“It’s a most unfortunate state of affairs,” declared Miss Ironsyde.  “Yet it was bound to happen in a little place like this.  Raymond is not sensitive, or he would feel it far more than he does.”

“He can’t do more and he does feel it a great deal,” declared Estelle.  “I think Sabina sees it clearly enough, but it’s very hard on her too, to have to go from Mister Churchouse and her home.”

“Nothing is more mysterious than the sowing and germination of spiritual seed,” said the old man.  “The enemy sowed tares by night, and what can be more devilish than sowing the tares of evil on virgin soil?  It was done long ago.  One hesitates to censure the dead, though I daresay, if we could hear them talking in another world, we should find they didn’t feel nearly so nice about us and speak their minds quite plainly.  We know plenty of people who must be criticising.  But truth will out, and the truth is that Mary Dinnett planted evil thoughts and prejudices in Abel.  He was not too young, unfortunately, to give them room.  A very curious woman—­obstinate and almost malignant if vexed and quite incapable of keeping silence even when it was most demanded.  If you are going to give people confidences, you must have a good memory.  Mary would confide all sorts of secrets to me and then, perhaps six months afterwards, be quite furious to find I knew them!  She came to me for advice on one occasion and I reminded her of certain circumstances she had confided to me in the past, and she lost her temper entirely.  Yet a woman of most excellent qualities and most charitable in other people’s affairs.”

“The question is Abel, and I have told Sabina she must decide about him,” said Jenny.  “We are all of one mind, and Raymond himself thinks it would be most desirable.  As soon as you are well again, Sabina must go.”

“I shall miss her very much.  To find anybody who will fall into my ways may be difficult.  When I was younger, I used to like training a domestic.  I found it was better to rule by love than fear.  You may lose here and there, but you gain more than you lose.  Human character is really not so profoundly difficult, if you resolutely try to see life from the other person’s standpoint.  That done, you can help them—­and yourself through them.”

“People who show you their edges, instead of their rounds, are not at all agreeable,” said Miss Ironsyde.  “To conquer the salients of character is often a very formidable task.”

“It is,” he admitted, “yet I have found the comfortable, convex and concave characters often really more difficult in the long run.  You must have some hard and durable rock on which to found understanding and security.  The soft, crumbling people may be lovable; but they are useless as sand at a crisis.  They are always slipping away and threatening to smother their best friends with the debris.”

He chattered on until a fit of coughing stopped him.

“You mustn’t talk so much,” warned Estelle.  “It’s lovely to hear you talking again; but it isn’t good for you, yet.”