“But—you’re a Protestant, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes. I have been so instructed. But I do not interest myself in the subject.”
Cheriton had heard many odd things at Oxford said about religion, but never anything to equal the naïveté of this avowal. He was quite unprepared with a reply, and Alvar went on,—
“I shall of course conform. I am not an infidel; but I leave those things to your—clergy, do you not call them?”
“Well, some people would say you were right,” said Cherry, thankful that Jack was not present to assert the inalienable right of private judgment.
“And politics?” said Alvar; “I know about your Tories and your Whigs. On which side do you range yourself?”
“Well, my father’s a Tory and High Churchman, which I suppose is what you mean by belonging to the clerical party; and I—if all places were like this—I’d like things very well as they are. Jack, however, would tell you we were going fast to destruction.”
“There are then dissensions among you?”
“Oh, he’ll come round to something, I dare say. But our English politics must seem mere child’s play to you.”
“I have taken no part,” said Alvar. “My grandfather would conform to anything for peace, and I, you know, my brother, am in Spain an Englishman—though a Spaniard here.”