g, in that he has so closely hit the mark. "It is
not of anything so paltry I would unburden my mind."

"Then you have nothing of importance to tell me," says the vicar; "and
I must go. Your story will keep: my work will not. I am in a great
hurry: old Betty Martin----"

"Must wait. I insist on it. Dying! nonsense! she has been dying every
week for three years, and you believe her every time. Come as far as
the gate with me."

"You command, I obey," says the vicar, with a sigh of resignation,
walking on beside his pet parishioner. "But if you could only
understand the trouble I am in with those Batesons you would know some
pity for me."

"What! again?" says Clarissa, showing, and feeling, deep compassion.

"Even so. This time about the bread. You know what unpleasant bread
they bake, and how Mrs. Redmond objects to it; and really it _is_ bad
for the children."

"It is poison," says Clarissa, who never does anything by halves, and
who is nothing if not sympathetic.

"Well so I said; and when I had expostulated with them, mildly but
firmly, and suggested that better flour might make better dough, and
they had declined to take any notice of my protest,--why, I just
ordered my bread from the Burtons opposite, and----"

The vicar pauses.

"And you have been happy ever since?"

"Well, yes, my dear. I suppose in a way I have; that is, I have ceased
to miss the inevitable breakfast-lecture on the darkness and
coarseness of the bread; but I have hardly gained on other points, and
the Batesons are a perpetual scourge. They have decided on never again
'darkening the church door' (their own words, my dear Clarissa),
because I have taken the vicarage custom from them. They prefer
imperilling their souls to giving up the chance of punishing me. And
now the question is, whether I should not consent to the slow
poisoning of my children, rather than drive my parishioners into the
arms of the Methodists, who keep open house for all comers below the
hill."

"I don't think I should poison the children," says Clarissa.

"But what is to become of my choir? Charlotte Bateson has the sweetest
voice in it, and now she will not come to church. I am at my wits' end
when I think of it all."

"I am going to supply Charlotte's place for you," says Clarissa,
slyly.

"Thank you, my dear. But, you see, you would never be in time. And,
unfortunately, the services must begin always at a regular hour.
Punctuality was the one thing I ne