“What are you two quarreling about?” inquired Jennie, who had put her baby to sleep and now entered the parlor.
“As to which is the best preacher, your mother of myself,” answered the curate.
“Oh, mamma! out and out! I have often wished I could hear her in the pulpit!” laughed Jennie.
“That settles it! Hetty, you have gained the point!” said the Rev. James, as he strolled out of the parlor into his study.
His wife’s words had not been without their effect. He was just now surrounded with such bright blessings, living in such an atmosphere of love, peace, health, comfort, and happiness that nothing could be added to their blessedness; yet their very perfection troubled him, lest they should not be permanent. He could not enjoy this blessed time, because next month or next year might bring a change which might be for the worse.
Why, what base thanklessness and faithlessness was this! While he “preached to others” he was himself “a castaway.”
But he resolved that he would reform all this. He would take no anxious care for the future. He would do the best he could and leave the rest to the Lord.
From that day he presented a more cheerful aspect to his family.
The leading parishioners began to call on his daughter.
Partly from hearsay and partly from inference, they had got a mixed opinion about the status of the young woman. She was the wife—so they Lad heard—of one Capt. Kightly Montgomery, son of the late General the Honorable Arthur Montgomery, and grandson of the late and nephew of the present Earl of Engelwing; that the captain was now, of course, with his regiment in India, and that his young wife had come home with her infant on a long visit to her father, because the climate of India was so fatal to young children of European parentage.