"There is no especial virtue in gravity," Mrs Errol returned. "There is not," he answered readily. "I prefer a cheerful countenance myself." The vicar's road that morning taking him past Robert's cottage, he looked in to inquire for Mrs Robert, who had been much troubled of late with mysterious pains which attacked equally mysterious parts of her anatomy. To listen to Hannah's diagnosis of her complaints was to wonder how anyone who suffered so distressingly could continue to live, and to remain on the whole fairly active. The vicar, being accustomed to this exaggerated description of the minor ills of the flesh, was able to be sympathetic, and not unduly pessimistic in regard to the patient's ultimate recovery. But this morning Hannah, having received a letter from her son, was less concerned with her ailments than with the epistle of Robert the younger, who, after two pages devoted to personal and intimate matters, had sent a filial exhortation to his father, in which he recommended for the latter's careful study the sixteenth verse of the sixteenth chapter according to Saint Mark. Robert the elder had insisted upon Hannah hunting up that particular verse in the Bible which stood in the front window, where the vicar's eye, and the eye of the district visitor, could not fail to light upon it. The vicar's eye had become so familiarised with this object, which looked as though it had never been displaced since first it had been put there, that he had formed a very fair estimate of its accepted value in the household. Mr Errol held no illusions concerning the piety of Robert and his wife. Hannah, nothing loth, had found the text, and read it aloud to Robert, whose wrathful disgust had caused her quite pleasantly to forget her pains for the time. There stood the words in relentless black and white: "He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." Hannah performed the supererogatory task of reading the text aloud to the vicar, who endeavoured while he listened to conceal the smile that found its way to his lips. "And what has Robert to say to that?" he asked. Robert had had a good deal to say, but his wife did not feel it necessary to quote him verbatim. "Robert's mad," she answered. "He says he'll learn 'im. But Bob's a good boy, sir, and terrible clever." "He certainly possesses a strong sense of responsibility," the vicar allowed.