“But about the savings bank!” burst out Tom; “how can that have anything to do with it?”
“You would put it differently, of course: you would say, ‘Honesty is the best policy.’”
“Possibly I should. At any rate, if one can account intelligibly for a thing it is better to do so, than to try to account for it fallaciously.”
Markham frowned.
“We’ve never talked of this kind of thing before,” he said tentatively. “I haven’t the remotest idea what your religion is, or, indeed, if you’ve got any.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking to myself all the evening,” remarked Tom. “I don’t know myself; I was only conscious that I felt no kind of sympathy with those people. I was amused and disgusted, and then I was frightened.”
“I wish you had stopped,” said Markham, suddenly.
“Why on earth? Do you really think it would have done me any good to have been suddenly ‘taken’ as those people were? I suppose you will say I am a Pharisee—but what good would it have done me? What should I not do that I do now, or what should I do that I do not do? Early chapels, I suppose——”
“Ah, don’t!” said Markham, with sudden earnestness. “Those things may mean nothing to you, but they do to others—and among others to me.”
Tom stared in perplexity.