CHAPTER V.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 14, 22 January 1892, Page 21

CHAPTER V.

It was a large rambling house in which the new Canon of St Swithun's found himself. " Quite the house for a married man with a big hungry family," as Miss Clutterbeck had more than once remarked, There were rooms enough to locate a small brotherhood if needs be. Certainly, there was too much space for one person, for space insists upon being filled somehow, and if with nothing better, then with melancholy. " I believe," said Conway Hope to himself on the third evening, as he lighted his candle and heard the echo of his footsteps on the broad oak staircase, which was guiltless of the profanation of Axminster carpet — " I believe I shall have to marry or — " It was that "or " that Miss Clutterbeck, with the peculiar insight into the male clerical character possessed by very churchy ladies, both married and unmarried, saw, and, seeing, assumed an authoratati? e silence upon the strength of it when the f ature of the new Canon was discusssd — as it most certainly was discussed — very vigorously by the Abbey set. A Bet to which it was the boast of Miss Clatterbeck's inner consciousness that she had the honour to belong : an honour won by admirable tact — the tact of a certain jovial dowdyism as much as anything, and also by a power all her own— the powtr of turning a slight into a further opportunity of showing her Christian benevolence by failing to obßerve it. " I shall become desperately intimate with her," said the andacious Emma to the Archdeacon on one occasion, '' jußt because of her pluck. I went out at the side door, and she greeted me at the front door. Now that conquered me I" Whereupon the Archdeacon made Emma a profound bow ; he got up from his chair, too, to make it. He was dreadfully oldfashioned, and whenever he desirtd to show his appreciation of Emma he found himself led away into the practices of a bygone century. Oddly enough, though, Emma liked it.

"It's all a part of it," she said to herself. "It was rery courageous of him to marry a lady so many years younger than himself, and one, too, who knows the ' Cities of Miny People,' and, to take a farther liberty with the Od. i. 3, the minds of many men." It was while reflecting on the many minds that had interested her, both ancient and modern, that Mrs Cudlip-Gaye thought there might have possibly come within her circumference yet another individualised soul, and that soul the new Canon. He had preached an extraordinary sermon at the Abbey before coming into residence —a sermon which, for harmony of colour and sound, was absolutely perfect. He had preached on ideals. He had called idealism the new mantle which was descending on a materialistic age. He had waged war, in a perfect torrent of fiery words, against prejudice, bigotry, and all daring repression of the exquisite dreams which, when tranelated into realism, formed the new avenues which became the home of new thoughts. Mrs Cadwallader had come out of the Abbey on that particular morning with her lips twisted anyhow, and over her capacious forehead a fine web of packers suggestive of spiderß at work. " If we can't repose in our cathedrals and abbeys, where can we ?" she said, gasping, and clutching at Mrs Gudlip-Gaye's arm as she gasped. If Mrs Cadlip-Gaye did not show as keen as sense of appreciation of Mrs Oadwallader's honesty as that lady expectad, can you blame her ?