And Carol brought out the big bottle and administered the designated teaspoonful.

“For you must quit coughing, David,” she said.  “You ruined two good points last Sunday by clearing your throat in the middle of a phrase.  And it isn’t so easy making points as that.”

“Aren’t you tired of hearing me preach, Carol?  We’ve been married a whole year now.  Aren’t you finding my sermons monotonous?”

“David,” she said earnestly, resting her head against his shoulder, partly for weariness, partly for the pleasure of feeling the rise and fall of his breast,—­“when you go up into the pulpit you look so white and good, like an apostle or a good angel, it almost frightens me.  I think, ’Oh, no, he isn’t my husband, not really,—­he is just a good angel God sent to keep me out of mischief.’  And while you are preaching I never think, ‘He is mine.’  I always think, ‘He is God’s.’”

Tears came into her eyes as she spoke, and David drew her close in his arms.

“Do you, sweetheart?  It seems a terrible thing to stand up there before a houseful, of people, most of them good, and clean, and full of faith, and try to direct their steps in the broader road.  I sometimes feel that men are not fit for it.  There ought to be angels from Heaven.”

“But there are angels from Heaven watching over them, David, guiding them, showing them how.  I believe good white angels are guiding every true minister,—­not the bad ones—­ Oh, I know a lot about ministers, honey,—­proud, ambitious, selfish, vainglorious, hypocritical, even amorous, a lot of them,—­but there are others, true ones,—­you, David, and some more.  They just have to grow together until harvest, and then the false ones will be dug up and dumped in the garbage.”

For a while they were silent.

Finally he asked, smiling a little, “Are you getting cramped, Carol?  Are you getting narrow, and settling down to a rut?  Have you lost your enthusiasm and your sparkle?”

Carol laughed at him.  “David, do you remember the first night we were married, when we knelt down together to say our prayers and you put your arm around my shoulder, and we prayed there, side by side?  Dearest, that one little fifteen minutes of confidence and humility and heart-gratitude was worth all the sparkle and fire in the world.  But have I lost it?  Seems to me I am as much a shouting Methodist as ever.”

David laughed, coughing a little, and Carol bustled him off to bed, sure he was catching a brand new cold, and berating herself roundly for allowing this foolish angel of hers to get a chill right on her very hands.

CHAPTER VII

THE FIRST STEP

It was Sunday night in mid-winter.  After church, David remained for a trustees’ meeting, and Carol walked home with some of the younger ones of the congregation.  When they asked if she wished them to wait with her for David she shook her head, smiling gratefully but with weariness.