De Forrest tried to laugh at his discomfiture when he appeared at the dinner-table, but he was evidently annoyed and vexed with its author. "It was very nice of you, Mr. Hemstead," said Lottie, "to permit youself to be pelted by us. You evidently did not think us worthy of your steel. But I fear you gave Julian a strong compliment." "I only returned one of his." "But he did not hit you." "He meant to. We form our most correct judgment of people sometimes from what they intend, rather than what they do." "Well, I thank you for my share of the sport." "And I thank you for mine." "What occasion have you to thank me, when I almost put your eyes out with snow?" "You did not so blind them but that I could see a face aglow with exercise. That made a pleasing contrast to the cold white snow." "Frank, Frank, you will make Lottie vain," said Mrs. Marchmont. "I did not know that complimenting was permitted to you." "That is all right, sister," said Mr. Dimmerly. "That's where he shows his good blood and connection with an old family. He is gallant to the ladies. They can't get that out of him, even at a theological seminary." Hemstead's blushing confusion increased the laugh at this speech. "O, mother," exclaimed Addie, "we are all going on a frolic to-night. You know that poor, forlorn little minister at Scrub Oaks, who has six children, and gets but six hundred a year? Well, they are going to give him a donation to-night, so a dilapidated pillar of the church told us. We were invited to come, and Lottie wants to go." "Very well, my dear, since you and our guests wish it." "Now, auntie, that's very sweet of you to answer so," said Lottie. "I want to see the queer, awkward country people who go to such places. They amuse me vastly; don't they you, Mr. Hemstead?" "They interest me." "O, it wouldn't be proper for you to say 'amuse.'" "Nor would it be exactly true." "Why, Lottie," said Addie, "you know that ministers only think of people as a sad lot that must be saved." "We'll help make a jolly lot there, to-night," said Lottie, with a swift glance at Hemstead's contracting brows. "Moreover, auntie, I want to see what a minister that lives on six hundred a year looks like. We give our pastor ten thousand." "You need not go so far for that purpose, Miss Marsden," said Hemstead, quietly: "that is all I shall get." "What!" she exclaimed, dropping her knife and fork. "That, in all probability, will be my salary at first. It may be but five hundred." "Is that all they pay you for going out among the border ruffians?" "That is the average." "I wouldn't go," she said indignantly, "You may rest assured I would not, for the money." "Frank will change his mind before spring," said his aunt; "or a year at least among the 'border ruffians,' as you call them, will cure him, and he will be glad to take a nice church at the East." "What do you say to that, Mr. Hemstead?" "Perhaps I would better answer by my actions," he replied.