especially in the presence of its patron.

"Is he to have it, Squire, or is he not?" would be Tub Ryll's serious
inquiry, just as it was the parson's turn to play on him, or, "Who backs
the vicar elect?"--observations which seldom failed to cost that
expectant divine a sovereign, for the play at the Hall table, although
not so high as was going on in the Library with those who patronized
cards, was for considerable stakes. Carew, who enjoyed, above all
things, this embarrassing pleasantry, would return an ambiguous reply,
so that the problem remained without a solution. But when the disgusted
chaplain at last threw up his cue, in a most unusual fit of dudgeon, the
Squire put the question to the company, as a case of church preferment
of which he was unwilling to take the sole responsibility. "The sum," he
said, "which had been offered to him for the next presentation would
exactly defray the cost of his second pack of hounds, which his chaplain
himself had advised him to put down; so the point to be considered--"

"The hounds, the hounds!" broke in this impatient audience, amidst roars
of laughter. And nobody knew better than poor Parson Whymper that this
verdict would be more final than that of most other ecclesiastical
synods, and that he had lost his preferment. It was Carew's humor to
take jest for earnest (as it was to turn into ridicule what was
serious), and to pretend that his word was pledged to decisions to which
nobody else would have attached the slightest weight; it pleased him to
feel that his lightest word was law, or perhaps it was a part of the
savage adoration which he professed to pay to truth.

Byam Ryll felt a genuine regret that he had pushed matters so far,
though Whymper himself was to blame for having shown temper, and thereby
precipitated the catastrophe. But he did not play the less skillfully on