r always bought
an article of each of the two sorts together; but I can't make it
straight with my conscience that one customer should pay too much
because I let another pay too little. Besides, I am not at all sure
that the general scale of profit is not set too high. I fear you and I
will have to part, Mr. Turnbull." But nothing was further from
Turnbull's desire than that he and Marston should part; he could not
keep the business going without his money, not to mention that he never
doubted Marston would straightway open another shop, and, even if he
did not undersell him, take from him all his dissenting customers; for
the junior partner was deacon of a small Baptist church in the town--a
fact which, although like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes of
John Turnbull in his villa, was invaluable in the eyes of John Turnbull
behind his counter.

Whether William Marston was right or wrong in his ideas about the rite
of baptism--probably he was both--he was certainly right in his
relation to that which alone makes it of any value--that, namely, which
it signifies; buried with his Master, he had died to selfishness,
greed, and trust in the secondary; died to evil, and risen to good--a
new creature. He was just as much a Christian in his shop as in the
chapel, in his bedroom as at the prayer-meeting.

But the world was not now much temptation to him, and, to tell the
truth, he was getting a good deal tired of the shop. He had to remind
himself, oftener and oftener, that in the mean time it was the work
given him to do, and to take more and more frequently the strengthening
cordial of a glance across the shop at his daughter. Such a glance
passed through the dusky place like summer lightning through a heavy
atmosphere, and came to Mary like a glad prophecy; for it told of a
world within and beyond the world, a region of love and faith, where
struggled no antagonistic desires, no counteracting aims, but unity was
the visible garment of truth.

The question may well suggest itself to my reader--How could such a man
be so unequally yoked with such another as Turnbull?--To this I reply
that Marston's greatness had yet a certain repressive power upon the
man who despised him, so that he never uttered his worst thoughts or
revealed his worst basenesses in his presence. Marston never thought of
him as my reader must soon think--flattered himself, indeed, that poor
John was gradually improving, coming to see things more