So, restraining herself in an agony of faltering, she told him that unless he could give her and her children greater spiritual nourishment, she had prayerfully decided to leave St. Jude’s. His forbearance when she had said her say brought her nearer to breaking down than ever. No one knew better than she what it meant to Dr. Ranken to lose the Bannerman family in this way, yet he uttered no reproach. He merely said she must do as she felt best, advised her to send Georgie to a boarding-school, and expressed a hope that at least his family and hers would remain on friendly terms. Bob, his fifteen-year-old son, was a constant visitor at Collessie Street; and it would be a pity, the minister said with a wintry gleam of humour crossing his face, that the children should cease to enjoy each other’s society because Mrs. Bannerman could not conscientiously enjoy his sermons!

So yellow-haired Bob Ranken came about the house as much as before, and for a time he struck up quite a friendship with Joanna. But Juley became subject to fits of depression which no wrestlings of the spirit seemed to avert or allay. Indeed the attacks grew denser in quality and longer in duration till her old conviction of sin in marrying became almost abiding. Her children suffered seeing their mother’s increasing difficulties in the routine of life, but as yet they did not guess at the depths of her dejection nor at her heroism. Scrupulously she went on with her duties. But sometimes the God she worshipped appeared less like the Father to her than like the stupendous Tradesman of the universe Who slowly renders His accounts.