William," said Mrs. Christie with sudden energy. "I can't abide Mr.
Wiley. Oh, he's an arrogant man! It's but seldom he calls this way, and
I don't care if it was seldomer; for could he have spoken plainer if it
had been to a dog? 'You'd be worse if you ailed aught, Mrs. Christie,'
says he, and grins. I'd been giving him an account of the poor health I
enjoy. And my William heard him with his own ears when he all but named
Mr. Carnegie in the pulpit, and not to his credit; so he's in the right
of it to keep away. A kinder doctor there is not far nor near, for all
he has such an unaccountable prejudice against what he lives by."

"But that is not Christian. We ought not to absent ourselves from the
holy ordinances because the clergyman happens to offend us. We ought to
bear patiently being told of our faults," urged Miss Wort, who on no
account would have allowed one of the common people to impugn the
spiritual authorities unrebuked: her own private judgment on doctrine
was another matter.

"'Between him and thee,' yes," said Mrs. Christie, who on some points
was as sensitive and acute as a well-born woman. "But it is taking a
mean advantage of a man to talk at him when he can't answer; that's what
my William says. For if he spoke up for himself, they'd call it brawling
in church, and turn him out. He ain't liked, Miss Wort; you can't say he
is, to tell truth. Not many of the gentlemen does attend church, except
them as goes for the look o' the thing, like the old admiral and a few
more."

Miss Wort groaned audibly, then cheered up, and with a gush of feeling
assured her humble friend that it would not be so in a better world;
_there_ all would be love and perfect harmony. And so she went on her
farther way. Mr. Carnegie and Bessie Fairfax, riding slowly, were still