“Ha! mounsheer, what is that you say?” cried Benjamin; “St. Paul's church is not worth so much as a damn! Mayhap you may be thinking too that the Royal Billy isn't so good a ship as the Billy de Paris; but she would have licked two of her any day, and in all weathers.”
As Benjamin had assumed a very threatening kind of attitude, flourishing an arm with a bunch at the end of it that was half as big as Monsieur Le Quoi's head, Richard thought it time to interpose his authority.
“Hush, Benjamin, hush,” he said; “you both misunderstand Monsieur Le Quoi and forget yourself. But here comes Mr. Grant, and the service will commence. Let us go in.”
The Frenchman, who received Benjamin's reply with a well-bred good-humor that would not admit of any feeling but pity for the other's ignorance, bowed in acquiescence and followed his companion.
Hiram and the major-domo brought up the rear, the latter grumbling as he entered the building:
“If so be that the king of France had so much as a house to live in that would lay alongside of Paul's, one might put up with their jaw. It's more than flesh and blood can bear to hear a Frenchman run down an English church in this manner. Why, Squire Doolittle, I've been at the whipping of two of them in one day—clean built, snug frigates with standing royals and them new-fashioned cannonades on their quarters—such as, if they had only Englishmen aboard of them, would have fout the devil.”
With this ominous word in his mouth Benjamin entered the church.
CHAPTER XI.
“And fools who came to scoff, remained to pray.”
—Goldsmith.