always had thought so; and his neighbors sometimes supposed that nobody could enjoy better experimental advantages for understanding the subject.  He was one of those men who suppose themselves submissive to the Divine will, to the uttermost extent demanded by the extreme theology of that day, simply because they have no nerves to feel, no imagination to conceive what endless happiness or suffering is, and who deal therefore with the great question of the salvation or damnation of myriads as a problem of theological algebra, to be worked out by their inevitable x, y, z.

But we must not spend too much time with our analysis of character, for matters at the tea-table are drawing to a crisis.  Mrs. Jones has announced that she does not think “he” can come this afternoon, by which significant mode of expression she conveyed the dutiful idea that there was for her but one male person in the world.  And now Mrs. Katy says, “Mary, dear, knock at the Doctor’s door and tell him that tea is ready.”

The Doctor was sitting in his shady study, in the room on the other side of the little entry.  The windows were dark and fragrant with the shade and perfume of blossoming lilacs, whose tremulous shadow, mingled with spots of afternoon sunlight, danced on the scattered papers of a great writing-table covered with pamphlets and heavily-bound volumes of theology, where the Doctor was sitting.

A man of gigantic proportions, over six feet in height, and built every way with an amplitude corresponding to his height, sitting bent over his writing, so absorbed that he did not hear the gentle sound of Mary’s entrance.

“Doctor,” said the maiden, gently, “tea is ready.”

No motion, no sound, except the quick racing of the pen over the paper.

“Doctor!  Doctor!”—­a little louder, and with another step into the apartment,—­“tea is ready.”

The Doctor stretched his head forward to a paper which lay before him, and responded in a low, murmuring voice, as reading something.

“Firstly,—­if underived virtue be peculiar to the Deity, can it be the duty of a creature to have it?”

Here a little waxen hand came with a very gentle tap on his huge shoulder, and “Doctor, tea is ready,” penetrated drowsily to the nerve of his ear, as a sound heard in sleep.  He rose suddenly with a start, opened a pair of great blue eyes, which shone abstractedly under the dome of a capacious and lofty forehead, and fixed them on the maiden, who by this time was looking up rather archly, and yet with an attitude of the most profound respect, while her venerated friend was assembling together his earthly faculties.

“Tea is ready, if you please.  Mother wished me to call you.”

“Oh!—­ah!—­yes!—­indeed!” he said, looking confusedly about, and starting for the door, in his study-gown.

“If you please, Sir,” said Mary, standing in his way, “would you not like to put on your coat and wig?”