“He approves of your preaching. He has talked your sermons over with me. You oughtn't to complain.” “Oh, I don't! Do you think he's really softening a little toward me?” “Not personally, that I know,” said Miss Vane. “But he seems to regard you as a channel of the truth.” “I ought to be glad of so much,” said Sewell. “I confess that I hadn't supposed he was at all of our way of thinking. They preached a very appreciable orthodoxy at Willoughby Pastures.” “I don't know about that,” said Miss Vane. “I only know that he approves your theology, or your ethics.” “Ethics, I hope. I'm sure _they're_ right.” After a thoughtful moment the minister asked, “Have you observed that they have softened him socially at all--broken up that terrible rigidity of attitude, that dismaying retentiveness of speech?” “I know what you mean!” cried Miss Vane delightedly. “I believe Lemuel _is_ a little more supple, a little _less_ like a granite boulder in one of his meadows. But I can't say that he's glib yet. He isn't apparently going to say more than he thinks.” “I hope he thinks more than he says,” sighed the minister. “My interviews with Lemuel have left me not only exhausted but bruised, as if I had been hurling myself against a dead wall. Yes, I manage him better from the pulpit, and I certainly oughtn't to complain. I don't expect him to make any response, and I perceive that I am not _quite_ so sore as after meeting him in private life.” * * * * * That evening Lemuel was helping to throng the platform of an overcrowded horse-car. It was Saturday night, and he was going to the provision man up toward the South End, whom Miss Vane was dealing with for the time being, in an economical recoil from her expensive Back Bay provision man, to order a forgotten essential of the Sunday's supplies. He had already been at the grocer's, and was carrying home three or four packages to save the cart from going a third time that day to Bolingbroke Street, and he stepped down into the road when two girls came squeezing their way out of the car. “Well, I'm glad,” said one of them in a voice Lemuel knew at once, “'t there's one man's got the politeness to make a _little_ grain o' room for you. Thank you, sir!” she added, with more scorn for the others than gratitude for Lemuel. “_You're_ a gentleman, _any_way.” The hardened offenders on the platform laughed, but Lemuel said simply, “You're quite welcome.” “Why, land's sakes!” shouted the girl. “Well, if 'tain't you! S'tira!” she exclaimed to her companion in utter admiration. Then she added to Lemuel, “Why, I didn't s'pose but what you'd a' be'n back home long ago. Well, I _am_ glad. Be'n in Boston ever since? Well, I want to know!”