well, dearie!" And so slid off to safer topics, and left on the mind of

the child an obscure but ineradicable sense of something wrong.

Mrs. Weir's philosophy of life was summed in one expression -

tenderness. In her view of the universe, which was all lighted up with

a glow out of the doors of hell, good people must walk there in a kind

of ecstasy of tenderness. The beasts and plants had no souls; they were

here but for a day, and let their day pass gently! And as for the

immortal men, on what black, downward path were many of them wending,

and to what a horror of an immortality! "Are not two sparrows,"

"Whosoever shall smite thee," "God sendeth His rain," "Judge not, that

ye be not judged" - these texts made her body of divinity; she put them

on in the morning with her clothes and lay down to sleep with them at

night; they haunted her like a favourite air, they clung about her like

a favourite perfume. Their minister was a marrowy expounder of the law,

and my lord sat under him with relish; but Mrs. Weir respected him from

far off; heard him (like the cannon of a beleaguered city) usefully

booming outside on the dogmatic ramparts; and meanwhile, within and out

of shot, dwelt in her private garden which she watered with grateful

tears. It seems strange to say of this colourless and ineffectual

woman, but she was a true enthusiast, and might have made the sunshine

and the glory of a cloister. Perhaps none but Archie knew she could be

eloquent; perhaps none but he had seen her - her colour raised, her

hands clasped or quivering - glow with gentle ardour. There is a corner

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