us, William," she said, when she
returned to her sewing.

"One can see he's been very badly brought up. He wants licking into
shape."

On the second Sunday after Philip arrived an unlucky incident occurred.
Mr. Carey had retired as usual after dinner for a little snooze in the
drawing-room, but he was in an irritable mood and could not sleep. Josiah
Graves that morning had objected strongly to some candlesticks with which
the Vicar had adorned the altar. He had bought them second-hand in
Tercanbury, and he thought they looked very well. But Josiah Graves said
they were popish. This was a taunt that always aroused the Vicar. He had
been at Oxford during the movement which ended in the secession from the
Established Church of Edward Manning, and he felt a certain sympathy for
the Church of Rome. He would willingly have made the service more ornate
than had been usual in the low-church parish of Blackstable, and in his
secret soul he yearned for processions and lighted candles. He drew the
line at incense. He hated the word protestant. He called himself a
Catholic. He was accustomed to say that Papists required an epithet, they
were Roman Catholic; but the Church of England was Catholic in the best,
the fullest, and the noblest sense of the term. He was pleased to think
that his shaven face gave him the look of a priest, and in his youth he
had possessed an ascetic air which added to the impression. He often
related that on one of his holidays in Boulogne, one of those holidays
upon which his wife for economy's sake did not accompany him, when he was
sitting in a church, the cure had come up to him and invited him to
preach a sermon. He dismissed his curates when they married, having
decided views on the celibacy of the unbeneficed clergy. But when at an
election the Liberals had written on his garden fence in large blue
letters: This way to Rome, he had been very angry, and threatened to
prosecute the leaders of the Liberal party in Blackstable. He made up his
mind now that nothing Josiah Graves said would induce him to remove the
candlesticks from the altar, and he muttered Bismarck to himself once or
twice irritably.

Suddenly he heard an unexpected noise. He pulled the handkerchief off his
face, got up from the sofa on which he was lying, and went into the
dining-room. Philip was seated on the table with all his bricks around
him. He had built a monstrous castle, and some defect in the foundation
had just brought t