"What answer have you sent the crazy little fellow?" said the rector, keeping the letter in his hand and running over it again and again, with brow knit, but eyes gleaming without any malignity.
"Oh, I sent no answer. I awaited yours."
"Mine!" said the rector, throwing down the letter on the table. "You don't suppose I'm going to hold a public debate with a schismatic of that sort? I should have an infidel shoemaker next expecting me to answer blasphemies delivered in bad grammar."
"But you see how he puts it," said Philip. With all his gravity of nature he could not resist a slightly mischievous prompting, though he had a serious feeling that he should not like to be regarded as failing to fulfill his pledge. "I think if you refuse, I shall be obliged to offer myself."
"Nonsense! Tell him he is himself acting a dishonorable part in interpreting your words as a pledge to do any preposterous thing that suits his fancy. Suppose he had asked you to give him land to build a chapel on; doubtless that would have given him a 'lively satisfaction.' A man who puts a non-natural, strained sense on a promise is no better than a robber."
"But he has not asked for land. I dare say he thinks you won't object to his proposal. I confess there's a simplicity and quaintness about the letter that rather pleases me."
"Let me tell you, Phil, he's a crazy little firefly, that does a great deal of harm in my parish. He inflames the Dissenters' minds on politics. There's no end to the mischief done by these busy, prating men. They make the ignorant multitude the judges of the largest questions, both political and religious, till we shall soon have no institution left that is not on a level with the comprehension of a huckster or a drayman. There can be nothing more retrograde—losing all the results of civilization, all the lessons of Providence—letting the windlass run down after men have been turning at it painfully for generations. If the instructed are not to judge for the uninstructed, why, let us set Dick Stubbs to make our almanacs, and have a President of the Royal Society elected by universal suffrage."
The rector had risen, placed himself with his back to the fire, and thrust his hands in his pockets, ready to insist further on this wide argument. Philip sat nursing one leg, listening respectfully, as he always did, though often listening to the sonorous echo of his own statements, which suited his uncle's needs so exactly that he did not distinguish them from his own impressions.
"True," said Philip; "but in special cases we have to do with special conditions. You know I defend the casuists. And it may happen that, for the honor of the church in Treby, and a little also for my honor, circumstances may demand a concession even to some notions of a Dissenting preacher."
"Not at all. I should be making a figure which my brother clergy might well take as an affront to themselves. The character of the Establishment has suffered enough already through the Evangelicals, with their extempore incoherence and their pipe-smoking piety. Look at Wimple, the man who is vicar of Shuttleton—without his gown and bands anybody would take him for a grocer in mourning."