He was true to his promise to help her; (he never made a promise that he did not honestly try to keep;) and he applied himself to the by no means thankless task with the good-humored directness and energy that characterized all his actions.

There was quite a number of young girls in his parish, more proportionately than in the others.

Bell Masters and Amy Duckworth had long been hovering on its borders, and the advent of so young and prepossessing a rector had instantly removed their last scruples as to infant baptism, and settled forever their doubts as to the apostolic succession.

They had come in at once.

It was even whispered that Maria Upjohn had in an incautious moment confessed that she preferred the litany to Mr.Webb's spontaneous effusions, and had been summarily sat upon by her mother, whose Bible contained an eleventh commandment curiously omitted from the twentieth chapter of Exodus in other versions, and reading: "Thou shalt not become an Episcopalian, and if possible, thou shalt not be born one." Then there were Nellie Atterbury, and Janet Mudge, and Polly and Mattie Dexter; there certainly was no lack of active young teachers for the Sunday-school, and Phebe was well content to remain passively aside, as of old.