But the preacher went on, without heeding the attack on his orthodoxy. "This other old house was still more uncomfortable: it was very draughty; the gutters were always leaking; and they wished themselves back in the new house. So, you see, if you wish for a better thing, you don't get it so good after all." "Ernest, that _is_ about the bad, after all!" cried Charles. "Well, it's _silly_," remarked Freddy severely. "But I wrote it myself," pleaded the preacher from the pulpit; and, in consideration of the fact, he was allowed to go on. "I was reading about them being always uncomfortable. At last they decided to go back to their own house, which they had sold. They had to pay so much to get it back, that they had hardly any money left; and then they got so unhappy, and the husband whipped his wife, and took to drinking. That's a lesson." (_Here the preacher's voice became very plaintive_), "that's a lesson to show you shouldn't try to get the better thing, for it turns out worse, and then you get sadder, and every thing." He paused, evidently too mournful to proceed. Freddy again remarked that it was _silly_; but Charles interposed a word for the preacher. "It's a good _lesson_, I think. A good _lesson_, I say," he repeated, as if he would not be supposed to consider it much of a sermon. But here the preacher recovered himself and summed up. "See how it comes: wanting to get every thing, you come to the bad and drinking. And I think I'll leave off here. Let us sing." The song was "Little Robin Redbreast;" during which Charles remarked to Freddy, apparently by way of pressing home the lesson upon his younger brother,-- "Fancy! floggin' his wife!" Then he got into the pulpit himself, and commenced an oration. "Chapter eighty-eight. _The wicked_.--Well, the time when the story was, was about Herod. There were some wicked people wanderin' about there, and they--not _killed_ them, you know, but--went to the judge. We shall see what they did to them. I tell you this to make you understand. Now the story begins--but I must think a little. Ernest, let's sing 'Since first I saw your face.' "When the wicked man was taken then to the good judge--there were _some_ good people: when I said I was going to preach about the wicked, I did not mean that there were no good, only a good lot of wicked. There were pleacemans about here, and they put him in prison for a few days, and then the judge could see about what he is to do with him. At the end of the few days, the judge asked him if he would stay in prison for life or be hanged." Here arose some inquiries among the congregation as to what the wicked, of whom the prisoner was one, had done that was wrong; to which Charles replied,--