"Oh, don't be too sure. You can't tell from a man's looks how red his blood is, especially if he's a priest. I suppose it's the men that have to hold themselves in hardest that make the best ministers." "I dare say," he answered indifferently. "Priest-craft has always been clever enough to see that unless the things it called sins were natural and inevitable its occupation would be gone. However, as long as folks will follow after them they'd be foolish to give up their trade." "Of course," his wife assented laughingly. "You won't get a rise out of me, my dear boy." Dr. Wilson chuckled. "You're a devilish humbug," he remarked admiringly; "but you do manage to get a lot of fun out of it." She smoothed her gown a moment, half smiling and half grave. "Of course it's of no use to tell you that in spite of all my fun I'm serious at bottom," she said slowly; "but it's a fact all the same. I don't take things with doleful solemnity like the old tabbies; but that's no sign that I'm not just as sincere. It's no matter, though; you won't believe it. What did you want to see me about?" "Oh, it was about those mortgages. I saw Lincoln this morning, and he has heard from Mrs. Frostwinch. She insists upon paying them off." "Then there isn't any truth in the story that that Sampson woman is circulating that Anna is going to build a spiritual temple or something. I never believed that Anna could be such an idiot as to give her money for anything so vulgar." "The whole thing is nonsensical on the face of it," was his response. "Mrs. Frostwinch can't build churches, let alone temples, if there's any difference." "Oh, in these days," Elsie interpolated, "a temple is only a church _declasse_." "She has only a life interest in the property," Wilson went on. "Berenice Morison is residuary legatee of almost everything, unless Mrs. Frostwinch has saved up her income." The talk ran on business for a few moments, Wilson advising with shrewdness, and practically deciding the matter for his wife. "I suppose," he said, when this was disposed of, "that Mrs. Frostwinch is too much wrapped up in faith-cure nonsense to take much interest in your holy war against Strathmore." "She isn't so much wrapped up in that stuff as you think. Dear Anna hasn't any sense of humor, but she's a model of propriety, and she's constantly shocked at herself for being alive by a treatment so irregular. She was mortified beyond words when that Crapps woman gave a treatment to Mrs. Bodewin Ranger's dog." "That snarling little black devil that's always under foot at the Rangers'? Gad! I'd like to give it a treatment!" "It got its ear hurt somehow, and Mrs. Crapps pretended to cure it. Mrs. Ranger was all but in tears over it, she was so grateful. Anna was entirely disgusted. She told Mrs. Crapps that she hadn't known before that she was in the hands of a veterinary."