Here Mr Maguire paused, and Miss Mackenzie, finding herself obliged to speak, said that she did not at all doubt it.

“You need not doubt it, Miss Mackenzie. She is all that, I tell you; and more, too. Her manners may seem a little harsh to you at first. I know it is so sometimes with ladies before they know her well; but it is only skin-deep, Miss Mackenzie,—only skin-deep. She is so much in earnest about her work, that she cannot bring herself to be light and playful as he is. Now, he is as full of play as a young lamb.”

“He seems to be very pleasant.”

“And he is always just the same. There are people, you know, who say that religion is austere and melancholy. They never could say that if they knew my friend Stumfold. His life is devoted to his clerical duties. I know no man who works harder in the vineyard than Stumfold. But he always works with a smile on his face. And why not, Miss Mackenzie? when you think of it, why not?”

“I dare say it’s best not to be unhappy,” said Miss Mackenzie. She did not speak till she perceived that he had paused for her answer.

“Of course we know that this world can make no one happy. What are we that we should dare to be happy here?”

Again he paused, but Miss Mackenzie feeling that she had been ill-treated and trapped into a difficulty at her last reply, resolutely remained silent.

“I defy any man or woman to be happy here,” said Mr Maguire, looking at her with one eye and at the corner of the wall with the other in a manner that was very terrible to her. “But we may be cheerful,—we may go about our work singing psalms of praise instead of songs of sorrow. Don’t you agree with me, Miss Mackenzie, that psalms of praise are better than songs of sorrow?”

“I don’t sing at all, myself,” said Miss Mackenzie.

“You sing in your heart, my friend; I am sure you sing in your heart. Don’t you sing in your heart?” Here again he paused.

“Well; perhaps in my heart, yes.”

“I know you do, loud psalms of praise upon a ten-stringed lute. But Stumfold is always singing aloud, and his lute has twenty strings.” Here the voice of the twenty-stringed singer was heard across the large room asking the company a riddle.

“Why was Peter in prison like a little boy with his shoes off?”

“That’s so like him,” said Mr Maguire.

All the ladies in the room were in a fever of expectation, and Mr Stumfold asked the riddle again.

“He won’t tell them till we meet again; but there isn’t one here who won’t study the life of St Peter during the next week. And what they’ll learn in that way they’ll never forget.”

“But why was he like a little boy with his shoes off?” asked Miss Mackenzie.