“That means newly come, as time is reckoned here,” Carr remarked.  “It takes at least a generation to make one permanent.  Have a seat, Mr. Thompson.  What do you think, so far, of the country you have selected for the scene of your operations?”

The slightly ironic inflection was not lost upon Thompson.  It nettled him a little, but it was too intangible to be resented, and in any case he had no ready defence against that sort of thing.  He took a third chair between the two of them and occupied himself a moment exterminating a few mosquitoes which had followed him from the grassy floor of the meadow and now slyly sought to find painful lodgment upon his face and neck.

“To tell the truth,” he said at last, “everything is so different from my expectations that I find myself a bit uncertain.  One finds—­well—­certain drawbacks.”

“Material or spiritual?” Carr inquired gravely.

The Reverend Thompson considered.

“Both,” he answered briefly.

This was the most candid admission he had ever permitted himself.  Carr laughed quietly.

“Well,” said he, “we are a primitive folk in a primitive region.  But I daresay you hope to accomplish a vast change for the better in us, if not in the country?”

Again there was that suggestion of mockery, veiled, scarcely perceptible, a matter of inflection.  Mr. Thompson found himself uttering an entirely unpremeditated reply.

“Which I daresay you doubt, Mr. Carr.  You seem to be fully aware of my mission here, and rather dubious as to its merit.”

Carr smiled.

“News travels fast in a country where even a passing stranger is a notable event,” he remarked.  “Naturally one draws certain conclusions when one hears that a minister has arrived in one’s vicinity.  As to my doubts—­first and last I’ve seen three different men sent here by your Board of Home Missions.  They have made no more of an impression than a pebble chucked into the lake.  Your Board of Missions must be a visionary lot.  They should come here in a body.  This country would destroy some of their cherished illusions.”

“A desire to serve is not an illusion,” Thompson said defensively.

“One would have to define service before one could dispute that,” Carr returned casually.  “What I mean is that the people who send you here have not the slightest conception of what they send you to.  When you get here you find yourself rather at sea.  Isn’t it so?”

“In a sense, yes,” Thompson reluctantly admitted.

“Oh, well,” Carr said, with a gesture of dismissing the subject, “that is your private business in any case.  We won’t get on at all if we begin by discussing theology, and dissecting the theological motive and activities.  Do you hunt or fish at all, Mr. Thompson?”

Mr. Thompson did not, and expressed no hankering for such pursuits.  There came a lapse in the talk.  Carr got out his pipe and began stuffing the bowl of it with tobacco.  Tommy Ashe sat gazing impassively over the meadow, slapping at an occasional mosquito.