"Come, Meg, there are five minutes for a sermon. I will listen to it respectfully, as if it were the Archbishop of Canterbury preaching."
But Meg was too much absorbed to mind a joke. She followed him into his sitting-room, and began restlessly walking about.
Mr. Standish sat down, and as he stroked his hat with his sleeve he watched the little figure's perambulations. Meg wore her Sunday gown, a rusty black velveteen, foldless and clinging, buttoned from throat to hem. She had outgrown its scanty proportions. Her feet, incased in black felt slippers, looked large under the trim ankles.
"Well, Meg, I am waiting," said Mr. Standish.
"Don't go," said the child, stopping short and facing him abruptly. The quaint austerity of the skimpy garment brought out the lines of the childish figure as she stood erect and animated before him.
"Why not, Meg?"
"Because they're bad; because I hate them; because they'll bring you to misery," said the child, with an upward flash of one little brown well-formed hand, and with a piteous emphasis on the last word.
"Nonsense, Meg!" said Mr. Standish, impatient because more impressed than he cared to be. "You keep comparing my friends with Mrs. Browne—I don't mean any disrespect—an uneducated tippling old woman. My friends, my dear Meg, are gentlemen, educated men, who, I admit, are fond of a joke, fond of a glass or two glasses of grog, but who respect themselves."
"Education has nothing to do with it," snapped Meg, with concise energy. "There was a man downstairs, he was educated. I think he was the devil. He'd leave his wife and little child for days, and come back drunk." Meg gave a fierce little shudder. "There'd be scenes. One day he went and never came back—never, and the wife and baby boy went off one snowy day to the workhouse."
"Poor child, you should not see those things!" said Mr. Standish with a troubled look.