Читать книгу The Ball of Fire онлайн

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“I’ll be very happy to take Miss Sargent anywhere she’d like to go,” offered Allison, almost instantaneously.

“Much obliged, Allison,” accepted Sargent heartily; “that is, if she’ll go with you.”

“Thank you,” said Gail simply, as she stepped out of the pew.

The gentlemen of the vestry rose as one man. Old Nicholas Van Ploon even attempted to stand gracefully on one leg, while his vest bulged over the back of the pew in front of him.

“I think we’ll have to make you a permanent member of the vestry,” smiled Manning, the patriarch, as he bowed his adieus. “We’ve been needing a brightening influence for some time.”

Willis Cunningham, the thoughtful one, wedged his Vandyke between the heads of Standard Cereal Clark and Banker Chisholm.

“We hope to see you often, Miss Sargent,” was his thoughtful remark.

“I mean to attend services,” returned Gail graciously, looking up into the organ loft, where the organist was making his third attempt at that baffling run in the Bach prelude.

“You haven’t said how you like our famous old church,” suggested the Reverend Smith Boyd with pleasant ease, though he felt relieved that she was going.