"It does you credit," answered Campbell; "but I am of Cambridge."
"But what do you say to Rubrics and the Calendar?" insisted Bateman.
"They are not binding," answered Campbell.
"They are, binding," said Bateman.
A pause, as between the rounds of a boxing-match. Reding interposed: "Bateman, cut me, please, a bit of your capital bread—home-made, I suppose?"
"A thousand pardons!" said Bateman:—"not binding?—Pass it to him, Willis, if you please. Yes, it comes from a farmer, next door. I'm glad you like it.—I repeat, they are binding, Campbell."
"An odd sort of binding, when they have never bound," answered Campbell; "they have existed two or three hundred years; when were they ever put in force?"
"But there they are," said Bateman, "in the Prayer Book."
"Yes, and there let them lie and never get out of it," retorted Campbell; "there they will stay till the end of the story."
"Oh, for shame!" cried Bateman; "you should aid your mother in a difficulty, and not be like the priest and the Levite."