Almost the first question Jack asked, Daintry hanging over the back of his chair and Kate smiling in more subdued radiance opposite him, was about his friend, the rector. Fortunately, Mr. Bonamy was not in the room. “And how about Lindo?” he asked. “Have you seen much of him, Kate?” “No, we have not seen much of him,” she answered, getting up to put something straight which was not much awry before. “Father has served him with a writ, though,” Daintry explained, nodding her head seriously. Jack whistled. “A writ!” he exclaimed. “What about?” “About the sheep in the churchyard. Mr. Lindo turned them out,” Kate explained hurriedly, as if she wished to hear no more upon the subject. But Jack was curious; and gradually he drew from them the story of the rector’s iniquities, and acquired, in the course of it, a pretty correct notion of the state of things in the parish. He whistled still more seriously then. “It seems to me that the old man has been putting his foot in it here,” he said. “He has,” Daintry answered solemnly, nodding any number of times. “No end!” “And yet he is the very best of fellows,” Jack replied, rubbing his short black hair in honest vexation. “Don’t you like him?” “I did,” said Daintry, speaking for both of them. “And you do not now?” The child reddened, and rubbed herself shyly against Kate’s chair. “Well, not so much!” she murmured, Jack’s eyes upon her. “He is too big a swell for us.” “Oh, that is it, is it?” Jack said contemptuously. He pressed it no farther, and appeared to have forgotten the subject; but presently, when he was alone with Kate, he recurred to it. “So, Lindo has been putting on airs, has he?” he observed. “Yet, I thought when Daintry wrote to me, after you left us, that she seemed to like him.” “He was very kind and pleasant to us on our journey,” Kate answered, compelling herself to speak with indifference. “But—well, you know, my father and he have not got on well; so, of course, we have seen little of him lately.” “Oh, that is all, is it?” Jack answered, moving restlessly in his chair. “That is all,” said Kate quietly. This seemed to satisfy Jack, for at tea he surprised her—and, for Daintry, she fairly leapt in her seat—by calmly announcing that he proposed to call on the rector in the course of the evening. “You have no objection, sir, I hope,” he said, coolly looking across at his host. “He has been a friend of mine for years, and though I hear you and he are at odds at present, it seems to me that that need not make mischief between us.” “N—no,” said Mr. Bonamy slowly. “I do not see why it should.” Nevertheless, he was greatly astonished. He had heard that Jack and Mr. Lindo were acquainted, but had thought nothing of it. It is possible that the discovery of this friendship existing between the two led him to take new views of the rector. He continued, “I dare say in private he is not an objectionable man.” “Quite the reverse, I should say!” Jack answered stoutly.