‘My love, I freely admit that some easier walk in life might have suited me better. A sub-librarian’s place, now, in some antique library, like the Cheetham Institution at Manchester. I should have had my books round me, and my superior to tell me what to do. No responsibilities, and leisure for self-culture. But if I am a poor creature as a parson, you supplement me so well, Selina, that, between us, I think we do our duty to the parish. That last batch of soup was excellent. I tasted it yesterday at old dame Hardy’s. The clear soup we get at Lord Highflyer’s state dinners is mere pot-liquor compared with it. Indeed, I think,’ pursued the Vicar, dreamily, as if he were meditating a proposition of Berkeley’s, ‘that all clear soups are more or less a mistake--tasting only of sherry and burnt sugar.’ ‘Always thinking of temporal blessings, Clement.’ ‘They are the only blessings we can fully realize while on this side of eternity, my dear. We may be excused if we sometimes set an undue value on them.’ Mrs. Dulcimer sighed, and opened her workbasket. There were little shirts and flannel swathings to be made for new-comers into this world of troubles--heirs apparent to a life of labour, with a reversionary interest in the workhouse. The Vicar’s wife spread her piece of linen on the table, and began a series of problems with a parallelogram in stiff brown paper, in order to find out how she might get the maximum of baby-shirts out of the minimum of linen. It vexed her that her husband should take life so lightly, and be troubled about a few things, when she was troubled about so many. She had no doubt that he was in the wrong, and that she and Cyril Culverhouse understood the real meaning of their duties a great deal better than the Vicar. Clement Dulcimer was the living embodiment of an idea which at this time had not yet been put before the world by Mr. Matthew Arnold. He was all sweetness and light. He believed in culture as the highest good. He lived among his books, and upon his books; and those books were of the best that the elect of this world have written. He sought no happiness beyond his library, save in his garden and poultry yard, which afforded his senses the gratification of colour and sweet scents, sunshine and balmy air. He had travelled little, and sighed but faintly for a pleasure which he found impossible. His books and his poor absorbed all his spare cash. There was none left for foreign travel--so Mr. Dulcimer was content to enjoy Greece in the pages of Thucydides, or Childe Harold--to stand on the threshold of the sacred grove with Antigone--to know Cithæron only on the lips of Œdipus--to see the sandy plain of Marathon, or the walls of Thebes, with his mind’s eye alone. ‘I dare say I should be disappointed if I saw the reality,’ he murmured placidly. ‘Realities are so disenchanting. Or I might be taken by brigands, and poor Selina would have to sell her great-grand-father’s silver tea-kettle to ransom me.’