“The fifth old lady is Mrs. Grant.  She is a sweet old thing; but she never says anything but good of anybody and so she is a very uninteresting conversationalist.

“And now for Jonas, Anne.

“That first day I came I saw a young man sitting opposite me at the table, smiling at me as if he had known me from my cradle.  I knew, for Uncle Mark had told me, that his name was Jonas Blake, that he was a Theological Student from St. Columbia, and that he had taken charge of the Point Prospect Mission Church for the summer.

“He is a very ugly young man—­really, the ugliest young man I’ve ever seen.  He has a big, loose-jointed figure with absurdly long legs.  His hair is tow-color and lank, his eyes are green, and his mouth is big, and his ears—­but I never think about his ears if I can help it.

“He has a lovely voice—­if you shut your eyes he is adorable—­and he certainly has a beautiful soul and disposition.

“We were good chums right way.  Of course he is a graduate of Redmond, and that is a link between us.  We fished and boated together; and we walked on the sands by moonlight.  He didn’t look so homely by moonlight and oh, he was nice.  Niceness fairly exhaled from him.  The old ladies—­except Mrs. Grant—­don’t approve of Jonas, because he laughs and jokes—­and because he evidently likes the society of frivolous me better than theirs.

“Somehow, Anne, I don’t want him to think me frivolous.  This is ridiculous.  Why should I care what a tow-haired person called Jonas, whom I never saw before thinks of me?

“Last Sunday Jonas preached in the village church.  I went, of course, but I couldn’t realize that Jonas was going to preach.  The fact that he was a minister—­or going to be one—­persisted in seeming a huge joke to me.

“Well, Jonas preached.  And, by the time he had preached ten minutes, I felt so small and insignificant that I thought I must be invisible to the naked eye.  Jonas never said a word about women and he never looked at me.  But I realized then and there what a pitiful, frivolous, small-souled little butterfly I was, and how horribly different I must be from Jonas’ ideal woman.  She would be grand and strong and noble.  He was so earnest and tender and true.  He was everything a minister ought to be.  I wondered how I could ever have thought him ugly—­but he really is!—­with those inspired eyes and that intellectual brow which the roughly-falling hair hid on week days.

“It was a splendid sermon and I could have listened to it forever, and it made me feel utterly wretched.  Oh, I wish I was like you, Anne.

“He caught up with me on the road home, and grinned as cheerfully as usual.  But his grin could never deceive me again.  I had seen the real Jonas.  I wondered if he could ever see the real Phil—­whom nobody, not even you, Anne, has ever seen yet.

“‘Jonas,’ I said—­I forgot to call him Mr. Blake.  Wasn’t it dreadful?  But there are times when things like that don’t matter—­’Jonas, you were born to be a minister.  You couldn’t be anything else.’