Maurice Mapleson is sanguine of results, I am not.  I am afraid he will come out bankrupt himself at the end of the year.  I wanted to raise a special subscription quietly to ensure his salary.  But he would not hear of it.  He replied to my suggestion, “I said I would trust the Lord, and I will.  If you want to add to your envelope contribution, very well.  But I do not want any more than that will give me.”

But one thing I notice and record here.  Our congregation have increased from ten to twenty per cent.  Miss Moore’s invitations have met with far greater success than I anticipated.  I never could get any of the boys from the Mill village to come to church at all regularly under the old system.  When this change was made I gave notice of it, and now over half my Bible-class are in the congregation.  But I can get no intimation from Maurice how the plan is prospering financially.  All he will say is, “We shall all know at the close of the year.”

CHAPTER XXX.

Mr. Hardcap’s Family Prayers.

“Jennie,” said I, the other evening, “I should like to go and make a call at Mr. Hardcap’s.”

Our new pastor had preached a sermon on that unapplied passage of Scripture, Luke xiv:  12-14.  It had made a great stir in our little village.  Mr. Wheaton thought it was a grand sermon, but impracticable.  Mrs. Potiphar resented it as personal.  Deacon Goodsole thought it was good sound doctrine.  I thought I would give the sermon a trial; meanwhile I reserved my judgment.

It is not a bad method, by the way, of judging a sermon to try it and see how it works in actual experiment.

Jennie assented with alacrity to my proposition; her toilet did not take long, and to Mr. Hardcap’s we went.

It was very evident that they did not go into society or expect callers.  In answer to our knock we heard the patter of a child’s feet on the hall floor and Susie opened the door.  As good fortune would have it, the sitting-room door at the other end of the hall stood invitingly open, and so, without waiting for ceremony, I pushed right forward to the common room, which a great blazing wood fire illuminated so thoroughly that the candles were hardly necessary.  Mrs. Hardcap started in dismay to gather up her basket of stockings, but on my positive assurance that we should leave forthwith if she stopped her work she sat down to it again.  Luckily the night was cold and there was no fire in the stove of the cheerless and inhospitable parlor.  So they were fain to let us share with them the cheery blaze of the cozy sitting-room.  We did not start out till after seven, and we had not been in the room more than ten minutes before the old-fashioned clock in the corner rang out the departure of the hour and ushered in eight o’clock—­whereat James laid aside his book, and at a signal from his father brought him the family Bible.

“We always have family prayers at eight o’clock,” said Mr. Hardcap, “before the children go to bed; and I never let anything interfere with it.”