They walked home in silence, Miss Charlotte grieving over the hopeless failure of the meeting to achieve what she desired. She had not yet learned that different natures need different kinds of food, and that to expect Frithiof to swallow the teachings which exactly suited certain minds was about as sensible as to feed a baby with Thorley’s Food for Cattle. However, there never yet was an honest attempt to do good which really failed, though the vast majority fail apparently. It was impossible that the revivalists’ teaching could ever be accepted by the Norseman; but their ardent devotion, their practical, aggressive lives, impressed him not a little, and threw a somewhat disagreeable light over his own selfishness. Partly owing to this, partly from physical causes, he felt bitterly out of heart with himself for the next few weeks. In truth he was thoroughly out of health, and he had not the only power which can hold irritability in check—the strong restraint of love. Except a genuine liking for the Bonifaces, he had nothing to take him out of himself, and he was quite ready to return with interest the dislike which the other men in the shop felt for him, first on account of his foreign birth, but chiefly because of his proud manner and hasty temper. Sometimes he felt that he could bear the life no longer; and at times, out of his very wretchedness, there sprung up in him a vague pity for those who were in his own position. As he stood there behind the counter he would say to himself, “There are thousands and thousands in this city alone who have day after day to endure this horrible monotony, to serve the customers who are rude, and the customers who are civil, the hurried ones who are all impatience, the tiresome ones who dawdle, the bores, who give you as much trouble as they can, often for nothing. One day follows another eternally in the same dull round. I am a hundred times better off than most—there are no hurried meals here, no fines, no unfairness—and yet what drudgery it is!” And as he glanced out at the sunny street and heard the sound of horses’ hoofs in the road, a wild longing used to seize him for the freedom and variety of his life in Norway, and the old fierce rebellion against his fate woke once more in his heart, and made him ready to fly into a rage on the smallest provocation. One day he was sent for to Mr. Boniface’s private room; he was quite well aware that his manner, even to Roy himself, whom he liked, had been disagreeable in the extreme, and the thought crossed his mind that he was going to receive notice to leave.