' me
the trouble o' gettin' things down an' hevin' crumpets made, an' after
all they don't come. I shall hev to wash every one o' these tea-things
myself, for there's no trustin' Sally--she'd break a fortin i' crockery
i' no time!'

'But why will you give yourself sich trouble, Susan? Our everyday
tea-things would ha' done as well for Mr. Tryan, an' they're a deal
convenenter to hold.'

'Yes, that's just your way, Mr. Jerome, you're al'ys a-findin' faut wi'
my chany, because I bought it myself afore I was married. But let me tell
you, I knowed how to choose chany if I didn't know how to choose a
husband. An' where's Lizzie? You've niver left her i' the garden by
herself, with her white frock on an' clean stockins?'

'Be easy, my dear Susan, be easy; Lizzie's come in wi' Sally. She's
hevin' her pinafore took off, I'll be bound. Ah! there's Mr. Tryan
a-comin' through the gate.'

Mrs. Jerome began hastily to adjust her damask napkin and the expression
of her countenance for the reception of the clergyman, and Mr. Jerome
went out to meet his guest, whom he greeted outside the door.

'Mr. Tryan, how do you do, Mr. Tryan? Welcome to the White House! I'm
glad to see you, sir--I'm glad to see you.'

If you had heard the tone of mingled good-will, veneration, and
condolence in which this greeting was uttered, even without seeing the
face that completely harmonized with it, you would have no difficulty in
inferring the ground-notes of Mr. Jerome's character. To a fine ear that
tone said as plainly as possible--'Whatever recommends itself to me,
Thomas Jerome, as piety and goodness, shall have my love and honour. Ah,
friends, this pleasant world is a sad one, too, isn't it? Let us help one
another, let us help one another.' And it was entirely owing to this
basis of character, not at all from any clear and precise doctrinal
discrimination, that Mr. Jerome had very early in life become a
Dissenter. In his boyish days he had been thrown where Dissent seemed to
have the balance of piety, purity, and good works on its side, and to
become a Dissenter seemed to him identical with choosing God instead of
mammon. That race of Dissenters is extinct in these days, when opinion
has got far ahead of feeling, and every chapel-going youth can fill our
ears with the advantages of the Voluntary system, the corruptions of a
State Church, and the Scriptural evidence that the first Christians were
Congregationalists. Mr. Jerome knew nothing o