“Oh, mother, how can you take it like that?” said Marion; “there was no criticism. If anything was said, it was more me than him. I said I could not bide to hear a word, as if our Lord might have approved such an ill man. And he said it was dangerous for a mixed congregation, and that few considered the real meaning of a parable, but just took every word as if it was instruction.” “And that was just your father’s strong point. He said it was like taking another man’s sail to fill up a leak in a boat. You would praise the man for getting the first thing he could lay his hands on to save himself and his crew, but not for taking his neighbour’s sail--that was just his grand point; but there are some folk that will always take things in the matter-of-fact way, to the letter, and cannot understand what’s expounded according to the spirit. That, however, has always just been your father’s special gift,” said the minister’s wife, _de facto_. She, who was only a minister’s wife in expectation, ought to have bowed her head; but, being young and confident, even though so extremely reasonable, Marion could not subdue herself to that better part. “That was just what Matthew said--dangerous for a mixed congregation,” she repeated; “the most of them just being bound by nature to the letter, and very matter-of-fact----” “No doubt Matthew is a great authority,” said Mrs. Buchanan, with a violent snap of her big scissors. “Well, mamma,” said Marion, with the soft answer that does not always take away wrath, “you’ll allow that he ought to be to me----” And there then ensued a deep silence; a whole large hole in the heel of Rodie’s stocking filled up, as by magic, in the mother’s hands, quickened by this contrariety, and the sudden absorption in her work which followed, and Marion marked twelve towels, one after the other, so quickly that Elsie could scarcely follow her with the iron in time to make them all shine. It was she who took up the thread of the conversation again, but not wisely. Had she been a sensible young person, she would have introduced a new subject, which is the bounden duty of a third party, when the other two have come to the verge of a quarrel. But Elsie was only sixteen, and this discussion had called back her own strange experience in the turret-room.