To these different labourers in the great field, there had wanted a comfortable hostel, as it were, or house where they could receive such rest and refreshment as the outer man requires, however strong and unwearied the inner man might be. Exactly such a pleasant, home-like domicile could Mrs. Degge now offer them. There the preachers could go direct, with the feeling of a welcome as sincere as it was acceptable. The poor servant of the gospel who had to foot it from the town, up the long hill, often in sweltering hot weather, often amid the snow and storms of winter, there found always a cheerful hearth, a ready cushioned arm-chair, a smiling, pious face, and a heart always ready to give the sure tokens of welcome and comfort. There they could dine and rest betwixt the morning and evening services: there they could take tea, and enjoy the company of one or other of the esteemed brethren who dropped in. There was a chamber, clean, snug, and quiet, if there were need of stopping the night. The richer brother who came on horseback knew that his horse was as welcome and would be ministered to as cordially in the stable of Mr. Degge, as he himself would be at his mother’s. Mr. Degge had assured them himself of this, and often stepped in and had a friendly chat with these apostles of the people. He told his mother that she was not to spare any expense in making her house a resort most agreeable to her friends; and Mrs. Degge, knowing that this was as genuinely said as she herself could say it, made her house the pleasant resort of the prophets of her community as much as the Shunamite woman of old did her little room on the wall to Elisha. A class met at Mrs. Degge’s house; and at any cottage in the village where any members of the society lived, Mrs. Degge was a most welcome visitor, always ready to carry help and comfort wherever there was need, or sickness, or want of counsel. Mr. Degge not only enabled her to do all that “she found in her heart to do,” but he paid off an old debt on the chapel, for at that time of day, few country chapels of the Wesleyans were without such a debt, whatever they may now be; and he frequently contributed liberally, as well as enabling his mother to contribute liberally, to the subscriptions ever and anon called for. But these favours to the religious friends of his mother were fresh aggravations of his offences against the fixed prejudices of the neighbouring squirearchy. Sir Roger Rockville had driven the Methodists with a high hand out of his village and beyond his domains, and here was this odious money-bag of Castleborough fostering them to the utmost of his and his old washer-woman mothers’ ability in Hillmartin almost under his nose. Every neighbouring squire sympathised with Sir Roger, and afresh denounced Simon Degge as a nuisance.