He nodded.  I think he enjoyed my perplexity.  I spoke on the impulse of the moment.  If I had given it a second thought I should not have done it; and yet I am not sorry I did.

“Mr. Quirk,” said I, “my husband was right and I was wrong.  We ladies thought very hard of you that you would not do anything toward repairing the parsonage.  For one I want to apologize.”

“Judge not, that ye be not judged,” said the old man; and he turned on his heel and went away.  He is the queerest man I ever saw.

I wish you could have seen that parsonage last Friday, the day that Mr. Mapleson and his wife were to arrive.  The walks were trim.  The plot before the piazza had been new sodded.  The grapevine was already putting out new buds as if it felt the effect of the Deacon’s tender care.  There was not a weed to be seen.  The beds, with their rich, black loam turned up to the sun, had a beauty of their own, which only one who loves to dig among flowers as much as I do can appreciate.  Mr. Glazier had made the dingy old house look like a new one.  After all there is nothing I like better for a cottage than pure white with green blinds.  Inside we had a lovely carpet on the parlor, and the new set of imitation rosewood.  A beautiful bouquet from Mrs. Wheaton’s garden stood in the bay window, which looks out upon the river.  My girl, lent for the occasion, was in the kitchen; and in the dining-room there was supper spread just for two, with cake, preserves, and pies enough in the closet (every body in the parish had sent in supper for that evening) to keep the parson supplied for a month at least.  I was the last to leave the house, and I did not leave it till I heard the whistle of the train.  Then I ran over to Miss Moore’s little cottage, which is right across the way.  Her parlor window was full of ladies peering out, first and foremost of whom was little Miss Flidgett, who thus gratified her wish to see how they would take it.  The Deacon, who was fixing something about the stable, was almost caught.  But he heard the carriage-wheels just in time to run into the shed, and I could see him there holding the door open a crack and peering out to see what passed.  Even dignified Mrs. Wheaton could not resist the temptation to be passing along, accidentally of course, just as the parson drove up.  Mr. Wheaton had called for them at the depot.  It was arranged (with them, that is) that he was to take them right to our house, and they were to stay there till they could decide whether to board or keep house.  He proposed to them, however, according to pre-arrangement, to stop a minute at the parsonage on the way.  “Mrs. Mapleson,” he said, “can see what it is and how she likes the house, and the location; and besides I have an errand to do at the store.”