'Yes, yes, yes; that's all very well, but you should always remember that charity begins at home.... I shouldn't have anything to say to a rich man's doing these things, but it's positively wicked for you to do them. Don't you understand that? And last of all, your wife tells me that you're realising your property with the idea of giving it away.' 'It's perfectly true,' said Mr Clinton. Mr Evans's mind was too truly pious for a wicked expletive to cross it; but a bad man expressing the curate's feeling would have said that Mr Clinton was a damned fool. 'Well, don't you see that it's a perfectly ridiculous and unheard-of thing?' he asked emphatically. '"Sell all that thou 'ast, and distribute unto the poor." It is in the Gospel of St Luke. Do you know it?' 'Of course I know it, but, naturally, these things aren't to be taken quite literally.' 'It is clearly written. What makes you say it is not to be taken literally?' Mr Evans shrugged his shoulders impatiently. 'Why, don't you see it would be impossible? The world couldn't go on. How do you expect your children to live if you give this money away?' '"Look at the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spin; yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these."'.... 'Oh, my dear sir, you make me lose my patience. You're full of the hell-fire platitudes of a park spouter, and you think it's religion.... I tell you all these things are allegorical. Don't you understand that? You mustn't carry them out to the letter. They are not meant to be taken in that way.' Mr Clinton smiled a little pitifully at the curate. 'And think of yourself--one must think of oneself. "God helps those who help themselves." How are you going to exist when this little money of yours is gone? You'll simply have to go to the workhouse.... It's absurd, I tell you.' Mr Clinton took no further notice of the curate, but he broke into a loud chant,-- '"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal."' Then, turning on the unhappy curate, he stretched out his arm and pointed his finger at him. 'Last Sunday,' he said, 'I 'eard you read those very words from the chancel steps. Go! go! I tell you, go! You are a bad man, a wolf in sheep's clothing--go!' Mr Clinton walked up to him threateningly, and the curate, with a gasp of astonishment and indignation, fled from the room. He met Mrs Clinton outside. 'I can't do anything with him at all,' he said angrily. 'I've never heard such things in my life. He's either mad or he's got into the hands of the Dissenters. That's the only explanation I can offer.'