"Them as is used to giddy girls gets timid, as is natural," said Mrs. Tozer; "it's different where there is only one, and she a quiet one. I can't say as I ever thought a young man was more taking for being a minister; but there can't be no doubt as it must be harder upon you, ma'am, as has four daughters, than me as has only one--and she a quiet one," added the deacon's wife, with a glance of maternal pride at Phoebe, who was just then enfolding the spare form of Maria Pigeon in an artless embrace, and who looked in her pink wreath and white muslin dress, "quite the lady," at least in her mother's eyes. "The quiet ones is the deep ones," said Tozer, interfering, as a wise man ought, in the female duel, as it began to get intense. "Phoebe's my girl, and I don't deny being fond of her, as is natural; but she ain't so innocent as not to know how things is working, and what meaning is in some folks' minds. But that's neither here nor there, and it's time as we was going away." "Not before we've had prayers," said Mrs. Brown. "I was surprised the first time I see Mr. Vincent in your house, Mr. Tozer, as we all parted like heathens without a blessing, specially being all chapel folks, and of one way of thinking. Our ways is different in this house; and though we're in a comfortless kind of condition, and no better than if we hadn't no minister, still as there's you and Mr. Pigeon here----" The tea-party thus concluded with a still more distinct sense of the pastor's shortcomings. There was nobody to "give prayers" but Pigeon and Tozer. For all social purposes, the flock in Salem might as well have had no minister. The next little committee held in the back parlour at the butter-shop was still more unsatisfactory. While it was in progress, Mr. Vincent himself appeared, and had to be taken solemnly up-stairs to the drawing-room, where there was no fire, and where the hum of the voices below was very audible, as Mrs. Tozer and Phoebe, getting blue with cold, sat vainly trying to occupy the attention of the pastor. "Pa has some business people with him in the parlour," explained Phoebe, who was very tender and sympathetic, as might be expected; but it did not require a very brilliant intelligence to divine that the business under discussion was the minister, even if Mrs. Tozer's solemnity, and the anxious care with which he was conveyed past the closed door of the parlour, had not already filled the mind of the pastor with suspicion.