"So I think," remarked Mrs. Belswin, dryly; "but if you make all your labourers so learned, Mr. Gelthrip, I'm afraid they won't do much work. Instead of hedging and ditching, they will take to admiring the sunsets." "And to analysing the music of the lark." "Or comparing the latest novelist's description of Nature to the disadvantage of the real thing." Mr. Gelthrip bore all this sarcasm with equanimity, smiling benignly all the time. He was an enthusiast on the subject, and had a hide impervious to shafts of ridicule, however skilfully launched. His scheme was simple. Sir Rupert had plenty of money, and, judging from his daughter's description, seemed to be philanthropically inclined. Mr. Gelthrip had full power in the parish--as his superior was too much taken up with the middle ages to pay attention to the nineteenth century--so he determined, with the aid of Sir Rupert's money and his own brains, to make Deswarth a model village in the matter of culture and high art. As to religion--well, Mr. Gelthrip was a clergyman, and thought he could mingle religion and high art together so as to make them palatable to his children-of-nature parishioners. Meanwhile his ideas stood in this order: culture, high art, religion. Alas for the possible model parish and the souls of its occupants! This, however, is talk of futurity; but at present, the ladies, headed by Mrs. Valpy, retired, leaving the four gentlemen to their wine. "Tobias!" said his father, benevolently--a man must feel benevolent with a glass of '34 port in his hand. "Tobias, to the health of your bride." "Thank you, father," replied Toby, gratefully, touching his lips with the glass. "Archie! to the future Mrs. Maxwell." "Ah! Ah!" remarked the old gentleman, smiling. "Has it gone as far as that?" "Not yet, sir." Archie was blushing deeply, being an ingenuous youth, and unused to such public compliments. "I'll bet," whispered Toby, looking at him gravely, "that you'll have something to say to me to-night over a pipe." "Do you think so?" faltered Archie, toying with his glass. "I speak," said Clendon _fils_, "I speak from experience, having proposed and been accepted." "I can do the first, but what about the second?" "Faint heart," remarked Toby, judiciously, "never won fair lady." "Then I'll take your advice this very night," said Archie, desperately. "I am," remarked Toby, as he lifted his glass, "a prophet in a small way. Old boy, your hand. To the health of our double marriage--and no heeltaps." Archie finished his glass. CHAPTER XII. ARS AMORIS. 'Tis very easy to make love; A smile--a pressure of the hand. A reference to the stars above, A "fly with me to some far land," A sigh as soft as coo of dove, A kiss--the rest she'll understand.