"Yes," replied my Grandmother, "as you know, the child here is dedicated to the Lord's work among the heathen." I puffed inwardly.
"What an honour, ah, what an honour! For oneself, one confesses, the home field comes nearest to one's heart; to one's earnest, if humble endeavours. M'yes. There is sad darkness far away, in the heathen continents and pagan isles, one knows, one knows: but here in England among one's nominal Christians, there is, alas, greater darkness still. Ah, these half-believers, these almost-persuaded Christians!—Once one was one oneself. So one knows. One was a Baptist, as you know, dear Sisters; one hardened one's heart against the ministrations of the Saints. Then one blessed day, the scales fell from one's eyes—one saw the error of one's ways—and one joined the one true flock."
I disliked him curiously as he murmured and whispered away in a soft treacly flow punctuated only by sticky lip-moistenings and heavenward sniffs; this miracle-man who never ever used the best beloved pronoun of all the human race.
His utterance was cut short by new arrivals. Grandmother received them in the hall, saw to the hat and coat doffing, and ushered them into the throne-room. I noted the slight variations in my Great-Aunt's manner as she motioned the different guests to chairs and accepted their congratulations and good wishes. With Mr. Pentecost Dodderidge she was regal.
"Thank 'ee, we are old friends, you and I. Yes, thanks be to the Lord. I'm well enough. And you? How are 'ee?"
"I am burdened this morning," he said, with that kingly glance all round him to see that all his subjects were attentive, which we knew to herald some pearl of godly epigram. "Yes, I am burdened this morning."
"Burdened?" echoed Aunt Jael.
"Burdened?" echoed my Grandmother.
"Yes, dear sisters. 'He daily loadeth us with benefits.' Psalm sixty-eight, nineteen."
This was the old patriarch's immemorial trick: to make some statement that was certain to provoke query, and then to explain its apparent paradox by swift quotation from the word of God. A later generation might think his method crude, his texts subtly irrelevant; but there is no question that the Saints, including my Grandmother and Great-Aunt, admired the godly wit and treasured all the texts. So when "the pilgrim patriarch of Tawborough" came up to me in the corner from which I was staring at him, I felt a high sense of pleasure and importance.