"You're pretty right, Ash," said Mr. Endicott. "It takes a brave man to keep his mouth shut and not care whether he's misunderstood or no. But 'tis a bleating age—a drum-beating age o' clash and clatter. Why, the very members of Parliament get too jaded to follow their great business with sober minds. If a man don't pepper his speeches with mountebank fun, they call him a dull dog, and won't listen to him. All the world's dropping into play-acting—that's the truth of it."
"I didn't make no jokes howsoever when I turned my speech 'fore supper," declared Mr. Cramphorn; "an' I'm sure I'd never do no such ondacent thing in a set speech. Ban't respectful. Not but what I was surprised to find how pat the right word comed to me at the right moment wi'out any digging for un."
"'Tis a gert gift for a humble man," said Mr. Ash.
"A gift to be used wi' caution," confessed Jonah. "When you say 'tis a gift, last word's spoken," he added, "but a man's wise to keep close guard awver his tongue when it chances to be sharper'n common. Not as I ever go back on the spoken word, for 'tis a sign of weakness."
Myles Stapledon laughed and Mr. Cramphorn grew hot.
"Why for should I?" he asked.
"If you never had call to eat your words after fifty years o' talkin', Jonah, you're either uncommon fortunate or uncommon wise," declared the blind man. "Wise you are not particular, not to my knowledge, so we must say you're lucky."
The others laughed, and Jonah, despite his brag of a tongue more ready than most, found nothing to say at this rebuke. He made an inarticulate growl at the back of his throat and puffed vigorously, while Henry Collins came to the rescue.
"Can 'e tell us when the weddin's like to be, sir?" he inquired of Stapledon, and Myles waited for somebody else to reply; but none did so.
"I cannot tell," he answered at length. "I fancy nothing is settled. But we shall hear soon enough, no doubt."