"Do not listen to Mrs. Dobbs, Holroyd!" cried the vicar. "I use my authority to forbid your listening to Mrs. Dobbs. The slugs spoil the flowers, and, like a greedy fellow, I want every flower in Heathmoor for Trinity Sunday."
"Alfred! Alfred!" said his wife.
"Yes, my dear, and you will never guess what Mrs. Hancock has just promised me. While she is at Bath I may order Ellis to send a basket of her best flowers up to the church every Sunday. No limitation over the basket, mind you. It shall be a clothes-basket! And as for best flowers—well, all I can say is that any one who hasn't seen Mrs. Hancock's tulips this year doesn't know what tulips can be."
Mr. Dobbs, who ate with his head perpendicularly above his plate, looked up at his wife.
"I told you salmon could be got, my dear!" he said.
"You shall have it," she said, "but don't blame me for the fishmonger's book."
Mr. Martin laughed joyfully.
"My wife tells me I mustn't play golf so much," he said, "because it gives me such an appetite that I eat her out of hearth and home. But I tell her it is one of my parochial duties. How can I get to know the young fellows of the place unless I join in their amusements? They will never tell me their difficulties and temptations unless they have found me in sympathy with their joys. And if when I am playing with them there is trouble in the long grass, and occasionally a little word, a wee naughty little word slips out—("Alfred, Alfred!")—you may be sure that I never seem to hear it."
"Well, I do call that tact!" said Mrs. Hancock genially. "But you must take a little cucumber with your salmon, Mr. Martin. This is the first cucumber Ellis has sent me in."
"A gourd—a positive gourd," said Mr. Martin, taking a slice of this remarkable vegetable. "Jonah and his whale could have sat under it."