“I see,” said I. “I was too hasty in my judgment. He is a man of uncompromising orthodoxy. We shall see him holding a class in Sunday-school next, or solving acrostics instead of sleeping after the Sunday Sirloin. Did he explain the Gehazi business, Rosamund?”
“He said that he was at first staggered when he heard that Elisha had refused the suits of clothes; but if Elisha did so, he is sure that his descendants have been making up for his self-denial ever since.”
“But about Gehazi catching the leprosy or whatever it was?”
“I said I thought it was too awful a punishment for so small a thing, though, of course, it was dreadfully mean of Gehazi. But Mr. Friswell laughed and said that I had forgotten that all Gehazi had to do to make himself all right again was to fellow the prescription given to Naamun; so he wasn't so hard on the man after all.”
“There, you see!” cried Dorothy triumphantly. “You talk to me about the bad influence Mr. Friswell may have upon the children, and now you find that he has been doing his best to make the difficult parts of the Bible credible! For my own part, I feel that a flood of new light has been shed by him over some incidents with which I was not in sympathy before.”
“All right, have it your own way,” said I.
“You old goose!” said she. “Don't I know that why you have your knife in poor Friswell is simply because he thought your scheme of treillage was too elaborate.”
“Anyhow I'm going to carry it out 'according to plan,' to make use of a classic phrase,” said I.
And then I hurried off to the tool-house; and it was only when I had been there for some time that I remembered that the phrase which I had fancied I was quoting very aptly, was the explanation of a retreat.
I hoped that it would not strike Dorothy in that way, and induce her to remind me that it was much apter than I had desired it to be.