Webb took his bearings, and slowly retraced his steps eastwards; when a furlong distant, a small chapel with a notice-board attracted his attention, setting forth how the Rev. Ebenezer Howland having gone, for weak lungs, to Mentone, the Rev. Bilgo Mash, B.A., would feed the flock in his absence, and purposed to lecture on Sunday evening next, at the school-room, on the liars of Scripture. Tickets, including tea, two shillings and sixpence.

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"Right at last!" soliloquized Webb, rubbing his hands; "it's ten to one she never saw him. Here goes for the clerical line; the outlay won't be great. Imprimis, a dozen very stiff white ties. Next a cardplate, say five shillings, engraved Rev. Bilgo Mash, B.A., and if I don't either frighten Miss Jasper out of her wits in a fortnight, or get her to give me a general

invitation to tea in a week, according to

the disposition of my customer, call me a one-eyed lobster. And if the real man should turn up, which he won't, I can but make a bolt of it."

21

CHAPTER II.

AN EX-COLUMBINE AT TEA.

"In the downhill of life when I find I'm declining, May my fate no less fortunate be,

Than a snug elbow-chair will afford for reclining-"

COLLINS.

"BUT I don't count you as a clergyman, Mr. Mash; I consider you a friend. You're so different from any I ever saw. Not that I've seen many. You can make allowances for people. I shall come and hear you preach, in a Sunday or two."

The speaker is Miss Livia Jasper, aged about forty-five, fat, good-natured, with high

cheek-bones, a rather expressionless face, some traces of good looks, a fresh colour, rippled short hair, and a generally untidy look about her attire. The scene, Miss Jasper's front parlour at tea-time, in Brompton. The time, about twelve days after Webb had accompanied that unconscious lady, on the roof of the Austriancoloured omnibus.

Webb, the pseudo-Mash, sat in the character and attire of that much injured divine, now perfectly at his ease with Miss Jasper, making deep inroads upon a pile of buttered toast."

"My dear Miss Jasper," he answered, with great deliberation, "I think, on the whole, you had better not think of coming to hear me preach just at present. I know many of my cloth would think such advice to a parishioner odd to say the least, scan

dalous to say the most. But I'm a man of the world, which they, with all due respect to them, will never be. It wouldn't do just yet, now really it wouldn't, till you know me thoroughly."

"I shan't come till you ask me," laughed she; "the idea of it, and you telling me not to come. Well, you are a most comical man. You're more fit for the stage than the church, that's my belief."

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My excellent hostess, I am candidly fit for neither; but being where I am I make the best of it. The main fact about me is, I never can be dismal for any length of time, and to be able to run in here for a comfortable dish of tea after the very tedious duties of the day makes me feel, in strictly unclerical language, for the moment jolly."

"How ever did you come to take orders ?" asked Miss Jasper.