“Now will you even say that you understand that passage?”

“Practically, well enough; just as the poorest man of my congregation may understand it.  I am not to despise one of the little ones.  Pope represents the angels as despising a Newton even.”

“And you despise Pope.”

“I hope not.  I say he was full of despising, and therefore, if for no other reason, a small man.”

“Surely you do not jest at his bodily infirmities?”

“I had forgotten them quite.”

“In every other sense he was a great man.”

“I cannot allow it.  He was intellectually a great man, but morally a small man.”

“Such refinements are not easily followed.”

“I will undertake to make the poorest woman in my congregation understand that.”

“Why don’t you try your friend Mrs Oldcastle, then?  It might do her a little good,” said Miss Hester, now becoming, I thought, a little spiteful at hearing her favourite treated so unceremoniously.  I found afterwards that there was some kindness in it, however.

“I should have very little influence with Mrs Oldcastle if I were to make the attempt.  But I am not called upon to address my flock individually upon every point of character.”

“I thought she was an intimate friend of yours.”

“Quite the contrary.  We are scarcely friendly.”

“I am very glad to hear it,” said Miss Jemima, who had been silent during the little controversy that her sister and I had been carrying on.  “We have been quite misinformed.  The fact is, we thought we might have seen more of you if it had not been for her.  And as very few people of her own position in society care to visit her, we thought it a pity she should be your principal friend in the parish.”

“Why do they not visit her more?”

“There are strange stories about her, which it is as well to leave alone.  They are getting out of date too.  But she is not a fit woman to be regarded as the clergyman’s friend.  There!” said Miss Jemima, as if she had wanted to relieve her bosom of a burden, and had done it.

“I think, however, her religious opinions would correspond with your own, Mr Walton,” said Miss Hester.

“Possibly,” I answered, with indifference; “I don’t care much about opinion.”

“Her daughter would be a nice girl, I fancy, if she weren’t kept down by her mother.  She looks scared, poor thing!  And they say she’s not quite—­the thing, you know,” said Miss Jemima.

“What do you mean, Miss Crowther?”

She gently tapped her forehead with a forefinger.

I laughed.  I thought it was not worth my while to enter as the champion of Miss Oldcastle’s sanity.

“They are, and have been, a strange family as far back as I can remember; and my mother used to say the same.  I am glad she comes to our church now.  You mustn’t let her set her cap at you, though, Mr Walton.  It wouldn’t do at all.  She’s pretty enough, too!”