dear! what can you be thinking of? On no account whatever. Such
guests would be _most_ inappropriate."

The Rector looked so properly humble and cast down at this reproof that
his wife relented a little.

"Not that there is any _harm_ in asking them, but they would be so very
ill at ease themselves, I fear, in such surroundings. If you think the
number should be even, we might perhaps ask old Noot. He _is_ a
gentleman, and would pass as your chaplain, and say grace."

Thus the party was made up, and Lord Blandamer accepted, and Mrs
Bulteel accepted; and there was no need to trouble about the curate's
acceptance--he was merely ordered to come to lunch. But, after all had
gone so well up to this point, the unexpected happened--the Bishop could
not come. He regretted that he could not accept the hospitality so
kindly offered him by Canon Parkyn; he had an engagement which would
occupy him for any spare time that he would have in Cullerne; he had
made other arrangements for lunch; he would call at the Rectory half an
hour before the service.

The Rector and his wife sat in the "study," a dark room on the north
side of the rectory-house, made sinister from without by dank
laurestinus, and from within by glass cases of badly-stuffed birds. A
Bradshaw lay on the table before them.

"He cannot be _driving_ from Carisbury," Mrs Parkyn said. "Dr Willis
does not keep at all the same sort of stables that his predecessor kept.
Mrs Flint, when she was attending the annual Christian Endeavour
meeting at Carisbury, was told that Dr Willis thinks it wrong that a
Bishop should do more in the way of keeping carriages than is absolutely
necessary for church purposes. She said she had passed the Bishop's
carriage herself, and that the coachman was a most unkempt creature, and
the horses two wretched screws."

"I heard much the same thing," assented the Rector. "They say he would
not have his own coat of arms painted on the carriage, for what was
there already was quite good enough for him. He cannot possibly be
driving here from Carisbury; it is a good twenty miles."

"Well, if he does not drive, he must come by the 12:15 train; that would
give him two hours and a quarter before the service. What business can
he have in Cullerne? Where can he be lunching? What can he be doing
with himself for two mortal hours and a quarter?"

Here was another conundrum to which probably only one person in Cullerne
town could have sup