“I understand you, sir,” he said. “But I think I knows trades as makes a lot of money, and them they makes it from is the worse for it, not the better. It’s better to stand on a fellow’s own head like a clown as I do than to sell whiskey.”

“You are quite right, there’s not a doubt of it,” answered Mr. Christopher. “But mind you,” he went on, “I don’t for a moment agree with those who tell you your trade is of no use. I was only explaining to you what they meant, for it’s always best to know what people mean, even when they are wrong.”

“Surely, sir, and I thank you kindly. Everybody’s not so fair.”

Here he broke into a quiet laugh, so pleased was he to have the doctor take his part.

“I think,” Mr. Christopher went on, “that to amuse people innocently is often the only good you can do them. When done lovingly and honestly, it is a Christian service.”

This rather shocked Hester—acrobatics a Christian service! With the grand ideas of service beginning to dawn within her, there still mingled some foolish notions. She still felt as if going to church and, while there, trying to fix her thoughts on the prayers and the sermons and the hymns was serving God. She felt that she ought to say something, but had no idea what. She was one of the few who know when they have nothing to say.

“Suppose,” he went on, “somebody walking along Oxford Street was brooding over an injury that had been done to him by another, and thinking of how he might get his revenge. He passes many persons and things and takes no notice of anything. But then he comes upon a small crowd watching a man perform some tricks—we won’t say as good as yours, Mr. Franks—he stops and stares and forgets for a moment or two that there is one brother-man he hates and would kill if he could.”

Here Hester found words to respond. “But he would only go away as soon as he had had enough of it, and hate him all the same.”

“I know very well,” answered Christopher, turning now to her, “that it would not make a good man of him. Yet it must count for something to have the evil mood in a man stopped even for a moment, just as it is something to a life to stop a fever. It gives the godlike spark in the man, feeble, perhaps nearly exhausted, a fresh opportunity of revival. For the moment at least, the man is open to influences from a source other than his hate. If the devil may catch a man unawares when he is in a bad or unthinking mood, why should not the good Power take his opportunity when the evil spirit is asleep through the harping David or the feats of a Franks?”