“It won’t be in the least worth your while except we announce it. You won’t have a soul to hear you but the pew-openers, the woman that cleans the chapel, Mrs Marshal’s washerwoman, and the old greengrocer we buy our vegetables from. We must really announce it.” “Then I won’t do it. Just tell me--what would our Lord have said to Peter or John if they had told Him that they had been to synagogue and had been asked to speak, but had declined because there were only the pew-openers, the chapel-cleaner, a washerwoman, and a greengrocer present?” “I said it only for your sake, Graham; you needn’t take me up so sharply.” “And ra-a-ther irreverently--don’t you think--excuse me, sir?” said Mrs Marshal very softly. But the very softness had a kind of jelly-fish sting in it. “I think,” rejoined the schoolmaster, indirectly replying, “we must be careful to show our reverence in a manner pleasing to our Lord. Now I cannot discover that he cares for any reverences but the shaping of our ways after his; and if you will show me a single instance of respect of persons in our Lord, I will press my petition no farther to be allowed to speak a word to your pew-openers, washerwoman, and greengrocer.” His entertainers were silent--the gentleman in the consciousness of deserved rebuke, the lady in offence. Just then the latter bethought herself that their guest, belonging to the Scotch Church, was, if no Episcopalian, yet no dissenter, and that seemed to clear up to her the spirit of his disapproval. “By all means, Mr Marshal,” she said, “let your friend speak on the Wednesday evening. It would not be to his advantage to have it said that he occupied a dissenting pulpit. It will not be nearly such an exertion either; and if he is unaccustomed to speak to large congregations, he will find himself more comfortable with our usual week-evening one.” “I have never attempted to speak in public but once,” rejoined Mr Graham, “and then I failed.” “Ah! that accounts for it,” said his friend’s wife, and the simplicity of his confession, while it proved him a simpleton, mollified her. Thus it came that he spent the days between Sunday and Thursday in their house, and so made the acquaintance of young Marshal. When his mother perceived their growing intimacy, she warned her son that their visitor belonged to an unscriptural and worldly community, and that notwithstanding his apparent guilelessness-- deficiency indeed--he might yet use cunning arguments to draw him aside from the faith of his fathers. But the youth replied that, although in the firmness of his own position as a Congregationalist, he had tried to get the Scotchman into a conversation upon church government, he had failed; the man smiled queerly and said nothing. But when a question of New Testament criticism arose, he came awake at once, and his little blue eyes gleamed like glow-worms.