Y.

XIV. BROTHER COPAS ON THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

XV. CANARIES AND GREATCOATS.

XVI. THE SECOND LETTER.

XVII. PUPPETS.

XVIII. THE PERVIGILIUM.

XVIX. MERCHESTER PREPARES.

XX. NAUGHTINESS, AND A SEQUEL.

XXI. RECONCILIATION.

XXII. MR. SIMEON MAKES A CLEAN BREAST.

XXIII. CORONA'S BIRTHDAY.

XXIV. FINIS CORONAT OPUS.

CONCLUSION.

BROTHER COPAS.

CHAPTER I.

THE MASTER OF ST. HOSPITAL.

'As poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet
possessing all things . . .'

The Honourable and Reverend Eustace John Wriothesley Blanchminster,
D.D., Master of St. Hospital-by-Merton, sat in the oriel of his
library revising his Trinity Gaudy Sermon. He took pains with these
annual sermons, having a quick and fastidious sense of literary
style. "It is," he would observe, "one of the few pleasurable
capacities spared by old age." He had, moreover, a scholarly habit
of verifying his references and quotations; and if the original,
however familiar, happened to be in a dead or foreign language, would
have his secretary indite it in the margin. His secretary, Mr.
Simeon, after taking the Sermon down from dictation, had made out a
fair copy, and stood now at a little distance from the corner of the
writing-table, in a deferential attitude.

The Master leaned forward over the manuscript; and a ray of afternoon
sunshine, stealing in between a mullion of the oriel and the edge of
a drawn blind, touched his bowed and silvery head as if with a
benediction. He was in his seventy-third year; lineal and
sole-surviving descendant of that Alberic de Blanchminster (Albericus
de Albo Monasterio) who had founded this Hospital of Christ's Poor in
1137, and the dearest, most distinguished-looking old clergyman
imaginable. An American lady had once summed him up as a Doctor of
Divinity in Dresden china; and there was much to be allowed to the
simile when you noted his hands, so shapely and fragile, or his
complexion, transparent as old ivory--and still more if you had
leisure to observe his saintliness, so delicately attuned to this
world.

"_As having nothing, and yet possessing all things_."--The Master
laid his forefinger upon the page and looked up reproachfully.
"os meden echontes--my good Simeon, is it possible?