"Don't think I don't know my faults. I know 'em well enough. The gospel light shows them up very clear. But jealousy ban't a fault, and I never will allow it is. 'Tis a virtue, and every self-respecting married Christian ought to be jealous. I'm jealous of the whole world that comes near you. I'm jealous of every male eye I catch upon your face—at church or anywhere. 'Tis my nature so to be. A man that marries hands over to his wife the best he's got, and 'tis just as precious to a day labourer as to a crowned king. He does well to be jealous of it. He'd be a mean-minded fashion of creature if he wasn't."
"I don't feel like that," she replied. "You've said yourself that nought can hurt a man from the outside; so how can a wife hurt a man?"
"Good Lord! what a lot you've got to learn, Sarah Jane! To talk of a wife as being outside! Ban't she the innermost of all—a man's own self—next to his God? 'Outside'! I wouldn't like for anybody else to hear you say a man's wife is outside him—and you a wife yourself."
"I'm rested," she said. "Us'll go on. I wish I was so deep-minded as you, but I never shall be. A regular Old Testament man you are."
"'Tisn't deep-mindedness," he answered; "'tis religious-mindedness. The puzzle to me is that you, who be so good as gold and honest as light, ain't more religious-minded. John Prout's the same. I know he's all wrong, yet I can't get up and point out where he's all wrong. 'Tis what he leaves undone that's wrong."
"It takes all sorts to make a world."
"But only one sort to make heaven," he answered very earnestly.
"Lucky we are not called upon to decide what sort."
He laughed rather grimly.
"You an' Prout would let all through, if you had to judge," he said.