Mr Haredale is too just, too generous, too
clear-sighted in his moral vision, to--'
'Yes, sir?' he rejoined with a sarcastic smile, finding the secretary
stopped. 'You were saying'--
Gashford meekly shrugged his shoulders, and looking on the ground again,
was silent.
'No, but let us really,' interposed Sir John at this juncture, 'let us
really, for a moment, contemplate the very remarkable character of this
meeting. Haredale, my dear friend, pardon me if I think you are not
sufficiently impressed with its singularity. Here we stand, by no
previous appointment or arrangement, three old schoolfellows, in
Westminster Hall; three old boarders in a remarkably dull and shady
seminary at Saint Omer's, where you, being Catholics and of necessity
educated out of England, were brought up; and where I, being a promising
young Protestant at that time, was sent to learn the French tongue from
a native of Paris!'
'Add to the singularity, Sir John,' said Mr Haredale, 'that some of you
Protestants of promise are at this moment leagued in yonder building, to
prevent our having the surpassing and unheard-of privilege of teaching
our children to read and write--here--in this land, where thousands of
us enter your service every year, and to preserve the freedom of which,
we die in bloody battles abroad, in heaps: and that others of you, to
the number of some thousands as I learn, are led on to look on all men
of my creed as wolves and beasts of prey, by this man Gashford.
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