Page:Betty Gordon in Washington.djvu/27

Rh knew the improvement was marked. Mrs. Peabody stared at herself in the glass contentedly.

"I didn't know I could look that nice," she said with a candor at once pathetic and naïve. "I've been wishing he wouldn't come, but now I kinda hope he will."

Betty gently propelled her to the porch and established her in one of the rocking chairs with a magazine to give her an air of leisure.

"You'll come and talk to him, won't you?" urged Mrs. Peabody anxiously. "It's been so long since I've seen a stranger I won't know what to say."

"Yes, you will," Betty assured her. "I'll come out after you've talked a little while. He won't stay long, I imagine, because he will probably have a number of calls to pay."

"Well, I hope Joseph stays out of sight," remarked Joseph Peabody's wife frankly. "Of course, in time the new minister will know him as well as the old one did; but I would like to have him call on me like other parishioners first."