I did not express an opinion, but began to feel a good deal of interest in the romance likely to go on around me. Mr. Travers was a great swell, Lottie said, and as that was what Sam had called him, I was anxious to see him. I did see him the next Sunday in the little church which, with Mrs. Parks and Lottie, I attended in the village. It was one of the oldest churches on the coast, Mrs. Parks said, and it looked its full age. There were not many Episcopalians in town; few of them had much money, except Colin McPherson, who paid three-fourths of the rector’s salary and left the rest of the expense to the other parishioners and summer visitors. The windows were high, with small panes of glass; the carpet was faded; the backs of the pews were low; the seats were narrow and hard, and the small organ was frightfully out of tune. Accustomed as I was to city churches, I began to feel homesick in this shabby place, where the people looked nearly as forlorn as their surroundings. The organ had just commenced what was intended as a voluntary, which set my nerves on edge, when there was a stir near the door, and the sexton in his creaky boots tiptoed up the aisle to a square pew with red cushions, which I had singled out as the McPherson pew. Nearly every one turned his head, and I with the rest, to look at the white-haired man carrying himself very erect, with his gold-bowed glasses on his nose and his big prayer-book held tightly in his hand. “Stiff, with a good face,” was my mental comment, and then I scanned curiously the young man who walked behind him, with aristocracy and polish and city stamped all over him from his collar and necktie to the shape of his shoes. I couldn’t see the latter, it is true, but I felt sure of them, and that his trousers were creased as they should be and were of the latest fashion. He had a pale, refined face, with clearly cut features, a mouth which told of firmness rather than sweetness, and eyes which I was certain seldom brightened at a joke because they didn’t see it. And yet there was about him something which I liked. He might be proud and probably was, but his presence seemed to brighten the little church wonderfully, so that I forgot its shabbiness in watching him, and nearly forgot the service, which the rector tried to intone, and the harsh notes of the organ and the discords of the soprano.