Poor people! They had tried to keep their ignorance of the world from
themselves by calling it the pursuit of heavenly things, and then
shutting their eyes to anything that might give them trouble. A son
having been born to them they had shut his eyes also as far as was
practicable. Who could blame them? They had chapter and verse for
everything they had either done or left undone; there is no better
thumbed precedent than that for being a clergyman and a clergyman's wife.
In what respect had they differed from their neighbours? How did their
household differ from that of any other clergyman of the better sort from
one end of England to the other? Why then should it have been upon them,
of all people in the world, that this tower of Siloam had fallen?
Surely it was the tower of Siloam that was naught rather than those who
stood under it; it was the system rather than the people that was at
fault. If Theobald and his wife had but known more of the world and of
the things that are therein, they would have done little harm to anyone.
Selfish they would have always been, but not more so than may very well
be pardoned, and not more than other people would be.
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