had served his cause and his influence
so well as these moments of free discursive intercourse. The mere
orator, the mere talker, indeed, would never have gained any permanent
hold; but the life behind gave weight to every acute or eloquent word,
and importance even to those mere sallies of a boyish enthusiasm which
were still common enough in him.

He had already visited the club once during the week preceding
this Saturday. On both occasions there was much talk of the growing
popularity and efficiency of the Elgood Street work, of the numbers
attending the lectures, the story-telling, the Sunday-school, and of the
way in which the attractions of it had spread into other quarters of the
parish, exciting there, especially among the clergy of St. Wilfrid's,
an anxious and critical attention. The conversation on Saturday night,
however, took a turn of its own. Robert felt in it a new and curious
note of _responsibility_. The men present were evidently beginning to
regard the work as _their_ work also, and its success as their interest.
It was perfectly natural, for not only had most of them been his
supporters and hearers from the beginning, but some of them were now
actually teaching in the night-school or helping in the various branches
of the large and overflowing boys' club. He listened to them for a while
in his favorite attitude, leaning against the mantelpiece, throwing in
a word or two now and then as to how this or that part of the work might
be mended or expanded. Then suddenly a kind of inspiration seemed to
pass from them to him. Bending forward as the talk dropped a moment, he
asked them, with an accent more emphatic than usual, whether in view of
this collaboration of theirs, which was becoming more valuable to
him and his original helpers every week, it was not time for a new
departure.

'Suppose I drop my dictatorship,' he said; 'suppose we set up
parliamentary government, are you ready to take your share? Are you
ready to combine, to commit yourselves? Are you ready for an effort to
turn this work into something lasting and organic?'

The men gathered round him, smoked on in silence for a minute. Old
Macdonald, who had been sitting contentedly puffing away in a corner
peculiarly his own, and dedicated to the glorification--in broad
Berwickshire--of the experimental philosophers, laid down his pipe and
put on his spectacles, that he might grasp the situation better. Then
Lestrange, in a dry cautious way