"I defy any man or woman to be happy here," said Mr Maguire, looking at her with one eye and at the corner of the wall with the other in a manner that was very terrible to her. "But we may be cheerful,—we may go about our work singing psalms of praise instead of songs of sorrow. Don't you agree with me, Miss Mackenzie, that psalms of praise are better than songs of sorrow?"
"I don't sing at all, myself," said Miss Mackenzie.
"You sing in your heart, my friend; I am sure you sing in your heart. Don't you sing in your heart?" Here again he paused.
"Well; perhaps in my heart, yes."
"I know you do, loud psalms of praise upon a ten-stringed lute. But Stumfold is always singing aloud, and his lute has twenty strings." Here the voice of the twenty-stringed singer was heard across the large room asking the company a riddle.
"Why was Peter in prison like a little boy with his shoes off?"
"That's so like him," said Mr Maguire.
All the ladies in the room were in a fever of expectation, and Mr Stumfold asked the riddle again.
"He won't tell them till we meet again; but there isn't one here who won't study the life of St Peter during the next week. And what they'll learn in that way they'll never forget."
"But why was he like a little boy with his shoes off?" asked Miss Mackenzie.