"No, no," interposed Cap'n Ira firmly. "I want you should sit in
here with us and hear all the elder's got to say."
"Perhaps, Uncle Ira, he will want to talk to you and Aunt Prue
privately."
"There won't be no private talk about you, Ida May," snorted the
captain, his keen eyes sparkling. "Not much! If he's got anything to
say to your aunt and me, he's got to say it in your hearing."
The elder was a tall and bony man with a stiff brush of gray beard
and bushy hair to match, which seemed as uncompromising as his
doctrinal discourses in the pulpit. He was an old-fashioned
preacher, but not wholly an old-fashioned thinker.
Sheila had thought, on the few occasions when she had met him away
from his pulpit, that there was an undercurrent of humanity in him
quite equal to that in Cap'n Ira Ball, but his personal appearance
and rather gruff manner made it difficult for one to be sure of the
measure of his tenderness.
How Elder Minnett appeared in the sick room or in the house of
sorrow, she did not know. She could not very well imagine his being
tender at any time with the sinner at whom he thundered from the
pulpit. Secretly she trembled at the old clergyman's approach.
"Well, Elder!" was the warm greeting of Prudence at the front door
when the rattling automobile came to a wheezing halt before the
gate.
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