One of them noticing Stead asked whether he had come to take service
with the saints and enjoy their dominion, but Jeph answered for him
that his call lay at home among those of his own household, until his
heart should be whole with the cause.
On the whole Stead was proud to see Jeph holding his own, though the
youngest among these determined-looking men. These two years had
made a man of the rough, idle, pleasure-loving boy, and a man after
the Ironsides' fashion, grave, self-contained, and self-depending.
Stead had been more like the elder than the younger brother in old
times, but he felt Jeph immeasurably his elder in the new, unfamiliar
atmosphere; and yet the boy had a strong sense that all was not
right; that these were interlopers in the kind old Dean's house; that
the talk about Baal was mere absurdity; and the profanation of the
Cathedral would have been utterly shocking to his good father. His
mind, however, worked slowly, and he would have had nothing to say
even if he could have ventured to speak; but he was very anxious to
get away; and when Jeph would have kept him to hear the serjeant
expound a chapter of Revelation, he pleaded the necessity of getting
home in time to milk the cows, and made his escape.
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