Her manner reminded me of the full importance of this arrival, as well as of the unfortunate circumstance that, owing to the ill-timed absence of the dissenting plasterer, the Canon must be lodged in the little room opposite to my own. However, when I went into the drawing-room, I found him accepting his niece's apologies and explanations with great good-humour. To me also he was especially gracious. "I had the pleasure of dining at Lindesford, Mr. Lyndsay, when you must have been in long clothes. I remember we had some of the finest trout I ever tasted. Are they still as good in your river?" His voice, like himself, was massive and impressive; his bearing and manner inspired me with wistful admiration: what must life be to a man so self-confident, and so rightly self-confident? "Is not Uncle Augustus a fine-looking man?" asked Lady Atherley, when he had left the room with Atherley. "I cannot think why they do not make him a bishop; he would look so well in the robes. He ought to have had something when the last ministry was in, for Aunt Clara and Lord Lingford are cousins; but, unfortunately, the families were on bad terms because of a lawsuit." The morning after was bright and fair, so that sunlight mingled with the drowsy calm--Sunday in the country as we remember it, looking lovingly back from lands that are not English to the tenderer side of the Puritan Sabbath. But I missed my little _aubade_ from the lawn, and not till breakfast-time did I behold my small friends, who then came into the breakfast-room, one on either side of their mother--two miniature sailors, exquisitely neat but visibly dejected. Behind walked Tip, demurely recognising the change in the atmosphere, but, undisturbed thereby, he at once, with his usual air of self-satisfied dignity, assumed his place in the largest arm-chair. "The landau could take us all to church except you, George," said Lady Atherley, looking thoughtfully into the fire as we waited for breakfast and the Canon. "But I suppose you would prefer to walk?" "Why should you suppose I am going to church, either walking or driving?" "Well, I certainly hoped you would have gone to-day; as Uncle Augustus is going to preach it seems only polite to do so." "Well, I don't mind; I daresay it will do me no harm; and if it is understood I attend only out of consideration for my wife's uncle, then--" He was interrupted by the entrance of the person in question. Many times during breakfast Denis looked thoughtfully at his great-uncle, and at last inquired-- "Do you preach very long sermons, Uncle Augustus?" "They are not generally considered so," replied the Canon with some dignity. "Denis, I have often told you not to ask questions," said Lady Atherley. "When I am grown up," remarked Harold, "I will be an atheist." "Do you know what an atheist is?" inquired his father. "Yes, it is people who never go to church." "But they go to lecture-rooms, which you would find worse."