He answered her with his quiet smile.
"Not to-day, Dorothy. To me it is a blessed privilege to administer to the wants of a suffering servant of Christ. When you have experienced the happiness it imparts, you will go and do likewise."
On leaving the impotent man, he paid a visit to the three other dwellings, which were all comprised under the one roof.
To Martha Brown, a widow with six young children, he gave a Bible and a tract. For she had been a mechanic's wife, had seen better days, and could read and write. After speaking words of comfort and cheering, he slipped into her hand money to buy shoes, and a new suit for her eldest boy, whom he had recommended into a gentleman's service, but the lad wanted decent clothing before he could accept the offer. This the good Samaritan generously supplied. "The Lord bless you, sir," said the woman, putting her apron to her eyes. "I hope Jim will never disgrace the good character your reverence has given him."
Rachel Jones, the occupant of the third cottage, a farm labourer's wife, was out. She was regularly paid by Mr. Fitzmorris for attending upon Thomas Francis, whom his benevolence had saved from the workhouse—a fate which the poor old man greatly dreaded.
The last cabin they entered was more dirty and dilapidated than the three other dwellings; its tenant, a poor shoemaker, who patched and re-soled the coarse high-lows used by the farm servants. He was a middle-aged man, with a large, half-grown-up family of squalid, bare-footed, rude girls and boys. His wife had been dead for several years, and his mother, an aged crone, bent double with the rheumatism, though unable to leave her chair, ruled the whole family with her venomous tongue. "She is a very uninteresting person," said Mr. Fitzmorris, in a whisper to Dorothy, as he rapped at the door, "but the poor creature has a soul to be saved, and the greater her need, the more imperative the duty to attempt her conversion."
Before the least movement was made to admit the visitors, a shrill, harsh voice screamed out,
"Ben! Who be that at the door?"
"New parson, and Farmer Rushmere's gal."
"And why don't you open the door?"