"No; but his Lordship thinks I have been called Father Dan long enough; he wants me now to be known as the Very Rev. Canon Hanrahan." "It's like as if you were going away to a strange country," she said. "Do you think the people will take kindly to it?" I said. "No! no! no!" she cried, shaking her head; "you will be Father Dan and Daddy Dan to the end." "So be it!" I replied. I returned home, and just before dinner I penned two letters--one to my good nuns, thanking them for their kindness and generosity; the other to the bishop, thanking his Lordship _ex imo corde_ also, but declining the honor. I was too old, _et detur digniori_. Then I got my camphor and lavender, and laid the fragrant powder between the folds of the mozzetta. And then I took a sheet of paper and wrote:-- To the Very Reverend Edward Canon Letheby, B.A., P.P., a gift from the grave of his old friend and pastor, the Rev. Daniel Hanrahan, P.P., more affectionately and familiarly known as "Daddy Dan." Then the old temptation came back to wind up with a lecture or quotation. I ransacked all my classics, and met with many a wise and pithy saying, but not one pleased me. I was about to give up the search in despair, when, taking up a certain book, my eye caught a familiar red pencil-mark. "Eureka!" I cried, and I wrote in large letters, beneath the above:-- "Amico, Io vivendo cercava conforto Nel Monte Parnasso; Tu, meglio consigliato, cercalo Nel Calvario." [Illustration: Waiting for my New Curate.] I placed this last testament in the folds of the lace, tied the parcel carefully, carefully put it away, and, after the untasted dinner had been removed, I lowered the lamp-flame, and sat, God only knows how lonely! as I had sat twelve months before, in my arm-chair, listening for the patter of the horse's hoofs, and the knock at the door, and the sounds of alighting, that were to mark the advent of MY NEW CURATE. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My New Curate, by P.A. Sheehan