ed that to the Puritan or dissenting influences which had at
some time got hold of him. To thwart those would at any rate be a good
work, and she prepared herself accordingly.

Pitt opened his book and turned over a few leaves.

'To begin with,' he said, 'you admit that whatever this book commands
we are bound to obey?'

'Provided we understand it,' his opponent put in.

'Provided we understand it, of course. A command not understood is
hardly a command. Now here is a word which has struck me, and I would
like to know how it strikes you.'

He turned to the familiar twenty-fifth of Matthew and read the central
portion, the parable of the talents. He read like an interested man,
and perhaps it was owing to a slight unconscious intonation here and
there that Pitt's two hearers listened as if the words were strangely
new to them. They had never heard them sound just so. Yet the reading
was not dramatic at all; it was only a perfectly natural and feeling
deliverance. But feeling reaches feeling, as we all know. The reading
ceased, nobody spoke for several minutes.

'What does it mean?' asked Pitt.

'My dear,' said his mother, 'can there be a question what it means? The
words are perfectly simple, it seems to me.'

'Mamma, I am not talking to you. You may sit as judge and arbiter; but
it is Miss Frere and I who are disputing. She will have the goodness to
answer.'

'I do not know what to answer,' said the young lady. 'Are not the
words, as Mrs. Dallas says, perfectly plain?'

'Then surely it cannot be difficult to say what the teaching of them
is?'

If it was not difficult, the continued silence of the lady was
remarkable. She made no further answer.

'_Are_ they so plain? I have been puzzling over them. I will divide the
question, and perhaps we can get at the conclusion better so. In the
first place, who are these "servants" spoken of?'

'Everybody, I suppose. You have the advantage of me, Mr. Dallas; I have
_not_ been studying the passage.'

'Yet you admit that we are bound to obey it.'

'Yes,' she said doubtfully. 'Obey what?'

'That is precisely what I want to find out. Now the servants; they
cannot mean everybody, for it says, he "called _his own_ servants;" the
Greek is "bond-servants."'

'His servants would be His Church then.'

'His own people. "He delivered unto them His goods." What are the goods
he delivered to them? Some had more, some had less; all had a share and
a charge. What are these