“You may see mine, Mr Nanjivell.  Look what some kind friend sent me this mornin’!”

“Well, I s’wow!” exclaimed Nicky-Nan, after a silence of astonishment.  “If I didn’ get such another Prince o’ Wales’s plume, an’ this very mornin’ too!”

“You?” cried the two young men together.  “See here”—­Nicky in his turn pulled forth an envelope.  “But what do it signify at all?  ’Tis all a heathen mystery to me.”

“Well, and how are we getting along?” asked the Vicar two days later, as he entered the morning-room where his wife sat busily addressing circulars and notices of sub-committee meetings.

She looked up, with a small pucker on her forehead.  “I suppose it is drudgery; but do you know, Robert,” she confessed, “I really believe I could get to like this sort of thing in time?”

He laughed, a trifle wistfully.  “And do you know, Agatha, why it is that clergymen and their wives so seldom trouble the Divorce Court—­ in comparison, we’ll say, with soldiers and soldiers’ wives? . . .  No, you are going to answer wrong.  It isn’t because the parsons are better men—­for I don’t believe they are.”

“Then it seems to follow that their wives must be better women!”

“You’re wrong again.  It’s because the wife of a parish priest, even when she has no children of her own”—­here the Vicar winced, flushed, and went on rapidly—­“nine times out of ten has a whole parish to mother—­clothing-clubs, Sunday-school classes, mothers’ meetings, children’s outings, choir feasts,—­it’s all looking after people, clothing ’em, feeding ’em, patting ’em on the head or boxing their ears and telling ’em to be good—­which is just the sort of business a virtuous woman delights in. She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household and a portion to her maidens.  ‘A portion to her maidens’; you see she used to measure out the butter in Solomon’s time.”

“It wouldn’t do in this parish,” she said with a laugh.  “They’d give notice at once.”

“God forgive me that I brought you to this parish, Agatha!”

“Now if you begin to talk like that—­when I’ve really made a beginning!” She pointed in triumph to the stacks of missives on the writing-table.

“It’s I who bungled, the other day, when I suggested your giving Mrs Polsue a duplicate list of the names and addresses.  I thought it would please her and save you half the secretarial labour; and now it appears that you like the secretarial labour!”

“What has happened?” Mrs Steele asked.  “Well, young Obed Pearce rode over to see me yesterday.  He’s in great distress of mind, poor fellow; dying to enlist and serve his country, but held back by his parents, who won’t hear of it.  As if this wasn’t torture enough, in the midst of it he gets an envelope by post—­addressed in a feigned hand, and with no letter inside, but just three white feathers.”

“Oh, hateful!  Who could be so wicked?”