'Quite good. The new curate preached. He seems a nice young fellow.'
'Speaking of curates,' I said, 'I have often wondered what became of your nephew—the one you were telling me about the other day.'
'Augustine?'
'The fellow who took the Buck-U-Uppo.'
'That was Augustine. And I am pleased and not a little touched,' said Mr Mulliner, beaming, 'that you should have remembered the trivial anecdote which I related. In this self-centred world one does not always find such a sympathetic listener to one's stories. Let me see, where did we leave Augustine?'
'He had just become the bishop's secretary and gone to live at the Palace.'
'Ah, yes. We will take up his career, then, some six months after the date which you have indicated.'
It was the custom of the good Bishop of Stortford—for, like all the prelates of our Church, he loved his labours—to embark upon the duties of the day (said Mr Mulliner) in a cheerful and jocund spirit. Usually, as he entered his study to dispatch such business as might have arisen from the correspondence which had reached the Palace by the first post, there was a smile upon his face and possibly upon his lips a snatch of some gay psalm. But on the morning on which this story begins an observer would have noted that he wore a preoccupied, even a sombre, look. Reaching the study door, he hesitated as if reluctant to enter; then, pulling himself together with a visible effort, he turned the handle.
'Good morning, Mulliner, my boy,' he said. His manner was noticeably embarrassed.