e virtue in Mr. Drake, which only
his friends were able to see, and only the wisest of them to set over
against his display--this, namely, that he never attempted to gain
credit for what he knew he had not. As he was not above show, I can not
say he was safely above false show, for he who is capable of the one is
still in danger of the other; but he was altogether above deception:
that he scorned. If, in his time of plenty he liked men to be aware of
his worldly facilities, he now, in the time of his poverty, preferred
that men should be aware of the bonds in which he lived. His nature was
simple, and loved to let in the daylight. Concealment was altogether
alien to him. From morning to night anxious, he could not bear to be
supposed of easy heart. Some men think poverty such a shame that they
would rather be judged absolutely mean than confess it. Mr. Drake's
openness may have sprung from too great a desire for sympathy; or from
a diseased honesty--I can not tell; I will freely allow that if his
faith had been as a grain of mustard seed, he would not have been so
haunted with a sense of his poverty, as to be morbidly anxious to
confess it. He would have known that his affairs were in high charge:
and that, in the full flow of the fountain of prosperity, as well as in
the scanty, gravelly driblets from the hard-wrought pump of poverty, the
supply came all the same from under the throne of God, and he would not
have _felt_ poor. A man ought never to feel rich for riches, nor poor
for poverty. The perfect man must always feel rich, because God is rich.

"The fact is," Mr. Drake went on, "we are very poor--absolutely poor,
Mr. Wingfold--so poor that I may not even refuse the trifling annuity my
late congregation will dole out to me."

"I am sorry to know it," said the curate.

"But I must take heed of injustice," the pastor resumed; "I do not think
they would have treated me so had they not imagined me possessed of
private means. The pity now is that the necessity which would make me
glad to fall in with your kind proposal itself renders the thing
impracticable. Even with what your friend would contribute to the
housekeeping we could not provide a table fit for her. But Dorothy ought
to have the pleasure of hearing your kind proposition: if you will allow
me I will call her."

Dorothy was in the kitchen, making pastry--for the rare treat of a
chicken pudding: they had had a present of a couple of chickens from
Mrs. Tho