The elder made a hurried survey of the room, with its bits of black oak and the arms on the wall, and the deer-skins on the floor, and bookshelves hanging on the wall, and wild flowers everywhere; and, being an operator so keen that he was said to know a market by scent, he changed his plan. “I took a hundred pounds with me,” he explained afterward to a friend of like spirit, “for a promising ministry was not to be hindered for a few pounds! I intended to begin with fifty and expected to bring back twenty-five, but I saw that it would have been inexpedient to offer money to the young woman. There was no flavour of spirituality at all about her, and she was filled with pride about war and such-like vanities. Her manner might be called taking in worldly circles, but it was not exactly... gentle, and she might have... been rude, quite unpleasant, if I had tried to buy her... I mean arrange on a pecuniary basis. Ah, Juitler, how much we need the wisdom of the serpent in this life!” “What a position you are to occupy, my dear friend,” began the simple man, seated before the most perfect of meals--rich milk of cows, fed on meadow grass, yellow butter and white oat cakes set among flowers. “I doubt not that you are often weighed down by a sense of responsibility, and are almost afraid of the work before you. After some slight experience in such matters I am convinced that the position of a minister's wife is the most... I may say critical in Christian service.” “You will be meaning that she must be taking great care of her man, and making a beautiful home for him, and keeping away foolish people, and standing by him when his back will be at the wall. Oh, yes, it is a minister that needs to be loved very much, or else he will become stupid and say bitter words, and no one will be wanting to hear him”--and Magdalen looked across the table with joyful confidence. “Far more than that, I'm afraid”--and Mr. Thompson's face was full of pity. “I was thinking of the public work that falls to a minister's wife in such a church as St Bede's, which is trying and needs much grace. The receiving of ladies alone--Providence has been very good to our people, twelve carriages some days at the church door--requires much experience and wisdom. “Mrs. Drummer, who has been much used among the better classes, has often told me that she considered tact in society one of her most precious talents, and I know that it was largely owing to her social gifts, sanctified, of course, that the Doctor became such a power. Ah, yes”--and Mr. Thompson fell into a soliloquy--“it is the wife that makes or mars the minister.” “Glasgow then will not be like Glenalder”--and Magdalen's face was much troubled--“for if any woman here will tell the truth and speak good words of people, and help when the little children are sick, and have an open door for the stranger, then we will all be loving her, and she will not hurt her man in anything.”