The Blythes Are Quoted Read Free

friendship with Dr. Blythe. And go into the parsonage ... don’t board.”
    Curtis shook his brown head ruefully.
    “I can’t ... Mr. Sheldon ... not right away. I haven’t a cent ... and I have some borrowed money to repay. I’ll have to wait until I have paid my debts and saved enough money to pay for a housekeeper.”
    So he was not contemplating matrimony.
    “Oh, well, of course if you can’t, you can’t. But do it as soon as you can. There is no place for a minister like his own home. The Mowbray Narrows parsonage is a nice house although it is old. It was a very happy home for me ... at first ... until the death of my dear wife two years ago. Since then I have been very lonely. If it had not been for my friendship with the Blythes ... but a good many people disapproved of that because they were Presbyterians. However, you will have agood boarding place with Mrs. Richards. She will make you very comfortable.”
    “Unfortunately Mrs. Richards cannot take me after all. She has to go to the hospital for a rather serious operation. I am going to board at Mr. Field’s ... Long Alec, I believe he is called. You seem to have odd nicknames in Mowbray Narrows ... I’ve heard a few already.”
    And then Mr. Sheldon had exclaimed, with something more than surprise in his tone,
    “Long Alec’s!”
    “Yes, I prevailed on him and his sister to take me in for a few weeks, at least, on promise of good behaviour. I’m in luck. It’s the only other place near the church. I had hard work to get them to consent.”
    “But ... Long Alec’s!” said Mr. Sheldon again.
    It struck Curtis that Mr. Sheldon’s surprise was rather surprising. And there had been the same note in Dr. Blythe’s voice when he had told him.
    Why shouldn’t he board at Long Alec’s?
    Long Alec seemed a most respectable and a rather attractive youngish man, with his fine-cut aquiline features and soft, dreamy grey eyes. And the sister ... a sweet, little brown thing, rather tired-looking, with a flute-like voice. Her face was as brown as a nut, her hair and eyes were brown, her lips scarlet. Of all the girls that had clustered, flowerlike, about the basement that day, casting shy glances of admiration at the handsome young minister, he remembered nothing. But somehow he remembered Lucia Field.
    “Why not Long Alec’s?” he said.
    Recalling, too, that a few other people besides Dr. Blythe had seemed taken aback when he had mentioned his changeof boarding house. Why ... why? Long Alec was on the board of managers. He must be respectable.
    Mr. Sheldon looked embarrassed.
    “Oh, it is all right, I suppose. Only ... I shouldn’t have thought them likely to take a boarder. Lucia has her hands full as it is. You may have heard there is an invalid cousin there?”
    “Yes, Dr. Blythe mentioned her. And I called to see her. What a tragedy ... that sweet, beautiful woman!”
    “A beautiful woman indeed,” said Mr. Sheldon emphatically. “She is a wonderful woman, one of the greatest powers for good in Mowbray Narrows. They call her the angel of the community. I tell you, Mr. Burns, the influence that Alice Harper wields from that bed of helplessness is amazing. I cannot tell you what she has been to me during my pastorate here. And every other minister will tell you the same. Her wonderful life is an inspiration. The young girls of the congregation worship her. Do you know that for eight years she has taught a teenage class of girls? They go over to her room after the opening exercises of the Sunday school here. She enters into their lives ... they take all their problems and perplexities to her. They say she has made more matches than Mrs. Blythe ... and that is saying something. And it was entirely due to her that the church here was not hopelessly disrupted when Deacon North went on a rampage because Lucia Field played a sacred violin solo for a collection piece one day. Alice sent for the deacon and talked him into sanity. She told me the whole