“It’s a great vocation—­that of being a prop,” smiled the minister, as he peeled a red Baldwin apple, carefully preserving the spiral and eating it first.

“I suppose the wobbly vine thinks it’s grand to be a stout trellis when it needs one to climb on, but doesn’t the trellis ever want to twine, I wonder?” And Reba’s tone was doubtful.

“Even the trellis leans against the house, Reba.”

“Well, Letty never gets a chance either to lean or to twine!  Her family, her friends, her acquaintances, even the stranger within her gates, will pass trees, barber poles, telephone and telegraph poles, convenient corners of buildings, fence posts, ladders, and lightning rods for the sake of winding their weakness around her strength.  When she sits down from sheer exhaustion, they come and prop themselves against her back.  If she goes to bed, they climb up on the footboard, hang a drooping head, and look her wistfully in the eye for sympathy.  Prop on, prop ever, seems to be the underlying law of the universe!”

“Poor Reba!  She is talking of Letty and thinking of herself!” And the minister’s eye twinkled.

“Well, a little!” admitted his wife; “but I’m only a village prop, not a family one.  Where you are concerned”—­and she administered an affectionate pat to his cheek as she rose from her chair—­“I’m a trellis that leans against a rock!”

[Illustration]

III

Letitia Boynton’s life had been rather a drab one as seen through other people’s eyes, but it had never seemed so to her till within the last few years.  Her own father had been the village doctor, but of him she had no memory.  Her mother’s second marriage to a venerable country lawyer, John Gilman, had brought a kindly, inefficient stepfather into the family, a man who speedily became an invalid needing constant nursing.  The birth of David when Letty was three years old, brought a new interest into the household, and the two children grew to be fast friends; but when Mrs. Gilman died, and Letty found herself at eighteen the mistress of the house, the nurse of her aged stepfather, and the only guardian of a boy of fifteen, life became difficult.  More difficult still it became when the old lawyer died, for he at least had been a sort of fictitious head of the family and his mere existence kept David within bounds.

David was a lively, harum-scarum, handsome youth, good at his lessons, popular with his companions, always in a scrape, into which he was generally drawn by the minister’s son, so the neighbors thought.  At any rate, Dick Larrabee, as David’s senior, received the lion’s share of the blame when mischief was abroad.  If Parson Larrabee’s boy couldn’t behave any better than an unbelieving black-smith’s, a Methodist farmer’s, or a Baptist storekeeper’s, what was the use of claiming superior efficacy for the Congregational form of belief?

“Dick’s father’s never succeeded in bringing him into the church, though he’s worked on him from the time he was knee-high to a toad,” said Mrs. Popham.