That may be. I only need to ask my wife. She’ll be sure to tell me he’s sick. She tells me the truth about everything on earth except that boy. And even if he isn’t sick--there you young men have the pull over us old folks again. You can do your devotions anywhere; you can say your prayers when you’re out bird-snaring, or taking a walk, or even in a public-house. “‘Our father, which art in Heaven’--Good-morning, Peter, coming to the dance to-night?--‘Hallowed be Thy Name’--Yes, you may smile, Katherine, but you’ll see--‘Thy will be done’--By God, I’m not shaved yet,”--and so on to the end, when you pronounce your own blessing, since you’re just as much a man as the parson, and there’s as much virtue in a blue coat as in a black. I’ve nothing against it. If you want to insert seven drinks between the seven petitions, what does it matter? I can’t prove to any one that beer and religion don’t go together. Perhaps it will get into the prayer-book some day, as a new way of taking communion. But I, old sinner that I am, am not strong enough to follow the fashion. I can’t catch devotion in the street, as if it were a cock-chafer. The twittering of sparrows and swallows cannot take the place of the organ for me. If my heart is to be uplifted, I must first hear the heavy iron church-doors clang behind me, and imagine they are the gates of the world. The high walls with their narrow windows, that only let the bright bold light of the world filter dimly through, must close in upon me, and in the distance I must see the dead-house with the walled-in skull. Well--better is better. LEONARD. You take it too seriously. ANTHONY. Without doubt. And I must admit as an honest man that it didn’t work to-day. I lost the mood for worship when I was in church, because of the empty seat beside me, and found it again outside, under the pear-tree in my garden. You are surprised? See, I was going home sad and depressed, like a man that’s had his harvest spoilt; for children are just like land, you sow good seeds and get tares in return. I stood still under the pear-tree, that the caterpillars have devoured. “Yes,” I thought, “my boy is like this tree, bare and empty.” Then I seemed to get thirsty, and felt as if I must go to the inn and have a drink. I was deceiving myself. It wasn’t beer that I wanted. I wanted to find my boy and rate him, and I knew for certain I should find him there. I was just going, when the wise old tree dropped a juicy pear at my feet, as if to say: Quench your thirst with that, and don’t insult me by comparing me with your knave of a son. I thought better of it, ate the pear and went home. LEONARD. Do you know that the apothecary is going bankrupt? ANTHONY. It doesn’t concern me. LEONARD. Not at all? ANTHONY.