But before Sunday morning came J.W. had other questions to ask. He put them to Marty in intervals of the skating races; and again after supper, before going over to the church to meet a little group of Sunday-school folk--"my teacher-partners" Marty called them--who were learning with him how to adapt Sunday school science and the teaching art to the conditions of the open country. All of J.W.'s questions were really one big question: "Say, Marty, boy, I always knew you had something in you that didn't show on the surface, but I never thought it was exactly the stuff they need to make up-to-date country preachers. How does it happen that you've blossomed out in these few months as a Moses to lead a 'rural parish'--if that's the right scientific name--out of such a wilderness as I saw at Deep Creek last Sunday?" Marty made a pass at his chum in the fashion of the Cartwright days, and waited for the return punch before answering. "Don't you 'Moses' me, John Wesley. Besides, this circuit was no wilderness. Henderson, the preacher who was here before me, was just the man for this work. He knew the country, and believed it had the makings of even more attractive life than the town. Too bad he had to quit. But he started these folks thinking the right way. And then, don't you remember I wrote last summer that I was spending two weeks at a school for rural ministers?" "Oh, yes, I remember that," J.W. answered, "but that's no explanation. I spent four years at a college for town and country boys, and now look at me! Two weeks is a little too short a course to produce miracles, even with such an intellect as yours, notwithstanding your name is bigger than mine, Martin Luther! Now, if you'd said four weeks, I might almost have believed you, but two weeks--well, it just isn't done, that's all!"