"Well, I shall cut a still worse figure, and so will you, in the Dissenting magazines and newspapers. It will go the round of the kingdom. There will be a paragraph headed, 'Tory Falsehood and Clerical Cowardice,' or else, 'The Meanness of the Aristocracy and the Incompetence of the Beneficed Clergy.'"
"There would be a worse paragraph if I were to consent to the debate. Of course it would be said that I was beaten hollow, and, that now the question had been cleared up at Treba Magna, the Church had not a sound leg to stand on. Besides," the rector went on, frowning and smiling, "it's all very well for you to talk, Phil; but this debating is not so easy when a man's close upon sixty. What one writes or says must be something good and scholarly; and, after all had been done, this little Lyon would buzz about one like a wasp, and cross-question and rejoin. Let me tell you, a plain truth may be so worried and mauled by fallacies as to get the worst of it. There's no such thing as tiring a talking-machine like Lyon."
"Then you absolutely refuse?"
"Yes, I do."
"You remember that when I wrote my letter of thanks to Lyon you approved my offer to serve him if possible."
"Certainly I remember it. But suppose he had asked you to vote for civil marriage, or to go and hear him preach every Sunday?"
"But he has not asked that."
"Something as unreasonable, though."
"Well," said Philip, taking up Mr. Lyon's letter and looking graver—looking even vexed, "it is rather an unpleasant business for me. I really felt obliged to him. I think there's a sort of worth in the man beyond his class. Whatever may be the reason of the case, I shall disappoint him instead of doing him the service I offered."
"Well, that's a misfortune; we can't help it."