p that's got lost out on
the moor, and he reckons the Shepherd'll bide warm in the fold with the
ninety and nine, and never give a thought to him, poor, starved,
straying thing! Dear, dear!--and as if _I'd_ do such a thing, sinner
that I am!--as if I could eat a crust in peace till I'd been after my
sheep, poor wretch!--and to think the good Lord'd do it!--and the poor
thing a-bleating out there, and wanting to get home! Dear, dear! how we
poor sinners do wrong the good Lord!' I said, `Won't you say a word to
him, daddy?' That was what I had always called him, my dear, since I
was a little child. `Eh, child!' says he, `what canst thou be thinking
on? The like of me to preach to a parson, all regular done up, bands
and cassock and shovel hat and all! But I'll tell thee what--there's
Dr Bates a-coming to bide with me a night this next week, on his way
from the North into Sussex, and I'll ask him to edge in a word. He's a
grand man, Dolly! "Silver-tongued Bates." Thou'lt hear.'

"Well, I knew, for I had heard talk of it at the time, that Dr Bates
was one of them that gave up their livings when the Act of Uniformity
came in, so that he was regarded as no better than a conventicler; and I
wondered how father should like to be spoke to by Dr Bates any more
than by Farmer Ingham, because to him they would both be laymen alike.
But at that time I was learning to tarry the Lord's leisure--ah! that's
a grand word, Phoebe! For His leisure runs side by side with our
profit, and He'll be at leisure to attend to you the minute that you
really need attending to. So I waited quietly to see what would come.
Dr Bates came, and he proved to be no common hedge-preacher, but a
learned man that had been to the University, and had Greek and Hebrew
pat at his tongue's end. I could see that it was pleasant to father to
talk with such a man; and maybe he took to him the rather because he had
the look of one that had known sorrow. When a man is suffering, he will
converse more readily with a fellow-sufferer than with a hale man. So
they talked away of their young days, when they were at school and
college, and father was much pleased, as I could see, to find that Dr
Bates and he were of the same college, though not there at the same
time: and a deal they had to say about this and that man, that both
knew, but of course all strangers to me. I thought I had never seen
Father seem to talk with the like interest and pleasure since my