ce and everything about it--the vespers--the bells--somehow there is
a respectability in it."

Mr. Furze was silent. At last he said, "It is a very serious matter. I
must consider it in all its bearings."

It _was_ a serious matter, and he did consider it--but not in all its
bearings, for he did nothing but think about it, so that it enveloped
him, and he could not put himself at such a distance that he could see
its real shape. He was now well over fifty and was the kind of person
with whom habits become firmly fixed. He was fixed even in his dress. He
always wore a white neckcloth, and his shirt was frilled--fashions which
were already beginning to die out in Eastthorpe. His manner of life was
most regular: breakfast at eight, dinner at one, tea at five, supper at
nine with a pipe afterwards, was his unvarying round. He never left
Eastthorpe for a holiday, and read no books of any kind. He was a most
respectable member of a Dissenting congregation, but he was not a member
of the church, and was never seen at the week-night services or the
prayer-meetings. He went through the ceremony of family worship morning
and evening, but he did not pray extempore, as did the elect, and
contented himself with reading prayers from a book called "Family
Devotions." The days were over for Eastthorpe when a man like Mr. Furze
could be denounced, a man who paid his pew-rent regularly, and
contributed to the missionary societies. The days were over when any
expostulations could be addressed to him, or any attempts made to bring
him within the fold, and Mr. Jennings therefore called on him, and
religion was not mentioned. It may seem extraordinary that, without
convictions based on any reasoning process, Mr. Furze's outward existence
should have been so correct and so moral. He had passed through the
usually stormy period of youth without censure. It is true he was
married young, but before his marriage nobody had ever heard a syllable
against him, and, after marriage, he never drank a drop too much, and
never was guilty of a single dishonest action. Day after day passed by
like all preceding days, in unbroken, level succession, without even the
excitement of meeting-house emotion. Naturally, therefore, his wife's
proposals made him uneasy, and even alarmed him. He shrank from them
unconsciously, and yet his aversion was perfectly wise; more so, perhaps,
than any action for which he could have assigned a definite motive.