The commotion had been considerable, and a good deal of it had been created by the Vicar of Abington, who really had nothing to do with it at all. Denis had now departed to his curacy in the East End of London, and his sisters had betaken themselves to the Cathedral City of Medchester, where they had many friends, or at least acquaintances, and their activities could be made use of for the general benefit of their fellow church-people. Mr. Leadbetter had been instituted Rector of Surley, and it was beginning to be known that he had refused the Bishop's offer of the living before it had been made to Denis, but had thought better of it on going over to Surley, and finding that the little church, otherwise undistinguished, possessed a remarkable roof for sound. He was a bachelor, with plenty of money of his own, besides what would come to him from his rectorate, and intended to provide a new organ, and to train a small but exquisite choir to render a full musical service, after the manner of Cathedrals and College Chapels, twice a day. Grafton unfolded his resolve to Worthing, over the dinner table, when the girls and Miss Waterhouse had left them to their cigars. "I'm going to get rid of Mercer," he said. "The fellow has become an infernal nuisance, and I'm tired of him." Worthing stared at him, and laughed. "You can't do it," he said. "I thought you knew better than that. You're the patron of the living, and you appoint a man when it becomes vacant. But once appointed he sticks there till he chooses to go. You've nothing more to do with it than anybody else." "Oh, I know all that. When I say I'm going to get rid of him, I don't mean that I've got the power to turn him out. But you can do a good many things that you haven't got that sort of power over, if you go the right way to work." "Well, I don't care much about Mercer myself, though I've always tried to keep my opinion dark for the sake of peace. He's a tiresome fellow, and that's a fact; but he's never done anything that he could be shifted for. It takes a Bishop all he knows, and a devil of a lot of money besides, to get rid of an incumbent who's a real wrong 'un. There was a case over at Minbrook when I first came here." "I know that too. But to my mind a quarrelsome back-biting fellow like Mercer does more harm in a community like this than many a man who kicks over the traces in a way to give a handle against himself."