“Master Ephraim, canst thou count syllables? I mean no offence. I may have counted wrongfully myself, not being born nor educated for an accountant.”
At such order I did count; and truly the suspicion was as just as if he had neither been a knight nor a sleeper.
“Sad stuff! sad stuff, indeed!” said Master Silas, “and smelling of popery and wax-candles.”
“Ay?” said Sir Thomas, “I must sift that.”
“If praying for the dead is not popery,” said Master Silas, “I know not what the devil is. Let them pray for us; they may know whether it will do us any good. We need not pray for them; we cannot tell whether it will do them any. I call this sound divinity.”
“Are our churchmen all agreed thereupon?” asked Sir Thomas.
“The wisest are,” replied Master Silas.
“There are some lank rascals who will never agree upon anything but upon doubting. I would not give ninepence for the best gown upon the most thrifty of ’em; and their fingers are as stiff and hard with their pedlary, knavish writing, as any bishop’s are with chalk-stones won honestly from the gout.”
Sir Thomas took the paper up from the table on which I had laid it, and said after a while,—
“The man may only have swooned. I scorn to play the critic, or to ask any one the meaning of a word; but, sirrah!”