“Oh, you may just sit you down,” said McIver, sharply, to him. “You can surely give us truth without stamping it down our throats with your boots, that are not, I’ve noticed, of the smallest size.”
“I know you, sir, from boot to bonnet,” said Gordon.
“You’re well off in your acquaintance,” said M’Iver, jocularly. “I wish I kent so good a man.”
“From boot to bonnet,” said Gordon, in no whit abashed by the irony. “Man, do you know,” he went on, “there’s a time comes to me now when by the grace of God I can see to one’s innermost as through a lozen. I shudder, sometimes, at the gift. For there’s the fair face, and there’s the smug and smiling lip, and there’s the flattery at the tongue, and below that masked front is Beelzebub himself, meaning well sometimes—perhaps always—but by his fall a traitor first and last.”
“God!” cried M’Iver, with a very ugly face, “that sounds awkwardly like a roundabout way of giving me a bad character.”
“I said, sir,” answered Gordon, “that poor Beelzebub does not sometimes ken his own trade. I have no doubt that in your heart you are touched to the finest by love of your fellows.”
“And that’s the truth—when they are not clerics,” cried John.
“Touched to the finest, and set in a glow too, by a manly and unselfish act, and eager to go through this world on pleasant footings with yourself and all else.”
“Come, come,” I cried; “I know my friend well, Master Gordon. We are not all that we might be; but I’m grateful for the luck that brought me so good a friend as John M’Iver.”
“I never cried down his credit,” said the minister, simply.