“Martha's.
“Oh, Lord-a-massy! Oh, Gough bless me sowl! Oh, my beloved grandfather! John Storm has done for himself at last! That man was never an author of peace and a lover of concord; but, my gracious, if you had heard his sermon in church on Sunday morning! Being a holy and humble woman of heart myself, I altered the Litany the smallest taste possible, and muttered away from beginning to end, 'O Lord, close thou our lips'; but the Lord didn't heed me in the least, with the result that everybody on earth is now screaming and snarling at our poor Mr. Storm exactly as if he had been picking the pockets of the universe.
“It was all about the morality of men. The text was as innocent as a baby: 'Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof.' And when he began in the usual way, the dear old goodies in glasses thought he had been wound up like the musical box and had just turned on the crank, so they cuddled in comfortably for forty winks before the anthem. There were two natures in man, and man's body might be good or bad according as spiritual or carnal affections swayed it, and all the rest of the good old change-for-sixpence-and-a-ha'penny-out, you know. But the lesson had been from Isaiah, where the unreasonable old prophet is indignant with the ladies of Zion because they don't want to look like dowdies, you remember: 'Tremble, ye women that are at ease, strip you and make you bare and gird sackcloth upon your loins.' And off he went like a comet, with the fashionable woman for his tail. If matrimony nowadays didn't always mean monogamy, who was chiefly to blame? Men were generally as pure as women required that they should be; and if the lives of men were bad it was often because women did not demand that they should be good. Tremble, ye women, that are at ease, and say why you allow your daughters to marry men who in fact and effect are married already. Strip you, and be ashamed for the poor women who were the first wives of your daughters' husbands, and for the children whom such men abandon and forget! In leading your innocent daughters to courts and receptions you are only leading them to the auction-room; and in dressing and decorating them you are preparing them for the market of base men. Last week some titled philanthropist had hauled up a woman in the East End of London for attempting to sell her daughter. How shocking! everybody said. What a disgrace to the nineteenth century! But the wretched creature had only been doing the best according to her light for the welfare of her miserable child; while here—with their eyes open, with their cultured consciences—the wives of these same philanthropists were doing the same thing every day—the very same!
“Having gone for the mammies like this, he went for the dear girls themselves one better. Let them gird sackcloth on their loins and hide their faces. Why did they suffer themselves to be sold? The woman who married a man for the sake of his title or his position or any worldly advantage whatever was no better than an outcast of the streets. Her act was the same, and in all reason and justice her name should be the same also.
“Hey, nonny, nonny! I told you how he broke down before; but on Sunday morning, in spite of mine own amended Litany, I had just as much hope of the breakdown of the Falls of Niagara, or a nineteen-feet spring tide. You would have said his face was afire, and those great eyes of his were lit up like the red lamps on Peel pier.
“Pulpit oratory! I don't know what it is, only I never heard the like of it in all my born days. I begin to think the real difference between preachers is the difference of the fire beneath the crust. In some it burns so low that it doesn't even warm the surface, and you couldn't get up enough puff to boil the kitchen kettle; but in others—look out! It's a volcano, and the lava is coming down with a rush.
“Mercy me, how I cried! 'Oh, my daughter, oh, my child, what a ninny you are!' I told myself; but it was no use talking. His voice was as hoarse as a raven's, and sometimes you would have thought his very heart was breaking.
“But the congregation! You should have seen the transformation scene! They had come in bowing and smiling and whispering softly until the church was a perfect sheet of sunshine, an absolute aurora borealis; but they went out like a northeast gale, with mutterings of thunder and one man overboard.
“And John Storm having put his foot in it, of course Glory Quayle had to get her toe in too. Coming down the aisle some of the dear ladies of Zion, who looked as if they wanted to 'swear in their wrath,' were mumbling all the lamentations of Jeremiah. Who was he, indeed, to talk to people like that? Nobody had ever heard of him except his mother. And in the porch they came upon a fat old dump in a velvet dollman who declared it was perfectly scandalous, and she had come out in the middle. Whereupon Glory, not being delivered that day from all evil and mischief, said, 'Quite right, ma'am, and you were not the only one who had to leave the church in the middle of that sermon.' 'Why, who else had to go?' said this female Pharisee. 'The devil, ma'am!' said Glory, and then left her with that bone to gnaw.
“It turns out that the old girlie in the dollman is a mighty patron of this hospital, so everybody says I am in for nasty weather. But hoot! My heart's in the Hielan's, my heart is not here; my heart's in the Hielan's, sae what can I fear!