cked. "How ever you _can_! Now if on'y your father was to
take you to Chapel, instead of such a bad example, see what good it
would do you both."

The ounce of influence that Aunt Elizabeth Jane alone possessed told on
Michael's stubborn spirit, and he did not contest the point. "Give us
the 'Oly Bible!" said he briefly. "Where's where you was?"

"That's a good boy! Now you just set down and read on where I was. 'To,
the, chief, musician,' and the next word's a hard word and you'll have
to spell it." For, you see, Aunt Elizabeth Jane's method was to go
steadily on with a text, and not distinguish titles and stage
directions.

So her nephew, being docile, tackled the fifty-second Psalm, and did not
flinch from _m_, _a_, _s_, mass--_c_, _h_, _i_, _l_, chill; total,
Mass-Chill--nor from _d_, _o_, do; _e_, _g_, hegg; total, Do-Hegg. But
when he came to Ahimelech, he gave him up, and had to be told. However,
he laboured on through several verses, and the old charwoman listened in
what might be called a Sunday-rapture, conscious of religion, but not
attaching any definite meaning to the words. As for Micky, he only
perceived that David and Saul, Doeg the Edomite, and Ahimelech the
Priest, were religious, and therefore bores. He had a general idea that
the Psalmist could not keep his hair on. He might have enjoyed the
picturesque savagery of the story if Aunt Elizabeth Jane had known it
well enough to tell him. But when you read for flavour, and ignore
import, the plot has to go to the wall.

Aunt Elizabeth Jane kept her nephew to his unwelcome devotional
enterprise until the second "Selah"--a word which always seemed to
exasperate him--provoked his restiveness beyond his powers of restraint.
"I say, Aunt Betsy," said he, "shan't I see about gettin' in the beer?"
This touched a delicate point, for his visit being unexpected, rations
were likely to be short.

Some reproof was necessary. "There now, ain't you a tiresome boy,
speaking in the middle!" But this was followed by: "Well, my dear, I
can't take anything myself, the cold's that heavy on me. But that's no
reason against a glass for you, after your walk. On'y I tell you, you'll
have to make your dinner off potatoes and a herring, that you will, by
reason there's nothing else for you. And all the early shops are shut an
hour ago."

Then Michael showed how great his foresight and resource had been.
"Bought a mutting line-chop coming along, off of our butcher. Fivepenc