"Doctor," murmured Mrs. Esther, in a voice like a turtledove's for softness, "I am sure that a niece of yours must be all sensibility and goodness." "Goodness at least," said her sister, in sharper tones. I saw that the difference between the sisters lay chiefly in their voices. "She will, I trust, be serviceable to you," said the Doctor, waving his hand. "She hath been well and piously brought up to obedient ways. Under your care, ladies, I look for a good account of her." "Dear and reverend sir," Mrs. Esther cooed, "we are pleased and happy to be of use to you in this matter. No doubt little miss, who is well grown of her years, will repay your kindness with her prayers. As for us, the memory of your past and present goodness----" "Tut, tut!" he replied, shaking his great head till his cheeks waggled, "let us hear no more of that. In this place"--here he laid his right hand upon his heart, elevating his left, and leaning his head to one side--"in this place, where infamy and well-deserved misery attend most of those who dwell in it, it is yours, as it should be mine, to keep burning continually the pure flame of a Christian life." "How sweet! how noble!" murmured the sisters. Was it possible? The man whom we had just seen reading the service of Mother Church, which my father had taught me to regard as little less sacred than the words of the Bible itself, in a squalid room, reeking with the fumes of rum and stale tobacco, before a gang of half-drunken sailors, assumed naturally and easily, as if _it belonged to him_, the attitude and language of one devoted entirely to the contemplation and practice of virtue and good works. Why, his face glowed with goodness like the sun at noonday, or the sun after a shower, or, say, the sun after a good action. The Doctor, indeed, as I learned later, could assume almost any character he pleased. It pleased him, not out of hypocrisy, but because for a time it was a return to the promise of his youth, to be with these ladies the devout Christian priest. In that character he felt, I am convinced, the words which came spontaneously to his lips: for the moment he _was_ that character. Outside, in the Fleet Market, he was the great Dr. Shovel--great, because among the Fleet parsons he was the most successful, the most learned, the most eloquent, the most important. In his own room he married all comers, after the manner we have seen; and it raised the envy of his rivals to see how the crowd flocked to him. But in the evening he received his friends, and drank and talked with them in such fashion as I never saw, but of which I have heard. Again, it raised their envy to witness how men came from all quarters to drink with the Doctor. At that time he was no longer the Christian advocate, nor the clergyman; he was a rollicking, jovial, boon companion, who delighted to tell better stories, sing better songs, and hold better talk--meaning more witty, not more spiritual talk--than any of those who sat with him.