Dorothy ran to put her bonnet on.  The curate went back to the bedside.  Mr. Drake had again turned his face to the wall.

“Sixty years of age!” he was murmuring to himself.

“Mr. Drake,” said Wingfold, “so long as you bury yourself with the centipedes in your own cellar, instead of going out into God’s world, you are tempting Satan and Mammon together to come and tempt you.  Worship the God who made the heaven and the earth, and the sea and the mines of iron and gold, by doing His will in the heart of them.  Don’t worship the poor picture of Him you have got hanging up in your closet;—­worship the living power beyond your ken.  Be strong in Him whose is your strength, and all strength.  Help Him in His work with His own.  Give life to His gold.  Rub the canker off it, by sending it from hand to hand.  You must rise and bestir yourself.  I will come and see you again to-morrow.  Good-by for the present.”

He turned away and walked from the room.  But his hand had scarcely left the lock, when he heard the minister alight from his bed upon the floor.

“He’ll do!” said the curate to himself, and walked down the stair.

When he got home, he left Dorothy with his wife, and going to his study, wrote the following verses, which had grown in his mind as he walked silent beside her:—­

  WHAT MAN IS THERE OF YOU?

  The homely words, how often read! 
    How seldom fully known! 
  “Which father of you, asked for bread,
    Would give his son a stone?”

  How oft has bitter tear been shed,
    And heaved how many a groan,
  Because Thou wouldst not give for bread
    The thing that was a stone!

  How oft the child Thou wouldst have fed,
    Thy gift away has thrown! 
  He prayed, Thou heardst, and gav’st the bread: 
    He cried, it is a stone!

  Lord, if I ask in doubt or dread
    Lest I be left to moan—­
  I am the man who, asked for bread,
    Would give his son a stone.

As Dorothy returned from the rectory, where Helen had made her happier than all the money by the kind words she said to her, she stopped at Mr. Jones’ shop, and bought of him a bit of loin of mutton.

“Shan’t I put it down, miss?” he suggested, seeing her take out her purse.—­Helen had just given her the purse:  they had had great fun, with both tears and laughter over it.

“I would rather not—­thank you very much,” she replied with a smile.

He gave her a kind, searching glance, and took the money.

That day Juliet dined with them.  When the joint appeared, Amanda, who had been in the kitchen the greater part of the morning, clapped her hands as at sight of an old acquaintance.

“Dere it comes! dere it comes!” she cried.

But the minister’s grace was a little longer than she liked, for he was trying hard to feel grateful.  I think some people mistake pleasure and satisfaction for thankfulness:  Mr. Drake was not so to be taken in.  Ere long, however, he found them a good soil for thankfulness to grow in.—­So Amanda fidgeted not a little, and the moment the grace was over—­