"Why then, it must have been Hubert Dorrien after all," said Sophie. "I thought it was, but he was too far back to be sure. Every time I looked round I caught that detestable eyeglass glaring at me." "`Every time'--ahem! And pray how many times was that?" said her father, drily. "Oh, there now, I've done it," cried Sophie with a laugh and a blush. "But it was only once or twice as the procession was coming round, and that was all behind us, so we couldn't see anything of it unless we did look back. Will that satisfy you, dad, dear?" "Well explained!" said the rector with a hearty laugh. "We must let her down easily on a great occasion, mustn't we, Margaret?" "But all the same that Hubert Dorrien angers me--he looks so conceited and supercilious always," went on Sophie. "He's a horrid boy?" "`Boy!' Why hear her! Why he's five years older than you, Sophie," laughed her father. "Well then he doesn't look it," retorted she. "And he's always tied to his mother's apron-string." "I wonder what Roland, the eldest one, is like," said Margaret; "the one in America. I wonder he doesn't come home." "Perhaps he doesn't get on well at home," suggested Olive. "But I wish he would come. He's sure to be nice, if only as a change from his utterly horrid family. And nice people--or at any rate nice men--are conspicuous here by their absence." The rector frowned ever so slightly--for his favourite daughter added to her other peccadilloes a decided penchant for flirtation. But like a wise man he said nothing, and by this time they had reached the gates of their pretty and cheerful-looking home. CHAPTER FOUR. THE RECTOR OF WANDSBOROUGH. The Rev William Ingelow, Doctor of Divinity of the University of Oxford, had, at the time our story opens, held the living of Wandsborough about fifteen years. On the face of the foregoing chapter, it is needless to explain that Dr Ingelow was a very "advanced" Anglican indeed. He was even too advanced for the bulk of his clerical brethren of his own way of thinking, who were wont to shake their heads while declaring confidentially among themselves that "Ingelow went too far," and was likely to do more harm than good to "the Cause" by going to such "extremes" and so forth. He was a regular Romaniser, they declared. Instead of trying to re-Catholicise the Church on good old Anglican lines, he boldly adopted Roman ceremonial in every particular. And his teaching--that, too, was far too outspoken. Invocation, auricular confession, and the like, he taught too openly. English people were not quite prepared to swallow pills of this nature without such a coating of silver leaf as would completely and effectually disguise the salutary medicine within. Ingelow was an admirable parish priest in every way--but--a Romaniser. Thus his clerical brethren.