Into her new life she had carried three matchless assets for a minister's wife,--a supreme confidence in the exaltation of the ministry, a boundless adoration for her husband, and a natural liking for people that made people naturally like her. Thus equipped, she faced the years of aids and missions with profound serenity. She was sorry they hadn't more time for the honeymoon business, she and David. Honeymooning was such tremendously good fun. But they were so almost unbelievably busy all the time. On Monday David was down-town all day, attending minister's meeting and Presbytery in the morning, and looking up new books in the afternoon. Carol always joined him for lunch and they counted that noon-time hour a little oasis in a week of work. In the evening there were deacons' meetings, or trustees' meetings, or the men's Bible class. On Tuesday evening they had a Bible study class. On Wednesday evening was prayer-meeting. Thursday night, they, with several of their devoted workers, walked a mile and a half across country to Happy Hollow where they conducted mad little mission meetings. Friday night Carol met with the young women's club, and on Saturday night was a mission study class. Carol used to sigh over the impossibility of having a beau night. She said that she had often heard that husbands couldn't be sweethearts, but she had never believed it before. Pinned down to facts, however, she admitted she preferred the husband. Mornings Carol was busy with housework, talking to herself without intermission as she worked. And David spent long hours in his study, poring over enormous books that Carol insisted made her head ache from the outside and would probably give her infantile paralysis if she dared to peep between the covers. Afternoons were the aid societies, missionary societies, and all the rest of them, and then the endless calls,--calls on the sick, calls on the healthy, calls on the pillars, calls on the backsliders, calls on the very sad, calls on the very happy,--every varying phase of life in a church community merits a call from the minister and his wife. The heavy yoke,--the yoke of dead routine,--dogs the footsteps of every minister, and even more, of every minister's wife. But Carol thought of the folks that fitted into the cogs of the routine to drive it round and round,--the teachers, the doctors' wives, the free-thinkers, the mothers, the professional women, the cynics, the pillars of the church,--and thinking of the folks, she forgot the routine. And so to her, routine could never prove a clog, stagnation. Every meeting brought her a fresh revelation, they amused her, those people, they puzzled her, sometimes they made her sad and frightened her, as they taught her facts of life they had gleaned from wide experience and often in bitter tears. Still, they were folks, and Carol had always had a passion for people.