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"There's no danger of my going," he told them. "The Cummings people are not sending cub salesmen to promote their big Asiatic trade. What could they make by it?" Then the talk drifted to the Carbrooks. Marty said, "Well, we've spoiled your scheme a little, J.W., right here in Delafield. Joe Carbrook and Marcia are in China by now, and I'd like to see both of 'em as they get down to work.
J.W. thought he could make up for the ear question. So he said, boldly, "Joe Carbrook, I can name every place from here to the livery barn north, and from here to the bridge south, on both sides of the street. Want me to prove it?" "No, J.W., I don't. I reckon you can. But I believe you're still as blind as I've been about Main Street, just the same.
On the steps of the library Marcia Dayne and some other girls were holding an informal reception. Joe Carbrook, with one or two of his friends, was finding it agreeable to assume a superior air concerning the Institute. The impression the boys gave was that their coming to the Institute at all had been a great concession, but that they were under no illusions about the place.
Joe Carbrook, with a new seriousness which sat awkwardly on him, confessed that he could not understand just what was happening. It was evident that he was ill at ease; Marcia had noticed it every time she had seen him since that encounter with Alma Wetherell. "I guess you folks know I am not easily caught; but I'm ready to admit that man has hold of something.
The event was now out of his hands. The relaxed tension made him realize that his nerves were shaky, and he had a sense of great depression. But before he went to bed he pulled himself together long enough to write to five missionaries, including Joe Carbrook, whose fields were on or near the route J.W. would travel. He had told J.W. that he would let these men know of his coming, but he did more.
"She has heard me talk since I found out a little about the Institute, and I told her this morning something of what Joe Carbrook and I had discussed last night after the camp fire."
So slight a matter could not stay in the front of his thinking when he really began to know something of the Delafield to which he had never paid much attention. It was through Joe Carbrook that he got his next jolt. Joe, now spending his vacations in ways that amazed people who had memories of his wild younger manner, was in and out of the Farwell store a good deal.
As the group broke up in the dim light of the dying embers, J.W. stumbled into Joe Carbrook, and the two headed for the tents together. They had been on a much more friendly footing since Thursday. "Say, J.W.," said Joe, abruptly, "what's the matter with me?
Even Joe Carbrook had been impressed. He heard the General Secretary the morning after that little exchange of compliments on the library steps, and for an hour thereafter let himself enjoy the rare luxury of thinking. The results were somewhat disconcerting.
"And then," said Joe Carbrook, "we might call it 'The Everyday Doctrines of Delafield, If we stick to the things every citizen will admit he ought to believe and do, the churches will still have all the chance they have now to preach those things which must be left to the individual conscience."
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