Mrs. Sewell, who did not always go to her husband's sermons, was at church that day, and joined him when some ladies who had lingered to thank him for the excellent lesson he had given them at last left him to her.
“Really, David,” she said, “I wondered your congregation could keep their countenances while you were going on. Did you think of that poor boy up at Willoughby Pastures when you were writing that sermon?”
“Yes, my dear,” replied Sewell gravely; “he was in my mind the whole time.”
“Well, you were rather hard upon yourself; and I think I was rather too hard upon you, that time, though I was so vexed with you. But nothing has come of it, and I suppose there are cases where people are so lost to common sense that you can't do anything for them by telling them the truth.”
“But you'd better tell it, all the same,” said Sewell, still in a glow of righteous warmth from his atonement; and now a sudden temptation to play with fire seized him. “You wouldn't have excused me if any trouble had come of it.”
“No, I certainly shouldn't,” said his wife. “But I don't regret it altogether if it's made you see what danger you run from that tendency of yours. What in the world made you think of it?”
“Oh, it came into my mind.” said Sewell.
He did not find time to write to Barker the next day, and on recurring to his letter he saw that there was no danger of his taking another step without his advice, and he began to postpone it; when he had time he was not in the mood; he waited for the time and the mood to come together, and he also waited for the most favourable moment to tell his wife that he had got that letter from Barker and to ask her advice about answering it. If it had been really a serious matter, he would have told her at once; but being the thing it was, he did not know just how to approach it, after his first concealment. He knew that, to begin with, he would have to account for his mistake in attempting to keep it from her, and would have to bear some just upbraiding for this unmanly course, and would then be miserably led to the distasteful contemplation of the folly by which he had brought this trouble upon himself. Sewell smiled to think how much easier it was to make one's peace with one's God than with one's wife; and before he had brought himself to the point of answering Barker's letter, there came a busy season in which he forgot him altogether.