As Ann went away, she wondered what could be the impediment to Mr. Finch’s going with her. He, meantime, roused his mind to undertake a great argument of duty. It was with a sense of complacency, even of elevation, that he now set himself to work to consider of his duty—determined to do it when his mind was made up. He afterwards declared that he went to his chamber to be secure against interruption, and there walked up and down for two hours in meditation and prayer. He considered that it had pleased God that he should be the only son of his mother, whose whole life would be desolate if he should die. He thought of Ellen Price, feeling almost sure that she would marry him whenever he felt justified in asking her; and he considered what a life of happiness she would lose if he should die. He remembered that his praying with the sick would not affect life on the one side, while it might on the other. The longer he thought of Ellen Price and of his mother, and of all that he might do if he lived, the more clear did his duty seem to himself to become. At the end of the two hours, he was obliged to bring his meditations to a conclusion; for Ann Warrender’s father had been waiting for some time to speak to him, and would then wait no longer. “It is not time lost, Warrender,” said Mr. Finch, when at last he came down stairs. “I have been determining my principle, and my mind is made up.” “Then, Sir, let us be off, or the man will be dead. What! you cannot come, Sir! Why, bless my soul!” “You see my reasons, surely, Warrender.” “Why, yes; such as they are. The thing that I can’t see the reason for, is your being a clergyman.” While Mr. Finch was giving forth his amiable and gentlemanly notions of the position of a clergyman in society, and of filial consideration, Warrender was twirling his hat, and fidgetting, as if in haste; and his summing up was—— “I don’t know what your mother herself might say, Sir, to your consideration for her; but most likely she has, being a mother, noticed that saying about a man leaving father and mother, and houses and lands, for Christ’s sake; and also——But it is no business of mine to be preaching to the clergyman, and I have enough to do, elsewhere.” “One thing more, Warrender. I entrust it to you to let the people know that there will be no service in church during the infection. Why, do not you know that, in the time of the plague, the churches were closed by order, because it was found that the people gave one another the disease, by meeting there?” John had never heard it; and he was sorry to hear it now. He hastened away to the Good Lady, to ask her if he must really tell the afflicted people that all religious comfort mast be withheld from them now, when they were in the utmost need of it. Meantime, Mr. Finch was entering at length in his diary, the history of his conflict of mind, his decision, and the reasons of it.