He was
aware of another strand completed in their mutual bond:
the sermon had been a moral, an emotional, and an oratorical
success; and in the expansion of the following morning
Dr Drummond had remembered that he had promised his
housekeeper a new gas cooking-range, and that it was high
time he should drop into Murchison's to inquire about
it. Mrs Forsyth had mentioned at breakfast that they had
ranges with exactly the improvement she wanted at
Thompson's, but the minister was deaf to the hint. Thompson
was a Congregationalist and, improvement or no improvement,
it wasn't likely that Dr Drummond was going "outside the
congregation" for anything he required. It would have
been on a par with a wandering tendency in his flock,
upon which he systematically frowned. He was as great an
autocrat in this as the rector of any country parish in
England undermined by Dissent; but his sense of obligation
worked unfailingly both ways.
John Murchison had not said much about the sermon; it
wasn't his way, and Dr Drummond knew it. "You gave us a
good sermon last night, Doctor"; not much more than that,
and "I noticed the Milburns there; we don't often get
Episcopalians"; and again, "The Wilcoxes"--Thomas Wilcox,
wholesale grocer, was the chief prop of St Andrew's--"were
sitting just in front of us.
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