“Yes, I know,” murmured Alice.  Then, with a sudden impulse, she turned to her companion.  “Candace,” she said fervently, “we’re alone here for the moment; I must tell you that if I don’t talk gratitude to you, it’s simply and solely because I don’t know where to begin, or what to say.  I’m just dumfounded at your goodness.  It takes my speech away.  I only know this, Candace:  God will be very good to you.”

“Tut! tut!” replied Sister Soulsby, “that’s all right, you dear thing.  I know just how you feel.  Don’t dream of being under obligation to explain it to me, or to thank us at all.  We’ve had all sorts of comfort out of the thing—­Soulsby and I. We used to get downright lonesome, here all by ourselves, and we’ve simply had a winter of pleasant company instead, that s all.  Besides, there’s solid satisfaction in knowing that at last, for once in our lives we’ve had a chance to be of some real use to somebody who truly needed it.  You can’t imagine how stuck up that makes us in our own conceit.  We feel as if we were George Peabody and Lady Burdett-Coutts, and several other philanthropists thrown in.  No, seriously, don’t think of it again.  We’re glad to have been able to do it all; and if you only go ahead now, and prosper and be happy, why, that will be the only reward we want.”

“I hope we shall do well,” said Alice.  “Only tell me this, Candace.  You do think I was right, don’t you, in insisting on Theron’s leaving the ministry altogether?  He seems convinced enough now that it was the right thing to do; but I grow nervous sometimes lest he should find it harder than he thought to get along in business, and regret the change—­and blame me.”

“I think you may rest easy in your mind about that,” the other responded.  “Whatever else he does, he will never want to come within gunshot of a pulpit again.  It came too near murdering him for that.”

Alice looked at her doubtfully.  “Something came near murdering him, I know.  But it doesn’t seem to me that I would say it was the ministry.  And I guess you know pretty well yourself what it was.  Of course, I’ve never asked any questions, and I’ve hushed up everybody at Octavius who tried to quiz me about it—­his disappearance and my packing up and leaving, and all that—­and I’ve never discussed the question with you—­but—­”

“No, and there’s no good going into it now,” put in Sister Soulsby, with amiable decisiveness.  “It’s all past and gone.  In fact, I hardly remember much about it now myself.  He simply got into deep water, poor soul, and we’ve floated him out again, safe and sound.  That’s all.  But all the same, I was right in what I said.  He was a mistake in the ministry.”

“But if you’d known him in previous years,” urged Alice, plaintively, “before we were sent to that awful Octavius.  He was the very ideal of all a young minister should be.  People used to simply worship him, he was such a perfect preacher, and so pure-minded and friendly with everybody, and threw himself into his work so.  It was all that miserable, contemptible Octavius that did the mischief.”