"
"My last words to you is," said Mr. Bullock solemnly, looking out of
the caravan window, "my last words to you are," he corrected himself,
"is to avoid beer. You can touch up the horse, Mr. Smillie."
"I'll come and touch you up, you big-mouthed Bible thumpers," a rich
voice shouted from the inn door. "Yes, you sit outside my public-house
and swill minerals when you're so full of gas already you could light a
corporation gasworks. Avoid beer, you walking bellows? Step down out of
that travelling menagerie, and I'll give you 'avoid beer.' You'll avoid
more than beer before I've finished with you."
But the gospel bearers without paying any attention to the tirade went
on their way; and Mark who did not wait to listen to the innkeeper's
abuse of all religion and all religious people went on his way in the
opposite direction.
Swinging homeward over the Cotswolds Mark flattered himself on a victory
over heretics, and he imagined his adversaries entering Wield that
afternoon, the prey of doubt and mortification. At the highest point of
the road he even ventured to suppose that they might find themselves at
Evensong outside St. Andrew's Church and led within by the grace of the
Holy Spirit that they might renounce their errors before the altar.
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