preach earnest, _earnest_, mind
you, he'll require some notes or heads jotted down, clear and easy to
be got at, before him." This was the opinion of another elderly man,
but of a fat and comfortable if blustering variety, who had come out
from the English provinces thirty years before as cook with a regiment,
and was now the Hawthorne butcher and general store-keeper, also
accounted a rich man.

"But that's not the point," he went on with husky and stertorous
fervour. "The point is not whether what he said was well said or ill
said; the point is, he should never have spoke them words at all.
Point? To almost point the finger at us sitting around this hospitable
board declaring we were all sinners! So we are, all of us. The Litany
says so, don't it? Don't it say, 'miserable sinners'?"

"It does, it does," murmured a sympathetic female engaged in feeding
two out of eleven kinds of cake to a child on her lap.

"And the rector leaves it there, where it ought to be left. In my
opinion, ma'am, it don't do no good to pray nor preach too direct.
It's casting a stone, that's what it is, it's casting a stone."

"Perhaps he was nervous, poor young man, at seeing so many people,"
said the young mother of the child who was crumbling the cake all over
its mouth and fingers and dress without swallowing any, having
previously been regaled with maple sugar and molasses candy outside,
and consequently not feeling very hungry. "Perhaps he has heard about
Angeel."

The latter was the common pronunciation of Angele, the name of the
little girl in the basket-chair who was engaged like the rest in eating
and drinking in company with her nurse not far from Mr. Abercorn.

At the word "Angeel" several warning coughs around her, winks, nudges
and a kick under the table, made the young woman so flurried that she
slapped the child for not eating properly, and the child immediately
beginning to cry, a diversion was created, but not before Ringfield had
overheard a few remarks touching his recent prayer, not exactly
flattering to his self-esteem. Soon the conversation lapsed as the
piles of cake, custard and pumpkin pies and jugs of tea were depleted;
and Mr. Abercorn, upon whom the quiet and gathering gloom had a
depressing effect, jumped up and asked for volunteers to assist in
lighting the lamps.

"We usually get through without artificial aid to our eyes and our
mouths, but that is when the picnic tea is held in October. We are