“I’ll take you there.”
“Thank you. Perhaps it would be as well if you did not come in. I have a serious matter to discuss with old Pieface—I mean, with the Rev. Stanley Brandon.”
“I have a serious matter to discuss with his daughter. I’ll just hang about the garden.”
“You are a very excellent young man,” said the bishop, as they walked along. “You are a curate, eh?”
“At present. But,” said Augustine, tapping his companion on the chest, “just watch my smoke. That’s all I ask you to do—just watch my smoke.”
“I will. You should rise to great heights—to the very top of the tree.”
“Like you did just now, eh? Ha, ha!”
“Ha, ha!” said the bishop. “You young rogue!”
He poked Augustine in the ribs.
“Ha, ha, ha!” said Augustine.
He slapped the bishop on the back.
“But all joking aside,” said the bishop as they entered the vicarage grounds, “I really shall keep my eye on you and see that you receive the swift preferment which your talents and character deserve. I say to you, my dear young friend, speaking seriously and weighing my words, that the way you picked that dog off with that stone was the smoothest thing I ever saw. And I am a man who always tells the strict truth.”
“Great is truth and mighty above all things. Esdras 4:41,” said Augustine.
He turned away and strolled towards the laurel bushes, which were his customary meeting-place with Jane. The bishop went on to the front door and rang the bell.
Although they had made no definite appointment, Augustine was surprised when the minutes passed and no Jane appeared. He did not know that she had been told off by her father to entertain the bishop’s wife that morning, and show her the sights of Lower Briskett-in-the-Midden. He waited some quarter of an hour with growing impatience, and was about to leave when suddenly from the house there came to his ears the sound of voices raised angrily.
He stopped. The voices appeared to proceed from a room on the ground floor facing the garden.
Running lightly over the turf, Augustine paused outside the window and listened. The window was open at the bottom, and he could hear quite distinctly.
The vicar was speaking in a voice that vibrated through the room.
“Is that so?” said the vicar.
“Yes, it is!” said the bishop.
“Ha, ha!”
“Ha, ha! to you, and see how you like it!” rejoined the bishop with spirit.
Augustine drew a step closer. It was plain that Jane’s fears had been justified and that there was serious trouble afoot between these two old schoolfellows. He peeped in. The vicar, his hands behind his coattails, was striding up and down the carpet, while the bishop, his back to the fireplace, glared defiance at him from the hearthrug.
“Who ever told you you were an authority on chasubles?” demanded the vicar.
“That’s all right who told me,” rejoined the bishop.
“I don’t believe you know what a chasuble is.”
“Is that so?”
“Well, what is it, then?”
“It’s a circular cloak hanging from the shoulders, elaborately embroidered with a pattern and with orphreys. And you can argue as much as you like, young Pieface, but you can’t get away from the fact that there are too many orphreys on yours. And what I’m telling you is that you’ve jolly well got to switch off a few of these orphreys or you’ll get it in the neck.”
The vicar’s eyes glittered furiously.
“Is that so?” he said. “Well, I just won’t, so there! And it’s like your cheek coming here and trying to high-hat me. You seem to have forgotten that I knew you when you were an inky-faced kid at school, and that, if I liked, I could tell the world one or two things about you which would probably amuse it.”
“My past is an open book.”
“Is it?” The vicar laughed malevolently. “Who put the white mouse in the French master’s desk?”
The bishop started.
“Who put jam in the dormitory prefect’s bed?” he retorted.
“Who couldn’t keep his collar clean?”
“Who used to wear a dickey?” The bishop’s wonderful organ-like voice, whose softest whisper could be heard throughout a vast cathedral, rang out in tone of thunder. “Who was sick at the house supper?”
The vicar quivered from head to foot. His rubicund face turned a deeper crimson.
“You know jolly well,” he said, in shaking accents, “that there was something wrong with the turkey. Might have upset anyone.”
“The only thing wrong with the turkey was that you ate too much of it. If you had paid as much attention to developing your soul as you did to developing your tummy, you might by now,” said the bishop, “have risen to my own eminence.”
“Oh, might I?”
“No, perhaps I am wrong. You never had the brain.”
The vicar uttered another discordant laugh.
“Brain is good! We know all about your eminence, as you call it, and how you rose to that eminence.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are a bishop. How you became one we will not inquire.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I say. We will not inquire.”
“Why don’t you inquire?”
“Because,” said the vicar, “it is better not!”
The bishop’s self-control left him. His face contorted with fury, he took a step forward. And simultaneously Augustine sprang lightly into the room.
“Now, now, now!” said Augustine. “Now, now, now, now, now!”
The two men stood transfixed. They stared at the intruder dumbly.
“Come, come!” said Augustine.
The vicar was the first to recover. He glowered at Augustine.
“What do you mean by jumping through my window?” he thundered. “Are you a curate or a harlequin?”
Augustine met his gaze with an unfaltering eye.
“I am a curate,” he replied, with a dignity that well became him. “And, as a curate, I cannot stand by and see two superiors of the cloth, who are moreover old schoolfellows, forgetting themselves. It isn’t right. Absolutely not right, my old superiors of the cloth.”
The vicar bit his lip. The bishop bowed his head.
“Listen,” proceeded Augustine, placing a hand on the shoulder of each. “I hate to see you two dear good chaps
