“Undoubtedly it was,” said Friswell. “The practice exists among many of those races that are still savage enough to believe in the devil—a good handmade tom-tom does the business quite effectually, I've heard.”
“Do you know, my dear Friswell, I think that when you sit down with us in our Garden of Peace, the conversation usually takes the form of the dialogue in Magnall's Questions or the Child's Guide or Joyce's Science. You are so full of promiscuous information which you cannot hide?”
He roared in laughter, and we all joined in.
“You have just said what my wife says to me daily,” said he. “I'll try to repress myself in future.”
“Don't try to do anything of the sort,” cried Dorothy. “You never cease to be interesting, no matter how erudite you are.”
“What I can't understand is, how he has escaped assassination all these years,” remarked Heywood. “I think the time is coming when whoso slayeth Friswell will think that he doeth God's service. Just think all of you of the mental state of the man who fails to see that, however heathenish may be the practice of church-bell-ringing, the fact that it has brought into existence some of the most beautiful buildings in the world makes the world its debtor for evermore!”
“I take back all my words—I renounce the devil and all his work,” cried the other man. “Yes, I hold that Giotto's Campanile justifies all the clashing and banging and hammering before and since. On the same analogy I believe with equal sincerity that the Temple of Jupiter fully justifies the oblations to the Father of gods, and the Mosque of Omar the massacres of Islam.”
“Go on,” said Dorothy. “Say that the sufferings of Alexander Selkirk were justified since without them we should not have Robinson Crusoe.”
“I will say anything you please, my Lady of the Garden,” said he heartily. “I will say that the beauty of that border beside you justifies Wakeley's lavish advertisements of Hop Mixture.”
I felt that this sort of thing had gone on long enough, so I made a hair-pin bend in the conversation by asking Dorothy if she remembered the day of our visit to Robinson Crusoe's island.