shirtwaist of ten years past, the task seemed positively hopeless.
Betty, however, was not one to give in easily, and when she had
brushed and pinned her hostess's thin hair as softly as she could
arrange it, and had turned in the high collar of her blouse and
pinned it with a cameo pin, the one fine thing remaining to Mrs.
Peabody from her wedding outfit, adding a soft silk girdle of gray-blue,
she 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 naive. "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."