“It ought to have been stopped,” said Lionel, when his laughter had subsided.  “They are going out to misery, and to nothing else, poor deluded creatures!”

“Who was to stop it?” asked Jan.

“Some one might have told them the truth.  If this Brother Jarrum represented things in rose-coloured hues, could nobody open to their view the other side of the picture?  I should have endeavoured to do it, had I been here.  If they chose to risk the venture after that, it would have been their own fault.”

“You’d have done no good,” said Jan.  “Once let ’em get the Mormon fever upon ’em, and it must run its course.  It’s like the gold fever; nothing will convince folks they are mistaken as to that, except the going out to Australia to the diggings.  That will.”

A faint tinge of brighter colour rose to Sibylla’s cheeks at this allusion, and Lionel knit his brow.  He would have avoided for ever any chain of thought that led his memory to Frederick Massingbird:  he could not bear to think that his young bride had been another’s before she was his.  Jan, happily ignorant, continued.

“There’s Susan Peckaby.  She has got it in her head that she’s going straight off to Paradise, once she is in the Salt Lake City.  Well, now, Lionel, if you, and all the world to help you, set yourselves on to convince her that she’s mistaken, you couldn’t do it.  They must go out and find the level of things for themselves—­there’s no help for it.”

“Jan, it is not likely that Susan Peckaby really expects a white donkey to be sent for her!” cried Sibylla.

“She as fully expects the white donkey, as I expect that I shall go from here presently, and drop in on Poynton, on my way home,” earnestly said Jan.  “He has had a kick from a horse on his shin, and a nasty place it is,” added Jan in a parenthesis.  “Nothing on earth would convince Susan Peckaby that the donkey’s a myth, or will be a myth; and she wastes all her time looking out for it.  If you were opposite their place now, you’d see her head somewhere; poked out at the door, or peeping from the upstairs window.”

“I wish I could get them all back again—­those who have gone from here!” warmly spoke Lionel.

“I wish sometimes I had got four legs, that I might get over double ground, when patients are wanting me on all sides,” returned Jan.  “The one wish is just as possible as the other, Lionel.  The lot sailed from Liverpool yesterday, in the ship American Star.  And I’ll be bound, what with the sea-sickness, and the other discomforts, they are wishing themselves out of it already!  I say, Sibylla, what did you think of Paris?”

“Oh, Jan, it’s enchanting!  And I have brought the most charming things home.  You can come upstairs and see them, if you like.  Benoite is unpacking them.”

“Well, I don’t know,” mused Jan.  “I don’t suppose they are what I should care to see.  What are the things?”