n."

"I don't want him to walk," said Mrs. Flandin; "there's more ways than
one o' doin' most things; but I _do_ say, all the ministers ever I see
druv a team; and it looks more religious. To see the minister flyin'
over the hills like a racer is altogether too gay for my likin's."

"But he ain't gay," said Miss Gunn, looking appalled.

"He's mighty spry, for anybody that gets up into a pulpit on the
Sabbath and tells his fellow-creaturs what they ought to be doin'."

"But he does do that, Mrs. Flandin," said Diana. "He speaks plain
enough, too."

"I _do_ love to hear him!" said Miss Barry. "There, his words seem to
go all through me, and clear up my want of understandin'; for I never
was smart, you know; but seems to me I see things as well agin when
he's been talkin' to me. I say, it was a good day when he come to
Pleasant Valley."

"He ain't what you call an eloquent man," said Miss Babbage, the
schoolmaster's sister.

"What is an 'eloquent man,' Lottie Babbage?" Mrs. Boddington asked.
"It's a word, I know; but what is the thing the word means? Come, you
ought to be good at definitions."

"Mr. Masters don't pretend to be an eloquent man!" cried Mrs. Carpenter.

"Well, tell; come! what do you mean by it? I'd like to know," said Mrs.
Boddington. "I admire to get my idees straight. What is it he don't
pretend to be?"

"I don't think he pretends to be anything," said Diana.

"Only to have his own way wherever he goes," added Diana's mother.

"I'd be content to let him have his own way," said Mrs. Carpenter.
"It's pretty sure to be a good way; that's what _I_ think. I wisht he
had it, for my part."

"And yet he isn't eloquent?" said Mrs. Boddington.

"Well," said Miss Babbage with some difficulty, "he just says what he
has got to say, and takes the handiest words he can find; but I've
heard men that eloquent that they'd keep you wonderin' at 'em from the
beginning of their sermon to the end; and you'd got to be smart to know
what they were sayin'. A child can tell what Mr. Masters means."

"So kin I," said Miss Barry. "I'm thankful I kin. And I don't want a
man more eloquent than he is, for my preachin'."

"It ain't movin' preachin'," said Mrs. Flandin.

"It moves the folks," said Mrs. Carpenter. "I don't know what you'd
hev', Mis' Flandin; there's Liz Delamater, and Florry Mason, jined the
church lately; and old Lupton; and my Jim," she added with softened
voice; "and there's several more serious."