“I met a son of Anak the other night at the Newhavens’,” he said to Hester, “who claimed you as a cousin—­a Mr. Richard Vernon.  He broke the ice by informing me that I had confirmed him, and that perhaps I should like to know that he had turned out better than he expected.”

“How like Dick!” said Hester.

“I remembered him at last.  His father was the squire of Farlow, where I was rector before I came to Southminster.  Dick was not a source of unmixed pleasure to his parents.  As a boy of eight he sowed the parental billiard-table with mustard and cress in his father’s absence, and raised a very good crop, and performed other excruciating experiments.  I believe he beat all previous records of birch rods at Eton.  I remember while he was there he won a bet from another boy who could not pay, and he foreclosed on the loser’s cricketing trousers.  His parents were distressed about it when he brought them home, and I tried to make him see that he ought not to have taken them.  But Dick held firm.  He said it was like tithe, and if he could not get his own in money, as I did, he must collect it in trousers.  I must own he had me there.  I noticed that he wore the garment daily as long as any question remained in his parents’ minds as to whether they ought to be returned.  After that I felt sure he would succeed in life.”

“I believe he is succeeding in Australia.”

“I advised his father to send him abroad.  There really was not room for him in England, and, unfortunately for the army, the examiners jibbed at his strictly phonetic spelling.  He tells me he has given up being an A.D.C. and has taken to vine-growing, because if people are up in the world they always drink freely, and if they are ‘down on their luck’ they drink all the more to drown care.  The reasoning appeared to me sound.”

“He and James used to quarrel frightfully in the holidays,” said Hester.  “It was always the same reason, about playing fair.  Poor James did not know that games were matters of deadly importance, and that a rule was a sacred thing.  I wonder why it is that clergymen so often have the same code of honor as women; quite a different code from that of the average man.”

“I think,” said the Bishop, “it is owing to that difference of code that women clash so hopelessly with men when they attempt to compete or work with them.  Women have not to begin with the esprit de corps which the most ordinary men possess.  With what difficulty can one squeeze out of a man any fact that is detrimental to his friend, or even to his acquaintance, however obviously necessary it may be that the information should be asked for and given.  Yet I have known many good and earnest and affectionate women, who lead unselfish lives, who will ‘give away’ their best woman friend at the smallest provocation, or without any provocation at all; will inform you, a propos of nothing, that she was jilted years ago, or that her husband married her for her money.  The causes of humiliation and disaster in a woman’s life seem to have no sacredness for her women friends.  Yet if that same friend whom she has run down is ill, the runner down will nurse her day and night with absolutely selfless devotion.”