"Please sit down," answered Dennis. Then he looked at his watch. "I can give you an hour," he said. "But I'm going to ride over to Bickleigh at nine o'clock, to see the vicar there." "And a very nice gentleman you'll find him," declared Thomas. "Of course, Bickleigh be but a little matter beside Shaugh Prior. We bulk a good deal larger in the eyes of the nation, and can hold our heads so much the higher in consequence; but the Reverend Coaker is a very good, humble-minded man, and knows his place in a way that's a high example to the younger clergymen." Miss Masterman cleared her throat, but her voice was none the less gruff. "Perhaps you will now tell us what you have come for. We are busy people," she said. Her brother deprecated this brevity and tried to tone it down, but Thomas accepted the lady's statement with great urbanity. "Miss be right," he answered. "Busy as bees, I warrant--same as me and my own sister here. She don't wear out many chairs, do you, Eliza?" "Not many," said Miss Gollop. "I always say, 'Let's run about in this world; plenty of time to sit down in the next.'" "I may tell you," added Thomas kindly, "that your first sermon went down very suent. From where I sits, along by the font, I can get a good look across the faces, and the important people, the Baskervilles and the Lillicraps and the Luscombes and the Mumfords--one and all listened to every word, and nodded now and again. You'll be glad to know that." "Some thought 'twas a sermon they'd heard afore, however," said Miss Gollop; "but no doubt they was wrong." "Quite wrong," declared Dennis warmly. "It was a sermon written only the night before I preached it. And talking of the font----" "Yes, of course, you've marked the famous font-cover over the holy basin, I suppose?" interrupted Mr. Gollop. "'Tis the joy and pride of the church-town, I assure you. Not another like it in the world, they say. Learned men come all across England to see it--as well they may." The famous font-cover, with its eight little snub-nosed saints and the Abbot elevated in the midst, was a special glory of St. Edward's. "I meant to speak of that," said the clergyman. "The figure at the top has got more than his proper vestments on, Gollop. In fact, he's wrapped up in cobwebs. That is not worthy of us. Please see they are cleaned off." "I hadn't noticed them; but since you say so--I'll look to it myself. Where the vamp-dish be concerned I allow none to meddle. It shall be done; but I must say again that I haven't noticed any cobwebs--not last Sunday. Have you, Eliza?" said Thomas. "No, I have not," answered his sister. "The dirt has clearly been there for months," remarked Miss Masterman. There was a painful pause, during which Miss Gollop gazed at the vicar's sister and then at the vicar. "'Tis a well-known fact that spiders will spin," she said vaguely, but not without intention. The other woman ignored her and turned to Thomas.