ver afterward, he
persisted in thinking of them jointly--to be buried in a country parish
where it was possible an experienced widower might manage the work
alone.

Of this, however, and of the good Bishop's later meditations and of his
consequent questionings and investigations, Catia unhappily was in
ignorance. Her ignorance, moreover, led her now into employing on her
husband the final weapon in her woman's quiver, namely pathos.

She dropped her eyes to her fingernails, and spoke with reverential
deliberation.

"She was a good woman, Scott, a dear, good woman, even if she always
was a little narrow. It can't fail to be a pleasure to you now to think
back to the way we have done our best to carry out her wishes as--"
suddenly Catia bethought herself of the change in the label of their
theology--"as far as our own consciences would allow us. And now, dear
boy," her eyes drooped lower still over her request; "now that you
haven't her to consider any longer, aren't you willing to do just one
very, very little thing for me?"

"I hope so, Catia," Brenton responded, still quite gravely. "What is it
that you want?"

Despite her efforts to the contrary, her voice thrilled with the sudden
surety that she had gained her cause.

"Write to the Bishop, dear, and tell him you will take Saint Peter's,
when he offers it," she begged him.

Brenton lifted his head to stare at her, aghast.

"Catia, I can't," he told her sternly.

Nevertheless, in the end of things, he did. His later self-reckonings
were all the more severe on that account. In more senses than one,
Scott Brenton's rest-time ended with his turning his back upon the
country parish.

CHAPTER NINE

"Well, what do you think about it, father?" Olive Keltridge queried, as
she tapped the table with the corner of the note she was holding in her
hand.

The tapping, however, was no indication of any filial impatience. It
was merely to remind her parent that something was still expected of
him, before he drifted off again into an absent-minded study of the
medical journal clutched between his fists. Olive Keltridge would have
been the last person in the world to dissent from the general adoration
of her father. He was all in all to her, as she to him. None the less,
she was driven to admit at times that it was a trifle difficult to keep
him up to his social duties.

Olive's mother had died, six years before. The girl had come out of
school to take upon he