But ... the ingratitude of her only son, who could not give up to his mother’s society his last Sunday afternoon in England! She choked with unshed tears and read verse after verse of the early part of Jeremiah without understanding one word, although she was told in her leaflets that the diatribes bore special reference to England in the latter part of the nineteenth century.... No, the thought of John wandering about the hayfields with Lucy—for, of course, that girl would lead him into the hayfields, perhaps throw hay at him—constantly rose before her, and once or twice a few hot tears dimmed her sight.... "The Lord said also unto me in the days of Josiah the King: Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done?..." She had devoted all the money she could save, all the time she could spare to the bringing-up of this boy. She had sent him to college and made him a gentleman. She had done her duty by him as a mother, and this was the return he made. He preferred to spend his last Sunday afternoon frolicking about the country with a feather-headed girl to passing it quietly by his mother’s side, as he formerly used to do.... They might even have had a word of prayer together. Mrs. Baines was not usually a woman who encouraged outbursts of vocal piety outside the chapel, but on such an occasion as this.... She might not see him for another five years.. "And I said, after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not."—Now was it becoming for a grown man, a missionary who had occupied the pulpit at Salem Chapel in the morning, to go gallivanting about the meadows with a young woman in the afternoon? What would any of the congregation say who saw him? A nice spectacle, to be sure!— "And the Lord said unto me, The back-sliding Israel hath justified herself more than treacherous Judah..." "Let me see," reflected Mrs. Baines, trying to give her attention to her reading, "Judah represents the Church of England, and Israel is ... Israel is ... Baines! For goodness _sake_ don’t snore like that. You ought to be ashamed of yourself! _How_ you can reconcile it with your conscience to guzzle like a pig every Sunday at dinner and then pass the rest of the afternoon snoring and snoozing instead of reading your Bible, _I_ don’t know."