l, and repeat it so well as
he does. Now would you, Aunt Bethia?"

"Nonsense, Jem, that's enough," said Davie. "He's chaffing, Aunt
Bethia."

"He's entirely welcome," said Miss Bethia, smiling grimly. "Though I
don't see anything funny in the idea of David's being a minister, or you
either, for that matter."

"Funny! No. Anything but funny! A very serious matter that would be,"
said Jem. "We couldn't afford to have so many ministers in the family,
Miss Bethia. I am not going to be a minister. I am going to make a lot
of money and be a rich man, and then I'll buy a house for papa, and send
Davie's boys to college."

They all laughed.

"You may laugh, but you'll see," said Jem. "I am not going to be a
minister. Hard work and poor pay. I have seen too much of that, Miss
Bethia."

He was "chaffing" her. Miss Bethia knew it quite well, and though she
had said he was entirely welcome, it made her angry because she could
not see the joke, and because she thought it was not respectful nor
polite on Jem's part to joke with her, as indeed it was not. And
besides this was a sore subject with Miss Bethia--the poverty of
ministers. She had at one time or another spent a great many of her
valuable words on those who were supposed to be influential in the
guidance of parish affairs, with a design to prove that their affairs
were not managed as they ought to be. There was no reason in the world,
but shiftlessness and sinful indifference, to prevent all being made and
kept straight between the minister and people as regarded salary and
support, she declared, and it was a shame that a man like their minister
should find himself pressed or hampered, in providing the comforts--
sometimes the necessaries of life--for his family.

That was putting it strong, the authorities thought and said, but Miss
Bethia never would allow that it was too strong, and she never tired of
putting it.

"The labourer is worthy of his hire."

"They that serve the temple must live by the temple." And with a house
to keep up and his children to clothe and feed, no wonder that Mr
Inglis might be troubled many a time when he thought of how they were to
be educated, and of what was to become of them in case he should be
taken away.

There was no theme on which Miss Bethia was so eloquent as this, and she
was eloquent on most themes. She never tired of this one, and answered
all excuses and expostulations with a force and sharpness that