Mr. Black was human, and he was aware that he was a good preacher. "I have often heard of him from Mrs. Stoddart," said Annette, with evident interest. "I supposed he lived in Lowshire because some of the scenes in _The Magnet_ are laid in this country." "Are they? I had not noticed it," said Mr. Black frigidly. He had often wished he could interest Annette in conversation, often wondered why he seemed unable to do so. Was it really because he did not take enough trouble, as he sometimes accused himself? But now that she was momentarily interested he stopped short at once, as at the entrance of a blind alley. What he really wanted was to talk, not about Mr. Stirling but about himself, to tell her how he found good in every one, how attracted he was to the ignorant and the simple. No. He did not exactly desire to tell her these things, but to coerce the conversation into channels which would show indubitably that he was the kind of man who could discover the good latent in every one, the kind of man who fostered the feeble aspirations of the young and the ignorant, who entered with wide-minded sympathy into the difficulties of stupid people, who was better read and more humorous than any of his clerical brethren in Lowshire, to whom little children and dogs turned intuitively as to a friend. Now, it is not an easy thing to enter lightly into conversation if you bring with you into it so many impedimenta. There was obviously no place for all this heavy baggage in the discussion of Mr. Stirling's novels. So that eminent writer was dismissed at once, and the subject was hitched, not without a jolt, on to the effect of the Lowshire scenery on Mr. Black. It transpired that Mr. Black was the kind of man who went for inspiration to the heathery moor, and who found that the problems of life are apt to unravel themselves under a wide expanse of sky. Annette listened dutifully and politely till the Vicarage door was reached. It seemed doubtful afterwards, when he reviewed what he had said, whether he had attained to any really prominent conversational peaks during that circumscribed parley. He felt with sudden exasperation that he needed time, scope, opportunity, lots of opportunity, so that if he missed one there would be plenty more, and above all absence of interruption. He never got a chance of _really_ talking to her. CHAPTER XI "It ain't the pews and free seats as knows what music is, nor it ain't the organist. It is the _choir_. There's more in music than just ketching a tune and singing it fort here and pianner there. But Lor! Miss, what do the pews and the free seats know of the dangers? When the Vicar gives them a verse to sing by themselves it do make me swaller with embarrassment to hear 'em beller. They knows nothing, and they fears nothing."--MRS. NICHOLLS.