any way compare two such entirely different persons.  At the same time and most earnestly, while dreading to hear, he desired to have Matilda Pridden’s opinion of the case distressing him.  He never could hear it, because he could never be allowed to expound the case to her.  Skepsey sighed again:  he as much as uttered:  Oh, if we had a few thousands like her!—­But what if we do have them?  They won’t marry!  There they are, all that the country requires in wives and mothers; and like Miss Priscilla Graves, they won’t marry!

He looked through sad thoughts across the benches of the compartments to the farther end of the carriage, where sat the Rev. Septimus Barmby, looking at him through a meditation as obscure if not so mournful.  Few are the third-class passengers outward at that early hour in the winter season, and Skepsey’s gymnastics to get beside the Rev. Septimus were unimpeded; though a tight-packed carriage of us poor journaliers would not have obstructed them with as much as a sneer.  Mr. Barmby and Skepsey greeted.  The latter said, he had a holiday, to pay a visit to Miss Nesta.  The former said, he hoped he should see Miss Nesta.  Skepsey then rapidly brought the conversation to a point where Matilda Pridden was comprised.  He discoursed of the ‘Army’ and her position in the Army, giving instances of her bravery, the devotion shown by her to the cause of morality, in all its forms.  Mr. Barmby had his fortunes on his hands at the moment, he could not lend an attentive ear; and he disliked this Army, the title it had taken, and the mixing of women and men in its ranks; not to speak of a presumption in its proceedings, and the public marching and singing.  Moreover, he enjoyed his one or two permissible glasses:  he doubted that the Chiefs of the Army had common benevolence for the inoffensive pipe.  But the cause of morality was precious to him; morality and a fit of softness, and the union of the happiest contrast of voices, had set him for a short while, before the dawn of Nesta’s day, hankering after Priscilla Graves.  Skepsey’s narrative of Matilda Pridden’s work down at the East of London; was effective; it had the ring to thrill a responsive chord in Mr. Barmby, who mused on London’s East, and martyrly service there.  His present expectations were of a very different sort; but a beautiful bride, bringing us wealth, is no misleading beam, if we direct the riches rightly.  Septimus, a solitary minister in those grisly haunts of the misery breeding vice, must needs accomplish less than a Septimus the husband of one of England’s chief heiresses:—­only not the most brilliant, owing to circumstances known to the Rev. Groseman Buttermore:  strangely, and opportunely, revealed:  for her exceeding benefit, it may be hoped.  She is no longer the ignorant girl, to reject the protecting hand of one whose cloth is the best of cloaking.  A glance at Dudley Sowerby’s defection, assures our worldly wisdom too, that now is the time to sue.