"Because she called me Master, and said it was very proper."
"But doesn't that show an interest in you?"
"I don't know what interest is."
"It's love."
"Mamma never called me Master," said Reuben.
The grave minister bites his lip, beckons his boy to him,—"Here, my son!"—passes his arm around him, had almost drawn him to his heart,—
"There, there, Reuben; leave me now; I have my sermon to finish. I hope you won't be disrespectful to your aunt again. Shut the door."
And the minister goes back to his work, ironly honest, mastering his sensibilities, tearing great gaps in his heart, even as the anchorites once fretted their bodies with hair-cloth and scourgings.
In the summer of 1828 Mr. Johns was called upon to preach a special discourse at the Commencement exercises of the college from which he had received his degree; and so sterlingly orthodox was his sermon, at a crisis when some sister colleges were bolstering up certain new theological tenets which had a strong taint of heresy, that the old gentlemen who held rank as fellows of his college, in a burst of zeal, bestowed upon the worthy man the title of D. D. It was not an honor he had coveted; indeed, he coveted no human honors; yet this was more wisely given than most: his dignity, his sobriety, his rigid, complete adherence to all the accepted forms of religious belief made him a safe recipient of the title.
The spinster sister, with an ill-concealed pride, was most zealous in the bestowal of it; and before a month had passed, she had forced it into current use throughout the world of Ashfield.