Mr. Baird has since gained considerable celebrity as an original writer and metropolitan lecturer, but at that time he used to preach in a little church something like a barn, to a congregation consisting of three rich farmers and their servants, about fifteen labourers, and the due proportion of women and children. The rich farmers understood him to be ‘very high learnt;’ but if you had interrogated them for a more precise description, they would have said that he was ‘a thinnish-faced man, with a sort o’ cast in his eye, like’. Seven, altogether: a delightful number for a dinner-party, supposing the units to be delightful, but everything depends on that. During dinner Mr. Fellowes took the lead in the conversation, which set strongly in the direction of mangold-wurzel and the rotation of crops; for Mr. Fellowes and Mr. Cleves cultivated their own glebes. Mr. Ely, too, had some agricultural notions, and even the Rev. Archibald Duke was made alive to that class of mundane subjects by the possession of some potato-ground. The two young curates talked a little aside during these discussions, which had imperfect interest for their unbeneficed minds; and the transcendental and near-sighted Mr. Baird seemed to listen somewhat abstractedly, knowing little more of potatoes and mangold-wurzel than that they were some form of the ‘Conditioned’. ‘What a hobby farming is with Lord Watling!’ said Mr. Fellowes, when the cloth was being drawn. ‘I went over his farm at Tetterley with him last summer. It is really a model farm; first-rate dairy, grazing and wheat land, and such splendid farm-buildings! An expensive hobby, though. He sinks a good deal of money there, I fancy. He has a great whim for black cattle, and he sends that drunken old Scotch bailiff of his to Scotland every year, with hundreds in his pocket, to buy these beasts.’ ‘By the by,’ said Mr. Ely, ‘do you know who is the man to whom Lord Watling has given the Bramhill living?’ ‘A man named Sargent. I knew him at Oxford. His brother is a lawyer, and was very useful to Lord Watling in that ugly Brounsell affair. That’s why Sargent got the living.’ ‘Sargent,’ said Mr. Ely. ‘I know him. Isn’t he a showy, talkative fellow; has written travels in Mesopotamia, or something of that sort?’ ‘That’s the man.’ ‘He was at Witherington once, as Bagshawe’s curate. He got into rather bad odour there, through some scandal about a flirtation, I think.’ ‘Talking of scandal,’ returned Mr. Fellowes, ‘have you heard the last story about Barton? Nisbett was telling me the other day that he dines alone with the Countess at six, while Mrs. Barton is in the kitchen acting as cook.’ ‘Rather an apocryphal authority, Nisbett,’ said Mr. Ely. ‘Ah,’ said Mr. Cleves, with good-natured humour twinkling in his eyes, ‘depend upon it, that is a corrupt version. The original text is, that they all dined together _with_ six--meaning six children--and that Mrs. Barton is an excellent cook.’