Bennett gave an expressive gesture.

“She won’t go—­you may depend on that!” he said; “She’s had too much of parsons as it is.  Why Mrs. Fred—­that’s her American aunt—­was regular pestered with ’em coming beggin’ of her for their churches and their windows and their schools and their infants and their poor, lame, blind, sick of all sorts, as well as for theirselves.  D’rectly they knew she was a millionaire lady’ they ’adn’t got but one thought—­how to get some of the millions out of her.  There was three secretaries kept when we was in London, and they’d hardly time for bite nor sup with all the work they ‘ad, refusin’ scores of churches and religious folks all together.  Miss Maryllia’s got a complete scare o’ parsons.  Whenever she see a shovel-hat coming she just flew!  When she was in Paris it was the Catholics as wanted money—­nuns, sisters of the poor, priests as ’ad been turned out by the Government,—­and what not,—­and out in America it was the Christian Scientists all the time with such a lot of tickets for lectures and fal-lals as you never saw,—­then came the Spiritooalists with their seeances; and altogether the Vancourt family got to look on all sorts of religions merely as so many kinds of beggin’ boxes which if you dropped money into, you went straight to the Holy-holies, and if you didn’t you dropped down into the great big D’s.  No!—­I don’t think anyone need expect to see my lady at church—­it’s the last place she’d ever think of going to!”

This piece of information was received by his hearers with profound gravity.  No one spoke, and during the uncomfortable pause Bennett gave a careless ’Good-night!’—­and took his departure.

“Things is come to a pretty pass in this ’ere country,” then said Mr. Netlips grandiosely, “when the woman who is merely the elevation of the man, exhibits in public a conviction to which her status is unfitted.  If the lady who now possesses the Manor were under the submission of a husband, he would naturally assume the control which is govemmentally retaliative and so compel her to include the religious considerations of the minority in her communicative system!”

Farmer Thorpe looked impressed, but slightly puzzled.

“You sez fine, Mr. Netlips,—­you sez fine,” he observed respectfully.  “Not that I altogether understands ye, but that’s onny my want of book-larnin’ and not spellin’ through the dictionary as I oughter when I was a youngster.  Howsomever I makes bold to guess wot you’re drivin’ at and I dessay you may be right.  But I’m fair bound to own that if it worn’t for Mr. Walden, I shouldn’t be found in church o’ Sundays neither, but lyin’ flat on my back in a field wi’ my face turned up to the sun, a-thinkin’ of the goodness o’ God, and hopin’ He’d put a hand out to ’elp make the crops grow as they should do.  Onny Passon he be a rare good man, and he do speak to the ’art of ye so wise-like and quiet, and that’s why I goes to hear him and sez the prayers wot’s