The Vicar was taking tea at Surley Rectory, after the afternoon service. Old Mr. Cooper, the Rector of Surley, was over eighty, and getting infirm. His daughters took all the responsibility for 'running the parish' off his hands, but ecclesiastical law forbade their taking the services in church, which otherwise they would have been quite willing to do, and he had to call in help from among his colleagues for this purpose, when he was laid up. There was no one more ready to help him than the Vicar of Abington. His own service was in the evening, and he was always willing to take that at Surley in the afternoon. The living of Surley was a 'plum,' in the gift of the Bishop of the diocese. It was worth, 'gross,' over a thousand a year, and although its emoluments had shrunk to a considerably lower figure, 'net,' its rector was still to be envied as being in possession of a good thing. There was a large house and an ample acreage of glebe, all very pleasantly situated, so that Surley Rectory had the appearance and all the appanages of a respectable-sized squire's house, and was only less in importance in the parish than Surley Park, which it somewhat resembled, though on a smaller scale. Mr. Cooper had held it for close upon forty years, and had done very well out of it. His daughters would be well provided for, and if at any time he chose to retire he would have ample means, with the pension he would get from his successor, to end his days in the same sort of comfort as that in which he had lived there for so long. But he had become a little 'near' in his old age. He would not retire, although he was gradually getting past what little work he had to do himself, and he would not keep a curate. What he ardently wished was that his son, who had come to him late in life, should succeed him as Rector of Surley. Denis would be ready to be ordained in the following Advent, and would come to him as curate. If the old man managed to hang on for a few years longer it was his hope that Denis would so have established himself as the right man to carry on his work that he would be presented to the living. It was a fond hope, little likely of realisation. The Vicar of Abington was accustomed to throw scorn upon it when discussing the old man's ambitions with his wife. "If it were a question of private patronage," he said to her once after returning from Surley, "I don't say that it might not happen. But there would be an outcry if the Bishop were to give one of the best livings in his diocese to a young man who had done nothing to deserve it. Quite justifiably too. Livings like Surley ought to be given to incumbents in the diocese, who have borne the burden and heat of the day in the poorer livings. I'm quite sure the Bishop thinks the same. I was telling him the other day how difficult it would be for a man to live here, and do his work as it ought to be done, unless he had private means behind him;