“It was certainly very ingenious of you,” Theron began almost stiffly.  Then he yielded to the humanities, and with a kindling smile added, “And it was as kind as kind could be.  I’m afraid you’re wrong about it’s doing me any good, but I can see how well you meant it, and I’m grateful.”

“We could have sneaked in the kitchen table, perhaps, while he was out in the garden, and put on the extra long tablecloth,” interjected Alice, musingly.

Sister Soulsby smiled again at Sister Ware, but without any words this time; and Alice on the instant rose, with the remark that she must be going out to see about supper.

“I’m going to insist on coming out to help you,” Mrs. Soulsby declared, “as soon as I’ve talked over one little matter with your husband.  Oh, yes, you must let me this time.  I insist!”

As the kitchen door closed behind Mrs. Ware, a swift and apparently significant glance shot its way across from Sister Soulsby’s roving, eloquent eyes to the calmer and smaller gray orbs of her husband.  He rose to his feet, made some little explanation about being a gardener himself, and desiring to inspect more closely some rhododendrons he had noticed in the garden, and forthwith moved decorously out by the other door into the front hall.  They heard his footsteps on the gravel beneath the window before Mrs. Soulsby spoke again.

“You’re right about the Presiding Elder, and you’re wrong,” she said.  “He isn’t what one might call precisely in love with you.  Oh, I know the story—­how you got into debt at Tyre, and he stepped in and insisted on your being denied Tecumseh and sent here instead.”

“He was responsible for that, then, was he?” broke in Theron, with contracted brows.

“Why, don’t you make any effort to find out anything at all?” she asked pertly enough, but with such obvious good-nature that he could not but have pleasure in her speech.  “Why, of course he did it!  Who else did you suppose?”

“Well,” said the young minister, despondently, “if he’s as much against me as all that, I might as well hang up my fiddle and go home.”

Sister Soulsby gave a little involuntary groan of impatience.  She bent forward, and, lifting her eyes, rolled them at him in a curve of downward motion which suggested to his fancy the image of two eagles in a concerted pounce upon a lamb.

“My friend,” she began, with a new note of impressiveness in her voice, “if you’ll pardon my saying it, you haven’t got the spunk of a mouse.  If you’re going to lay down, and let everybody trample over you just as they please, you’re right!  You might as well go home.  But now here, this is what I wanted to say to you:  Do you just keep your hands off these next few days, and leave this whole thing to me.  I’ll pull it into shipshape for you.  No—­wait a minute—­don’t interrupt now.  I have taken a liking to you.  You’ve got brains, and you’ve got human nature in you,