“Rude! methinks you forget yourself!—a truce to all compliments. Did you not call me faint-hearted?”
“Your memory is short indeed, Sir Charles, not to remember who first used the word.”
“Come, come,” interrupted the old knight, “I wo’n’t have any falling out between friends. Are we not all king’s men, loyal and true? It may be, Sir Charles, that Juxon sees further into matters than we do; but his heart is with us.”
“That may seem clear to you, Sir Oliver:—time will show us all men in their true colours: I have been right once before, and I may be right again.”
“What do you mean?” asked Juxon, reddening with anger: “do you doubt my loyalty, sir?”
The evil temper of Sir Charles was so strong within him, that, desirous only of vexing Juxon to the uttermost, he replied with a sneer, “You have taken care to secure yourself a friend in the enemy’s camp; so that your parsonage at Old Beech will be quite safe, come what may; and you mean to stick by it, as I am told.”
“It is an insinuation as false as it is base to suspect and utter it: try me not farther, or you will make me forget my sacred calling.”
“You are not likely to do that by what I hear of your doings at Old Beech. You preach like a Puritan already: it were a pity to lose a fat rectory if the Parliament get uppermost.”
The mean and cruel turn, which Sir Charles thus gave to his malicious charge, so startled and affected Juxon, who had always been both honest and earnest in his pulpit, that he paused in his reply,—and was sending up a swift ejaculation to Heaven for the grace of patience, when Sir Oliver angrily interposed.