“Well, will you pardon me saying something?” Resting both her hands on the raised lid of the piano, she looked up at him, and it must be confessed that he thought he had never seen eyes so soft and brilliant before. “It is only this,” she said earnestly. “That I hope you will not give way to him. He is a wretched, cross-grained, fidgety man and full of crotchets. You know all about him, of course?” she added, a slight ring of pride in her voice. “I know that he is my church warden,” said the rector, half in seriousness. “Yes!” she replied. “That is just what he is fit for!” “You think so?” Lindo retorted, smiling. “Then you really mean that I should be guided by him? That is it?” She looked brightly at him for a moment. “I think you will be guided only by yourself,” she murmured; and, blushing slightly, she nodded and left him to go to another guest. They were all in the same tale. “He is a rude overbearing man, Mr. Lindo,” Mrs. Hammond said roundly, even her good nature giving place to the _odium theologicum_. “And I cannot imagine why Mr. Williams put up with him so long.” “No indeed,” said the archdeacon’s wife, complacently smoothing down her skirt. “But that is the worst of a town parish. You have this sort of people.” Mrs. Hammond looked for the moment as if she would have liked to deny it. But under the circumstances this was impossible. “I am afraid we have,” she admitted gloomily. “I hope Mr. Lindo will know how to deal with him.” “I think the archdeacon would,” said the other lady, shaking her head sagely. But, naturally enough, the archdeacon was more guarded in his expressions. “It is about removing the sheep from the churchyard, is it not?” he said, when he and Lindo happened to be left standing together and the subject came up. “They have been there a long time, you know.” “That is true, I suppose,” the rector answered. “But,” he continued rather warmly—“you do not approve of their presence there, archdeacon?” “No, certainly not.” “Nor do I. And, thinking the removal right, and the responsibility resting upon me, ought I not to undertake it?” “Possibly,” replied the older man. “But pardon me making a suggestion. Is not the thing of so little importance that you may, with a good conscience, prefer quiet to the trouble of raising it?” “If the matter were to end there, I think so,” replied the new rector, with perhaps too strong an assumption of wisdom in his tone. “But what if this be only a test case?—if to give way here means to encourage further trespass on my right of judgment? The affair would bear a different aspect then, would it not?” “Oh, no doubt. No doubt it would.” And that was all the archdeacon, who was a cautious man and knew Mr. Bonamy, would say. But it will be observed that the rector had both altered his standpoint and done another thing which most people find easy enough. He had discovered an answer to his own arguments. CHAPTER VIII. TWO SURPRISES.