‘I found it inside Somebody-or-other-quite-dull on Thessalonians, you know,’ said Charles, ‘and I saw it was Latin because of quam and——’
‘My dear sir—and ladies,’ said the agreeable clergyman, ‘I am the soul of honour. I would perish at the stake before I would reveal a centimetre of your least secret. Trust me to the death.’
And off he went.
‘What a different clergyman,’ said Charles; ‘he is just like anybody else—only nicer.’
‘He said thank God,’ Caroline reminded him; ‘he said it like being in church too, not like cabmen and people in the street.’
‘He said “Thank God he was a working man,”’ said Charlotte. ‘I wonder what he meant.’
‘I shall ask him some day,’ said Caroline, ‘when we know him better.’
But any one who had met the party as they went talking and laughing up the hill would have thought they had known each other for long enough, and could hardly know each other any better than they did.
Charles was dreaming of mortaring the Murdstone man securely into a first-class railway carriage, and tapping him on the head with a brass trowel which was also a candlestick, when he was awakened by a pinch given gently. At the same moment a hand was laid on his mouth, and a whisper said: