‘Ah, well,’ she answered one day, ‘I like dear old Mr. Crewe and his pipes a great deal better than your Mr. Tryan and his Gospel. When I was a little toddle³, Mr. and Mrs. Crewe used to let me play about in their garden, and have a swing between the great elm-trees, because mother had no garden. I like people who are kind; kindness is my religion; and that’s the reason I like you, dear Mrs. Pettifer, though you are a Tryanite.’

 

‘But that’s Mr. Tryan’s religion too—at least partly. There’s nobody can give himself up more to doing good amongst the poor; and he thinks of their bodies too, as well as their souls.’

 

‘O yes, yes; but then he talks about faith, and grace, and all that, making people believe they are better than others, and that God loves them more than He does the rest of the world. I know he has put a great deal of that into Sally Martin’s head, and it has done her no good at all. She was as nice, honest, patient a girl as need be before; and now she fancies she has new light and new wisdom. I don’t like those notions.’

 

‘You mistake him, indeed you do, my dear Mrs. Dempster; I wish you’d go and hear him preach.’

 

‘Hear him preach! Why, you wicked woman, you would persuade me to disobey my husband, would you? O, shocking! I shall run away from you. Good-bye.’

 

A few days after this conversation, however, Janet went to Sally Martin’s about three o’clock in the afternoon. The pudding that had been sent in for herself and ‘Mammy,’ struck her as just the sort of delicate morsel⁴ the poor consumptive girl would be likely to fancy, and in her usual impulsive⁵ way she had started up from the dinner table at once, put on her

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