He could not deny that he was disappointed, and as he went towards the post-office, he almost wished he had offered a word of advice to Lois.

"Still, a girl needs her mother for that sort of thing, and, after all, perhaps it is best.

For really, I should be very dull at the rectory without her." Thus he comforted himself for what was only a disappointment to his vanity, and was quite cheerful when he opened Helen's letter.
The post-office was in that part of the drug-store where the herbs were kept, and the letters always had a faint smell of pennyroyal or wormwood about them.

The rector read his letter, leaning against the counter, and crumpling some bay leaves between his fingers; and though he was interrupted half a dozen times by people coming for their mail, and stopping to gossip about the weather or the church, he gained a very uncomfortable sense of its contents.
"More of this talk about belief," he grumbled, as he folded the last sheet, covered with the clear heavy writing, and struck it impatiently across his hand before he thrust it down into his pocket.

"What in the world is John Ward thinking of to let her bother her head with such questions ?" "I am surprised" Helen wrote, "to see how narrowness and intolerance seem to belong to intense belief.