"Thank ye!" said the parson, raising his brows superciliously, putting the hook-end of his hunting-whip to his mouth, and striding about the floor in his spurred boots; "sit you down, I beg, Dame Pyecroft! sit you down—I'll not sit, thank ye!"
"I fear, sir, there is a great deal of suffering at present," said Dorothy, sitting down, and fixing her mild blue eyes upon the thoughtless young coxcomb, and feeling too earnestly in love with goodness to lose any opportunity of recommending its glorious lessons.
"Oh!—suffering!—ay!" observed the young clergyman, in a tone that showed he did not know what it was to think seriously: "you know there always was a difference between the rich and the poor."
"But do you not think, sir, that the rich might lessen the difference between themselves and the poor, without injuring themselves?" asked Dorothy, in a tone of mild but firm expostulation.
"Why, as to that, I can't say exactly," replied the parson, apparently brought to a halt in his thoughtlessness, and unable to extricate himself from the difficulty in which his ignorance placed him; "I can't say exactly; but, you know, Dame Pyecroft, some people have nothing to give away, though they may be better off than many of the poor: with such people, you know, Dame Pyecroft, the old proverb holds good, that 'Charity begins at home.'"
"I am grieved to hear you quote that proverb, sir," said Dorothy; "I had just been exerting my poor wits to show that that saying was not a right one, in the hearing of poor Jonah the pedlar, before your reverence came in."
"Not a right saying, Dame Pyecroft? Why, you know it is a very old-established saying; and I think it a very shrewd one," rejoined the clergyman.
"But it is not so old as the New Testament, sir," replied Dorothy, with a winning smile; "and as shrewd as it is, do you think, sir, it was ever acted upon by your Great Master?"
The young clergyman took his hook-whip from his mouth, laid it on the table, took out his pocket-handkerchief, and, blushing up to the eyes, sat down before he attempted an answer to the good old dame's meek but powerful question.
"You will remember, Dame Dorothy," he said, at length, "that the Saviour was in very different circumstances to all other human beings that ever lived."