mmond was going "outside the congregation" for anything he
required. It would have been on a par with a wandering tendency in his
flock, upon which he systematically frowned. He was as great an autocrat
in this as the rector of any country parish in England undermined by
Dissent; but his sense of obligation worked unfailingly both ways.

John Murchison had not said much about the sermon; it wasn't his way,
and Dr Drummond knew it. "You gave us a good sermon last night, Doctor";
not much more than that, and "I noticed the Milburns there; we don't
often get Episcopalians"; and again, "The Wilcoxes"--Thomas Wilcox,
wholesale grocer, was the chief prop of St Andrew's--"were sitting just
in front of us. We overtook them going home, and Wilcox explained how
much they liked the music. 'Glad to see you,' I said. 'Glad to see you
for any reason,'" Mr Murchison's eye twinkled. "But they had a
great deal to say about 'the music.'" It was not an effusive form of
felicitation; the minister would have liked it less if it had been,
felt less justified, perhaps, in remembering about the range on that
particular morning. As it was, he was able to take it with perfect
dignity and good humour, and to enjoy the point against the Wilcoxes
with that laugh of his that did everybody good to hear; so hearty it
was, so rich in the grain of the voice, so full of the zest and flavour
of the joke. The range had been selected, and their talk of changes had
begun with it, Mr Murchison pointing out the new idea in the boiler and
Dr Drummond remembering his first kitchen stove that burned wood and
stood on its four legs, with nothing behind but the stove pipe, and if
you wanted a boiler you took off the front lids and put it on, and how
remarkable even that had seemed to his eyes, fresh from the conservative
kitchen notions of the old country. He had come, unhappily, a widower
to the domestic improvements on the other side of the Atlantic. "Often
I used to think," he said to Mr Murchison, "if my poor wife could have
seen that stove how delighted she would have been! But I doubt this
would have been too much for her altogether!"

"That stove!" answered Mr Murchison. "Well I remember it. I sold it
myself to your predecessor, Mr Wishart, for thirty dollars--the last
purchase he ever made, poor man. It was great business for me--I
had only two others in the store like it. One of them old Milburn
bought--the father of this man, d'ye mind him?--the other sta