returned Mrs. Mackintosh, "I don't know as it does. I should have said your palace was about as good a sample of all-round peacefulness as there is going."

"Ha," said his Lordship, "it hadn't occurred to me."

"That's just like you men. You never know when you're well off. Now with your palace and Jonah you ought to be content."

The Bishop sighed.

"Dear lady," he said, "I admit my faults. The palace I indeed possess temporarily, but Jonah—ah, what would Jonah be without you! If I have left my work once in the past month to ask your advice, I have left it a hundred times."

"You have," admitted Mrs. Mackintosh with decision.

"Then it is to you that Jonah owes his debt of gratitude, not to me. You have lightened my labour in more senses of the word than one."

"Well, I've had a very pleasant visit. Blanford's a little paradise."[Pg 181]

[Pg 181]

The Bishop sighed again, and remarked:

"Paradise I have always regarded as being peaceful."

"Yes," acquiesced his companion reflectively, "with all that Jonah went through, I don't remember as he had an unmarried sister."

There was silence for a moment, and then his Lordship abruptly changed the subject.

"What a charming, bright, fresh young life is Miss Arminster's! She dances through the world like—like—er—" And he paused for a simile.

"Like a grasshopper," suggested Mrs. Mackintosh, with marked disapproval in her tones. The Bishop had a trivial, not to say frivolous, strain in his nature which seemed to her hardly in accord with his exalted position.

"No, dear lady," objected his Lordship, "not a grasshopper. Decidedly not a grasshopper; say—like a ray of sunshine."

"Violet's a good girl," remarked his companion, "a very good girl, but in most things[Pg 182] she is still a child, and the serious side of life doesn't appeal to her. I dare say she'd go to sleep if you read to her about Jonah."

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