"I suppose 'tis tu inquirin' to ax if you'll bide to Endicott's when missis do leave it?" said Samuel Pinsent.
"Well—yes, I think it is. Lord knows what I'm going to do. My home's here for the present—until—well, I really cannot tell myself. It depends on various things."
There was a silence. Even the most slow-witted perceived a new revelation of Stapledon in this speech. Presently Churdles Ash spoke.
"Best to bide here till the time-work chaps be through wi' theer job. Them time-work men! The holy text sez, 'Blessed be they as have not seed an' yet have believed'; but fegs! 'tis straining scripture to put that on time-work. I'd never believe no time-work man what I hadn't seed."
"Anybody's a fool to believe where he doesn't trust," said Mark Endicott. "You open a great question, Ash. I believed no more or less than any other chap of five-an'-twenty in my young days; but, come blindness, there was no more taking on trust for me. I had to find a reason for all I believed from that day forward."
"Was faith a flower that grew well in the dark with you, uncle?" inquired Myles, and there was a wave of sudden interest in his voice.
"Why, yes. Darkness is the time for making roots and 'stablishing plants, whether of the soil or of the mind. Faith grew but slowly. And the flower of it comes to no more than this: do your duty, and be gentle with your neighbour. Don't wax weak because you catch yourself all wrong so often. Don't let any man pity you but yourself; and don't let no other set of brains than your own settle the rights and wrongs of life for you. That's my road—a blind man's. But there's one thing more, my sons: to believe in the goodness of God through thick and thin."
"The hardest thing of all," said Stapledon.
Mr. Cramphorn here thought proper to join issue. He also had his own views, reached single-handed, and was by no means ashamed of them.
"As to the A'mighty," he said, "my rule's to treat Un same as He treats me—same as we'm taught to treat any other neighbour. That's fair, if you ax me."