Lemuel Buskin rose trembling. His knees seemed to have forgotten their strength. But he remembered his mother’s counsel, plucked up courage, and repeated mentally the stimulating chorus of a hymn. He was, as he entered the private office and took the offered seat, in such a whirl of confusion that he did not at once recognize the person of the financier. Suddenly he was aware of Oldstein’s identity, and blushed hotly. "I ca-came to see Mr. Gordon!" "I am Mithter Gordon!" "Ja-Jabez Gordon?" "Jabez Gordon! and you are Mithter Buthkin." "But you--I--oh!" "Exthactly! Oh! ith jutht the word. Mithter Buthkin, I’m glad to thee you. We’re old acquaintanthes, we are, although you may not know it! You ask my daughter ’Annah ’ow much indebted to you we feel. My ’Annah lookth on you ath a brother, a Christian brother. Thee them billth?"--Emmanuel slapped the pile of mission notices with a dingy hand. Lemuel’s last shadow of pluck was evaporating fast; but Oldstein with the question challenged his fanaticism. "I’m proud to be a labourer in the vineyard!" was the surly defiant reply. "And well may be! But you’re an unthkilled labourer, Mr. Buthkin. Now I’m glad you’ve called, for I want to talk to you; you’re goin’ to listen and then we may do bithness." Lemuel, surprised and unprepared, was cowed by Oldstein’s decision and speech. He had bitterness on his tongue, but refrained from any retort. "Do you believe in the fairieth, Mithter Buthkin?" was the unexpected question. Lemuel could only stare and wonder. "Answer me!" "Certainly I do not!" "That’th a pity. I do." "I believe in higher things." "And do you live up to them?" Lemuel gasped. "I didn’t come here to be insulted." "No, Mithter Buthkin, and I don’t go ’ome to be inthulted with them things--do you recognithe ’em?--in my letter-box. Who put ’em there? Look at ’em well! You did. Why? Because you’re a tuppenny little thkunk--I leave your parenth out of it, for they’re too old to know better; they’re past mendin’--you’re a little tuppenny thkunk who prethumes to think that your belief ith the whole and only truth, and that my belief--which my fathers and their fathers ’eld for thouthandth on thouthandth of yearth, long before London wath more than a puddle, ith--I don’t know what you think it ith. You can’t compre’end it, Mithter Buthkin, no, you can’t!" The old man paused and watched his victim keenly. He then burst out with speech of passion. "You to convert uth! You to wish to make uth such Christians as yourselves--nuisances in the street--thingin’, blarin’, thpeakin’ uncharitably of our neighbourth! To convert uth! Father Abraham! I’d rather be a persecuted Jew, stoned, starved, beaten, ’ated--as we have been ’ated, starved and stoned for thousandth of yearth--than such a Christian! Even if I ’ad to be a damned thoul burnin’, rottin’, stinkin’ in Gehenna for ever afterwardth, I would not be such a Christian! Thit down, Mithter Buthkin!"