Mrs. G. blushed at the implied compliment, while the Doctor went on:
"Now, I never felt the least fear of how Arthur was coming out, and I take great credit to myself for not opposing him. I knew a young man must do a certain amount of fussing and fizzling before he settles down strong and clear; and fighting and opposing a crotchety fellow does no good. I think I have kept hold on Arthur by never rousing his combativeness and being sparing of good advice; and you see he is turning right already. A wife will put an end to all the semi-monkish trumpery that has got itself mixed up with his real self-denying labor. A woman is capital for sweeping down cobwebs in Church or State. Well, I shall call on Arthur and congratulate him forthwith."
Dr. Gracey was Arthur's maternal uncle, and he had always kept an eye upon him from boyhood, as the only son of a favorite sister.
The Doctor, himself rector of a large and thriving church, was a fair representative of that exact mixture of conservatism and progress which characterizes the great, steady middle class of the American Episcopacy. He was tolerant and fatherly both to the Ritualists, who overdo on one side, and the Low Church, who underdo on the other. He believed largely in good nature, good sense, and the expectant treatment, as best for diseases both in the churchly and medical practice.
So, when he had succeeded in converting his favorite nephew to Episcopacy, and found him in danger of using it only as a half-way house to Rome, he took good heed neither to snub him, nor to sneer at him, but to give him sympathy in all the good work he did, and, as far as possible, to shield him from that species of persecution which is sure to endear a man's errors to him, by investing them with a kind of pathos.
"The world isn't in danger from the multitudes rushing into extremes of self-sacrifice," the Doctor said, when his wife feared that Arthur was becoming an ascetic. "Keep him at work; work will bring sense and steadiness. Give him his head, and he'll pull in harness all right by and by. A colt that don't kick out of the traces a little, at first, can't have much blood in him."
It will be seen by the subject-matter of this conversation that the good seed which had been sown in the heart of Miss Gusher had sprung up and borne fruit—thirty, sixty and a hundred fold, as is the wont of the gourds of gossip,—more rapid by half in their growth than the gourd of Jonah, and not half as consolatory.
In fact, the gossip plant is like the grain of mustard seed, which, though it be the least of all seeds, becometh a great tree, and the fowls of the air lodge in its branches and chatter mightily there at all seasons.