"Thank you my dear, ... that's all right, and I'll never plague you about it, after I once get the appointment; only do what I bid you to-night, and we'll snap our fingers at them afterwards."
The party assembled at Mr. Newbirth's consisted of himself and his lady, and four gentlemen belonging to "the congregation" which was to be propitiated. After the tea and coffee had disappeared, Mr. Newbirth, who was the only gentleman in the company (except her own O'Donagough) with whom Mrs. Barnaby was personally acquainted, opened the conversation, by asking if the change of residence which she contemplated, from one side of the world to the other, was an agreeable prospect to her.
"Very much so indeed!" was the reply.
"I suppose you are aware, ma'am," observed Mr. Littleton, who was senior clerk in a banking house, and the principal lay orator of the congregation—"I suppose you are aware that you are going among a set of people who, though decidedly the most interesting portion of the human race in the eyes of all true Christians, are nevertheless persons accustomed heretofore to habits of irregular, not to say licentious living.... How do you think, ma'am, that you shall like to fall into habits of friendship and intimacy with such?"
Mr. O'Donagough listened with a good deal of anxiety for the answer: but it was a point on which he had given his affianced bride very ample instructions, and she did not disgrace her teacher.
"My notions upon that point, sir," she replied, "are rather particular, I believe; for so far from thinking the worse of my fellow creatures because they have done wrong, I always think that is the very reason why I should seek their company, and exert myself in all ways to do them good, and to make them take their place among the first and greatest in the kingdom of heaven."
A murmur of applause ran round the little circle as Mrs. Barnaby concluded her speech, and Mr. Littleton, in particular, expressed his approbation of her sentiments in a manner that inspired the happy O'Donagough with the most sanguine hopes of success.
"I never heard better sense, or sounder principles, or more christian feelings, in the whole course of my life, than what this lady has now expressed; and I will take upon me to say, gentlemen, without making any new difficulty about the matter, that any minister going out to Sydney in the holy and reverend character of a missionary, sent by an independent congregation of devotional men, with such a wife in his hand as this good lady will be sure to make, will do more good in his generation, than all the bishops and archbishops that ever were consecrated after the manner of the worn-out superstitions of by-gone ages. Gentlemen!..." he continued, rising from his chair, "I do, therefore, forthwith propose the immediate election of the reverend Patrick O'Donagough to the office of missionary from the independent congregation of Anti-work Christians of London, to the independent congregation of Anti-work Christians at Sydney, with the privilege and undivided monopoly of tract and hymn selling to the said congregation, together with a patent right (not royal patent, my brethren, but holy patent,) to all fees, donations, contributions, and payments of whatsoever kind, made by the said independent congregation of Anti-work Christians at Sydney, for and on account of the salvation of their souls.... This, gentlemen, is the resolution I would propose, and I trust that some among you will readily be found to second it."
"That, sir, will I, and most joyfully," said Mr. Dellant, rising; "for I neither do nor can feel the shadow of a doubt, that our beneficent objects in despatching this mission will be more forwarded by this appointment than by any other, it is probable—gentlemen, I might say POSSIBLE—we could make—for where, I would ask, shall we find another Mrs Barnaby? May we not say, in the language of scripture, that she is a help meet for him, even for the Reverend Patrick O'Donagough, whom we have chosen."
Mr. Newbirth followed on the same side, giving many unanswerable reasons for believing that nothing which the stiff-necked, unconverted, obsolete ministers of the Church of England could do for the predestined army of saints at present located at Sidney, could approach in utility and saving efficacy of absolving grace, to what might be hoped from the ministry of Mr. O'Donagough, assisted by the lady he was so happy as to have engaged to be his wife.