You'd have 'em there, I think." Theron had begun cheerfully enough, but the careworn, preoccupied look returned now to his face."I'm sorry if we've fallen out with the Barnums," he said."His brother-in-law, Davis, the Sunday-school superintendent, is a member of the Quarterly Conference, you know, and I've been hoping that he was on my side.I've been taking a good deal of pains to make up to him."He ended with a sigh, the pathos of which impressed Alice.
"If you think it will do any good," she volunteered, "I'll go and call on the Davises this very afternoon.
I'm sure to find her at home,--she's tied hand and foot with that brood of hers--and you'd better give me some of that candy for them."Theron nodded his approval and thanks, and relapsed into silence.When the meal was over, he brought out the confectionery to his wife, and without a word went back to that remarkable book.
When Alice returned toward the close of day, to prepare the simple tea which was always laid a half-hour earlier on Thursdays and Sundays, she found her husband where she had left him, still busy with those new scientific works.
She recounted to him some incidents of her call upon Mrs.Davis, as she took off her hat and put on the big kitchen apron--how pleased Mrs.Davis seemed to be;how her affection for her sister-in-law, the grocer's wife, disclosed itself to be not even skin-deep; how the children leaped upon the candy as if they had never seen any before;and how, in her belief, Mr.Davis would be heart and soul on Theron's side at the Conference.
To her surprise, the young minister seemed not at all interested.He hardly looked at her during her narrative, but reclined in the easy-chair with his head thrown back, and an abstracted gaze wandering aimlessly about the ceiling.When she avowed her faith in the Sunday-school superintendent's loyal partisanship, which she did with a pardonable pride in having helped to make it secure, her husband even closed his eyes, and moved his head with a gesture which plainly bespoke indifference.