The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
be satisfied to work very hard and to have only very bad food and clothes and homes.'
'Then I should think the workers ought to be jolly well ashamed of themselves, Mum, don't you?'
'Well, in one sense they ought, but you must remember that that's what they've always been taught. But you have been taught differently. Do you remember what you told me the other day, when you came home from school, about the scripture lesson?'
'About St Thomas?'
'Yes. What did the teacher say St Thomas was?'
'She said he was a bad example; and she said I was worse than him because I asked too many foolish questions. She always gets in a wax if I talk too much.'
'Well, why did she call St Thomas a bad example?'
'Because he wouldn't believe what he was told.'
'Exactly. Well, when you told Dad about it what did he say?'
'Dad told me that really St Thomas was the only sensible man in the whole crowd of apostles. That is,' added Frankie, correcting himself, 'if there ever was such a man at all.'
'But did Dad say that there never was such a man?'
'No; he said he didn't believe there ever was, but he told me to just listen to what the teacher said about such things, and then to think about it in my own mind, and wait till I'm grown up and then I can use my own judgment.'
'Well now, that's what you were told, but all the other children's mothers and fathers tell them to believe, without thinking, whatever the teacher says. So it will be no wonder if those children are not able to think for themselves when they're grown up, will it?'
'Don't you think it will be any use, then, for me to tell them what to do to the idlers?' asked Frankie, dejectedly.
'Hark!' said his mother, holding up her finger.
'Dad!' cried Frankie, rushing to the door and flinging it open.
He ran along the passage and opened the staircase door before Owen reached the top of the last flight of stairs.
'Why ever do you come up at such a rate?' exclaimed Owen's wife reproachfully, as he came into the room exhausted from the climb upstairs and sank panting into the nearest chair.
'I al—ways—for—get,' he replied, when he had in some degree recovered.
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