When the chapter was finished, Tom shut his Bible with a slap.
"I can't stand that fellow Naaman," said he, "after what he'd seen and felt, going back and bowing himself down in the house of Rimmon, because his effeminate scoundrel of a master did it.

I wonder Elisha took the trouble to heal him.

How he must have despised him!" "Yes; there you go off as usual, with a shell on your head," struck in East, who always took the opposite side to Tom, half from love of argument, half from conviction.

"How do you know he didn't think better of it?
How do you know his master was a scoundrel?
His letter don't look like it, and the book don't say so." "I don't care," rejoined Tom; "why did Naaman talk about bowing down, then, if he didn't mean to do it?
He wasn't likely to get more in earnest when he got back to court, and away from the prophet." "Well, but, Tom," said Arthur, "look what Elisha says to him--'Go in peace.' He wouldn't have said that if Naaman had been in the wrong." "I don't see that that means more than saying, 'You're not the man I took you for.'" "No, no; that won't do at all," said East.

"Read the words fairly, and take men as you find them.