Next Saturday there was some business to be done in London, and George went, this time by himself. On the Sunday morning he called on the Colemans, and found Zachariah at home, but Pauline away. Mr. Bradshaw, too, was not to preach that day. It was wet, and Zachariah and George sat and talked, first about the election, and then about other indifferent subjects. Conversation—even of the best, and between two friends—is poor work when one of the two suffers from some secret sorrow which he cannot reveal, and George grew weary. Zachariah knew what was the matter with him, and had known it for a long while, but was too tender to hint his knowledge. Nevertheless, remembering his own history, he pitied the poor boy exceedingly. He loved him as his own child, for his father’s sake, and loved him all the more for an experience so nearly resembling another which he recollected too well. “How is it Mr. Bradshaw is not preaching to-day?” said George. “He is ill; I am afraid he is breaking up; and latterly he has been worried by the small attacks made upon him by people who are afraid to say anything distinctly.” “What kind of attacks?” “Well, they insinuate that he is Arian.” “What is that?” Zachariah explained the case as well as he could, and George was much interested. “Arian or not, I tell you one thing, Mr. Coleman, that Mr. Bradshaw, whenever I have heard him, seems to help me as Mr. Broad never does. I never think about what Mr. Broad says except when I am in chapel, and sometimes not then.” “Bradshaw speaks from himself. He said a thing last Sunday which stuck by me, and would have pleased a country lad like you more than it did three parts of his congregation, who are not so familiar with country life as he is. He told us he was out for a holiday, and saw some men hoeing in a field—‘Hoeing the charlock,’ he said to himself; but when he came nearer he found they were hoeing turnips—hoeing up the poor plants themselves, which lay dying all around; hoeing them up to let the other plants have room to grow. “I have known men,” added Zachariah after a pause, “from whose life so much—all love, for example—has been cut out; and the effect has been, not ruin, but growth in other directions which we should never have seen without it.” Zachariah took down a little book from his shelf, and wrote George’s name in it. “There, my boy, it is not much to look at, but I know nothing better, and keep it always in your pocket. It is the _Imitation of Christ_. You will find a good deal in it which will suit you, and you will say, as I have said a thousand times over it, that other people may write of science or philosophy, but this man writes about me.”