"Ernest, that is about the bad, after all!" cried Charles.
"Well, it's silly," remarked Freddy severely.
"But I wrote it myself," pleaded the preacher from the pulpit; and, in consideration of the fact, he was allowed to go on.
"I was reading about them being always uncomfortable. At last they decided to go back to their own house, which they had sold. They had to pay so much to get it back, that they had hardly any money left; and then they got so unhappy, and the husband whipped his wife, and took to drinking. That's a lesson." (Here the preacher's voice became very plaintive), "that's a lesson to show you shouldn't try to get the better thing, for it turns out worse, and then you get sadder, and every thing."
He paused, evidently too mournful to proceed. Freddy again remarked that it was silly; but Charles interposed a word for the preacher.
"It's a good lesson, I think. A good lesson, I say," he repeated, as if he would not be supposed to consider it much of a sermon.
But here the preacher recovered himself and summed up.
"See how it comes: wanting to get every thing, you come to the bad and drinking. And I think I'll leave off here. Let us sing."
The song was "Little Robin Redbreast;" during which Charles remarked to Freddy, apparently by way of pressing home the lesson upon his younger brother,—
"Fancy! floggin' his wife!"