“Are you in the Sappers?” she asked after a long pause. She had heard that some of the Sappers had peculiarities. “The Sappers?” he repeated. “The Sappers? I'm afraid I don't quite understand your question. How could I----” “Are you not Colonel Trelawney?” she cried. “I am Canon Trelawney,” he replied. “What! Is it possible that you fancied--oh, it must be so. That is why you have been talking on military topics all this time. Colonel! Oh, this is really amusing! Colonel!” “I thought that our hostess had said 'Colonel,'” she murmured. “You must have fancied that I was mad.” “It was largely my own fault,” said he. “I am a little old-fashioned, and I have never taken kindly to the modern innovation in evening dress adopted by my brethren. My father was a parson and he habitually wore ordinary evening dress, and I followed him in this particular. I think I shall have to get a dog collar and satin stock after all.” The lady did not care whether he did or not. She felt she had wasted an evening. CHAPTER TWELVE--A CLOSE CORPORATION I.--TROLLOPE'S MRS. PROUDIE NO ONE WHO HAS LIVED FOR ANY length of time in a cathedral town can fail to appreciate the perfection of Anthony Trollope's Barchester series of novels. In my opinion no more artistic achievement than the creation of Barchester and its people exists on the same scale in the English language. I do not think that there is a false note in any scene--a crude tone in any character. Certainly no writer ever dealt with the members of any profession with such completeness and without ceasing to interest a reader from page to page, from chapter to chapter, from volume to volume. Fancy any writer venturing upon five long novels with all the chief characters solicitors or solicitors' wives and daughters! Fancy a dozen medical men stethoscoping their way through a thousand closely printed pages! We know what military novels we have been treated to from time to time--stuff to send guffaws round every mess-room--as crude as the red of the tunics that gave the marksmen of other armies every chance in the old days. The personages in _Barchester Towers, The Warden, and The Last Chronicle of Barset_ are such finished pieces of characterisation that they strike one as being photographs from life. One feels that the author must have had intimate acquaintance with the originals of his portraits, as well as with their entourage, before he could produce such transcripts from nature.