"He was _there_, though!" I protested in desperation, when we had been
waiting in vain for a long quarter-hour. The dark monitor lifted his
chin from his collar and looked at his watch.
"It's hard," I heard him sigh, as he turned away down Lovett's Court,
where Center Church blossomed with its prayer-meeting lamps. Shadows of
the uneasy flock moved across the windows; Emsy Nickerson, in his
trustee's black, peered out of the door into the dubious night, and
beyond him in the bright vestry Aunt Nickerson made a little spot of
color, agitated, nursing formless despairs, an artist in vague dreads.