Theron found himself only imperfectly following the theories of the young philosopher.  It was his fact that monopolized the minister’s attention.

“But as I understand it,” he remarked hesitatingly, “Brother Gorringe—­or rather Mr. Gorringe—­gets all the plants he wants, everything he likes, from a big garden somewhere outside.  I don’t know that it is exactly his; but I remember hearing something to that effect.”

The boy slapped the last litter off his hands, and, as he came to the window, shook his head.  “These don’t come from no garden outside,” he declared.  “They come from the dealers’, and he pays solid cash for ’em.  The invoice for this lot alone was thirty-one dollars and sixty cents.  There it is on the table.  You can see it for yourself.”

Mr. Ware did not offer to look.  “Very likely these are for the garden I was speaking of,” he said.  “Of course you can’t go on taking plants out of a garden indefinitely without putting others in.”

“I don’t know anything about any garden that he takes plants out of,” answered Harvey, and looked meditatively for a minute or two out upon the street below.  Then he turned to the minister.  “Your wife’s doing a good deal of gardening this spring, I notice,” he said casually.  “You’d hardly think it was the same place, she’s fixed it up so.  If she wants any extra hoeing done, I can always get off Saturday afternoons.”

“I will remember,” said Theron.  He also looked out of the window; and nothing more was said until, a few moments later, Mr. Gorringe himself came in.

The lawyer seemed both surprised and pleased at discovering the identity of his visitor, with whom he shook hands in almost an excess of cordiality.  He spread a large newspaper over the pile of seedling plants on the table, pushed the packing-box under the table with his foot, and said almost peremptorily to the boy, “You can go now!” Then he turned again to Theron.

“Well, Mr. Ware, I’m glad to see you,” he repeated, and drew up a chair by the window.  “Things are going all right with you, I hope.”

Theron noted again the waving black hair, the dark skin, and the carefully trimmed mustache and chin-tuft which gave the lawyer’s face a combined effect of romance and smartness.  No; it was the eyes, cool, shrewd, dark-gray eyes, which suggested this latter quality.  The recollection of having seen one of them wink, in deliberate hostility of sarcasm, when those other trustees had their backs turned, came mercifully at the moment to recall the young minister to his errand.

“I thought I would drop in and have a chat with you,” he said, getting better under way as he went on.  “Quarterly Conference is only a fortnight off, and I am a good deal at sea about what is going to happen.”

“I’m not a church member, you know,” interposed Gorringe.  “That shuts me out of the Quarterly Conference.”

“Alas, yes!” said Theron.  “I wish it didn’t.  I’m afraid I’m not going to have any friends to spare there.”