spurred to put dashes of character in
his descriptions, and set forth the idiosyncrasies and distinguishing
earmarks of his flock with what he felt afterward might have been too
free a tongue. But at the time her fine air of appreciation led him
captive. He gossiped about his parishioners as if he enjoyed it. He
made a specially happy thumb-nail sketch for her of one of his trustees,
Erastus Winch, the loud-mouthed, ostentatiously jovial, and really
cold-hearted cheese-buyer. She was particularly interested in hearing
about this man. The personality of Winch seemed to have impressed her,
and she brought the talk back to him more than once, and prompted Theron
to the very threshold of indiscretion in his confidences on the subject.

Save at meal-times, Sister Soulsby spent the two days out around among
the Methodists of Octavius. She had little or nothing to say about
what she thus saw and heard, but used it as the basis for still further
inquiries. She told more than once, however, of how she had been pressed
here or there to stay to dinner or supper, and how she had excused
herself. "I've knocked about too much," she would explain to the Wares,
"not to fight shy of random country cooking. When I find such a born
cook as you are--well I know when I'm well off." Alice flushed with
pleased pride at this, and Theron himself felt that their visitor showed
great good sense. By Saturday noon, the two women were calling each
other by their first names. Theron learned with a certain interest that
Sister Soulsby's Christian name was Candace.

It was only natural that he should give even more thought to her than to
her quaint and unfamiliar old Ethiopian name. She was undoubtedly a very
smart woman. To his surprise she had never introduced in her talk any of
the stock religious and devotional phrases which official Methodists
so universally employed in mutual converse. She might have been an
insurance agent, or a school-teacher, visiting in a purely secular
household, so little parade of cant was there about her.

He caught himself wondering how old she was. She seemed to have been
pretty well over the whole American continent, and that must take years
of time. Perhaps, however, the exertion of so much travel would tend
to age one in appearance. Her eyes were still youthful--decidedly
wise eyes, but still juvenile. They had sparkled with almost girlish
merriment at some of his jokes. She turned them about a good deal when
she s