After he had discharged Miss Bundle, the church secretary—and that was a pleasant moment; she cried so ludicrously—Elmer had to depend on a series of incapable girls, good Methodists but rotten stenographers.
It almost made him laugh to think that while everybody supposed he was having such a splendid time with his new fame, he was actually running into horrible luck. This confounded J. E. North, with all his pretenses of friendship, kept delaying his resignation from the Napap. Dr. Wilkie Bannister, the conceited chump—a fellow who thought he knew more about theology than a preacher!—delayed in advising the Official Board of the Yorkville Church to call Elmer. And his secretaries infuriated him. One of them was shocked when he said just the least little small "damn"!
Nobody appreciated the troubles of a man destined to be the ruler of America; no one knew what he was sacrificing in his campaign for morality.
And how tired he was of the rustic and unimaginative devotion of Lulu Bains! If she lisped "Oh, Elmer, you are so strong!" just once more, he'd have to clout her!
In the queue of people who came up after the morning service to shake hands with the Reverend Dr. Gantry was a young woman whom the pastor noted with interest.
She was at the end of the queue, and they talked without eavesdroppers.
If a Marquis of the seventeenth century could have been turned into a girl of perhaps twenty-five, completely and ardently feminine yet with the haughty head, the slim hooked nose, the imperious eyes of M. le Marquis, that would have been the woman who held Elmer's hand, and said:
"May I tell you, Doctor, that you are the first person in my whole life who has given me a sense of reality in religion?"
"Sister, I am very grateful," said the Reverend Dr. Gantry, while Elmer was saying within, "Say, you're a kid I'd like to get acquainted with!"
"Dr. Gantry, aside from my tribute—which is quite genuine—I have a perfectly unscrupulous purpose in coming and
