ongregation hate
the very sight of a church--well, there's something wrong about it
somewhere."

Mrs. Pennycoop, gentlest of little women, laid her plump and still
pretty hands upon her husband's shoulders. "Don't think, dear, I
haven't sympathized with you. You have borne it nobly. I have marvelled
sometimes that you have been able to control yourself as you have done,
most times; the things that he has said to you."

Mr. Pennycoop had slid unconsciously into an attitude suggestive of
petrified virtue, lately discovered.

"One's own poor self," observed Mr. Pennycoop, in accents of proud
humility--"insults that are merely personal one can put up with. Though
even there," added the senior churchwarden, with momentary descent
towards the plane of human nature, "nobody cares to have it hinted
publicly across the vestry table that one has chosen to collect from
the left side for the express purpose of artfully passing over one's own
family."

"The children have always had their three-penny-bits ready waiting in
their hands," explained Mrs. Pennycoop, indignantly.

"It's the sort of thing he says merely for the sake of making a
disturbance," continued the senior churchwarden. "It's the things he
does I draw the line at."

"The things he has done, you mean, dear," laughed the little woman, with
the accent on the "has." "It is all over now, and we are going to be
rid of him. I expect, dear, if we only knew, we should find it was his
liver. You know, George, I remarked to you the first day that he came
how pasty he looked and what a singularly unpleasant mouth he had.
People can't help these things, you know, dear. One should look upon
them in the light of afflictions and be sorry for them."

"I could forgive him doing what he does if he didn't seem to enjoy it,"
said the senior churchwarden. "But, as you say, dear, he is going, and
all I hope and pray is that we never see his like again."

"And you'll come with me to call upon him, George," urged kind little
Mrs. Pennycoop. "After all, he has been our vicar for three years, and
he must be feeling it, poor man--whatever he may pretend--going away
like this, knowing that everybody is glad to see the back of him."

"Well, I sha'n't say anything I don't really feel," stipulated Mr.
Pennycoop.

"That will be all right, dear," laughed his wife, "so long as you don't
say what you do feel. And we'll both of us keep our temper," further
suggested the little woman, "whatev