non Parkyn, and your own arms painted
up clear on the back of it. Don't you trouble for that. It is all laid
down in the statutes, and I shall make the very same obeisance for your
lordship when you take your seat as for my Lord Bishop. `Two
inclinations of the body, the mace being held in the right hand, and
supported on the left arm.' I cannot say more fair than that, for only
royalties have three inclinations, and none of them has ever been to
church in my time--no, nor yet a Lord Blandamer neither, since the day
that your dear father and mother, what you never knew, was buried."

Mrs Janaway drummed with her knuckles on the supper-table, in amazement
that her husband should dare to stand chattering at the door when she
had told him that the meal was ready. But, as the conversation revealed
by degrees the stranger's identity, curiosity to see the man whose name
was in all Cullerne mouths got the better of her, and she came
curtseying to the door.

Lord Blandamer flung the flapping cape of his overcoat over the left
shoulder in a way that made the clerk think of foreigners, and of
woodcuts of Italian opera in a bound volume of the _Illustrated London
News_ which he studied on Sunday evenings.

"I must be moving on," said the visitor, with a shiver. "I must not
keep you standing here; there is a very chill air this evening."

Then Mrs Janaway was seized with a sudden temerity.

"Will your lordship not step in and warm yourself for a moment?" she
interposed. "We have a clear fire burning, if you will overlook the
smell of cooking."

The clerk trembled for a moment at his wife's boldness, but Lord
Blandamer accepted the invitation with alacrity.

"Thank you very much," said he; "I should be very glad to rest a few
minutes before my train leaves. Pray make no apology for the smell of
cookery; it is very appetising, especially at supper-time."

He spoke as if he took supper every evening, and had never heard of a
late dinner in his life; and five minutes later he sat at table with Mr
and Mrs Janaway. The cloth was of roughest homespun, but clean; the
knives and forks handled in old green horn, and the piece-of-resistance
tripe; but the guest made an excellent meal.

"Some folk think highly of squash tripe or ribband tripe," the clerk
said meditatively, looking at the empty dish; "but they don't compare,
according to my taste, with cushion tripe." He was emboldened to make
these culinary remarks by that