“But, George, if the pink-room ceiling is not put right by Saturday, where shall we put Uncle Augustus?”

“Into the room just opposite to Lindy’s.”

“What! that little room?  In the bachelor’s passage?  A man of his age, and of his position!”

“I am sure it is large enough for any one under a bishop.  Besides, I don’t think he is fussy about anything except his dinner.”

“It is not the way he is accustomed to be treated when he is on a visit, I can assure you.  He is a person who is generally considered a great deal.”

“Well, I consider him a great deal.  I consider him one of the finest old heathen I ever knew.”

Fortunately for their domestic peace, Lady Atherley usually misses the points of her husband’s speeches, but there are some which jar upon her sense of the becoming, and this was one of them.

“I don’t think,” she observed to me, the offender himself having escaped, “that even if Uncle Augustus were not my uncle, a heathen is a proper name to call a clergyman, especially a canon—­and one who is so looked up to in the Church.  Have you ever heard him preach?  But you must have heard about him, and about his sermons?  I thought so.  They are beautiful.  When he preaches the church is crammed, and with the best people—­in the season, when they are in town.  And he has written a great many religious books too—­sermons and hymns and manuals.  There is a little book in red morocco you may have seen in my sitting-room—­I know it was there a week ago—­which he gave me, The Life of Prayer, with a short meditation and a hymn for every hour of the day—­all composed by him.  We don’t see so much of him as I could wish.  He is so grieved about George’s views.  He gave him some of his own sermons, but of course George would not look at them; and—­so annoying—­the last time he came I put the sermons, two beautiful large volumes of them, on the drawing-room table, and when we were all there after dinner George asked me quite loud what these smart books were, and where they came from.  So altogether he has not come to see us for a long time; but as he happened to be staying with the Mountshires, I begged him to come over for a night or two; so you will hear him preach on Sunday.”

At lunch that day Lady Atherley proposed that I should accompany them to Woodcote.  “Do come, Mr. Lyndsay,” said Denis.  “We shall have cakes for tea, and jam-sandwiches as well.”

“And there is an awfully jolly banister for sliding down,” added Harold, “without any turns or landing, you know.”

I professed myself unable to resist such inducements.  Indeed, I was almost glad to go.  The recollection of Mrs. Mostyn’s cheerful face was as alluring to me that day as the thought of a glowing hearth might be to the beggar on the door-step.  Here, at least, was one to whom life was a blessing; who partook of all it could bestow with an appetite as healthfully keen as her nephew’s, but without his disinclination or disregard for anything besides.