e the Church as a final
court of appeal.

'How-do-you-do, Peter, how-do-you-do?' said the canon cordially, as
Peter went across the lawn to meet him. 'Got leave again, have you? I
don't believe you know what hard work is!' The vicar had pottered
about a small parish for thirty years and had given his five sons an
excellent education on the handsome fortune which his wife had brought
him. This helped to convince him that he had borne the burden and heat
of the day, and very naturally he regarded idleness as the root of all
evil.

'Mrs. Wrottesley is looking over the guild work in the morning-room,'
said Miss Abingdon conscientiously. She loved a chat with the vicar,
and thought him more genial and charming when his wife was not present.
'Shall I tell her you are here?'

'She likes taking a look at the things the girls have made,' said the
canon indulgently.

The Vicar of Culversham and Honorary Canon of Sedgwick-in-the-Marsh was
a genial and delightful man. He always spoke kindly of his wife's
work, and he could even pardon fussing on the part of a woman. He was
a universal favourite and was no doubt aware of the fact, which gave
him a very legitimate and wholly pardonable sense of pleasure. It is
doubtful if any man was ever more happily placed than was Canon
Wrottesley in the considerable village of which he was the esteemed
vicar. In a larger place he might have been overlooked, in spite of
his many excellent qualities; and in a smaller one he would not have
had so many social advantages nor so many opportunities for usefulness.
His vicarage was large and well-furnished, his sons were well-grown and
well-educated, and he himself had many friends. The part of the
country where he found himself was known to house-agents as being a
good neighbourhood; and it was not so far away from London that the
canon felt himself cut off from the intellectual life of his day.
Canon Wrottesley belonged to the London Library and liked to converse
on books, even when he had read only a portion of the volumes which he
discussed. He often fingered them with true scholarly affection as
they lay on his library table, and he discussed erudite points of
learning with a light touch which his hearers, in a parish not renowned
for its culture, found truly impressive. Even his vanity was of the
refined and dignified order of things, and seemed to accord pleasantly
with his handsome, clean-shaven, aristocratic features. Perhaps h