“Lecturing other people.”
“A hit, a most palpable hit, Miss St. Clair. I own my fault. But confess I don’t pretend to be a bit better than my neighbours. But about this Stokes, now. He interests me.”
“Of course.”
“Why of course?”
“Well, you see, Stokes would be all right if he would only take things as he finds them. Why can’t he come to church like other people, and be a decent member of society? Instead of that he goes on Saturday night to the public-house and talks—oh! horrid things—blasphemy and high treason, to the labourers. Papa says if his ricks are burned he shall have Stokes arrested as an accessory before the fact.”
“I don’t suppose Mr. St. Clair will entrust me with the brief for the prosecution.”
“Oh, no! If you don’t take care, sir, you’ll have enough to do to defend yourself some fine day. But I’ve done Stokes an injustice. I said he went to the public-house. He used to; but the Publican refused to serve him any more.”
“Got too much to drink, I suppose. I always knew tailors were a guzzling lot. Tailoring runs to drink, as naturally as cobbling to atheism. I don’t know why, but cobblers are all free-thinkers and tailors and lawyers’ clerks born tosspots.”
“Well, you’re out this time, Mr. Beaumont. The landlord—he’s people’s warden, you know, at the church and a most respectable man—turned Stokes out because, whenever he went of a Saturday night, he drank only one mug of small beer in a matter of three hours, and all the time discoursed of nothing but the evils of strong drink. He so frightened our undergardener, who was of the company, that he turned teetotaller, and got my maid to stitch him a piece of blue ribbon in the lapel of his Sunday coat.”
“That was carrying the war into the enemy’s camp with a vengeance. Well, he won’t be able to corrupt the farm labourers any longer of a Saturday night now he’s ejected from the ‘Blue Boar.’”