"A man"--my husband went on, who was surprised that a clergyman should be so liberal--"a man who sells drink!--in whose house so many of your parishioners will to-morrow night get too drunk to be in church the next morning!" "I wish having been drunk were what _would_ keep them from being in church. Drunk or sober, it would be all the same. Few of them care to go. They are turning out better, however, than when first I came. As for the publican, who knows what chance of doing him a good turn it may put in my way?" "You don't expect to persuade him to shut up shop?" "No: he must persuade himself to that." "What good, then, can you expect to do him?" "Who knows? I say. You can't tell what good may or may not come out of it, any more than you can tell which of your efforts, or which of your helpers, may this night be the means of restoring your child." "What do you expect the man to say about it?" "I shall provide him with something to say. I don't want him to attribute it to some foolish charity. He might. In the New Testament, publicans are acknowledged to have hearts." "Yes; but the word has a very different meaning in the New Testament." "The feeling religious people bear towards them, however, comes very near to that with which society regarded the publicans of old." "They are far more hurtful to society than those tax-gatherers." "They may be. I dare say they are. Perhaps they are worse than the sinners with whom their namesakes of the New Testament are always coupled." I will not follow the conversation further. I will only give the close of it. Percivale told me afterwards that he had gone on talking in the hope of diverting my thoughts a little. "What, then, do you mean to tell him?" asked Percivale. "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," said Mr. Blackstone. "I shall go in to-morrow morning, just at the time when there will probably be far too many people at the bar,--a little after noon. I shall return him his five sovereigns, ask for a glass of ale, and tell him the whole story,--how my friend, the celebrated painter, came with his wife,--and the rest of it, adding, I trust, that the child is all right, and at the moment probably going out for a walk with her mother, who won't let her out of her sight for a moment." He laughed again, and again I thought him heartless; but I understand him better now. I wondered, too, that Percivale _could_ go on talking, and yet I found that their talk did make the time go a little quicker. At length we reached the printing-office of "The Times,"--near Blackfriars' Bridge, I think. After some delay, we saw an overseer, who, curt enough at first, became friendly when he heard our case. If he had not had children of his own, we might perhaps have fared worse. He took down the description and address, and promised that the advertisement should appear in the morning's paper in the best place he could now find for it.