The lady disappeared once more, and the curate of Little Magnus went slowly and deliberately down the garden of the Rectory, where he had been for many years resident; the wealthy rector, who was a canon of Dunchester, finding a sermon or two a year nearly all he could give to the little parish. The bees were visited, both those dwelling in the round-topped, old-fashioned straw hives and the occupants of the modern square boxes, cunningly contrived to enable the proprietor to commit honied burglaries without adding bee-murder to the offence. The bees were as busy as those immortalised by Dr Watts, and coming and going in the bright sunshine, making a glorious hum in a snowy cherry-tree close at hand, and suggesting to the curate's mind ample supplies of the cloying sweet, about five hundredweights of which he hoped to sell at a shilling a pound. The Reverend Arthur went slowly away, smiling in his heart--he rarely smiled visibly--happy and thankful for his lot; opened the white gate in the tall green hedge, and after closing it carefully, began to walk across the drenched grass, a couple of soft-eyed, mousy-skinned Alderney cows slowly raising their heads to stare at him, munching the grass the while, and then coming to meet him, lowing softly. "Ah, Dewnose! Ah, Bessy," he said, pulling the great flapping ears of each in turn, and inhaling the puffs of warm, sweet-scented breath as he passed, the cows watching him for a few moments, and then, evidently thinking fresh dewy grass preferable to the best of curates, they resumed their quiet "crop crop" of the verdant meal. The meadow crossed, another gate led back into the garden, where a long glass-house stood with open door inviting the Reverend Arthur to enter and breathe the warm, deliciously-scented air. The sun was shining brightly and came in a shower of rays upon the red-bricked floor, broken up as it were by the silvery shoots of the vines whose leaves were fringed with drops of pearly dew. A glance at the leafy roof displayed so much attention needed that the Reverend Arthur, after a little contemplation and a few moral comparisons between the wild growth of the vine and that of the young and old of the parish, slowly took off his coat, lifted a heavy plank and placed it across two of the iron rafter-ties of the building; and after satisfying himself of its safety, mounting a pair of steps, climbing on to the plank, and seating himself in a very unclerical attitude, he began to snap off the redundant branches of the vine. "Chirrup!" went a shrill whistle as the first branch was snapped, but the Reverend Arthur heard it not, and in a rapt, dreamy manner went on snapping off at their joints branch after branch just beyond where the young bunches of grapes were beginning to show.