“‘Oh yes,’ said Smith with increased politeness: ‘then I should think he would be ploughed TOO.’” What evil spirit prompted Robin Goodfellow to rush into the fray? When was any anecdote of his not condemned? Yet at this moment he started forward: “I say, I heard a good story the other day,” he began, chuckling feebly at the reminiscence; “and I doubt if even you, Miller, ever heard it before. A woman brought her girl to be christened, and when the parson, you know, asked her to name the child, she said, ‘Luthy thir,’ because she lisped, don’t you know. ‘Lucifer!’ said the parson, ‘you might as well call him Beelzebub: I shall christen him John,’ and so he did. Good, wasn’t it?” The story was not well received. “You’ve forgotten the end, Robin,” shouted one man: “when I first heard that story at a private school in Lancashire about thirty years ago, it went on: “But the father muttered, ‘Tha’st called hoo Jahn, and hoo’s a wench.’” (General assent.) The Canon rose wrathfully from his seat: “Goodfellow, you call that a new story! do you know that it is to be found in the ‘Life of St. Augustine,’ in the chapter describing his reception in Kent in the year 596? Where is the book?” And he went to the bookshelves, picked up a huge folio, and read with some fluency: Inde, precibus finitis, postquam omnes dispersi essent, advenit femina filiolam in manibus gerens. “Quid petis, mea filia” inquit Augustinus: “Ut infantem baptizare velis” respondet mater. (_H’m, it’s very poor print._) Quo concesso omnes redierunt, et ad Fontem aggrediebantur. “Now that is very interesting,” interposed Johnson, to give the Canon time. “You see ‘Fons’ would not be the font, of course, but a spring: Augustine, no doubt, was preaching on a hillside, and at the foot in the meadow there would be a fons, or spring. I beg pardon for interrupting you, Miller.” “Not at all,” said the Canon, grinning with complete understanding of the motive: he had spent the interval in careful study of the folio, and now resumed more easily: “Nomina hunc infantem” inquit sacerdos. “Lu-lu-lucia” respondit illa, balbutiens propter quandam hesitationem linguæ. “Quid dixisti, mulier?” petit Augustinus; quippe qui--(_“‘quippe qui’ is good,” muttered Johnson to me_)--post tot pericula per terram et mare, et tantos labores paululum surdus erat;-- “Is it ‘erat’ or ‘esset’?” enquired Johnson, with kindly concern for the Latinity of Augustine, or his biographer. “‘Esset’ of course: it’s the vilest print,” said the Canon, smothering a laugh: “where was I? h’m, h’m”: surdus esset: “num audes infanti mox Christiano futuro nomen Luciferum ascribere? quem ego certe Johannem appellare mallem”; et ita factum est. “There, Goodfellow, I think that settles the antiquity of your story.”