about the hewing in pieces of Agag."

"That's nothing to do with it," says Usk: "we're bound to set an
example."

"That's why you doze in public, and Mrs. Curzon wears her big pearls, to
lead the school-children in the way they should go."

"That's nothing to do with it," repeats Lord Usk, somewhat crossly. He
has a comfortable if indistinct idea that he does something patriotic,
patriarchal, and highly praiseworthy in getting up an hour earlier than
usual one Sunday out of three, and putting on a tall hat, a frock-coat,
and a pair of new gloves, to attend the village church for morning
service when he is at Orme, Denton, or Surrenden in fine weather.

If he sleeps, what of that? There are curtains to the pew, and nobody
sees him except the Babe, who takes fiendish rapture in catching big
flies and releasing them from a careful little hand to alight on his
father's forehead or nose. The Babe would define the Sunday morning as a
horrid bore tempered by blue-bottles.

"What a curiously conventional mind is the English mind!" thinks
Brandolin, when he is alone. "Carlisle is right: the gig is its
standard. The gig is out of fashion as a vehicle, but the national mind
remains the same as in the age of gigs,--content with the outside of
things, clinging to the husk, to the shell, to the outward appearance,
and satisfied with these. My dear friend puts on his chimney-pot, then
takes it off and snores in his pew, and thinks that he has done
something holy which will sustain both Church and State, as he thinks
that he prays when he buries his face in his hat and creases his
trousers on a hassock! Mysterious consolations of the unfathomable human
breast!"

CHAPTER V.

A few new people have come by the brake, and make their appearance at
luncheon. More come by the five-o'clock train, and are visible at
six-o'clock tea, which is always to be had in the library any time
before seven: dinner at all the Usk houses is always at nine.
Brandolin's doctrines do not prevail with any of his acquaintances,
although he, unlike most professors, emphasizes them by example.

Among the people who come by the latter train are the famous Mr.
Wootton, a man very famous at London dinner-parties, and Lady Gundrede
Vansittart, whose dinners are the best in London.

"Where would those two people be if you brought the pulse and the rice
you recommend into fashion?" says their host to Brandolin. "Take 'em
away from the table, they'd be