“Indeed, I cannot say,” said Evelyn, “I have never gone anywhere but to the parish church--but--I don’t quite understand--” “We both understand perfectly,” said Mrs. Dean, “that you would miss the ritual and your beautiful prayer-book. We have a great sympathy for that. There is nothing in the prayer-book, I am sure, that would be a stumbling-block to my husband, and he sometimes takes a collect just straight out of it without any kind of clipping or trimming. There is a great movement in Scotland, which perhaps you are not acquainted with, to improve the baldness of our services, and make them more generally attractive. We have a harmonium,” Mrs. Dean said with pride, “and I am happy to say that our choir is beginning to chant just extraordinarily well. You will see no such terrible difference as maybe you think.” Evelyn held her peace, being more and more bewildered with every word. She wondered what Mrs. Reuben Butler, _née_ Jeanie Dean, who was once the minister’s wife of this parish, would have thought of this statement. She only bowed in reply, not being for her own part at all qualified to speak. “Alexander will explain to you far better than I can, and you will find no intolerance in him. He perhaps agrees better with you,” she added, with a smile, “than with the old-fashioned folk who insist upon keeping up all the difference.--Alexander, Mrs. Rowland would like you to explain the way we’re trying to bridge over the debateable land between our establishment and the other. Just come here. I will change places with you.” The good wife, with these words, rose and took a chair beside Rowland, to whom her husband had been talking, which was very self-denying on the part of the minister’s wife, there being nothing at all novel in the gentleman of the house, whereas there was a great deal that was novel in the lady, and therefore interesting. She relinquished the post to the minister, who was perhaps better able to expound--was he better able to expound?--the problem of that ecclesiastical movement in Scotland which is so much more puzzling to unsophisticated English understandings, prepared for polemics and opposition, than the good old conventional figure of the Presbyterian Calvinist, which is a primitive type that everybody knows. “I don’t know what there is to explain,” said Mr. Dean, taking, nothing loth, the chair his wife had vacated: he too preferred the mistress to the master of the house. “Our services--but then Mrs. Rowland will understand them better when she has seen them.” “Oh, I was very tired after my long journey--and I had a headache.” “She was not out of her bed,” replied Rowland, as if his wife were being blamed.