“Tied up between the Drydale Estate and —— College, and in the hands of the quarry master, Nicolson. There was an application made to the College, but they did not begin at the right end.”
“Upon my word, Dick, you take it easy!” cried his friend, rather indignantly.
“I own I have not stirred in the matter,” said Dr. May. “I knew nothing would come to good under the pack of silly women that our schools are ridden with—” and, as he heard a sound a little like “pish!” he continued, “and that old Ramsden, it is absolutely useless to work with such a head—or no head. There’s nothing for it but to wait for better times, instead of setting up independent, insubordinate action.”
“You are the man to leave venerable abuses undisturbed!”
“The cure is worse than the disease!”
“There spoke the Corporation!”
“Ah! it was not the way you set to work in Poonshedagore.”
“Why, really, when the venerable abuses consisted of Hindoos praying to their own three-legged stools, and keeping sacred monkeys in honour of the ape Hanyuman, it was a question whether one could be a Christian oneself, and suffer it undisturbed. It was coming it too strong, when I was requested to lend my own step-ladder for the convenience of an exhibition of a devotee swinging on hooks in his sides.”
Dr. Spencer had, in fact, never rested till he had established a mission in his former remote station; and his brown godson, once a Brahmin, now an exemplary clergyman, traced his conversion to the friendship and example of the English physician.
“Well, I have lashed about me at abuses, in my time,” said Dr. May.