‘Why, it’s struck six i’ the kitchen a’ready.  It’s nonsense to look for him comin’ now.  So you may’s well ring for th’ urn.  Now Sally’s got th’ heater in the fire, we may’s well hev th’ urn in, though he doesn’t come.  I niver see’d the like o’ you, Mr. Jerome, for axin’ people an’ givin’ me the trouble o’ gettin’ things down an’ hevin’ crumpets made, an’ after all they don’t come.  I shall hev to wash every one o’ these tea-things myself, for there’s no trustin’ Sally—­she’d break a fortin i’ crockery i’ no time!’

’But why will you give yourself sich trouble, Susan?  Our everyday tea-things would ha’ done as well for Mr. Tryan, an’ they’re a deal convenenter to hold.’

‘Yes, that’s just your way, Mr. Jerome, you’re al’ys a-findin’ faut wi’ my chany, because I bought it myself afore I was married.  But let me tell you, I knowed how to choose chany if I didn’t know how to choose a husband.  An’ where’s Lizzie?  You’ve niver left her i’ the garden by herself, with her white frock on an’ clean stockins?’

‘Be easy, my dear Susan, be easy; Lizzie’s come in wi’ Sally.  She’s hevin’ her pinafore took off, I’ll be bound.  Ah! there’s Mr. Tryan a-comin’ through the gate.’

Mrs. Jerome began hastily to adjust her damask napkin and the expression of her countenance for the reception of the clergyman, and Mr. Jerome went out to meet his guest, whom he greeted outside the door.

’Mr. Tryan, how do you do, Mr. Tryan?  Welcome to the White House!  I’m glad to see you, sir—­I’m glad to see you.’

If you had heard the tone of mingled good-will, veneration, and condolence in which this greeting was uttered, even without seeing the face that completely harmonized with it, you would have no difficulty in inferring the ground-notes of Mr. Jerome’s character.  To a fine ear that tone said as plainly as possible—­’Whatever recommends itself to me, Thomas Jerome, as piety and goodness, shall have my love and honour.  Ah, friends, this pleasant world is a sad one, too, isn’t it?  Let us help one another, let us help one another.’  And it was entirely owing to this basis of character, not at all from any clear and precise doctrinal discrimination, that Mr. Jerome had very early in life become a Dissenter.  In his boyish days he had been thrown where Dissent seemed to have the balance of piety, purity, and good works on its side, and to become a Dissenter seemed to him identical with choosing God instead of mammon.  That race of Dissenters is extinct in these days, when opinion has got far ahead of feeling, and every chapel-going youth can fill our ears with the advantages of the Voluntary system, the corruptions of a State Church, and the Scriptural evidence that the first Christians were Congregationalists.  Mr. Jerome knew nothing of this theoretic basis for Dissent, and in the utmost extent of his polemical discussion he had not gone further than to question whether a Christian man was bound in conscience to distinguish Christmas and Easter