"Church or no church, Miss Vancourt's a real lady!" declared Dan Bidley emphatically--"She may have her reasons, an' good ones too, for not attending service, but she ain't no heathen, I'm sartin' sure o' that."
"You cannot argumentarially be sure of what you do not know," said Mr. Netlips, with a tight smile, buttoning on his overcoat--"A heathen is a proscription of the law, and cannot enjoy the rights of the commons."
Dan stared.
"There ain't no proscription of the law in stayin' away from church," he said--"Nobody's bound to go. Lords nor commons can't compel us."
Mr. Netlips shook his head and frowned darkly, with the air of one who could unveil a great mystery if he chose.
"Compulsion is a legal community," he said--"And while powerless to bring affluence to the Christian conscience, it culminates in the citizenship of the heathen. Miss Vancourt, as her father's daughter, should be represented by the baptized spirit, and not by the afflatus of the ungenerate! Good-night!"
Still puckering his brow into lines of mysterious suggestiveness, the learned Netlips went his way, Roger Buggins gazing after him admiringly.
"That man's reg'lar lost down 'ere,"--he observed--"He oughter ha' been in Parliament."
"Ah, so he ought!" agreed Dan Ridley--"Where's there's fog he'd a made it foggier, and where's there's no understandin' he'd a made it less understandable. I daresay he'd a bin Prime Minister in no time- -he's just the sort. They likes a good old muddler for that work-- someone as has the knack o' addlin' the people's brains an' makin' them see a straight line as though'twere crooked. It keeps things quiet an' yet worrity-like--first up, then down--this way, then that way, an' never nothin' certain, but plenty o' big words rantin' round. That's Netlips all over,--it's in the shape of his 'ed,--he was born like it. I don't like his style myself,--but he'd make a grand cab-nit minister!"
"Ay, so he would!" acquiesced Buggins, as he drew the little red curtains across the windows of the tap-room and extinguished the hanging lamp--"Easy rest ye, Dan!"
"Same to you, Mr. Buggins!" responded the tailor cheerfully, as he turned out into the cool sweet dimness of the hawthorn-hedged lane in which the 'Mother Huff' stood--"I make bold to say that church or no church, Miss Vancourt's bein' at her own 'ouse 'ull be a gain an' a blessing to the village."