...
Never had two human beings understood each other more completely.
A dirty little boy! Capable no doubt of a thousand kindred
scoundrelisms.
It seemed ages before the conscience-stricken bishop could tear himself
from the spot and walk back, with such a pretence of dignity as he could
muster, to the house.
And instead of the discourse he had prepared for the Shop-girls' Church
Association, he had preached on temptation and falling, and how he knew
they had all fallen, and how he understood and could sympathize with the
bitterness of a secret shame, a moving but unsuitable discourse that
had already been subjected to misconstruction and severe reproof in the
local press of Princhester.
But the haunting thing in the bishop's memory was the face and gesture
of the little boy. That grubby little finger stabbed him to the heart.
"Oh, God!" he groaned. "The meanness of it! How did I bring myself--?"
He turned out the light convulsively, and rolled over in the bed, making
a sort of cocoon of himself. He bored his head into the pillow and
groaned, and then struggled impatiently to throw the bed-clothes off
himself. Then he sat up and talked aloud.
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