ff the
verandah, valise in hand, and away on to the road.

When Coristine returned, he was just in time for dinner. He had not been
missed; the entire interest of the feminine part of the community was
centred in Miss Graves. The Squire took her in, as the latest lady
arrival, while Mr. Douglas escorted the hostess. To his infinite
annoyance, Coristine, who had brought in Mrs. Du Plessis, was
ostentatiously set down by the side of his invalided type-writer, to
whom he was the next thing to uncivil. Miss Carmichael, between Mr.
Douglas and Mr. Errol, was more than usually animated and
conversational, to the worthy minister's great delight. The amusing man
of the table was Mr. Perrowne. His people were building him a house,
which Miss Halbert and he had inspected in the morning, with a view to
the addition of many cupboards, which the lady deemed indispensable to
proper housekeeping. Mr. Perrowne thought he would call the place
Cubbyholes; but Miss Du Plessis asked what it would really be, the
rectory, the vicarage or the parsonage? Miss Halbert suggested the
basilica, to which he replied that, while a good Catholic, he was
neither Fannytic nor a Franciscan. He derided his intended bride's taste
in architecture, and maintained that the income of a bishop would be
insufficient to stock half the storerooms and wardrobes, leaving all the
rest of the house unfurnished. As it was, he feared that the charming
Fanny would be in the predicament of old Mother Hubbard, while he,
unfortunately, would be in that of the dog. "In that case, Basil," said
Miss Halbert, "you would be like an inclined plane."

"How so?" enquired Mr. Perrowne.

"An inclined plane is a slope up, you know," answered the mischievous
bride elect.

"Talking about dawgs," remarked the victim of the terrible conundrum, "I
asked a little girl belonging to one of my parishoners what kind her
dawg was. She said it had been given to her as a spanuel, but she
thought it was only a currier."

"When I was at the school," said the Edinburgh gentleman, "a boy whom I
had offended some way, offered to make the like of me with a street cur
and an old gun. He said he could make 'one dowg less' in the time it
took to fire the gun."

"What did you do to that boy, Mr. Douglas?" asked Miss Carmichael.

"I left him alone, for he was a good deal bigger than me."

"You were not a Boanerges then?"

"No, I was James the Less."

"What are you dreaming about, Mr. Coristine,"