"Personal!" whispered Mr. Prymm.
"I don't care if it is personal," said Squire Woodhouse. "I'm trying to point a moral, and it isn't my fault if other folks get in the way and get hurt. I don't know how to be meek when I'm abused, but——"
"It isn't required of you," said Mr. Jodderel. "You're expected to take care of what has been intrusted to you in your capacity as a steward of the Lord."
Many were the affirmative shakes of head which followed this remark.
"I suppose I am," said the Squire, "and so long as I am a human being I won't be likely to forget it; but whether when I get mad over being swindled the anger all comes from my feeling of being deprived of the Lord's property, I'm not so sure: I've a suspicion that more of it comes from the heart of Squire Woodhouse than from the kingdom of heaven."
"Not a bit of it," said Mr. Hopper, finding at last a subject upon which he could speak from the abundance of his heart. "Aren't you working for the good of your family, and don't St. Paul say that the man who don't look out for his family is worse than an infidel?"
"Yes," said the Squire meditatively; "but he don't tell you to boil over when there's nothing to be gained by it, and when getting mad makes you uninteresting to everybody, not excepting yourself. He doesn't tell you to let your suspicions manage your wits, and determine what sort of a man your neighbor is. The man who gets the best of me in a trade may be a scoundrel; I've always made it a rule to think so, in fact; but when I come to think of it, I remember that I've sometimes made a hard, sharp trade myself without meaning anything wrong."
"You never carried back the unfair gains, though, when you saw what you'd done, did you?" asked Captain Maile.
"Well, no; not that I can recollect. I have tried to make it up to the man in some way or other, though."
"Taking pains to tell him why you were trying to do it?" asked the Captain.