For the first time
in all these years, his Lordship realised how lonely he had been. He
should have remarried long before, and indeed even so unworldly a person
as he knew that more than one young lady in Blanford would have viewed
with complacency the prospect of becoming Mrs. Bishop.

A young wife, however, even as attractive as the fair Violet, was not,
he told himself, exactly what he wanted. He had tried a period of double
rule in which his sister was the power behind the throne, and it was
infinitely worse than the present regime. No; if he took another
helpmate, she must be a person of strong will, some one who could hold
her own against all comers, some one who should have an inexhaustible
fund of sympathy for his work, some one whose appreciation of the
exalted position of the Bishop of Blanford should be so great as to
blind her, occasionally at least, to those minor faults to which,
Scripture tells us, all flesh is heir.

It was at just this point in his meditations that his Lordship, turning
sharply round the corner of a large gooseberry-bush, came suddenly upon
Mrs. Mackintosh. Their surprise was mutual, for the good lady had
evidently been gardening, and was suffering from the rigour of the game.

"That head man of yours is a duffer," she said sharply, pointing a very
earthy trowel at the unconscious figure of the gardener, who was busy in
the middle distance digging potatoes. "A man," she continued, "who calls
a plain, every-day squash a vegetable marrow isn't fit to run a
well-ordered truck-patch; though it's no more than might be expected in
a country where they sell bread by the yard, and flour by the gallon.
And what, I should like to know, is a 'punnet'?"

"I'm afraid, madam, I must confess my ignorance," replied the Bishop.

"I thought as much," she retorted. "And yet they put you in command of a
diocese. Your gardener said to me this morning: 'I'll pick a "punnet" of
strawberries to-day.' 'You'll do nothing of the kind,' I told him.
'Pick them in a Christian basket, or not at all.'"

His Lordship laughed.

"It's some sort of measure, I imagine," he remarked.

"I shouldn't wonder. And your cook's just as bad. She asked me yesterday
if I liked jugged hare. 'Let me see your jug,' said I, 'and then I'll
tell you.' And as sure's I'm a sinner, she told me she never used one
for that dish!"

"Now you speak of it," said his Lordship, "I don't think I ever saw one
myself. But what are you doing th