“Yes, Leopold,” she said, “Mr. Wingfold will, I am sure, stay with you as long as he can.” “Indeed I will,” assented the curate. “But I must run for Mr. Faber first.” “How did I come here?” asked Leopold, opening his eyes large upon Helen after swallowing a spoonful of the broth she held to his lips. But, before she could answer him, he turned sick, and by the time the doctor came was very feverish. Faber gave the necessary directions, and Wingfold walked back with him to get his prescription made up. CHAPTER VI. THE CURATE AND THE DOCTOR. “There is something strange about that young man’s illness,” said Faber, as soon as they had left the house. “I fancy you know more than you can tell, and if so, then I have committed no indiscretion in saying as much.” “Perhaps it might be an indiscretion to acknowledge as much however,” said the curate with a smile. “You are right. I have not been long in the place,” returned Faber, “and you had no opportunity of testing me. But I am indifferent honest as well as you, though I don’t go with you in everything.” “People would have me believe you don’t go with me in anything.” “They say as much--do they?” returned Faber with some annoyance. “I thought I had been careful not to trespass on your preserves.” “As for preserves, I don’t know of any,” answered the curate. “There is no true bird in the grounds that won’t manage somehow to escape the snare of the fowler.” “Well,” said the doctor, “I know nothing about God and all that kind of thing, but, though I don’t think I’m a coward exactly either, I know I should like to have your pluck.” “I haven’t got any pluck,” said the curate. “Tell that to the marines,” said Faber. “I daren’t go and say what I think or don’t think, even in the bedroom of my least orthodox patient--at least, if I do, I instantly repent it--while you go on saying what you really believe Sunday after Sunday!--How you can believe it, I don’t know, and it’s no business of mine.” “Oh yes, it is!” returned Wingfold. “But as to the pluck, it may be a man’s duty to say in the pulpit what he would be just as wrong to say by a sick-bed.” “That has nothing to do with the pluck! That’s all I care about.” “It has everything to do with what you take for pluck. My pluck is only Don Worm.” “I don’t know what you mean by that.” “It’s Benedick’s name, in Much Ado about Nothing, for the conscience. MY pluck is nothing but my conscience.” “It’s a damned fine thing to have anyhow, whatever name you put upon it!” said Faber. “Excuse me if I find your epithet more amusing than apt,” said Wingfold, laughing. “You are quite right,” said Faber. “I apologize.” “As to the pluck again,” Wingfold resumed, “--if you think of this one fact--that my whole desire is to believe in God, and that the only thing I can be sure of sometimes is that, if there be a God, none but an honest man will ever find him, you will not then say there is much pluck in my speaking the truth?”