“You’ve nothing more to complain of?” asked the Monsignor.

“No—­no—­” The second “no” was drawn out to its full length.  “Of course, he’s unpunctual, and he’s often late for dinner.  I don’t know where he gets his dinner at all sometimes.  And there are always ladies coming to see him.  If there are two in the parlour and another in the dining-room, and a young man on the stairs, it’s for ever Father Molyneux they are asking for.  And, of course, he has too much money given him for the poor, and we have double the beggars we had last year.”

“But,” said the other, “you know there’s more being said than all that.  There’s an unpleasant story, and it’s about that I want to ask you.  Well—­the same sort of thing as poor Nobbs; you’ll remember Nobbs?”

“Remember Nobbs!  Why, I was curate with him when I first left the seminary.  Now, there was a preacher, if you like!  But it turned his head completely.  Poor, wretched Nobbs!  It’s a dangerous thing to preach too well, I’m certain of that.”

“Well, it’s a danger you and I have been spared,” said the Monsignor, and they both laughed heartily.

Then they got back to the point.

“Well,” said the Rector, “there’s a lady comes here sometimes who spoke to me about this the other day.  It seems she went to see John Nicholls, and the poor old blind fellow bit her head off, but she thought she ought to tell somebody who might put a stop to the talk, and so she came to me.  There’s some woman, a very rich Protestant, who gives out openly that she is waiting till Molyneux announces that he doesn’t believe in the Church, and then they will marry and go to America.  Then, another day Jim Dixon came along, and a friend of his had heard the tale from some Army man at his Club.  It’s exactly the way things went on about Nobbs, you know, beginning with talk like that.  Really, if it wasn’t for having seen Nobbs go down hill I shouldn’t think anything of it.  Young Molyneux is all straight so far, but so was Nobbs straight at first.”

“A priest shouldn’t be talked about,” said the Monsignor.

“Of course not,” said the Rector.

“He has started too young,” the Monsignor went on, not unkindly; “it’s all come on in such a hurry; he ought to have had a country mission first.  But my predecessor thought he’d be so safe with you.”

“But how can I help it?” asked the other hotly; “I’m sure I’ve done my best!  You can ask him if I haven’t warned him from his very first sermon that he’d be a popular preacher.  I’ve even tried to teach him to preach.  I’ve lent him Challoner, and Hay, and Wiseman, and tried to get him out of his Oxford notions, but he’s no sooner in the pulpit than he’s off at a hard gallop—­three hundred words to a minute, and such words!—­’vitality,’ ‘personality,’ ‘development,’ ‘recrudescence,’ ’mentality’—­the Lord knows what!  And there they sit and gaze at him with their mouths open drinking it in as if they’d been starved!  No, no; it won’t be my fault if he turns out another Nobbs—­poor, miserable old Nobbs!  Now his really were sermons!”