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"
Ordered! Oh, everything's ordered, when a person has to find some way
out when he has been stupid. Just the same, it was ordered that the
money should come to us in this special way, and it was you that must
take it on yourself to go meddling with the designs of Providence--and
who gave you the right? It was wicked, that is what it was--just
blasphemous presumption, and no more becoming to a meek and humble
professor of--"
"
But, Mary, you know how we have been trained all our lives long, like
the whole village, till it is absolutely second nature to us to stop not
a single moment to think when there's an honest thing to be done--"
"
Oh, I know it, I know it--it's been one everlasting training and
training and training in honesty--honesty shielded, from the very cradle,
against every possible temptation, and so it's artificial honesty, and
weak as water when temptation comes, as we have seen this night. God
knows I never had shade nor shadow of a doubt of my petrified and
indestructible honesty until now--and now, under the very first big and
real temptation, I--Edward, it is my belief that this town's honesty is
as rotten as mine is; as rotten as yours. It is a mean town, a hard,
stingy town, and hasn't a virtue in the world but this honesty it is so
celebrated for and so conceited about; and so help me, I do believe that
if ever the day comes that its honesty falls under great temptation, its
grand reputation will go to ruin like a house of cards. There, now, I've
made confession, and I feel better; I am a humbug, and I've been one all
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