"What will you do then? It will be dreadful to have a disturbance in the church of this kind, Philip; it will ruin your prospects here. You will not be able to work under all that friction."
And the minister's wife suddenly broke down and had a good cry; while Philip comforted her, first by saying two or three funny things, and secondly by asserting, with a positive cheerfulness which was peculiar to him when he was hard pressed, that, even if the church withdrew all support, he (Philip) could probably get a job somewhere on a railroad, or in a hotel, where there was always a demand for porters who could walk up several flights of stairs with a good-sized trunk.
"Sometimes I almost think I missed my calling," said Philip, purposely talking about himself in order to make his wife come to the defense. "I ought to have been a locomotive fireman."
"The idea, Philip Strong! A man who has the gift of reaching people with preaching the way you do!"
"The way I reach Mr. Winter, for example!"
"Yes," said his wife, "the way you reach him. Why, the very fact that you made such a man angry is pretty good proof that you reached him. Such men are not touched by any ordinary preaching."
"So you really think I have a little gift at preaching?" asked Philip, slyly.
"A little gift! It is a great deal more than a little, Philip."
"Aren't you a little prejudiced, Sarah?"
"No, sir. I am the severest critic you ever have in the congregation. If you only knew how nervous you sometimes make me!—when you get started on some exciting passage and make a gesture that would throw a stone image into a fit, and then begin to speak of something in a different way, like another person, and the first I know I am caught up and hurled into the subject, and forget all about you."