She learned rapidly. The lesson-book was of course the New Testament; and Stephen soon discovered that Sara’s questions, moving his pity at first because of the ignorance they displayed, always left him thinking about some point that had never occurred to him before; so that at length he regarded Sara as a being of superior intelligence waylaid and obstructed by unfriendly powers upon her path towards the threshold of the kingdom, while she looked up to him as to one supreme in knowledge as in goodness. But she never could understand the pastor. This would have been a great trouble to Stephen, had not his vanity been flattered by her understanding of himself. He did not consider that growing love had enlightened his eyes to see into her heart, and enabled him thus to use an ordinary human language for the embodiment of commonsense ideas; whereas the speech of the pastor contained such an admixture of technicalities as to be unintelligible to the neophyte.
Stephen was now distressed to find that whereas formerly he had received everything without question that his minister spoke, he now in general went home in a doubting, questioning mood, begotten of asking himself what Sara would say. He feared at first that the old Adam was beginning to get the upper hand of him, and that Satan was laying snares for his soul. But when he found at the same time that his conscience was growing more scrupulous concerning his business affairs, his hope sprouted afresh.
One day, after Charley had been out for the first time, Sara, with a little tremor of voice and manner, addressed Stephen thus:—
“I shall take Charley home tomorrow, if you please, Mr. Archer.”
“You don’t mean to say, Sara, you’ve been paying for those lodgings all this time?” half-asked, half-exclaimed Stephen.