There was nothing else discussed and nothing else thought of in the Vicarage. The first of June had been the day now fixed for the opening of the new chapel, and here they were already in April. Mr. Fenwick was quite of opinion that if the services of Mr. Puddleham's congregation were once commenced in the building they must be continued there. As long as the thing was a thing not yet accomplished it might be practicable to stop it; but there could be no stopping it when the full tide of Methodist eloquence should have begun to pour itself from the new pulpit. It would then have been made the House of God,--even though not consecrated,--and as such it must remain. And now he was becoming sick of the grievance, and wished that it was over. As to going to law with the Marquis on a question of Common-right, it was a thing that he would not think of doing. The living had come to him from his college, and he had thought it right to let the Bursar of Saint John's know what was being done; but it was quite clear that the college could not interfere or spend their money on a matter which, though it was parochial, had no reference to their property in the parish. It was not for the college, as patron of the living, to inquire whether certain lands belonged to the Marquis of Trowbridge or to the parish at large, though the Vicar no doubt, as one of the inhabitants of the place, might raise the question at law if he chose to find the money and could find the ground on which to raise it. His old friend the Bursar wrote him back a joking letter, recommending him to put more fire into his sermons and thus to preach his enemy down. "I have become so sick of this chapel," the Vicar said to his wife that night, "that I wish the subject might never be mentioned again in the house." "You can't be more sick of it than I am," said his wife. "What I mean is, that I'm sick of it as a subject of conversation. There it is, and let us make the best of it, as Quickenham says." "You can't expect anything like sympathy from Richard, you know." "I don't want any sympathy. I want simply silence. If you'll only make up your mind to take it for granted, and to put up with it--as you had to do with the frost when the shrubs were killed, or with anything that is disagreeable but unavoidable, the feeling of unhappiness about it would die away at once. One does not grieve at the inevitable." "But one must be quite sure that it is inevitable." "There it stands, and nothing that we can do can stop it." "Charlotte says that she is sure Richard has got something in his head. Though he will not sympathise, he will think and contrive and fight." "And half ruin us by his fighting," said the husband. "He fancies the land may be common land, and not private property." "Then of course the chapel has no right to be there."