"How about the next?"

"Oh, well, perhaps even the scum may count for somethin' over there."
She turned to face him and her smile vanished. "Go on, Mr. Ellery," she
said. "Go and call where you please. Far be it from me that I should
tell you to do anything else. I suppose likely you hope some day to be
a great preacher. I hope you will. But I'd enough sight rather you was a
good man than the very greatest. No reason why you can't be both. There
was a preacher over in Galilee once, so you told us yesterday, who was
just good. 'Twa'n't till years afterwards that the crowd came to realize
that he was great, too. And, if I recollect right, he chummed in with
publicans and sinners. I'm glad you tore up that fool paper of mine. I
hoped you might when I gave it to you. Now you run along, and I'll wash
dishes. If cleanliness is next to godliness, then a parson ought to eat
out of clean plates."

As a matter of fact, the minister's calls were in the nature of a
compromise, although an unintentional one. He dropped in on Zebedee
Mayo, owner of the big house on the slope of the hill. Captain Zeb took
him up into what he called his "cupoler," the observatory on the top of
the house, and showed him Trumet spread out like a map. The main road
was north and south, winding and twisting its rutted, sandy way. Along
it were clustered the principal houses and shops, shaded by silver-leaf
poplars, a few elms, and some willows and spruces. Each tree bent
slightly away from the northeast, the direction from which blew the
heavy winter gales. Beyond the main road were green slopes and pastures,
with swamps in the hollows, swamps which were to be cranberry bogs in
the days to come. Then the lower road, with more houses, and, farther
on, the beach, the flats--partially uncovered because it was high
tide--and the bay.