There had always been a certain negative virtue in Mr. Drake, which only his friends were able to see, and only the wisest of them to set over against his display—­this, namely, that he never attempted to gain credit for what he knew he had not.  As he was not above show, I can not say he was safely above false show, for he who is capable of the one is still in danger of the other; but he was altogether above deception:  that he scorned.  If, in his time of plenty he liked men to be aware of his worldly facilities, he now, in the time of his poverty, preferred that men should be aware of the bonds in which he lived.  His nature was simple, and loved to let in the daylight.  Concealment was altogether alien to him.  From morning to night anxious, he could not bear to be supposed of easy heart.  Some men think poverty such a shame that they would rather be judged absolutely mean than confess it.  Mr. Drake’s openness may have sprung from too great a desire for sympathy; or from a diseased honesty—­I can not tell; I will freely allow that if his faith had been as a grain of mustard seed, he would not have been so haunted with a sense of his poverty, as to be morbidly anxious to confess it.  He would have known that his affairs were in high charge:  and that, in the full flow of the fountain of prosperity, as well as in the scanty, gravelly driblets from the hard-wrought pump of poverty, the supply came all the same from under the throne of God, and he would not have felt poor.  A man ought never to feel rich for riches, nor poor for poverty.  The perfect man must always feel rich, because God is rich.

“The fact is,” Mr. Drake went on, “we are very poor—­absolutely poor, Mr. Wingfold—­so poor that I may not even refuse the trifling annuity my late congregation will dole out to me.”

“I am sorry to know it,” said the curate.

“But I must take heed of injustice,” the pastor resumed; “I do not think they would have treated me so had they not imagined me possessed of private means.  The pity now is that the necessity which would make me glad to fall in with your kind proposal itself renders the thing impracticable.  Even with what your friend would contribute to the housekeeping we could not provide a table fit for her.  But Dorothy ought to have the pleasure of hearing your kind proposition:  if you will allow me I will call her.”

Dorothy was in the kitchen, making pastry—­for the rare treat of a chicken pudding:  they had had a present of a couple of chickens from Mrs. Thomson—­when she heard her father’s voice calling her from the top of the little stair.  When Lisbeth opened the door to the curate she was on her way out, and had not yet returned; so she did not know any one was with him, and hurried up with her arms bare.  She recoiled half a step when she saw Mr. Wingfold, then went frankly forward to welcome him, her hands in her white pinafore.

“It’s only flour,” she said, smiling.