"Quarterly Conference is only a fortnight off, and I am a good deal at sea about what is going to happen.""I'm not a church member, you know," interposed Gorringe.
"That shuts me out of the Quarterly Conference.""Alas, yes!" said Theron."I wish it didn't.I'm afraid I'm not going to have any friends to spare there.""What are you afraid of?" asked the lawyer, seeming now to be wholly at his ease again "They can't eat you.""No, they keep me too lean for that," responded Theron, with a pensive smile."I WAS going to ask, you know, for an increase of salary, or an extra allowance.
I don't see how I can go on as it is.The sum fixed by the last Quarterly Conference of the old year, and which Iam getting now, is one hundred dollars less than my predecessor had.That isn't fair, and it isn't right.
But so far from its looking as if I could get an increase, the prospect seems rather that they will make me pay for the gas and that sidewalk.I never recovered more than about half of my moving expenses, as you know, and--and, frankly, I don't know which way to turn.
It keeps me miserable all the while."
"That's where you're wrong," said Mr.Gorringe."If you let things like that worry you, you'll keep a sore skin all your life.You take my advice and just go ahead your own gait, and let other folks do the worrying.
They ARE pretty close-fisted here, for a fact, but you can manage to rub along somehow.If you should get into any real difficulties, why, I guess--" the lawyer paused to smile in a hesitating, significant way--"Iguess some road out can be found all right.The main thing is, don't fret, and don't allow your wife to--to fret either."
He stopped abruptly.Theron nodded in recognition of his amiable tone, and the found the nod lengthening itself out into almost a bow as the thought spread through his mind that this had been nothing more nor less than a promise to help him with money if worst came to worst.
He looked at Levi Gorringe, and said to himself that the intuition of women was wonderful.Alice had picked him out as a friend of theirs merely by seeing him pass the house.
"Yes," he said; "I am specially anxious to keep my wife from worrying.She was surrounded in her girlhood by a good deal of what, relatively, we should call luxury, and that makes it all the harder for her to be a poor minister's wife.I had quite decided to get her a hired girl, come what might, but she thinks she'd rather get on without one.Her health is better, I must admit, than it was when we came here.She works out in her garden a great deal, and that seems to agree with her.""Octavius is a healthy place--that's generally admitted,"replied the lawyer, with indifference.He seemed not to be interested in Mrs.Ware's health, but looked intently out through the window at the buildings opposite, and drummed with his fingers on the arms of his chair.
Theron made haste to revert to his errand."Of course, your not being in the Quarterly Conference," he said, "renders certain things impossible.But I didn't know but you might have some knowledge of how matters are going, what plans the officials of the church had; they seem to have agreed to tell me nothing.""Well, I HAVE heard this much," responded Gorringe.
"They're figuring on getting the Soulsbys here to raise the debt and kind o' shake things up generally.
I guess that's about as good as settled.Hadn't you heard of it?""Not a breath!" exclaimed Theron, mournfully."Well," he added upon reflection, "I'm sorry, downright sorry.
The debt-raiser seems to me about the lowest-down thing we produce.I've heard of those Soulsbys; I think I saw HIMindeed once at Conference, but I believe SHE is the head of the firm.""Yes; she wears the breeches, I understand,"said Gorringe sententiously.
"I HAD hoped," the young minister began with a rueful sigh, "in fact, I felt quite confident at the outset that Icould pay off this debt, and put the church generally on a new footing, by giving extra attention to my pulpit work.
It is hardly for me to say it, but in other places where Ihave been, my preaching has been rather--rather a feature in the town itself I have always been accustomed to attract to our services a good many non-members, and that, as you know, helps tremendously from a money point of view.
But somehow that has failed here.I doubt if the average congregations are a whit larger now than they were when Icame in April.I know the collections are not.""No," commented the lawyer, slowly; "you'll never do anything in that line in Octavius.You might, of course, if you were to stay here and work hard at it for five or six years--""Heaven forbid!" groaned Mr.Ware.
"Quite so," put in the other."The point is that the Methodists here are a little set by themselves.
I don't know that they like one another specially, but I do know that they are not what you might call popular with people outside.Now, a new preacher at the Presbyterian church, or even the Baptist--he might have a chance to create talk, and make a stir.
