"Yes, yes. I don't know anything else he does but stroke his Piccadilly weepers, and draw his salary. Only I suppose they have some grand name for salary nowadays, out of the Latin Grammar or the Roman Antiquities, or some such, to make it respectable. Don't tell me there's a God, when he puts a man like that in the pulpit. To hear him haw-haw!" The bookseller's logic was, to say the least of it, queer. But Spelt was no logician. He was something better, though in a feeble way. He could jump over the dry-stone fences and the cross-ditches of the logician. He was not one of those who stop to answer arguments against going home, instead of making haste to kiss their wives and children. "I have read somewhere--in a book I dare say you mayn't have in your collection, Mr. Kitely--they call it the New Testament--" There was not an atom of conscious humor in the tailor as he said this. He really thought Mr. Kitely might have conscientious scruples as to favoring the sale of the New Testament. Kitely smiled, but said nothing. "I've read"--the tailor went on--"that God winked at some people's ignorance. I dare say he may wink at Mr. Potter's." "Anyhow, I wouldn't like to be Mr. Potter," said the bookseller. "No, nor I," returned Spelt. "But just as I let that poor creature, Dolman, cobble away in my ground-floor--though he has never paid me more than half his rent since ever he took it--" "Is that the way of it? Whew!" said Mr. Kitely. "About and about it," answered the tailor. "But that's not the point." "What a fool you are then, Spelt, to--" "Mr. Kitely," interposed the tailor with dignity, "do I pay your rent?" "You've got my receipts, I believe," answered the bookseller, offended in his turn. "Then I may make a fool of myself, if I please," returned Spelt, with a smile which took all offense out of the remark. "I only wanted to say that perhaps God lets Mr. Potter hold the living of St. Jacob's in something of the same way that I let poor Dolman cobble in my ground-floor. No offense, I hope." "None whatever. You're a good-natured, honest fellow, Spelt; and don't distress yourself, you know, for a week or so. Have half a herring more? I fear this is a soft roe." "No more, I thank you, Mr. Kitely. But all the clergy ain't like Mr. Potter. Perhaps he talks such nonsense because there's nobody there to hear it." "There's plenty not there to do something for his money," said Kitely. "That's true," returned the tailor. "But seeing I don't go to church myself, I don't see I've any right to complain. Do you go to church, Mr. Kitely?" "I should think _not_," answered the bookseller. "But there's some one in the shop." So saying, he started up and disappeared. Presently voices were heard, if not in dispute, yet in difference. "You won't oblige me so far as that, Mr. Kitely?"