‘Wait till they do say it.’

’That’s a long stretch.  They’re turn-cocks of one Water-company—­to wash the greasy citizens!’

‘You’re keeping Nevil on the gape;’ said Mr. Romfrey, with a whimsical shrewd cast of the eye at Beauchamp, who stood alert not to be foiled, arrow-like in look and readiness to repeat his home-shot.  Mr. Romfrey wanted to hear more of that unintelligible ‘You!’ of Beauchamp’s.  But Stukely Culbrett intended that the latter should be foiled, and he continued his diversion from the angry subject.

‘We’ll drop the sacerdotals,’ he said.  ’They’re behind a veil for us, and so are we for them.  I’m with you, colonel; I wouldn’t have them persecuted; they sting fearfully when whipped.  No one listens to them now except the class that goes to sleep under them, to “set an example” to the class that can’t understand them.  Shrapnel is like the breeze shaking the turf-grass outside the church-doors; a trifle fresher.  He knocks nothing down.’

‘He can’t!’ ejaculated the colonel.

‘He sermonizes to shake, that’s all.  I know the kind of man.’

‘Thank heaven, it’s not a common species in England!’

‘Common enough to be classed.’

Beauchamp struck through the conversation of the pair:  ’Can I see you alone to-night, sir, or to-morrow morning?’

‘You may catch me where you can,’ was Mr. Romfrey’s answer.

’Where’s that?  It’s for your sake and mine, not for Dr. Shrapnel’s.  I have to speak to you, and must.  You have done your worst with him; you can’t undo it.  You have to think of your honour as a gentleman.  I intend to treat you with respect, but wolf is the title now, whether I say it or not.’

‘Shrapnel’s a rather long-legged sheep?’

‘He asks for nothing from you.’

‘He would have got nothing, at a cry of peccavi!’

’He was innocent, perfectly blameless; he would not lie to save himself. 
You mistook that for—­but you were an engine shot along a line of rails. 
He does you the justice to say you acted in error.’

‘And you’re his parrot.’

‘He pardons you.’

‘Ha! t’ other cheek!’

’You went on that brute’s errand in ignorance.  Will you keep to the character now you know the truth?  Hesitation about it doubles the infamy.  An old man! the best of men! the kindest and truest! the most unselfish!’

‘He tops me by half a head, and he’s my junior.’

Beauchamp suffered himself to give out a groan of sick derision:  ‘Ah!’

‘And it was no joke holding him tight,’ said Mr. Romfrey, ’I ’d as lief snap an ash.  The fellow (he leaned round to Colonel Halkett) must be a fellow of a fine constitution.  And he took his punishment like a man.  I’ve known worse:  and far worse:  gentlemen by birth.  There’s the choice of taking it upright or fighting like a rabbit with a weasel in his hole.  Leave him to think it over, he’ll come right.  I think no harm of him, I’ve no animus.  A man must have his lesson at some time of life.  I did what I had to do.’