"Now, what do you think of it?" asked Marion in a meditative tone. We crept within the scope of her vision, and stood. A voice, which I knew, was at the moment replying to her question. "_I_ don't think it's much of a chapter, that, grannie." The speaker was the keen-faced, elderly man, with iron-gray whiskers, who had come forward to talk to Percivale on that miserable evening when we were out searching for little Ethel. He sat near where we stood by the door, between two respectable looking women, who had been listening to the chapter as devoutly as if it had been of the true gospel. "Sure, grannie, that ain't out o' the Bible?" said another voice, from somewhere farther off. "We'll talk about that presently," answered Marion. "I want to hear what Mr. Jarvis has to say to it: he's a carpenter himself, you see,--a joiner, that is, you know." All the faces in the room were now turned towards Jarvis. "Tell me why you don't think much of it, Mr. Jarvis," said Marion. "'Tain't a bit likely," he answered. "What isn't likely?" "Why, not one single thing in the whole kit of it. And first and foremost, 'tain't a bit likely the old man 'ud ha' been sich a duffer." "Why not? There must have been stupid people then as well as now." "Not _his_ father." said Jarvis decidedly. "He wasn't but his step-father, like, you know, Mr. Jarvis," remarked the woman beside him in a low voice. "Well, he'd never ha' been _hers_, then. _She_ wouldn't ha' had a word to say to _him_." "I have seen a good--and wise woman too--with a dull husband," said Marion. "You know you don't believe a word of it yourself, grannie," said still another voice. "Besides," she went on without heeding the interruption, "in those times, I suspect, such things were mostly managed by the parents, and the woman herself had little to do with them." A murmur of subdued indignation arose,--chiefly of female voices. "Well, _they_ wouldn't then," said Jarvis. "He might have been rich," suggested Marion. "I'll go bail _he_ never made the money then," said Jarvis. "An old idget! I don't believe sich a feller 'ud ha' been _let_ marry a woman like her--I _don't_." "You mean you don't think God would have let him?" "Well, that's what I _do_ mean, grannie. The thing couldn't ha' been, nohow." "I agree with you quite. And now I want to hear more of what in the story you don't consider likely." "Well, it ain't likely sich a workman 'ud ha' stood so high i' the trade that the king of Jerusalem would ha' sent for _him_ of all the tradesmen in the town to make his new throne for him. No more it ain't likely--and let him be as big a duffer as ever was, to be a jiner at all--that he'd ha' been two year at work on that there throne--an' a carvin' of it in figures too!--and never found out it was four spans too narrer for the place it had to stand in. Do ye 'appen to know now, grannie, how much is a span?" "I don't know. Do you know, Mrs. Percivale?"