The Rector walked to the window and stood waiting while the receipt was made out:  then took the paper, went to the cupboard and filed it, locked the door and resumed his seat.

“Now, sir, let me understand your further business.  You desire, I gather, to marry my daughter Mehetabel?”

Mr. Wright gasped and swallowed something in his throat.  Put into words, his audacity frightened him.  “That’s so, sir,” he managed to answer.

“Knowing her late conduct?”

“If I didn’t,” Mr. Wright answered frankly, “I shouldn’t ha’ been fool enough to come.”

“You are a convinced Christian?”

“I go to church off and on, if that’s what you mean, sir.”

“’Tis not in the least what I mean, Mr. Wright.”

“There’s no reason why I shouldn’t go oftener.”

“There is every reason why you should.  You are able to maintain my daughter?”

“I pay my way, sir; though hard enough it is for an honest tradesman in these times.”  Insensibly he dropped into the tone of one pressing for payment.  The Rector regarded him with brows drawn down and the angry light half-veiled, but awake in his eyes now and growing.  Mr. Wright, looking up, read danger and misread it as threatening him.  “Indeed, sir,” he broke out, courageously enough, “I feel for you:  I do, indeed.  It seems strange enough to me to be standing here and asking you for such a thing.  But when a man feels as I do t’ards Miss Hetty he don’t know himself:  he’ll go and do that for which he’d call another man a fool.  Kick me to doors if you want to:  I can’t help it.  All I tell you is, I worship her from the top of her pretty head to her shoe-strings; and if she were wife of mine she should neither wash nor scrub, cook nor mend; but a room I would make for her, and chairs and cushions she should have to sit on, and books to read, and pens and paper to write down her pretty thoughts; and not a word of the past, but me looking up to her and proud all the days of my life, and studying to make her comfortable, like the lady she is!”

During this remarkable speech Mr. Wesley sat without a smile.  At the end of it, he lifted a small handbell from the writing-table and rang it twice.

Mr. Wright made sure that this was a signal for his dismissal.  He mopped his face.  “Well, it can’t be helped.  I’ve been a fool, no doubt:  but you’ve had it straight from me, as between man and man.”

He picked up his hat and was turning to go, when the door opened and Mrs. Wesley appeared.

“My dear,” said the Rector, “the name of this honest man is Wright—­ Mr. William Wright, a plumber, of Lincoln.  To my surprise he has just done me the honour of offering to marry Mehetabel.”

Mrs. Wesley turned from the bowing Mr. Wright and fastened on her husband a look incredulous but scared.

“I need scarcely say he is aware of—­of the event which makes his offer an extremely generous one.”