"It ain't that at all," said Tilda, after considering awhile. "It's your bein' a clergyman. 'E's shy of clergymen. If ever you'd seen Glasson you wouldn' wonder at it, neither." "I'd like to persuade him that the clergy are not all Glassons. Perhaps you might ask him to give me a chance, next time?" "Oh, _you?_" Tilda answered, turning in the doorway and nodding gravely. "_You're_ all right, o' course. W'y, you sit a hoss a'most well enough for a circus!" "That child is a brick," laughed Miss Sally as the door closed. "At this moment," said Mr. Chichester, "I should be the last man in the world to dispute it. Her testimonial was not, perhaps, unsolicited; still, I never dreamed of one that tickled my secret vanity so happily. I begin to believe her story, and even to understand how she has carried through this amazing anabasis. Shall we have the horses saddled?" He rang the bell. Mrs. Tossell answered it, bringing with her a tray of cold meats, apple tart, syllabubs, glasses, and a flagon of home-made cider. Yes, to be sure, they might have their horses saddled; but they might not go before observing Inistow's full ritual of hospitality. Miss Sally plied (as she put it) a good knife and fork, and the Parson was hungry as a hunter should be. They ate, therefore, and talked little for a while: there would be time for talk on the long homeward ride. But when, in Homer's words, they had put from them the desire of meat and drink, and had mounted and bidden Mrs. Tossell farewell, Parson Chichester reopened the conversation. "You believe the child's story, then?" "Why, of course; and so must you. Man alive, truth was written all over it!" "Yes, yes; I was using a fashion of speech. And the boy?" "Is Miles Chandon's son. On that too you may lay all Lombard Street to a china orange." In the twilight Miss Sally leaned forward for a moment and smoothed her roan's mane. "You know the history, of course?" "Very little of it. I knew, to be sure, that somehow Chandon had made a mess of things--turned unbeliever, and what not--" "Is that all?" Miss Sally, for all her surprise, appeared to be slightly relieved. "But I was forgetting. You're an unmarried man: a wife would have taught you the tale and a hundred guesses beside. Of all women in the world, parsons' wives are the most inquisitive." Mr. Chichester made no reply to this. She glanced at him after a pause, and observed that he rode with set face and looked straight ahead between his horse's ears.