The Doctor gave a hurried glance at his study-gown, put his hand to his head, which, in place of the ample curls of his full-bottomed wig, was decked only with a very ordinary cap, and seemed to come at once to a full comprehension.  He smiled a kind of conscious, benignant smile, which adorned his high cheek-bones and hard features as sunshine adorns the side of a rock, and said, kindly, “Ah, well, child, I understand now; I’ll be out in a moment.”

And Mary, sure that he was now on the right track, went back to the tearoom with the announcement that the Doctor was coming.

In a few moments he entered, majestic and proper, in all the dignity of full-bottomed, powdered wig, full, flowing coat, with ample cuffs, silver knee- and shoe-buckles, as became the gravity and majesty of the minister of those days.

He saluted all the company with a benignity which had a touch of the majestic, and also of the rustic in it; for at heart the Doctor was a bashful man,—­that is, he had somewhere in his mental camp that treacherous fellow whom John Bunyan anathematizes under the name of Shame.  The company rose on his entrance; the men bowed and the women curtsied, and all remained standing while he addressed to each with punctilious decorum those inquiries in regard to health and well-being which preface a social interview.  Then, at a dignified sign from Mrs. Katy, he advanced to the table, and, all following his example, stood, while, with one hand uplifted, he went through a devotional exercise which, for length, more resembled a prayer than a grace,—­after which the company were seated.

“Well, Doctor,” said Mr. Brown, who, as a householder of substance, felt a conscious right to be first to open conversation with the minister, “people are beginning to make a noise about your views.  I was talking with Deacon Timmins the other day down on the wharf, and he said Dr. Stiles said that it was entirely new doctrine,—­entirely so,—­and for his part he wanted the good old ways.”

“They say so, do they?” said the Doctor, kindling up from an abstraction into which he seemed to be gradually subsiding.  “Well, let them.  I had rather publish new divinity than any other, and the more of it the better,—­if it be but true.  I should think it hardly worth while to write, if I had nothing new to say.”

“Well,” said Deacon Twitchel,—­his meek face flushing with awe of his minister,—­“Doctor, there’s all sorts of things said about you.  Now the other day I was at the mill with a load of corn, and while I was a-waitin’, Amariah Wadsworth came along with his’n; and so while we were waitin’, he says to me, ‘Why, they say your minister is gettin’ to be an Armenian’; and he went on a-tellin’ how old Ma’am Badger told him that you interpreted some parts of Paul’s Epistles clear on the Armenian side.  You know Ma’am Badger’s a master-hand at doctrines, and she’s ’most an uncommon Calvinist.”