"There wasn't much difference, so far as I could see, between them and
most of us," answered the little old lady. "You're not married, dear,"
she continued, glancing at Joan's ungloved hand, "but people must have a
deal of patience when they have to live with us for twenty-four hours a
day. You see, little things we do and say without thinking, and little
ways we have that we do not notice ourselves, may all the time be
irritating to other people."

"What about the other people irritating us?" suggested Joan.

"Yes, dear, and of course that can happen too," agreed the little old
lady.

"Did he, Carlyle, ever come to this church?" asked Joan.

Mary Stopperton was afraid he never had, in spite of its being so near.
"And yet he was a dear good Christian--in his way," Mary Stopperton felt
sure.

"How do you mean 'in his way'?" demanded Joan. It certainly, if Froude
was to be trusted, could not have been the orthodox way.

"Well, you see, dear," explained the little old lady, "he gave up things.
He could have ridden in his carriage"--she was quoting, it seemed, the
words of the Carlyles' old servant--"if he'd written the sort of lies
that people pay for being told, instead of throwing the truth at their
head."

"But even that would not make him a Christian," argued Joan.