Mr. Bunce said he found his parochial duty too heavy and too engrossing to admit of desultory meeting-going.
"But the heathen! Mr. Bunce, if you take no interest in the octopus."
"We have heathens in Montreal, Miss Herkimer, as ignorant of good as any South Sea Islander. They want to be taught, and some even to be fed, for work is scarce this year, and winter coming on."
"Ah, yes!" answered Miss Judith, "it is sad to think of, and," she added--with a twinge of conscience for what she was about, to say, for she was of St. Silas, and set no great store by the church activities of St. Wittikind, but then good manners and Christian charity require one to stretch a point verbally sometimes--"You are doing much good in St. Wittikind's, I understand. We in St. Silas are doing what we can too. We distribute fifty thousand gospel leaflets every month, and with--well, they must have the best results. So many benighted Romanists have no other opportunity to get a glimpse of the truth; and you know, Mr. Bunce, the truth must prevail."
"No doubt. Miss Herkimer, it will, someday. In St. Wittikind's parish, however, we find so many in physical want, and so many with no religion at all, that our hands are full, and we do not attempt controversy."
Miss Judith sighed softly, so as not to be observed. These were not the views in vogue at St. Silas, and of course they were wrong; but with her "yearning" towards this curate, who seemed meet for better things, if he could be won, it seemed her duty to be winning. So she suppressed her inclination to say something "sound," merely observing that all souls were alike precious, and then added that she had heard much of the zealous beneficence exercised at St. Wittikind's, and "would he explain about those sisterhoods, of which people talked so much."
This, to use an Americanism, "fetched" the curate--fetched him round, as it were, to his own shopdoor, the pulpit, into which he at once stepped, and held forth fluently and minutely, and at very great length, while Judith listened with interest. Not so Susan, who found the prelection both tedious and unnecessary. She paid what she thought she could afford to the different charities recommended by her church, whose business she considered it to see that its member's money was well applied; and having paid, she took a receipt in full from her conscience, and did not wish to hear any more about giving till that day twelvemonths, when, if convenient, she would renew the contribution. Every one, she said, had her own preference in fancy-work and amusements; hers was Berlin wool--as indeed her drawing-room showed, where every chair and ottoman was bedecked with representations of impossible herbage in the crudest of colour and design. Judith's fad was handing tracts to ragged French and Irish men, an equally harmless exercise, though with less result to show, seeing the recipients hardly waited till her back was turned before lighting their pipes with them.
Susan's eyes strayed from one passer-by to the next, in search of something to interest her more than the clerical monologue proceeding at her side, and by-and-by she espied a gentleman being driven in the direction from which she had come. An idea struck her; she hailed the cab, which stopped before her, and the gentleman within looked out inquiringly.
"Oh! Mr. Jordan," she said, "forgive my stopping you; but this was the day that wretched woman who stole our little niece was to be tried, and I know you have charge of Mr. Selby's interests in the matter. Is the case decided? What have they done with her? Has she confessed?"
"She has been acquitted, ma'am. I am just now on my way to Mrs. Selby's, who will no doubt be impatient to hear the result; though, for myself, I have suspected for some time there was a mistake in arresting her."