“Well, there is no harm in that, Mr. Bonamy,” replied the archdeacon, somewhat offended, “as long as he is back to do the duty to-morrow.”
Mr. Bonamy grunted. “A one-day-a-week duty is a very fine thing,” he said. “You clergymen are to be envied, Mr. Archdeacon!”
“You would be a great deal more to be envied yourself, Mr. Bonamy,” the magnate returned with heat, “if you did not carp at everything and look at other people through distorted glasses. Fie! here is a young clergyman new to the parish, and, instead of helping him, you find fault with everything he does. For shame! For shame, Mr. Bonamy!”
“Ah!” said the lawyer, quite unabashed, “you did not mean to say that when you came across the street to me. But—well, least said soonest mended, and I will wish you good evening. You will have a wet drive home, I am afraid, Mr. Archdeacon.”
And he put up his umbrella and went his way sturdily, while the archdeacon, crossing to his carriage, which was in front of the inn, entertained an uncomfortable suspicion that he had done more harm than good by his intercession. “I am afraid,” he said to himself, as he handled the reins and sent his horses down the street in a fashion of which he was not a little proud—“I am afraid that there is trouble in front of that young man. I am afraid there is.”
If he had known all, he might have shaken his head still more gravely,
CHAPTER X.
OUT WITH THE SHEEP.
Stephen Clode, while listening with a certain pleasure to the archdeacon’s hints, did not dream of the good turn which fortune was about to do him. If he had foreseen it, he would probably have taken a bolder part in the conversation, and parted from the elder clergyman with a more jubilant step. As it was, he heard no rumor that evening, nor was it until ten o’clock on the Sunday morning that he learned anything was amiss. Calling at the house in the churchyard at that hour, he was received by Mrs. Baker herself; and he remarked at once that the housekeeper’s face fell in a manner far from flattering when she recognized him.
“Oh, it is you, is it, Mr. Clode?” she said, her tone one of disappointment. “You have not seen him, sir, have you?”
“Seen whom?” the curate replied in surprise.