“But I’m not going to have anything more to say to Peter and Paul at present,” he declared at last. “You’d keep me here all night, and the tea will be spoilt.”

Then they all laughed again at the absurd idea of this great and good man preferring his food,—his food of this world,—to that other food which it was his special business to dispense. There is nothing which the Stumfoldian ladies of Littlebath liked so much as these little jokes which bordered on the profanity of the outer world, which made them feel themselves to be almost as funny as the sinners, and gave them a slight taste, as it were, of the pleasures of iniquity.

“Wine maketh glad the heart of woman, Mrs Jones,” Mr Stumfold would say as he filled for the second time the glass of some old lady of his set; and the old lady would chirrup and wink, and feel that things were going almost as jollily with her as they did with that wicked Mrs Smith, who spent every night of her life playing cards, or as they had done with that horrid Mrs Brown, of whom such terrible things were occasionally whispered when two or three ladies found themselves sufficiently private to whisper them; that things were going almost as pleasant here in this world, although accompanied by so much safety as to the future in her own case, and so much danger in those other cases! I think it was this aptitude for feminine rakishness which, more than any of his great virtues, more even than his indomitable industry, made Mr Stumfold the most popular man in Littlebath. A dozen ladies on the present occasion skipped away to the tea-table in the back drawing-room with a delighted alacrity, which was all owing to the unceremonious treatment which St Peter and St Paul had received from their pastor.

Miss Mackenzie had just found time to cast an eye round the room and examine the scene of Mr Stumfold’s pleasantries while Mr Maguire was reading. She saw that there were only three gentlemen there besides the two clergymen. There was a very old man who sat close wedged in between Mrs Stumfold and another lady, by whose joint dresses he was almost obliterated. This was Mr Peters, a retired attorney. He was Mrs Stumfold’s father, and from his coffers had come the superfluities of comfort which Miss Mackenzie saw around her. Rumour, even among the saintly people of Littlebath, said that Mr Peters had been a sharp practitioner in his early days;—that he had been successful in his labours was admitted by all.

“No doubt he has repented,” Miss Baker said one day to Miss Todd.

“And if he has not, he has forgotten all about it, which generally means the same thing,” Miss Todd had answered.

Mr Peters was now very old, and I am disposed to think he had forgotten all about it.

The other two gentlemen were both young, and they stood very high in the graces of all the company there assembled. They were high in the graces of Mr Stumfold, but higher still in the graces of Mrs Stumfold, and were almost worshipped by one or two other ladies whose powers of external adoration were not diminished by the possession of husbands. They were, both of them, young men who had settled themselves for a time at Littlebath that they might be near Mr Stumfold, and had sufficient of worldly wealth to enable them to pass their time in semi-clerical pursuits.