spell of
it."

--"Ah, good evening, Mrs. Royle! What wonderful ten-week stocks!
I declare I cannot grow the like of them in my garden. And what a
perfume! But it warns me that the dew is beginning to fall, and
Brother Royle ought not to be sitting out late. We must run no
risks, Nurse, after his illness?"

The Master appealed to a comfortable-looking woman who, at his
approach, had been engaged in earnest talk with Mrs. Royle--talk to
which old Brother Royle appeared to listen placidly, seated in his
chair.

--And so on. He had a kindly word for all, and all answered his
salutations respectfully; the women bobbing curtseys, the old men
offering to rise from their chairs. But this he would by no means
allow. His presence seemed to carry with it a fragrance of his own,
as real as that of the mignonette and roses and sweet-Williams amid
which he left them embowered.

When he had passed out of earshot, Brother Clerihew turned to Brother
Woolcombe and said--

"The silly old '--' is beginning to show his age, seemin' to me."

"Oughtn't to," answered Brother Woolcombe. "If ever a man had a soft
job, it's him."

"Well, I reckon we don't want to lose him yet, anyhow--'specially if
Colt is to step into his old shoes."

Brother Clerihew's reference was to the Reverend Rufus Colt, Chaplain
of St. Hospital.

"They never would!" opined Brother Woolcombe, meaning by "they" the
governing body of Trustees.

"Oh, you never know--with a man on the make, like Colt. Push carries
everything in these times."

"Colt's a hustler," Brother Woolcombe conceded. "But, damn it all,
they _might_ give us a gentleman!"

"There's not enough to go round, nowadays," grunted Brother Clerihew,
who had been a butler, and knew. "Master Blanchminster's the real
thing, of course . . ." He gazed after the retreating figure of the
Master. "Seemed gay as a goldfinch, he did. D'ye reckon Colt has
told him about Warboise?"

"I wonder. Where is Warboise, by the way?"

"Down by the river, taking a walk to cool his head. Ibbetson's wife
gave him a dressing-down at tea-time for dragging Ibbetson into the
row. Threatened to have her nails in his beard--I heard her.
That woman's a terror. . . . All the same, one can't help
sympathising with her. 'You can stick to your stinking
Protestantism,' she told him, 'if it amuses you to fight the
Chaplain. You're a widower, with nobody dependent. But don't you
teach my husband to quarrel