He came to the Widow Clark's house, where he had lived as bachelor.
Jane was out in the yard, the March breeze molding her skirt about her; rosy face darker and eyes more soft as she saw the pastor hailing her, magnificently raising his hat.
She fluttered toward him.
"You folks ever miss me? Guess you're glad to get rid of the poor old preacher that was always cluttering up the house!"
"We miss you awfully!"
He felt his whole body yearning toward her. Hurriedly he left her, and wished he hadn't left her, and hastened to get himself far from the danger to his respectability. He hated Cleo again now, in an injured, puzzled way.
"I think I'll sneak up to Sparta this week," he fumed, then: "No! Conference coming in ten days; can't take any chances till after that."
The Annual Conference, held in Sparta, late in March. The high time of the year, when the Methodist preachers of half a dozen districts met together for prayer and rejoicing, to hear of the progress of the Kingdom and incidentally to learn whether they were to have better jobs this coming year.
The bishop presiding—Wesley R. Toomis, himself—with his district superintendents, grave and bustling.
The preachers, trying to look as though prospective higher salaries were unworthy their attention.
Between meetings they milled about in the large auditorium of the Preston Memorial Methodist Church: visiting laymen and nearly three hundred ministers.
Veteran country parsons, whiskered and spectacled, rusty-coated and stooped, still serving two country churches, or three or four; driving their fifty miles a week; content for reading with the Scriptures and the weekly Advocate.
New-fledged country preachers, their large hands still calloused from plow-handle and reins, content for learning with two years of high school, content with the Old Testament for history and geology.
The preachers of the larger towns; most of them hard to recognize as clerics, in their neat business suits and modest
