“But he was never fond of him in his heart⁠—that everyone knows,” said Mrs. Tom Toller. “ Mr. Thesiger never goes into extremes. He keeps to the truth in what is evangelical. It is only clergymen like Mr. Tyke, who want to use Dissenting hymnbooks and that low kind of religion, who ever found Bulstrode to their taste.”

“I understand, Mr. Tyke is in great distress about him,” said Mrs. Hackbutt. “And well he may be: they say the Bulstrodes have half kept the Tyke family.”

“And of course it is a discredit to his doctrines,” said Mrs. Sprague, who was elderly, and old-fashioned in her opinions.