f it is difficult with the food, it is worse still with what they
are to drink. Some clergymen do so dislike wine, and others feel they
need it before the exertion of speaking. Only last year, when Mrs
Bulteel gave a drawing-room meeting, and champagne with biscuits was
served before it, Dr Stimey said quite openly that though he did not
consider all who drank to be _reprobate_, yet he must regard alcohol as
the Mark of the Beast, and that people did not come to drawing-room
meetings to drink themselves sleepy before the speaking. With Bishops
it must be much worse; so I don't know what we shall give him."

"Don't distress yourself too much," the organist said, having at last
spied a gap in the serried ranks of words; "I have found out what
Bishops eat; it is all in a little book. We must give him cold lamb--
cold ribs of lamb--and mint sauce, boiled potatoes, and after that
Stilton cheese."

"Stilton?" Miss Joliffe asked with some trepidation. "I am afraid it
will be very expensive."

As a drowning man in one moment passes in review the events of a
lifetime, so her mind took an instantaneous conspectus of all cheeses
that had ever stood in the cheese-cradle in the palmy days of Wydcombe,
when hams and plum-puddings hung in bags from the rafters, when there
was cream in the dairy and beer in the cellar. Blue Vinny, little
Gloucesters, double Besants, even sometimes a cream-cheese with rushes
on the bottom, but Stilton never!

"I am afraid it is a _very_ expensive cheese; I do not think anyone in
Cullerne keeps it."

"It is a pity," Mr Sharnall said; "but we cannot help ourselves, for
Bishops _must_ have Stilton for lunch; the book says so. You must ask
Mr Custance to get you a piece, and I will tell you later how it is to
be cut, for there are rules about that too."

He laughed to himself with a queer little chuckle. Cold lamb and mint
sauce, with a piece of Stilton afterwards--they would have an Oxford
lunch; they would be young again, and undefiled.

The stimulus that the Bishop's letter had brought Mr Sharnall soon wore
off. He was a man of moods, and in his nervous temperament depression
walked close at the heels of exaltation. Westray felt sure in those
days that followed that his friend was drinking to excess, and feared
something more serious than a mere nervous breakdown, from the agitation
and strangeness that he could not fail to observe in the organist's
manner.

The door of the architect