But Mr. Tappitt has been ill, and his wife, who wants him to retire so she and her daughters can enjoy the delights of Torquay, has threatened to have him committed "under fitting restraint" if he goes to the meeting. This is the red pepper program: "There may be those who think that a wife goes too far in threatening a husband with a commission of lunacy, and frightening him with a prospect of various fatal diseases; but the dose must be adapted to the constitution, and the palate that is accustomed to large quantities of red pepper must have quantities larger than usual whenever some special culinary effect is to be achieved." Tappitt comes home from the dinner drunk, and his wife finds him vulnerable the next morning. She refuses to let him out of bed until he agrees to invite Honeyman the lawyer back to the brewery, thus achieving a compromise that allows Mr. Tappitt to sell out and retire. So everything works out. The author has also used our story to indulge his fondness for church affairs. Rachel's widowed sister has been attracted to the less formal side of the Church of England, and in particular to a rather unsavory clerical representative of this school of thought, one Mr. Prong, whose pride in his sermons exceeds the results. But in the end Rachel's sister Dorothea shrugs off Mr. Prong, who denies any interest in Dorothea's money but is unwilling to forgo the husband's legal right to her money. It's all a good story. We share the author's fun with the radicals, the politics, the churchmen, the fairy godmother, and particularly with Mr. Tappitt. Rachel's romance works itself out, but perhaps more to the point, the men of Baslehurst will get better beer. "HE COMETH NOT; I AM AWEARY" MISS MACKENZIE