Mr. Harding put his spectacles on his nose. He took them off again. He fidgetted and fumbled with them with his fingers.
"The fact is, Mr. Luxmare--and this is entirely between ourselves--Mr. Plumber is in such straitened circumstances----"
"Quite so. But because a man is a pauper, does that justify him in becoming a thief?"
"Gently, Mr. Luxmare, let us consider our words before we utter them. Here is no question of anything even distantly approaching to felony. To be frank with you, I think you are unnecessarily hard on this particular journal. The paper is merely a vulgar paper----"
"And Mr. Plumber is merely an ordained minister of the Established Church. Are we, then, as churchmen, to expect our clergy to encourage, not only passively, but, also, actively, the already superabundant vulgarity of the public press?"
The vicar had the worst of it; when he was once more alone he felt that there was no sort of doubt upon that point.
Whether, intentionally or not, Mr. Luxmare managed to convey the impression that, in his opinion, the curate, while pretending to save souls with one hand, was doing his best to destroy them with the other, and that, in that singular course of procedure, he was being aided and abetted by the vicar. Mr. Harding had strong forebodings that the trouble, so far from being ended, was only just beginning. Those forebodings became still stronger when, scarcely an hour after Mr. Luxmare had left him, Mrs. Harding, entering the study like a passable imitation of a hurricane, laid a printed sheet in front of her husband with the air almost of a Jove hurling thunderbolts from the skies.
"Mr. Harding, have you seen that paper?"
It was the unescapable Skittles. The vicar groaned in spirit. He regarded it with weary eyes.
"A copy of it now and then, my dear."