pulled herself together, and observed that there had been enough talk
about a mere visitor. "What of you two, now that your student
occupation's gone?"

"Tell her about yourself, Marty," said J.W. "She knows what I'm going to
do." And for the moment it seemed to him a very drab and unromantic
prospect, in spite of his agreement with Mr. Drury that all service
ranks alike with God.

Marty was always slow to talk of himself. "It isn't much," he said. "The
district superintendent is asking me to fill out the year on the Ellis
and Valencia Circuit--the present pastor is going to Colorado for his
health. So I'm to be the young circuit-rider," and he smiled a wry
little smile. He had no conceit of himself to make the appointment seem
poor; rather he wondered how any circuit would consent to put up with a
boy's crude preaching and awkward pastoral effort.

But J.W., Jr., was otherwise minded. A country circuit for Marty did not
accord with his views at all. Marty was too good for a country church,
he argued, mainly from his memories of the bare little one-room
meetinghouse of his early childhood. In his periodical trips to the farm
he had seen the old church grow older and more forlorn, as one family
after another moved away, and the multiplying cars brought the town and
its allurements almost to the front gate of every farm.

So J.W. had tried to say "No," for Marty, who would not say it for
himself. It was one of the rare times when they did not see eye to eye.
But it made no difference in their sturdy affection; nothing ever could.
And Marty would take the appointment.