The institution of pastoral calling, particularly that inquisitorial form of it laid down in the Discipline, had never attracted Theron.  He and Alice had gone about among their previous flocks in quite a haphazard fashion, without thought of system, much less of deliberate purpose.  Theron made lists now, and devoted thought and examination to the personal tastes and characteristics of the people to be cultivated.  There were some, for example, who would expect him to talk pretty much as the Discipline ordained—­that is, to ask if they had family prayer, to inquire after their souls, and generally to minister grace to his hearers—­and these in turn subdivided themselves into classes, ranging from those who would wish nothing else to those who needed only a mild spiritual flavor.  There were others whom he would please much better by not talking shop at all.  Although he could ill afford it, he subscribed now for a daily paper that he might have a perpetually renewed source of good conversational topics for these more worldly calls.  He also bought several pounds of candy, pleasing in color, but warranted to be entirely harmless, and he made a large mysterious mark on the inside of his new silk hat to remind him not to go out calling without some of this in his pocket for the children.

Alice, he felt, was not helping him in this matter as effectively as he could have wished.  Her attitude toward the church in Octavius might best be described by the word “sulky.”  Great allowance was to be made, he realized, for her humiliation over the flowers in her bonnet.  That might justify her, fairly enough, in being kept away from meeting now and again by headaches, or undefined megrims.  But it ought not to prevent her from going about and making friends among the kindlier parishioners who would welcome such a thing, and whom he from time to time indicated to her.  She did go to some extent, it is true, but she produced, in doing so, an effect of performing a duty.  He did not find traces anywhere of her having created a brilliant social impression.  When they went out together, he was peculiarly conscious of having to do the work unaided.

This was not at all like the Alice of former years, of other charges.  Why, she had been, beyond comparison, the most popular young woman in Tyre.  What possessed her to mope like this in Octavius?

Theron looked at her attentively nowadays, when she was unaware of his gaze, to try if her face offered any answer to the riddle.  It could not be suggested that she was ill.  Never in her life had she been looking so well.  She had thrown herself, all at once, and with what was to him an unaccountable energy, into the creation and management of a flower-garden.  She was out the better part of every day, rain or shine, digging, transplanting, pruning, pottering generally about among her plants and shrubs.  This work in the open air had given her an aspect of physical well-being which it was impossible to be mistaken about.