ay
to say those things that Mrs. Lansdale sorely needed to hear, it was
agreed among them that the minister must say them.

"The minister" in Little Arcady meant him of the Methodist church, the
two other clergymen being so young and unimportant as to need
identification by name.

Of the official and inspired visit of this good man to Miss Caroline,
the version that reached the public was one thing: its secret and true
history was another. The latter has never been told until now. It was
known abroad only that the minister had called on a warm afternoon in
July; that Miss Caroline had received him out of doors, on the shaded
east side of the house, where the heat had driven her to await a cooling
breeze from the river. One of the dingy rugs had been spread upon the
grass close to the lilac clump, and by an unfashionable little table
Miss Caroline sat, in a chair sadly out of date, reading of Childe
Harold. It was understood that the minister had there sat in another
antiquated chair of capacious arms and upholstered in faded green
velvet, a chair brought by Clem; and that he had weakly chatted away a
pleasant hour or two without ever once daring to bring Miss Caroline's
evil state to that attention which it merited from her. His difficulty
seemed to have been similar to that experienced by the calling ladies.
He could observe no opening that promised anything but an ungracious
plunge or an awkward stumble, and the ladies had been wrong in
suspecting that his authority as a cleric would nerve him to either of
these things.

There was despair next day when it was known that he had come away even
lavisher in praise of Miss Caroline than Aunt Delia had become; that he
refused with a gentle but unbreakable stubbornness, a thing he was known
to be cursed with latently, ever again to approach the lady with a
concealed purpose or with aught in his heart but a warm and flagrant
esteem.

So much for the public's knowledge; and doubtless the public in every
case knows all that it ought to know. But these are the facts as they
came to my privileged ears, and to what, I believe, are gifts of
interpretation not below the average.

When Clem brought the chair for the minister, Miss Caroline gave him a
brief, low-toned order, which he hurried away to execute. Within ten
minutes, and before Miss Caroline had finished telling how altogether
beautiful she found Arcady of the Little Country, Clem returned, bearing
breast-high a napk