There’s neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee.

— SHAKESPEARE.

“MY mind misgives me, Dick!” said the Bishop, a day or two later, as Dick joined him and his sister and Rachel at luncheon at the Palace. “I am convinced that you have been up to some mischief.”

“I have just returned from Warpington, my lord. I understood it was your wish I should ride over and tell them Hester was better.”

“It certainly was my wish. I’m very much obliged to you. But I remembered after you had gone that you had refused to speak to Gresley when he was over here, and I was sorry I sent you.”

“I spoke to him all right,” said Dick grimly. “That was why I was so alacritous to go.”

The Bishop looked steadily at him.

“Until you are my suffragan I should prefer to manage my own business with my clergy.”

“Just so,” said Dick, helping himself to mustard. “But you see I’m his cousin, and I thought it just as well to let him know quietly and dispassionately what I thought of him. So I told him I was not particular about my acquaintances. I knew lots of bad eggs out in Australia, half of them hatched in England, chaps who’d been shaved and tubbed gratis by Government, in fact I’d a large visiting list, but that I drew the line at such a cad as him, and that he might remember I wasn’t going to preach for him at any more of his little cold water cures"— a smile hovered on Dick’s crooked mouth —“or ever take any notice of him in future. That was what he wanted, my lord. You were too soft with him, if you’ll excuse my saying so. But that sort of chap wants it giving him hot and strong. He doesn’t understand anything else. He gets quite beyond himself, fizzing about on his little pocket-handkerchief of a parish, thinking he is a sort of god, because no one makes it their business to keep him in his place, and rub it into him that he is an infernal fool. That is why some clergymen jaw so, because they never have it brought home to them what rot they talk. They’d be no sillier than other men if they were only treated properly. I was very calm, but I let him have it. I told him he was a mean sneak, and that either he was the biggest fool or the biggest rogue going, and that the mere fact of his cloth did not give him the right to do dishonest things with other people’s property, though it did save him from the pounding he richly deserved. He tried to interrupt, indeed he was tooting all the time like a fog-horn, but I did not take any notice, and I wound up by saying it was men like him who brought discredit on the Church and on the clergy, and who made the gorge rise of decent chaps like me.”

“Yes,” said Dick after a pause. “When I left him he understood, I don’t say entirely, but he had a distant glimmering. It isn’t often I go on these errands of mercy, but I felt that the least I could do was to back you up, my lord. Of course, it is in little matters like this that lay helpers come in, who are not so hampered about their language as I suppose the clergy are.”

The Bishop tried, he tried hard, to look severe, but his mouth twitched.

“Don’t thank me,” said Dick. “Nothing is a trouble where you are concerned. It was — ahem — pleasure.”

“That I can believe,” said the Bishop. “Well, Dick, Providence makes use of strange instruments — the jawbone of an ass has a certain Scriptural prestige. I daresay you reached poor Gresley where I failed. I certainly failed. But if it is not too much to ask, I should regard it as a favour another time if I might be informed beforehand what direction your diocesan aid was about to take.”

Dr. Brown, who often came to luncheon at the Palace, came in now. He took off his leathern driving gloves and held his hands to the fire.

“Cold,” he said. “They’re skating everywhere. How is Miss Gresley?”

“She knows us to-day,” said Rachel, “and she is quite cheerful.”

“Does the poor thing know her book is burnt?”

“No. She was speaking this morning of its coming out in the spring.”

The little doctor thrust out his underlip and changed the subject.

“I travelled from Pontesbury this morning,” he said, “with that man who was nearly drowned at Beaumere in the summer. I doctored him at Wilderleigh. Tall, thin, rather a fine gentleman. I forget his name.”

Dr. Brown always spoke of men above himself in the social scale as “fine gentlemen.”

“Mr. Redman,” said Miss Keane, the Bishop’s sister, a dignified person, who had been hampered throughout life by a predilection for the wrong name, and by making engagements in illegible handwriting by last year’s almanacs.

“Was it Mr. Scarlett?” said Rachel, feeling Dick’s lynx eye upon her. “I was at Wilderleigh when the accident happened.”

“That’s the man. He got out at Southminster, and asked me which was the best hotel. No, I won’t have any more, thanks. I’ll go up and see Miss Gresley at once.”

Rachel followed the Bishop into the library. They generally waited there together till the doctor came down.

“I don’t know many young men I like better than Dick,” said the Bishop. "I should marry him if I were a young woman. I admire the way he acts up to his principles. Very few of us do. Until he has a further light on the subject he is right to knock a man down who insults him. And from his point of view he was justified in speaking to Mr. Gresley as he did. I was sorely tempted to say something of that kind to him myself, but as one grows grey one realises that one can only speak in a spirit of love. A man of Dick’s stamp will always be respected because he does not assume virtues which belong to a higher grade than he is on at present. But when he reaches that higher grade he will act as thoroughly upon the convictions that accompany it as he does now on his present convictions.”

“He certainly would not turn the other cheek to the smiter.”

“I should not advise the smiter to reckon on it. And unless it is turned from that rare sense of spiritual brotherhood it would be unmanly to turn it. To imitate the outward appearance of certain virtues is like imitating the clothes of a certain class. It does not make us belong to the class to dress like it. The true foundation for the spiritual life, as far as I can see it, is in the full development of our human nature with all its simple trusts and aspirations. I admire Dick’s solid foundation. It will carry a building worthy of him some day. But my words of wisdom appear to be thrown away upon you. You are thinking of something else.”

“I was thinking that I ought to tell you that I am engaged to be married.”

The Bishop’s face lit up.

“I am engaged to Mr. Scarlett. That is why he has come down here.”

The Bishop’s face fell. Rachel had been three days at the Palace. Dick had not allowed the grass to grow under his feet. “That admirable promptitude,” the Bishop had remarked to himself, “deserves success.”

“Poor, dear Dick,” he said softly.

“That is what Hester says. I told her yesterday.”

“I really have a very high opinion of Dick,” said the Bishop.

“So have I. If I might have two I would certainly choose him second.”

“But this superfluous Mr. Scarlett comes first, eh?”

“I am afraid he does.”

“Well,” said the Bishop with a sigh, “if you are so ungrateful as to marry to please yourself instead of to please me there is nothing more to be said. I will have a look at your Mr. Scarlett when he comes to tea. I suppose he will come to tea. I notice the most farouche men do when they are engaged. It is the first step in the taming process. I shall of course bring an entirely unprejudiced mind to bear upon him, as I always make a point of doing, but I warn you beforehand I shan’t like him.”

“Because he is not Mr. Dick.”

“Well, yes, because he is not Dick. I suppose his name is Bertie.”

“Not Bertie,” said Rachel indignantly, “Hugh.”

“It’s a poor inefficient kind of name, only four letters, and a duplicate at each end. I don’t think, my dear, he is worthy of you.”

“Dick has only four letters.”

“I make it a rule never to argu............