"Mother, I will listen to anything you choose to say; but I won't see that—" fool he was going to say, but he changed the epithet—"I won't talk about such things to a man for whom I have no respect."
Mrs. Worboise gave a sigh; but, perhaps partly because her own respect for Mr. Simon had been a little shaken of late, she said nothing more. Thomas resumed.
"If I hadn't been taken by the hand by a very different man from him, mother, I shouldn't have been here to-day. Thank God! Mr. Fuller is something like a clergyman!"
"Who is he, Thomas? I think I have heard the name."
"He is the clergyman of St. Amos's in the city."
"Ah! I thought so. A Ritualist, I am afraid, Thomas. They lay snares for young people."
"Nonsense, mother!" said Thomas, irreverently. "I don't know what you mean. Mr. Fuller, I think, would not feel flattered to be told that he belonged to any party whatever but that of Jesus Christ himself. But I should say, if he belonged to any, it would be the Broad Church."
"I don't know which is worse. The one believes all the lying idolatry of the Papists; the other believes nothing at all. I'm sadly afraid, Thomas, you've been reading Bishop Colenso."
Mrs. Worboise believed, of course, in no distinctions but those she saw; and if she had heard the best men of the Broad Church party repudiate Bishop Colenso, she would only have set it down to Jesuitism.