“What!” I exclaimed.  “Lady Y—­:  that funny old woman!”

“No—­middle-aged,” he corrected, a little frigidly and perhaps a little mockingly at the same time.

“Very well, middle-aged if you like; I don’t know her personally.  One hears about her; but I did not know she had a place in these parts.”

“She owns most of this parish and has done so much for us that we can very well look leniently on a little weakness—­her wish that the future inhabitants of the place shall not remember her as a middle-aged woman not remarkable for good looks—­’funny,’ as you just now said.”

He was wonderfully candid, I thought.  But what extraordinary benefits had she bestowed on them, I asked, to enable them to regard, or to say, that this picture of a very beautiful young female was her likeness!

“Why,” he said, “the church would not have been built but for her.  We were astonished at the sum she offered to contribute towards the work, and at once set about pulling the small old church down so as to rebuild on the exact site.”

“Do you know,” I returned, “I can’t help saying something you will not like to hear.  It is a very fine church, no doubt, but it always angers me to hear of a case like this where some ancient church is pulled down and a grand new one raised in its place to the honour and glory of some rich parvenu with or without a brand new title.”

“You are not hurting me in the least,” he replied, with that change which came from time to time in his eyes as if the flame behind the screen had suddenly grown brighter.  “I agree with every word you say; the meanest church in the land should be cherished as long as it will hold together.  But unfortunately ours had to come down.  It was very old and decayed past mending.  The floor was six feet below the level of the surrounding ground and frightfully damp.  It had been examined over and over again by experts during the past forty or fifty years, and from the first they pronounced it a hopeless case, so that it was never restored.  The interior, right down to the time of demolition, was like that of most country churches of a century ago, with the old black worm-eaten pews, in which the worshippers shut themselves up as if in their own houses or castles.  On account of the damp we were haunted by toads.  You smile, sir, but it was no smiling matter for me during my first year as vicar, when I discovered that it was the custom here to keep pet toads in the church.  It sounds strange and funny, no doubt, but it is a fact that all the best people in the parish had one of these creatures, and it was customary for the ladies to bring it a weekly supply of provisions—­bits of meat, hard-boiled eggs chopped up, and earth-worms, and whatever else they fancied it would like—­in their reticules.  The toads, I suppose, knew when it was Sunday—­their feeding day; at all events they would crawl out of their holes in the floor under the pews to receive their rations—­and caresses.  The toads got on my nerves with rather unpleasant consequences.  I preached in a way which my listeners did not appreciate or properly understand, particularly when I took for my subject our duty towards the lower animals, including reptiles.”