Once more I was right.
“There is your guinea,” said he, a little mortified.
“No,” I answered. “I do not feel at liberty to take it, because, to tell the truth, the last was a mere guess, nothing more.”
Mr Stoddart looked relieved.
“You are more honest than most of your profession,” he said. “But I am far more pleased to offer you the guinea upon the smallest doubt of your having won it.”
“I have no claim upon it.”
“What! Couldn’t you swallow a small scruple like that for the sake of the poor even? Well, I don’t believe YOU could.—Oblige me by taking this guinea for some one or other of your poor people. But I AM glad you weren’t sure of that last book. I am indeed.”
I took the guinea, and put it in my purse.
“But,” he resumed, “you won’t do, Mr Walton. You’re not fit for your profession. You won’t tell a lie for God’s sake. You won’t dodge about a little to keep all right between Jove and his weary parishioners. You won’t cheat a little for the sake of the poor! You wouldn’t even bamboozle a little at a bazaar!”
“I should not like to boast of my principles,” I answered; “for the moment one does so, they become as the apples of Sodom. But assuredly I would not favour a fiction to keep a world out of hell. The hell that a lie would keep any man out of is doubtless the very best place for him to go to. It is truth, yes, The Truth that saves the world.”