He had happened to pass along the street one 'fourth-day' morning as John came out of the meeting-house, and overheard him address a remark about business to a Quaker friend at his side, and thereafter was merciless in ridicule. 'John's patent incubator,' he styled the meeting-house, 'for plot-hatching,' and pretended to be afraid of doing business with him on Wednesday afternoons for fear of being 'skinned.' Bill was a waif from the seas who had somehow been thrown up at Old Quay a few years back, and having 'prospected around' and 'pegged out a claim' for himself in the indiscriminate region of commission business, life insurance, advertising agencies, secretaryships, and other nebulous formative processes, was now almost as well-known a figure in the town as Quaker John himself. The chief foundation in any abiding friendship is a certain diversity of temperament which those who wondered at the mutual liking that had sprung up between the retiring stockbroker's clerk and the worldly Yankee had evidently overlooked. To John the American's audacity was a perpetual delight, tempered by occasional Puritan scruples as to whether he was justified in associating with so hardened an unbeliever. To Bill Coody the Quaker's reposefulness and quiet self-sufficiency were both a sleeping-draught and irritant. Nothing delighted him more than to get a rise out of John; but John was hard to catch, and even when craftily inveigled into a theological argument, was extremely chary of entering into definite statements. Even when his position was most hotly assailed by the other, who made unsparing use of the _argumentum ad hominem_, reinforced by a store of malicious anecdotes of religious 'professors' all the world over, John never lost his temper, but mildly suggested that his antagonist was an Anarchist in disguise. John himself, though immersed in business which some of the 'plain people' have been used to look askance at, lived after the simple fashion of the straiter sect. After his day's work at the office, where as head clerk much responsibility lay on his shoulders, he would go straight home and employ his leisure on fine days in his garden, and on wet days in his library, for John was not only a book-collector, but also a reader. One pipe of tobacco he allowed himself before going to bed on week days and two on 'first-days,' and flavoured his tobacco with a chapter of 'George,' as he styled in affectionate intimacy his favourite author (Mr. Meredith) on week-days, but a portion of Barclay's 'Apology' on 'first-day' evenings. One evening John was sitting reading as usual, when the maid-servant came in to say that Mr. Coody wished to have a few words with him. 'Very well,' replied her master, laying aside 'George' with a sigh, and wondering what business Bill might have on hand to come at such an untimely hour.