"Lieutenant Polker," replied Tinderella, "has married a dissenter, or a person of low church principles, and that is as bad, and he has nothing whatever to do with our duty to the Holy Catholic Church I assure you, sir."
"Then it must be that silly, ignorant coxcomb, Charles Fustian, my own godson, my favourite from his youth—an excellent fellow, but a conceited ass—I wish he had never gone into the diocese of Vexer."
This is the tender way in which you are spoken of, my dear Charles; and I feel sure you will appreciate the compliment paid to you by the Doctor, losing his temper, but retaining his affection.
There was a blush on Tinderella's cheek as she entered into a defence of "the Reverend Charles Fustian, a priest of our church;" and she almost curtsied in reverence for your name and office; and I advise Araminta to keep watch over her friend's proceedings, for I don't think Tinderella is so deeply attached to the doctrine of celibacy as she pretends. And I take this opportunity also, my dear Charles, to tell you that I shall keep watch over YOU; and if I find you casting your smiles at Tinderella, and holding her by the hand, and recommending her to enter into the privileges of confession, in the summer-house in her father's garden—and holding forth all the time on the blessings of a conventual life and penance, and hair shirts and a cat-o'-nine-tails—I shall be greatly inclined to recur to the discipline that used to improve your manners greatly when you were a little boy, and use the scourge with more effect than when you apply it to your shoulders with your own hand.
The Doctor has just been here, and as I know you will be rejoiced to hear the news he gave me, I will transmit it to you at once.
"Buddle," he said to me, "you have perhaps seen how vainly I have tried to resist the parish, at least the young ladies of the parish; for I am sorry to say, that, with the exception of yourself and two or three others of the seniors, the parish has left me to fight the battle alone."
"My dear Smiler," I replied, "what can we do? Surely, if we lie quiet on our oars, the fancy for that sort of thing will go off."
"Not at all; as they get older it will get worse. There is some hope for them when they are very young, but in a few years there is no chance of escaping a universal passing over to the Pope; and between ourselves,"—and here the Doctor looked at the door, as if he wished to bolt it with a twist of his eye—"I am in great anxiety of mind lest they carry me with them. Yes, my good Buddle, it would not surprise me if I awoke some morning and found myself a monk."
"How? Haven't you signed the articles and repeated the creed, and the oath of abjuration, and all that?"
"That is no defence. Those girls go to work so scientifically, carrying one object first, and then another; and they are so good, and active, and amiable, and so useful in the parish, and so clever, and defer so respectfully to my judgment in all things, that I find there is not an alteration which has taken place in the parish that I did not at first oppose, and end in a very short time by ordering on my own authority. Yes, my dear friend, I feel that, if not supported by some person of stout uncompromising church principles, I shall probably find myself eating fish on Fridays, and administering castigation to myself in my old age, and listening to young ladies' confessions, and flogging Araminta or Tinderella in atonement for their tasting a mutton-chop on a fast-day."