“I will never touch a penny of it, Fred, until it _is_ a question of starvation,” she had answered quietly. Then he had kissed her, and called her his good little wife, but no power on earth could have kept him in the house that day, though the March wind was keen to the dividing asunder of bone and marrow, and the rain heavy enough to drown a cuttle-fish. So the consequence had been a sharp attack of rheumatism, from which he was only beginning to recover. And it was only human that, in the first glow of convalescence, he should feel aggrieved at having his social impulses curbed by a pecuniary bridle. For, indeed, never having in his life felt the sting of genuine _poortith cauld_, it was always difficult for Dr. Richards to remember that five dollars are only equal, after all, to five hundred cents; and that, while actually having nothing, a man cannot, in our present stage of development, virtually possess all things. The Sunday dinner was a perfect success, Louis having spurred on Miss Sally to the concocting of a new, and, as she called it, “researchy,” bill of fare. “And if they _could_ have had just the same at ‘Prices’ they’ll never know it,” Louis had said to the giver of the feast; “for they’ve never had just these dishes there yet, and in all probability never will, all at the same time; so you see it will be the same to them as if you had cooked it all yourself.” “And a good deal better to me,” said Alice, laughing. The guests were in fine spirits and appetite, and cleared their plates in royal style, Father McClosky averring that preaching was a mighty fine thing for the appetite, av it was bad intirely for the pocketbook. “On that score, I’ve only a right to half-rations,” said Ernest Clare, laughing; “for though I have offered my services to a certain overworked rector in our neighborhood, he only trusted me to read the lessons this morning.” “Sure he was afraid ye’d be after preaching Socialism if he let ye into his pulpit, from the text of the eleventh commandment, ‘Thou shalt surely divide,’” said Father McClosky. “I wouldn’t have done it,” returned the other; “there is only one rich man in the congregation, and it would have been decidedly personal. However, if I had preached from ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,’ I don’t know that he could have taken offence.” “And you think they mean the same?” asked Dr. Richards. “Don’t you?” returned the man who never argued. “In so far as neither one is practised or practicable, I suppose they do.” “You are entirely right, Dr. Richards. My text should have been ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength;’ then the other would follow as a practical consequence.” “Humph! I suppose you mean that in a Pickwickian sense?” “Did you ever know a man who loved God with heart, soul, and strength, and did _not_ love his neighbor as himself?”