The membership, meanwhile, are dropping in by couples to say kindly words to our mother, whom they pity, and it is rumored that they are collecting a purse to help us on our way.  At last our father returns, striving to hide his solicitude in a smile, for no fate to which they could consign himself would scathe that grisly servant of his Master; but for his family, who do not altogether share the spirit of his mission, he has a little fear.  He kisses us all in order, from the least to the biggest, commencing and ending with our mother, and playfully prevaricates as to our “appointment,” the name of which we noisily demand, until his wife says timidly,

“Where do they send us, Thomas?”

He tries to smile and trifle, but the possibility of her discontent gives him so great pain that we children perceive it.

“How would you like to go to Greensburg?”

“Not Greensburg!” she says, with a sudden paleness.

“Isn’t it a good circuit?” he says smilingly; “they paid the last preacher three hundred dollars, and his marriage fees were a hundred more.  They say he saved fifty dollars a year!”

“Oh, Thomas, I thought I had fortitude, but this—­”

“Is only to test your faith,” he cries.  “A poor preacher’s wife should be willing to go anywhere—­even to Greensburg; but that is not our appointment, dear; we move to Swan Neck.”

Then the fun begins in earnest.  The church people come to look at our contribution bedquilts, and help us pack up the blue earthenware.  The legs of the prodigious box, yclept a milk chest, are summarily amputated and laid away in it, with the parental library, which, we are sorry to say, is equally doubtful in point of both ornament and use.  The good gossips slyly peep into the covers of Matthew Henry, and regard their retiring pastor as a more learned man than they had suspected, while the black letter-press of Lorenzo Dow, and John Bunyan, and Fox’s “Book of Martyrs” touches them like so much necromancy.  The faithful old clock, whose disorders are crises in our humdrum pastoral year, is stopped and disjointed, much to our marvel, and all the spare straw in the barn is brought to protect the large gilt-edged cups and saucers, which say upon their edges, “To our pastor,” and “To our pastor’s wife.”  The thin rag carpets are folded away; the potatoes in the bin are sold to Brother Bibb, the grocer, and to a very few of the select sisters we present a can of our preserved quinces, with directions how to prepare them.  Poor Em., the black domestic, drops so many tears upon the parlor stove as she carries it out to the wagon that the fresh blackening she has so industriously given it goes for nothing; for Em. is to be discharged, and the fact troubles her, though a preacher’s servant has little to eat and plenty to do.