"If everybody was patient," said Mr. Palk, "then the hosses, and even the donkeys, would come into their own no doubt. But patience be too often mistook for contentment; and when the masters think you'm content, they be only too pleased to leave it at that." "Yet impatience is the first uprooter of happiness," argued Mr. Chaffe. "Take a little thing like habits. Only yesterday a particular nice, clean old woman was grumbling to me because her husband's simple custom was to spit in the fire when he was smoking; and sometimes he'd miss the fire. A nasty vexation for her no doubt; but not a thing as ought to cast a shadow over a home. Our habits are so much a part of ourselves, that it never strikes us we can worry our friends with 'em; but if you consider how the habits of even them you care about often fret you, then you'll see how often your little ways fret them." "No doubt 'tis well to be patient with your neighbour's habits, so long as they'm honest," admitted Mr. Palk. "Certainly; because if you don't, you'll set him thinking and find you'll get as good as you give. Patience all round be the watchword, Tom, and it would save a power of friction if it was practised. Nobody knows where his own skeleton pinches but himself, and to rate folk harshly may be doing a terrible cruel thing and touching a raw the sufferer can't help." "Like Ben Bamsey," said the horseman. "'Tis whispered he've grown tootlish since his famous illness. That'll call for patience at Green Hayes." "True love's always patient, my dear. Yes, the poor old man be sinking into the cloud, and the only bright thought is that he won't know it, or suffer himself. But them with brains will suffer to see him back in childhood. Yet he was always a childlike man and none the worse for it. The light's growing dim, and doctor says he'll fade gradual till he don't know one from another. And then, such is human nature, his family will change gradual too, and forget what he was, and come slow and sure to think of him as a thing like the kettle, or washing day--just a part of life and a duty and not much more." "Better he'd died." "You mustn't say that. He may very like have a stroke and go soon, doctor says; but he'll live so long as he's useful here to his Maker. He'll be a reminder and a lesson and a test of character. His wife will see he don't come to be just a shadow, like a picture on the wall--so will I, so far as I can. He's been a very great friend of mine and always will be, wits or no wits." Mr. Palk, impressed with these opinions, was inspired to ask a question that had long troubled him. He had never made a very close confident of Maynard, feeling the man too young, and also doubting his ideas on various topics; but here was a Christian of general esteem and one older than himself. He debated the point while a silence fell, save for the noise of Arthur's plane.