anner. "If you like her, that's the chief thing."

Alice shook her tear-drops away. "No," she replied, with a wistful
smile; "the chief thing is to have her like you. She's as smart as a
steel trap--that woman is--and if she took the notion, I believe she
could help get us a better place."

CHAPTER XIV

The ensuing week went by with a buzz and whirl, circling about Theron
Ware's dizzy consciousness like some huge, impalpable teetotum sent
spinning under Sister Soulsby's resolute hands. Whenever his vagrant
memory recurred to it, in after months, he began by marvelling, and
ended with a shudder of repulsion.

It was a week crowded with events, which seemed to him to shoot past
so swiftly that in effect they came all of a heap. He never essayed the
task, in retrospect, of arranging them in their order of sequence. They
had, however, a definite and interdependent chronology which it is worth
the while to trace.

Mrs. Soulsby brought her trunk round to the parsonage bright and early
on Friday morning, and took up her lodgement in the best bedroom,
and her headquarters in the house at large, with a cheerful and
business-like manner. She desired nothing so much, she said, as that
people should not put themselves out on her account, or allow her to
get in their way. She appeared to mean this, too, and to have very good
ideas about securing its realization.

During both Friday and the following day, indeed, Theron saw her only at
the family meals. There she displayed a hearty relish for all that was
set before her which quite won Mrs. Ware's heart, and though she talked
rather more than Theron found himself expecting from a woman, he could
not deny that her conversation was both seemly and entertaining. She had
evidently been a great traveller, and referred to things she had seen in
Savannah or Montreal or Los Angeles in as matter-of-fact fashion as
he could have spoken of a visit to Tecumseh. Theron asked her many
questions about these and other far-off cities, and her answers were
all so pat and showed so keen and clear an eye that he began in spite of
himself to think of her with a certain admiration.

She in turn plied him with inquiries about the principal pew-holders
and members of his congregation--their means, their disposition, and the
measure of their devotion. She put these queries with such intelligence,
and seemed to assimilate his replies with such an alert understanding,
that the young minister was