“Shall I tell you what you have done for me I—You made a man of me first of all, by giving me a trade, and making me independent. Then again, by that trade you taught me to love the very shape of a book. Baronet or no baronet,—”
“What do you mean?”
“My father threatens to disown me.”
“He can't take your rank from you. We'll have you sir Richard anyhow!—An' I'd let 'em see that a true baronet—”
“—is just a true man, uncle.” interposed Richard; “and that you've helped to make me. It's being independent and helping others, not being a baronet, that will make a gentleman of me! That's how it goes in the true world anyhow!”
“The true world! Where's that?” rejoined Tuke, with what would have been a sneer had there been ill-nature in it.
“And that reminds me of another precious thing you've given me,” Richard went on: “You've taught me to think for myself!”
“Think for yourself indeed, and talk of any world but the world we've got!”
“If you hadn't taught me,” returned Richard, “to think for myself, I should have thought just as you did. But I've been thinking for myself a great deal, and I say now, that, if there be no more of it after we die, then the whole thing is such a sell as even the dumb, deaf, blind, heartless, headless God you seem to believe in, could not have been guilty of!”
“Ho! ho!—that's the good my teaching has done you? Well, we'll have it out by and by! In the meantime, tell us how it all came about—how you came to know, I mean. You're a good sort, whatever you believe or don't believe, and I wish you were ours in reality!”