You spoke of 'setting old men by the ears.' Do you mean it seriously--that our Brethren, just now, are not dwelling in concord ?" "God bless your innocent old heart!" murmured Brother Copas under his breath.

Aloud he said, "Men of the Brethren's age, Master, are not always amiable; and the tempers of their womenfolk are sometimes unlovely.

We are, after all, failures in life, and to have lived night and day beside any one of us can be no joke." The Master, with his body half-turned towards the reading-lamp, still held the letter and eyed it at arm's length.
"I observed," he said after a while, "that Brother Bonaday did not sign your Petition.

Yet I had supposed him to be an Evangelical, and everyone knows you two to be close friends." The Master mused again.
"Pardon me, but he has some reason, of course ?" "He has." -- "Which you are not at liberty to tell me ?" "That is so." "Ah, well," said the Master, turning and facing about on Brother Copas with a sudden resolve.

"I wonder if--to leave this matter of the Petition--you can tell me something else concerning your friend; something which, if you can answer it so as to help him, will also lift a sad weight off my mind.