The lawyer seemed both surprised and pleased at discovering the identity of his visitor, with whom he shook hands in almost an excess of cordiality. He spread a large newspaper over the pile of seedling plants on the table, pushed the packing-box under the table with his foot, and said almost peremptorily to the boy, “You can go now!” Then he turned again to Theron. “Well, Mr. Ware, I'm glad to see you,” he repeated, and drew up a chair by the window. “Things are going all right with you, I hope.” Theron noted again the waving black hair, the dark skin, and the carefully trimmed mustache and chin-tuft which gave the lawyer's face a combined effect of romance and smartness. No; it was the eyes, cool, shrewd, dark-gray eyes, which suggested this latter quality. The recollection of having seen one of them wink, in deliberate hostility of sarcasm, when those other trustees had their backs turned, came mercifully at the moment to recall the young minister to his errand. “I thought I would drop in and have a chat with you,” he said, getting better under way as he went on. “Quarterly Conference is only a fortnight off, and I am a good deal at sea about what is going to happen.” “I'm not a church member, you know,” interposed Gorringe. “That shuts me out of the Quarterly Conference.” “Alas, yes!” said Theron. “I wish it didn't. I'm afraid I'm not going to have any friends to spare there.” “What are you afraid of?” asked the lawyer, seeming now to be wholly at his ease again “They can't eat you.” “No, they keep me too lean for that,” responded Theron, with a pensive smile. “I WAS going to ask, you know, for an increase of salary, or an extra allowance. I don't see how I can go on as it is. The sum fixed by the last Quarterly Conference of the old year, and which I am getting now, is one hundred dollars less than my predecessor had. That isn't fair, and it isn't right. But so far from its looking as if I could get an increase, the prospect seems rather that they will make me pay for the gas and that sidewalk. I never recovered more than about half of my moving expenses, as you know, and--and, frankly, I don't know which way to turn. It keeps me miserable all the while.” “That's where you're wrong,” said Mr. Gorringe. “If you let things like that worry you, you'll keep a sore skin all your life. You take my advice and just go ahead your own gait, and let other folks do the worrying. They ARE pretty close-fisted here, for a fact, but you can manage to rub along somehow. If you should get into any real difficulties, why, I guess--” the lawyer paused to smile in a hesitating, significant way--“I guess some road out can be found all right. The main thing is, don't fret, and don't allow your wife to--to fret either.”