"Well, I might do that--or add to the income, or whatever it might be, for a man who could make himself happy here, and get on with us all. I won't beat about the bush, Mercer. You seem to have got at loggerheads with everybody here, and it's no more comfortable for us than it is for you. You haven't fallen out with us yet, but I can't help feeling it may come any time. If I could do anything to make it easy for you to get away from a place where you don't find congenial society, we could part on good terms now, and it might save trouble in the future." The Vicar now understood that the proposal was not to raise the endowment of the living for his own benefit. He had not yet grasped the fact that he was being invited to quit. "I can only say that if you and I fall out it won't be my fault," he said. "It's quite true that the people round here--your sort of people, I mean--are a cantankerous lot." "Well, I don't find them so, Mercer. I don't find them so." He did not like being contradicted in this resolute fashion. "I'm afraid we must agree to differ on that point then," he said stiffly. "It's the _whole_ point, Mercer. It isn't only one or two you've managed to fall out with; that might happen to anybody, though if sensible people manage to fall out with their neighbours they generally manage to fall in again sooner or later. It's the whole lot. When we first came here you warned me against every single family about here we were likely to make friends with, except two. And you've fallen out with them since." He now understood that he was being brought to book, and he liked that less than anything. He grew red and gobbled like a turkey cock before he spoke. "This is a most unwarrantable attack," he said. "Did you ask me to come here to receive a lecture from you, Mr. Grafton?" "I asked you to come here to see if we couldn't come to some mutual understanding that needn't reflect upon you if we can do so. My reasons for wanting a change made are likely to be painful to you, I know, and probably surprising as well. But I must state them if anything is to come of it. So I do so as directly as possible. If you'll accept them, and talk it over on the grounds that I should like a change made, so much the better. Then we needn't go over the reasons any more." "You'd like a change made." He understood it now, and summoned all his powers of resistance, and resentment. "And you really think, Mr. Grafton, that because you've bought this property, and live in the biggest house on it, you can order things in that way. Let me tell you that there is one house in this parish that you have _not_ bought, and that is my humble Vicarage. You have no more right to dispose of that than you have of--of the Bishop's Palace at Medchester. You--" "Can't we talk over things reasonably, Mercer? If I thought I had that sort of power, I should make some attempt to exercise it, shouldn't I? I shouldn't be asking you if we can't come to some understanding."