I take some credit to myself for broad-mindedness.
A Churchwoman, eh?"--he beamed on Hester--"and in other respects, I hope,
satisfactory?"

"Quite." Mr. Sam turned to Hester. "Would you mind running over your
qualifications again? To tell the truth, I've forgotten 'em."

Hester, with an acute sense of shame, again rehearsed the list.

"Quite so," said Parson Endicott, who had obviously not been listening.
He turned to Mr. Sam with inquiry in his eye. "I think, perhaps--if Miss
Marvin--"

"I daresay she won't mind stepping into the next room," said Mr. Sam,
turning his back on her, and calmly reseating himself. The parson glanced
at Hester with polite inquiry, and, as she bowed, stepped to open the door
for her. With head bent to hide the flush on her cheeks, she passed out
into the great parlour.

Now the great parlour overlooked the garden through three tall windows,
of which Susannah had drawn down the blinds half-way and opened the lower
sashes, so that the room seemed to Hester deliciously fresh and cool.
It was filled, too, with the fragrance of a jarful of peonies, set
accurately in the middle of the long bare table; and she stood for a
moment--her sight yet misty with indignant, wounded pride--staring at the
reflection of their crimson blooms in the polished mahogany.

These two men were intolerable: and yet they only translated into meaner
terms the opinion which everyone in this strange country seemed to have
formed of her. She thought of the young sailor, of Nuncey, of Mr. Benny.
All these were simple souls, and patently willing to believe the best of a
fellow-creature; yet each in a different way had treated her with
suspicion, as though she were here to seek her own interests, and with a
selfish disregard of others'. The young sailor had openly and hotly
accused her of it. Nuncey and her father, though kind, and even
delicately eager to make her welcome, as clearly held some disapproval in
reserve--were puzzled somehow to account for her. And she was guiltless.
She had come in response to a plain invitation, thinking only of good work
to be done. No; what she found intolerable was not these two men, but the
whole situation.

She turned with a start. Something had flown in through the open midmost
window, and fallen with a thud on the floor a few yards from her feet.

She stepped across and stooped to examine it. It was the upper half of a
tattered and somewhat grimy rag doll.

To acco