‘Upon my word, I don’t understand you, Osborne! You make a fellow feel deuced queer with your remarks.’
‘At all events, you will allow that the first of them—they call them apostles, don’t they?—didn’t take to preaching the gospel for the sake of a living. What a satire on the whole kit of them that word living, so constantly in all their mouths, is! It seems to me that Messrs Peter and Paul and Matthew, and all the rest of them, forsook their livings for a good chance of something rather the contrary.’
‘Then it was true—what they said about you at Forest’s?’
‘I don’t know what they said,’ returned Charley; ‘but before I would pretend to believe what I didn’t—’
‘But I do believe it, Osborne.’
‘May I ask on what grounds?’
‘Why—everybody does.’
‘That would be no reason, even if it were a fact, which it is not. You believe it, or rather, choose to think you believe it, because you’ve been told it. Sooner than pretend to teach what I have never learned, and be looked up to as a pattern of godliness, I would ‘list in the ranks. There, at least, a man might earn an honest living.’
‘By Jove! You do make a fellow feel uncomfortable!’ repeated Home. ‘You’ve got such a—such an uncompromising way of saying things—to use a mild expression.’
‘I think it’s a sneaking thing to do, and unworthy of a gentleman.’