ladies who appeared in town one night and disappeared the next into the great world. No creature could have been more remote than these coryphées from the slate-colored house and the prayer-meetings of the Reverend Castor.
It was the Reverend Castor himself who greeted Philip on the doorstep when he reached home at last. Philip would have avoided him, but the clergyman was coming down the path as he turned into it and so there was no escape.
He greeted Philip with a smile, saying, "Well, it's good to see you about again, my boy. We had a bad time over you . . . thought you weren't going to make the grade."
Philip grinned. "I'm not so easy to be rid of." He felt a sudden refreshing sense of superiority over the preacher, strange in all his experience. It was simply that he had no longer any awe of him as a man of God.
The Reverend Castor coughed and answered, "Oh! My dear boy. We didn't want to be rid of you. That's the last thing. . . ." He protested nervously and added, "I just dropped in for a moment to see how your wife was doing . . . and the twins. You ought to be proud, my boy, of two such fine babies . . . two. Most people are thankful for one."
"I would have been, too."
"You don't mean you aren't delighted with what God has sent you?"
"No . . . of course not . . . I was only making a
