But the worthy lady’s countenance was overcast as she spoke; and the hands which were smoothing and folding the surplice that the parson had just laid aside were shaking. The reverend Horatio turned upon his spouse with a philosophic smile. The lady did not use to seek him thus in the sacristy after service unless something in the Sunday congregation seemed to call for her immediate comment. On this particular morning he well knew where the thorn pricked; for he himself, mounting to the pulpit with the consciousness of an extra-polished discourse awaiting that choice Oxford delivery which had so rare a chance of being appreciated, had not seen without a pang of vexation that the Bindon House pew was empty save for its usual occupant—Mrs. Marvel. Having promptly overcome his small weakness and proceeded with his sermon with all the eloquence he would have bestowed on the expected cultivated, or at least fashionable, audience, he was now all the more ready to banter his wife upon her distress. “What is the matter, dear Sophia?” “An ungrateful and reprobate generation! He that will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican!” cried Madam, suddenly rolling the surplice into a tight bundle and indignantly gesticulating with it. “How now! has Joe Mossmason been snoring under your very nose, or has Barbara——” “Tush, tush, Doctor! You know right well what I mean. Was not that empty pew a scandal and a disgrace? Bindon House full of guests and not one to come and bend the knee to their Lord!” “And admire my rolling periods, is it not so, my faithful spouse?” quoth the parson good-naturedly. “I took special care to remind them of the hour of service last night; not, indeed, that I ever expected anything of Maud; although she might well be thinking that in every cough she gives she can find the hand-writing on the wall. Amen, amen, I come like a thief in the night!” The parson’s eyelids contracted slightly, but he made no reply. Seating himself in the wooden armchair, he began with some labour to encircle his unimpeachable legs with the light summer gaiters that their unprotected, silk-stocking state demanded for out-door walking. “My dear Horatio, what are you doing? Allow me!” She was down on her knees in a second; and while, with her amazing activity of body, she wielded the button-hook, her tongue never ceased to wag under the stress of her equally amazing activity of mind. “But that card-playing woman—that Jezebel—one would have thought she’d have had the decency to open a prayer-book on the day when the commandments of the Lord forbid her to shuffle a pack; she’s old enough to know better!” “I’m not so sure,” said the reverend Horatio, complacently stretching out the other leg, “that she interprets the Sabbath ordinance in that spirit.” “Horatio!” ejaculated the outraged churchwoman, “you do not mean to insinuate that such simony could take place within our diocese as card-playing on the Sunday?”