or share the sports
of honest laymen. The shaven one was Mr. Josephs, his companion Mr.
Fairholme. Obvious scriptural perversions of this brace of names had
been introduced by Agatha.

"Here come Pharaoh and Joseph," she said to Jane. "Joseph will blush
when you look at him. Pharaoh won't blush until he passes Gertrude, so
we shall lose that."

"Josephs, indeed!" said Jane scornfully.

"He loves you, Jane. Thin persons like a fine armful of a woman.
Pharaoh, who is a cad, likes blue blood on the same principle of the
attraction of opposites. That is why he is captivated by Gertrude's
aristocratic air."

"If he only knew how she despises him!"

"He is too vain to suspect it. Besides, Gertrude despises everyone,
even us. Or, rather, she doesn't despise anyone in particular, but is
contemptuous by nature, just as you are stout."

"Me! I had rather be stout than stuck-up. Ought we to bow?"

"I will, certainly. I want to make Pharoah blush, if I can."

The two parsons had been simulating an interest in the cloudy firmament
as an excuse for not looking at the girls until close at hand. Jane sent
an eyeflash at Josephs with a skill which proved her favorite assertion
that she was not so stupid as people thought. He blushed and took off
his soft, low-crowned felt hat. Fairholme saluted very solemnly, for
Agatha bowed to him with marked seriousness. But when his gravity and
his stiff silk hat were at their highest point she darted a mocking
smile at him, and he too blushed, all the deeper because he was enraged
with himself for doing so.

"Did you ever see such a pair of fools?" whispered Jane, giggling.

"They cannot help their sex. They say women are fools, and so they are;
but thank Heaven they are not quite so bad as men! I should like to look
back and see Pharaoh passing Gertrude; but if he saw me he would think I
was admiring him; and he is conceited enough already without that."

The two curates became redder and redder as they passed the column of
young ladies. Miss Lindsay would not look to their side of the road, and
Miss Wilson's nod and smile were not quite sincere. She never spoke to
curates, and kept up no more intercourse with the vicar than she could
not avoid. He suspected her of being an infidel, though neither he nor
any other mortal in Lyvern had ever heard a word from her on the subject
of her religious opinions. But he knew that "moral science" was taught
secularly at the college; and he felt t