“That’s too bad,” said Jennie.

“And we can’t do much if we do join it.  I have no time for church affairs, and you—­you have all you can do to attend to your infant class at home, Jennie.”

“That’s true,” said Jennie.

“Besides it is a Presbyterian church and we are Congregationalists.”

Jennie made no reply.

“And I can’t bear the idea of leaving the Broadway Tabernacle church.  I was brought up in it.  I have been in its Sunday-School ever since I can recollect.  It was dear to me in its old homely attire as a Congregationalist meeting-house.  It is dear to me in its new aristocratic attire as a Congregationalist cathedral.  And Harry was baptized there.  And there are all our dearest and best friends.  It would be like pulling a tooth to uproot from it.”

“It is dear to me too, John,” said Jennie softly, “for your sake, if not for my own.”

“And all our friends are there, Jennie,” continued I.  “Except the Lines and Deacon Goodsole we hardly know anybody here.”

“Though I suppose time will cure that,” said Jennie.

“I do not know that I care to cure it,” said I.

Jennie made no response.

Was it not at Bunker Hill that the soldiers were directed to reserve their fire till the attacking party had exhausted theirs?  That is the way Jennie conducts an argument—­when she argues at all, which is very seldom.  She accepted every consideration I had offered against uniting with the Wheathedge church, and yet I knew her opinion was not changed; and somehow my own began to waver.  I wonder how that method of arguing would work in the court-room.  I mean to try it some time.

I had exhausted my fire and Jennie was still silent.  Silence they say means consent.  But I knew that it did not in her case.  It depends so much upon the kind of silence.

“What do you say Jennie?” said I.

“Well, John,” said she slowly and thoughtfully, “perhaps there are two sides to the question.  I don’t like to leave the Broadway Tabernacle.  But it seems to me that we have left it.  We cannot attend its prayer-meetings, or go to its Sabbath-school, or worship with its members on the Sabbath, or even mingle much with its members in social life.  We have left it, and we ought to have thought of that before we left—­not after.  Perhaps I am to blame, John, that I did not think of it more.  I did not think of what you were giving up for me when you took this beautiful home for my sake.”

I had not taken it for her sake—­that is, not wholly for her sake.  And as to the giving up!  Why, bless you, that little sitting-room, with the wife and baby it contained, was worth a thousand Tabernacles to me; and I managed to tell Jennie so, and emphasize the declaration with a—­well no matter.  But she did not need the information, she knew it very well before, I am sure.

“The real question seems to me, John, to be whether we mean to be church members at all?” said Jennie.