"You'll come and talk to him, won't you?" urged Mrs. Peabody
anxiously. "It's been so long since I've seen a stranger I won't know
what to say."
"Yes, you will," Betty assured her "I'll come out after you've
talked a little while. He won't stay long, I imagine, because he will
probably have a number of calls to pay."
"Well, I hope Joseph stays out of sight," remarked Joseph Peabody's
wife frankly. "Of course, in time the new minister will know him as
well as the old one did; but I would like to have him call on me like
other parishioners first."
CHAPTER III
BOB HAS GREAT NEWS
The new minister proved to be a gentle old man, evidently retired to
a country charge and, in his way, quite as diffident as Mrs. Peabody.
He was apparently charmed to be entertained on the porch, and saw
nothing wrong with the neglected house and grounds. His near-sighted
eyes, beaming with kindness and good-will, apparently took comfort
and serenity for granted, and when Betty came out half an hour after
his arrival, carrying a little tray of lemonade and cakes, he was
deep in a recital of the first charge he had held upon his graduation
from the theological seminary forty years before.
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