u! But it is easy to see how _that_
comes about. Lucy Wodehouse and young Wentworth are--; well, I don't
know if they are engaged--but they are always together, walking and
talking, and consulting with each other, and so forth--a great deal
more than I could approve of; but that poor elder sister, you know,
has no authority--nor indeed any experience, poor thing," said the
Rector's wife; "that's how it is, no doubt." "Engaged!" said the
Rector. He gave a kindly glance at his wife, and melted a little.
"Engaged, are they? Poor little thing! I hope she'll be as good as you
have been, my dear; but a young man may be in love without interfering
with another man's parish. I can't forgive that," said Mr Morgan,
recovering himself; "he must be taught to know better; and it is very
hard upon a clergyman," continued the spiritual ruler of Carlingford,
"that he cannot move in a matter like this without incurring a storm
of godless criticism. If I were sending Wentworth out of my parish, I
shouldn't wonder if the 'Times' had an article upon it, denouncing me
as an indolent priest and bigot, that would neither work myself nor
let my betters work; that's how these fellows talk."

"But nobody could say such things of you," said Mrs Morgan, firing up.

"Of me! they'd say them of St Paul, if he had ever been in the
circumstances," said the Rector; "and I should just like to know what
he would have done in a parish like this, with the Dissenters on one
side, and a Perpetual Curate without a district meddling on the other.
Ah, my dear," continued Mr Morgan, "I daresay they had their troubles
in those days; but facing a governor or so now and then, or even
passing a night in the stocks, is a very different thing from a
showing-up in the 'Times,' not to speak of the complications of duty.
Let us go out and call at Folgate's, and see whether he thinks
anything can be done to the church."

"Dear, you wouldn't mind the 'Times' if it were your duty?" said the
Rector's wife, getting up promptly to prepare for the walk.

"No, I suppose not," said Mr Morgan, not without a thrill of importance;
"nor the stake," he added, with a little laugh, for he was not without a
sense of humour; and the two went out to the architect's to ascertain
the result of his cogitations over the church. They passed that sacred
edifice in their way, and went in to gaze at it with a disgust which
only an unhappy priest of high culture and aesthetic tastes, doomed to
o