n the wind, and the minute the train stopped I
caught the Presiding Elder, and invited him in your name to come
right here and stay; told him you and Alice were just set on his
coming--wouldn't take no for an answer. Of course he couldn't come--I
knew well enough he had promised old Pierce--but we got in our
invitation anyway, and it won't do you any harm. Now, that's what I call
having some gumption--wisdom of the serpent, and so on."

"I'm sure," remarked Alice, "I should have been mortified to death if he
had come. We lost the extension-leaf to our table in moving, and four is
all it'll seat decently."

Sister Soulsby smiled winningly into the wife's honest face. "Don't you
see, dear," she explained patiently, "I only asked him because I knew
he couldn't come. A little butter spreads a long way, if it's only
intelligently warmed."

"It was certainly very ingenious of you," Theron began almost stiffly.
Then he yielded to the humanities, and with a kindling smile added,
"And it was as kind as kind could be. I'm afraid you're wrong about
it's doing me any good, but I can see how well you meant it, and I'm
grateful."

"We COULD have sneaked in the kitchen table, perhaps, while he was out
in the garden, and put on the extra long tablecloth," interjected Alice,
musingly.

Sister Soulsby smiled again at Sister Ware, but without any words this
time; and Alice on the instant rose, with the remark that she must be
going out to see about supper.

"I'm going to insist on coming out to help you," Mrs. Soulsby declared,
"as soon as I've talked over one little matter with your husband. Oh,
yes, you must let me this time. I insist!"

As the kitchen door closed behind Mrs. Ware, a swift and apparently
significant glance shot its way across from Sister Soulsby's roving,
eloquent eyes to the calmer and smaller gray orbs of her husband. He
rose to his feet, made some little explanation about being a gardener
himself, and desiring to inspect more closely some rhododendrons he had
noticed in the garden, and forthwith moved decorously out by the other
door into the front hall. They heard his footsteps on the gravel beneath
the window before Mrs. Soulsby spoke again.

"You're right about the Presiding Elder, and you're wrong," she said.
"He isn't what one might call precisely in love with you. Oh, I know the
story--how you got into debt at Tyre, and he stepped in and insisted on
your being denied Tecumseh and sent here instead."