“It shall be done,” said Lucre, “and I will go about it presently, but in the mean time the matter rests as it is. If what you say is true, and I believe it is, your own safety depends upon your silence.”
“Not a breath,” replied Darby; “and now, sir, about what brought me here—I wanted to say that I'd wish 'to read' upon Sunday next.”
“What do you mean?” asked Lucre.
“Why, sir, as I said, I don't like to take my religion from an attorney—and I'm afeard, besides, that he's not altogether orthybox, in regard that he hinted once that God was ———; but, indeed I disremember his words, for it wasn't aisy to hould them when you got them.”
“He, of course, is a Fatalist and Predestinarian,” said Lucre; “but what is this you were about to say?”
“Why, sir, that I'd wish publicly to read my recompensation in your church on Sunday next.”
“And why in my church?” asked the proud parson, who felt his vanity touched, not by anything Darby had yet said, but by the indescribable expression of flattery which appeared in his face.
“Why, sir,” he replied, “bekase it's given out on all hands that there's no end to your larnin'—that it's wondherful the books you wrote—and as for your preachin', that it 'ud make one think themselves in heaven, hell, or purgatory, accordin as you wished.”
“Very well, O'Drive, very well indeed,” exclaimed Lucre, caught on his weakest side by this artful compliment; “but you must forget purgatory—however I can conceive that it was the mere force of habit that prompted you to utter it. Well, then, you shall read your recantation on Sunday, since you wish it—there will be about a dozen or two others, and you had better attend early. Good-day, O'Drive!”
“Plaise your honor,” said Darby, who never could be honest to both parties, “there's a batch o' convarts outside waitin' to see you, but between you and me, I think you had as well be on your guard wid some o' them, I know what they want.”