“Austin!  Austin!” came still more faintly from Aunt Charlotte.

The vicar, scandalised at first, was now in convulsions of silent laughter.  Mrs Sheepshanks’s parasol was lowered in a most suspicious manner, so as completely to hide her face; while the unfortunate curate, with his head almost between his knees, was working havoc in the vicarage lawn with the point of a heavy walking-stick.  The only person who seemed perfectly at his ease was Austin, and he was enjoying himself hugely.  Then the vicar, feeling it incumbent upon him, as host, to say something to relieve the strain, attempted to pull himself together.

“My dear boy,” he said, in rather a quavering voice, “you may be perfectly sure that our valued guest has no sympathy with any of the barbarous religions you allude to, but is a most loyal member of the Church of England; and that when he said he would like to ‘burn’ a brother clergyman—­one of the greatest Talmudists and Hebrew scholars now alive—­it was only his humorous way of intimating that he was inclined to differ from him on one or two obscure points of historical or verbal criticism which——­”

“It was not,” said the curate’s friend.

Mrs Sheepshanks immediately turned to Aunt Charlotte, and remarked that feather boas were likely to be more than ever in fashion when the weather changed; and Aunt Charlotte said she had heard from a most authoritative source that pleated corselets were to be the rage that autumn.  Both ladies then agreed that the days were certainly beginning to draw in, and asked the curate if he didn’t think so too.  The curate fumbled in his pocket, and offered Austin a cigarette, and Austin, noticing the unconcealed annoyance of the unfortunate young man, who was really not a bad fellow in the main, felt kindly towards him, and accepted the cigarette with effusion.  The vicar relapsed into silence, making no attempt to complete his unfinished sentence; then he stole a glance at the saturnine face of the stranger, and from that moment became an almost liberal-minded theologian; He had had an object-lesson that was to last him all his life, and he never forgot it.

“Well, Austin,” said Aunt Charlotte, when they were walking home, a few minutes later, “of course you ought to have a severe scolding for your behaviour this afternoon; but the fact is, my dear, that on this occasion I do not feel inclined to give you one.  That man was perfectly horrible, and deserved everything he got.  I only hope it may have done him good.  I couldn’t have believed such people existed at the present day.  The most charitable view to take of him is that he can scarcely be in his right mind.”

“What, because he wanted to burn somebody alive?” said Austin.  “Oh, that was natural enough.  I thought it rather an amusing idea, to tell the truth.  The reason I went for him was that I caught him making faces at me when he thought I wasn’t looking.  I saw at once that he was a beast, so the instant he gave me an opportunity of settling accounts with him I took it.  Oh, what a blessing it is to be at home again!  Dear auntie, let’s make a virtuous resolution.  We’ll neither of us go to the vicarage again as long as we both shall live.”