“You do it by his orders then?”
“Of course I do.”
“I could never have believed that he could have been guilty of such a thing!” exclaimed Mark, more shocked and disgusted by the hypocrisy of Lowe, than by any of the open wickedness that he had ever witnessed. “And you, Radley, how can your conscience let you do what is so wrong?”
“My conscience is my master’s, I only obey what he commands.”
“Your conscience your master’s! Oh no!” exclaimed Mark; “you will have to answer for yourself before God.”
“If I refused to do this I should have to leave the grocer’s service.”
“Better leave his service than the service of God.”
“I say, young man,” replied Radley, still good-humouredly, though with some appearance of scorn, “mind your own business, and leave me to mind mine. When you carry the goods to the customers, no one asks you whether the parcel holds tea or gooseberry leaves.”
“But can you endure to kneel down, and repeat prayers to the Almighty, when you know—”
“I tell you,” said Radley, as though he thought it a joke, “my master’s religion and mine is like the articles in this shop, it is mixed. But what matter? it makes as good a show as any, it serves our purpose, and I really think that the world likes to be taken in. We get on, look respectable, and thrive; what can be better than that?”