Mr. May could not restrain another short laugh.
“We must not join in the vulgar abuse of shopkeepers,” he said.
Phœbe's colour rose. She raised her head a little, then perceiving the superiority of her former position, smiled.
“I have no right to do so. My people, I suppose, were all shopkeepers to begin with; but this gives me ways of knowing. Grandpapa is very kind and nice—really nice, Mr. May; but he has not at all a wide way of looking at things. I feel it, though they are so kind to me. I have been brought up to think in such a different way; and if I feel it, who am fond of them, think how that young minister must feel it, who was brought up in a totally different class?”
“What kind of class was this one brought up in?” said Mr. May, with a laugh. “He need not have assaulted Reginald, if he had been born a prince. We had done him no harm.”
“That is making it entirely a private question,” said Phœbe, suavely, “which I did not mean to do. When such a man finds out abuses—what he takes to be abuses—in the Church, which treats him like a roadside ranter, may not he feel a right to be indignant? Oh, I am not so. I think such an office as that chaplaincy is very good, one here and there for the reward of merit; and I think he was very right to take it; but still it would not do, would it, to have many of them? It would not answer any good purpose,” she said, administering a little sting scientifically, “if all clergymen held sinecures.”
These words were overheard by Reginald, who just then came in, and to whom it was startling to find Phœbe serenely seated at tea with his family. The hated word sinecure did not seem to affect him from her lips as it would have done from any one else's. He came in quite good-humouredly, and said with a smile—
“You are discussing me. What about me? Miss Beecham, I hope you take my side.”
“I take everybody's side,” said Phœbe; “for I try to trace people's motives. I can sympathise both with you and those who assailed you.”
“Oh, that Dissenting fellow. I beg your pardon, Miss Beecham, if you are a Dissenter; but I cannot help it. We never go out of our way to attack them and their chapels and coteries, and why should they spring at our throats on every occasion? I think it is hard, and I can't say I have any charity to spare for this individual. What had we done to him? Ursula, give me some tea.”