e years.... No, he
didn't say, 'You sickening fool' this time. I reminded him how he used
to, and he laughed and said, 'Yes; did I? Well, I still get riled, you
know, when chaps can't see--' And then he said 'Yes, "sickening fool";
so I did; odd!' and he looked out of the window as though he was looking
a thousand miles away--this was in his office, you know--and chucked
talking absolutely....

"Yes, in his office I saw him.... He's in a good business down there at
Tidborough. Dashed good. 'Fortune, East and Sabre'... Never heard of
them? Ah, well, that shows you're not a pillar of the Church, old son.
If you took the faintest interest in your particular place of worship,
or in any Anglican place of worship, you'd know that whenever you want
anything for the Church from a hymn book or a hassock or a pew to a
pulpit or a screen or a spire you go to Fortune, East and Sabre,
Tidborough. Similarly in the scholastic line, anything from a birch rod
to a desk--Fortune, East and Sabre, by return and the best. No, they're
_the_ great, _the_ great, church and school-furnishing people.
'Ecclesiastical and Scholastic Furnishers and Designers' they call
themselves. And they're IT. No really decent church or really
gentlemanly school thinks of going anywhere else. They keep at
Tidborough because they were there when they furnished the first church
in the year One or thereabouts. I expect they did the sun-ray fittings
at Stonehenge. Ha! Anyway, they're one of the stately firms of old
England, and old Sabre is the Sabre part of the firm. And his father
before him and so on. Fortune and East are both bishops, I believe. No,
not really. But I tell you the show's run on mighty pious lines. One of
them's a 'Rev.', I know. I mean, the tradition of the place is to be in
keeping with the great and good works it carries out and for which,
incidentally, it is dashed well paid. Rather. Oh, old Sabre has butter
with his bread all right....

"Married? Oh, yes, he's married. Has been some time, I believe, though
they've no kids. I had lunch at his place one time I was down Tidborough
way. Now there's a place you ought to go to paint one of your
pictures--where he lives--Penny Green. Picturesque, quaint if ever a
place was. It's about seven miles from Tidborough; seven miles by road
and about seven centuries in manners and customs and appearance and all
that. Proper old village green, you know, with a duck pond and cricket
pitch and houses all rou