“I give the story as I heard it from our people; you know, I suppose, that there is a Moravian Indian Mission on the borders of the counties of Kent and Middlesex.  I once thought of going there as a missionary, before I fell in with Mr. Hill.”

“I knew a lady who married a clergyman, with the express understanding that he was to become a foreign missionary.  His church missionary societies refused to accept him, because of some physical defect, so he had to settle down to a home charge.  But his wife never went to hear him conduct service.  She said she could not listen to a fraud who had married her under false pretences.”

“It is a great pity he married such a woman.  If a wife has not the missionary spirit in her own house, how can she expect to acquire it by going abroad?  Besides, there is so much mission work to be done in a new country like this.  A few years ago, this place was almost as bad as Peskiwanchow, but now it has greatly improved.”

“There was a young man we met there, Mrs. Hill, in whom my friend and I were much interested,” said the dominie, and proceeded to give an account of the exploit of Timotheus.  He also narrated what Coristine had told him of his hero’s attitude towards the catechism, as accounting for his present position.  The old lady relented in her judgment of the younger Pilgrim, thought that Saul, perhaps, was too severe, and that the catechism could stand revision.  Wilkinson agreed, and, the ice being completely broken between them, they also proceeded to view the scenery in a poetic light, or rather in two, the dame’s a Cowperish, and the dominie’s a Wordsworthian reflection.  Suddenly, the latter saw the father of Tryphena and Tryphosa open a gate, and turn into a side road, along which the lawyer seemed not quite disposed to accompany him.  The elder smoker, therefore, came back to the gate, and waited for Wilkinson and the old lady to come forward.

“Mother!” said the old man, as the pair came up to the halting place, “you’ve got a soft blarneying Lutherian tongue in your head—­”

“Henry Cooke,” she replied sharply, “how often must I tell you that Lutherian is wrong, and that I am not a Lutheran, and have ceased even to be a United Brother since I cast in my lot with you; moreover, it is not pleasant for an old woman like me to be accused of blarneying, as if I were a rough Irishman with a grin on his broad face.”

“Well, well, mother, I don’t care a snuff if you were a Sesayder or even a Tommykite—­”

“A Tommykite?” cried Coristine, anxious to extend his knowledge and increase his vocabulary.

“It’s a man called Thomas,” answered the interrupted husband, “that made a new sect out our way, and they call his following Tommykites; I dunno if he’s a relation of the captain or not.  Give a dog a bad name, they say, and you might as well hang him; but the Tommykites are living, in spite of their name.”

“Henry Cooke, your remarks are very unnecessary and irrevelant,” said his wife, falling into bad English over a long adjective.