"Yes," said Ann; "but it isn't every minister or every minister's wife who can make anything of the opportunity. Just think of some we know--sticks. Can you think of any poor stricken soul going to them to be comforted 'as one whom his mother comforteth'? What would they say? 'Oh, indeed! How sad!' or 'Really! I'm very sorry.' Some little stilted sentence that would freeze the very fount of tears. You, Mother, I don't think you would say anything. To speak to those who weep is no use; you must be able in all sincerity to weep with them. As for Father, his voice was enough. Isn't it in one of the Elizabeth books that someone talking of the futility of long, dull sermons, says, 'If only a man with a voice of gold would stand up and say, "Children, Christ died for you," I would lay down my head and cry and cry...' Oh, it's a great life if a minister and his wife are any good at their job, and, above all, if they have a sense of humour!" "Well, I don't know about the sense of humour," Mrs. Douglas said doubtfully. "I have often envied the people who never seem overcome by the ludicrous side of things, who don't even seem aware that it is there. Do you remember Mrs. Daw? I dare say not. My first meeting with her was in the Path on a hot summer's day. I saw an enormously stout woman toiling in front of me with a heavy basket, and as I passed her she laid down her load, and turning to me a red, perspiring, but surprisingly bland countenance, said, 'Hech! but it's a sair world for stout folk.' There was something so Falstaffian and jocund about the great figure, and the way she took me into her confidence, that I simply stood still and laughed, and she laughed with me. We shared the basket between us the rest of the way, and after that I often visited her. But I could never let your father come with me; Mrs. Daw was too much for us together. Only once we tried it, and she told us that the doctor had advised her to take 'sheriff-wine and Van Houtong's cocoah,' and her genteel pronunciation was too much for us. She was never at her best when your father was there; she didn't care for the clergy. "'A lazy lot,' she called them. 'No wan o' them does a decent day's work. If it was me I wad mak' a' the ministers pollismen as weel, and that wad save some o' the country's siller.' She condescended to say that she rather liked your father's preaching, though her reason for liking it was not very flattering. 'I like him because he's no what ye ca' a scholarly preacher. I dinna like thae scholars, they're michty dull. I like the kind o' minister that misca's the deevil for aboot twenty meenits and then stops.' "Mrs. Daw had me bogged at once when we started on theological discussions. She would ask questions and answer them herself as she knelt before the kitchen fire, engaged in what she called 'ringein' the ribs.'