The sudden reference took me very much by surprise; but I had not forgotten, happily, the answer I received to the same question, when anxious to realize the monstrous height of Goliath. "I remember my father telling me," I replied, "that it was as much as you could stretch between your thumb and little finger." "There!" cried Jarvis triumphantly, parting the extreme members of his right hand against the back of the woman in front of him--"that would be seven or eight inches! Four times that? Two foot and a half at least! Think of that!" "I admit the force of both your objections," said Marion. "And now, to turn to a more important part of the story, what do you think of the way in which according to it he got his father out of his evil plight?" I saw plainly enough that she was quietly advancing towards some point in her view,--guiding the talk thitherward, steadily, without haste or effort. Before Jarvis had time to make any reply, the blind man, mentioned in a former chapter, struck in, with the tone of one who had been watching his opportunity. "_I_ make more o' that pint than the t'other," he said. "A man as is a duffer may well make a mull of a thing; but a man as knows what he's up to can't. I don't make much o' them miracles, you know, grannie--that is, I don't know, and what I don't know, I won't say as I knows; but what I'm sure of is this here one thing,--that man or boy as _could_ work a miracle, you know, grannie, wouldn't work no miracle as there wasn't no good working of." "It was to help his father," suggested Marion. Here Jarvis broke in almost with scorn. "To help him to pass for a clever fellow, when he was as great a duffer as ever broke bread!" "I'm quite o' your opinion, Mr. Jarvis," said the blind man. "It 'ud ha' been more like him to tell his father what a duffer he was, and send him home to learn his trade." "He couldn't do that, you know," said Marion gently. "He _couldn't_ use such words to his father, if he were ever so stupid." "His step-father, grannie," suggested the woman who had corrected Jarvis on the same point. She spoke very modestly, but was clearly bent on holding forth what light she had. "Certainly, Mrs. Renton; but you know he couldn't be rude to any one,--leaving his own mother's husband out of the question." "True for you, grannie," returned the woman. "I think, though," said Jarvis, "for as hard as he'd ha' found it, it would ha' been more like him to set to work and teach his father, than to scamp up his mulls." "Certainly," acquiesced Marion. "To hide any man's faults, and leave him not only stupid, but, in all probability, obstinate and self-satisfied, would not be like _him_. Suppose our Lord had had such a father: what do you think he would have done?" "He'd ha' done all he could to make a man of him," answered Jarvis. "Wouldn't he have set about making him comfortable then, in spite of his blunders?" said Marion. A significant silence followed this question.