‘Perhaps,’ said Mr. Tryan, feeling slightly uncomfortable, ’since you are not very strong, my dear sir, it will be well, as Mrs. Jerome suggests, that you should not run the risk of any excitement.’

‘Say no more, Mr. Tryan.  I’ll stan’ by you, sir.  It’s my duty.  It’s the cause o’ God, sir; it’s the cause o’ God.’

Mr. Tryan obeyed his impulse of admiration and gratitude, and put out his hand to the white-haired old man, saying, ’Thank you, Mr. Jerome, thank you.’

Mr. Jerome grasped the proffered hand in silence, and then threw himself back in his chair, casting a regretful look at his wife, which seemed to say, ‘Why don’t you feel with me, Susan?’

The sympathy of this simple-minded old man was more precious to Mr. Tryan than any mere onlooker could have imagined.  To persons possessing a great deal of that facile psychology which prejudges individuals by means of formulae, and casts them, without further trouble, into duly lettered pigeon-holes, the Evangelical curate might seem to be doing simply what all other men like to do—­carrying out objects which were identified not only with his theory, which is but a kind of secondary egoism, but also with the primary egoism of his feelings.  Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution:  a self-obtrusive, over-hasty reformer complacently disclaiming all merit, while his friends call him a martyr, has not in reality a career the most arduous to the fleshly mind.  But Mr. Tryan was not cast in the mould of the gratuitous martyr.  With a power of persistence which had been often blamed as obstinacy, he had an acute sensibility to the very hatred or ridicule he did not flinch from provoking.  Every form of disapproval jarred him painfully; and, though he fronted his opponents manfully, and often with considerable warmth of temper, he had no pugnacious pleasure in the contest.  It was one of the weaknesses of his nature to be too keenly alive to every harsh wind of opinion; to wince under the frowns of the foolish; to be irritated by the injustice of those who could not possibly have the elements indispensable for judging him rightly; and with all this acute sensibility to blame, this dependence on sympathy, he had for years been constrained into a position of antagonism.  No wonder, then, that good old Mr. Jerome’s cordial words were balm to him.  He had often been thankful to an old woman for saying ‘God bless you’; to a little child for smiling at him; to a dog for submitting to be patted by him.

Tea being over by this time, Mr. Tryan proposed a walk in the garden as a means of dissipating all recollection of the recent conjugal dissidence Little Lizzie’s appeal, ‘Me go, gandpa!’ could not be rejected, so she was duly bonneted and pinafored, and then they turned out into the evening sunshine.  Not Mrs. Jerome, however; she had a deeply-meditated plan of retiring ad interim to the kitchen and washing up the best teathings, as a mode of getting forward with the sadly-retarded business of the day.