the sound of voices warned him that several persons were lingering. The
nature of their congratulations confirmed his doubts. Mrs. Plimpton,
resplendent and looking less robust than usual in one of her summer Paris
gowns, greeted him effusively.

"Oh, Mr. Hodder, what a wonderful sermon!" she cried. "I can't express
how it made me feel--so delinquent! Of course that is exactly the effect
you wished. And I was just telling Wallis I was so glad I waited until
Tuesday to go East, or I should have missed it. You surely must come on
to Hampton and visit us, and preach it over again in our little stone
church there, by the sea. Good-by and don't forget! I'll write you,
setting the date, only we'd be glad to have you any time."

"One of the finest I ever heard--if not the finest," Mr. Plimpton
declared, with a kind of serious 'empressement', squeezing his hand.

Others stopped him; Everett Constable, for one, and the austere Mrs.
Atterbury. Hodder would have avoided the ever familiar figure of her
son, Gordon, in the invariable black cutaway and checked trousers,
but he was standing beside Mr. Parr.

"Ahem! Why, Mr. Hodder," he exclaimed, squinting off his glasses,
"that was a magnificent effort. I was saying to Mr. Parr that it isn't
often one hears a sermon nowadays as able as that, and as sound. Many
clergymen refrain from preaching them, I sometimes think, because they
are afraid people won't like them."

"I scarcely think it's that," the rector replied, a little shortly.
"We're afraid people won't heed them."