"Well, father," returned Mattie.
Whereupon her father turned to Spelt and said, as if resuming what had passed before—
"Now tell me honestly, Spelt, do you believe there is a God?"
"I don't doubt it."
"And I do. Will you tell me that, if there was a God, he would have a fool like that in the church over the way there, to do nothing but read the service, and a sermon he bought for eighteenpence, and—"
"From you?" asked Spelt, with an access of interest.
"No, no. I was too near the church for that. But he bought it of Spelman, in Holywell Street. Well, what was I saying?"
"You was telling us what Mr. Potter did for his money."
"Yes, yes. I don't know anything else he does but stroke his Piccadilly weepers, and draw his salary. Only I suppose they have some grand name for salary nowadays, out of the Latin Grammar or the Roman Antiquities, or some such, to make it respectable. Don't tell me there's a God, when he puts a man like that in the pulpit. To hear him haw-haw!"
The bookseller's logic was, to say the least of it, queer. But Spelt was no logician. He was something better, though in a feeble way. He could jump over the dry-stone fences and the cross-ditches of the logician. He was not one of those who stop to answer arguments against going home, instead of making haste to kiss their wives and children.