She had laughed and kissed him. He remembered the tears in her eyes and the little catch in her voice. But there was nothing heroic about this thing that he wanted to do. It was the littleness, the meanness of it that would freeze her sympathies. Her sense of humour would rise up against it. Was there no better way of serving Christ than by setting up as a pettifogging solicitor in a little square of faded gentility. And a solicitor of all professions! A calling so eminently suggestive of the Scribe and Pharisee. Was there not danger of the whole thing being smothered under laughter? And why here in Millsborough where everybody knew him? Where they would be stared at, called after in the street, snapshotted and paragraphed in the local Press; where they would be the laughing stock of the whole town, a nuisance round the neck of all their friends and acquaintances. The boy’s career: he would be the butt of the messroom. Norah’s engagement: it would have to be broken off. What man wants to marry into a family of cranks? Could it serve Christ for His would-be followers to cover themselves with ridicule. It was just because his going on with his own business had seemed to him the simplest, plainest path before him that he had chosen it. He had thought at one time of asking Matthew Witlock to let him come as his assistant in the workshop. He had retained much of his old skill as a mechanic. With a little practice it would come back to him. He would have enjoyed the work: the swinging of the hammer, the flashing of the sparks, the harmony of hand and brain. His desk had always bored him. The idea had grown upon him. It would have been like going home. He would have met there the little impish lad who had once been himself. Old Wandering Peter would have sat cross-legged upon the bench and talked to him. He would have come across his father, pottering about among the shadows; would have joked with him. Strong kindly Matthew of the dreamy eyes would have been sweet, helpful company. Together they would have listened to the passing footsteps. There, if anywhere, might have come the Master. It had cost him an effort to dismiss the desire. He so wanted to preach the practical, the rational. We could not all be blacksmiths. We could not all do big things, heroic things. But we could all work for God, wherever and whatever we happened to be; that was the idea he wanted to set going. He wanted to preach to men that the Christ-life was possible for all: for the shop-keeper, for the artisan, for the doctor, for the lawyer, for the labourer, for the business man. He wanted to tell the people that Christ had not to be sought for in any particular place, that he was here; that we had only to open the door and He would come to us just where we were. One went on with one’s work, whatever it was, the thing that lay nearest to one, the thing one could do best. We changed the Master not the work, took other wages.