And Miss Esperance, knowing the length and strength of Elsa’s tongue, felt herself constrained to explain (she did it with considerable humour) to the Reverend Peter Gloag what had really happened. Whereupon the minister dismissed Mr. Wycherly and all his works as being "fettered by formula?": and to the great relief of this prisoner in the chains of ecclesiasticism he was never again asked to conduct family worship. He innocently wondered why, for he imagined with some complacency that he had acquitted himself gracefully in what had been rather a trying ordeal. The tender smile of Miss Esperance, as she reflected upon her many mercies, had changed to a smile of no less tender amusement as she recalled those by-gone days, and Mr. Wycherly, ever quick to notice any change in the dear old face he loved so well, felt that he might now venture upon more familiar ground. "You look amused," he remarked; "would it be a safe conjecture to say that you are probably thinking of Edmund?" "That reminds me," Miss Esperance exclaimed, without committing herself. "I do wish that we could induce that dear little boy not to call you ’man.’ It is so disrespectful." It had never struck Mr. Wycherly in that light. In fact he had found considerable secret comfort in the fact that Edmund, at all events, had from the very first considered him deserving of that epithet. Mr. Wycherly was sensitive, and he knew perfectly well in what sort of estimation most of the inhabitants of Burnhead held him. "Do you think it matters?" he asked mildly, "what such a baby calls me?" "Not to you, certainly," Miss Esperance replied promptly; "but I do think it matters for him. He is three now, and it’s time he knew better." "Surely three is not a very great age?" Mr. Wycherly pleaded. "It is old enough for Edmund to want his own way, and generally to take it," Miss Esperance rejoined as she rose from the table; "and it is old enough for him to learn that he must be dutiful and obedient." As Mr. Wycherly held the door open for her to go out, he remarked deferentially, "But, don’t you think, dear Miss Esperance, that either ’Mr.’ or ’Sir’ is a somewhat formal mode of address to exact from such a baby?" "I called my honoured father ’Sir’ from the time I could speak at all, and when I was young it would never for one moment have been permitted to us to address any grown-up person otherwise than with respect," Miss Esperance continued, as she paused in the doorway. "I will see what I can do about it this very day. I feel sure that if we reason with that dear child, we can induce him to find some more suitable way of addressing you." When Miss Esperance had gone, and Mr. Wycherly had shut his door, he shook his head and laughed. Two or three times lately he had tried a fall with Edmund, and that lusty infant invariably came off an easy victor.