To feel a flabby piece of paper instead of a warm hand is not conducive to theological persuasion: all Bundock’s dissenting blood rushed to his head.
“There’s two opinions about that,” he snorted.
“There are two opinions,” Miss Gentry assented placidly; “one wrong and the other mine.”
“Oh, of course!” he sneered. “The Church is always infallible.”
“We’re eighteen and a half centuries old,” said Miss Gentry freezingly.
“Did you put that in your census paper?” retorted the humorist.
Miss Gentry winced. She was weary of the jokes that had desolated Bradmarsh, yet she was conscious of having let her landlady’s estimate of her age go by default.
“I had no paper to fill up,” she reminded him frigidly. “But if there was a census of religions, you’d certainly be among the mushrooms.”
“Better than being among the mummies.” Bundock’s father might have clapped his palsied hands, to hear this defender of the faith. But Miss Gentry mistook this fair retort in kind for another allusion to the personal census.
“I thought you could discuss like a gentleman!” It was a cunning shaft, and Squibs, seizing this moment to rub herself against the postman’s leggings, he replied more mildly: “What’s the use of going by age—except the Age of Reason?”