The Love That Prevailed

The old church ways be good enough for me,” said Miller Pendelly as he placed on the table a capacious jug of cider, laying a friendly left hand on the shoulder of Jake Pullsford, the carrier, as he bent across the side of the settee with the high back.

“I ne'er could see aught that was helpful to the trade of a smith in such biases as the Quakers, to name only one of the new-fangled sects,” said Hal Holmes, the blacksmith, shaking his head seriously. “So I holds with Miller.”

“Ay, that's the way too many of ye esteems a religion—' Will it put another crown in my pocket?' says you. If't puts a crown in your pocket, 'tis a good enough religion; if't puts half-a-crown in your pocket, 'tis less good; if't puts naught in your pocket, that religion is good for naught.”

The speaker was a middle-aged man with a pair of large eyes which seemed to vary curiously in colour, sometimes appearing to be as grey as steel, and again of a curious green that did not suit everybody's taste in eyes. But for that matter, Jake Pullsford, the carrier, found it impossible to meet everybody's taste in several other ways. He had a habit of craning forward his head close to the face of anyone to whom he was speaking, and this movement had something of an accusing air, about it—occasionally a menacing air—which was distinctly distasteful to most people, particularly those who knew that they had good reason to be accused or to be menaced.

“Jake Pullsford goes about the world calling his best friends liars without the intent to hurt their feelings,” was the criticism passed upon him by Miller Pendelly. Other critics were not so sure on the subject of his intent. He had never shown himself to be very careful of the feelings of his friends.

“The religion that puts naught in thy pocket is good for naught—that's what you be thinking of, Hal Holmes,” he said, thrusting his head close to the face of the smith. But the smith did not mind. The man that spends most of his days hammering out and bending iron to his will, usually thinks good-naturedly of one who uses words and phrases as arguments.