his season of congratulations Lord Gatling dining unusually at the
Athenaeum. Lord Gatling and he did not talk frequently, but on this
occasion the great racing peer came over to him. "You will feel like a
cherub in a stokehole," Lord Gatling had said....

"They used to heave lumps of slag at old Hood's gaiters," said Lord
Gatling.

"In London a bishop's a lord and a lark and nobody minds him," said Lord
Gatling, "but Princhester is different. It isn't used to bishops....
Well,--I hope you'll get to like 'em."

(3)


Trouble began with a fearful row about the position of the bishop's
palace. Hood had always evaded this question, and a number of
strong-willed self-made men of wealth and influence, full of local
patriotism and that competitive spirit which has made England what it
is, already intensely irritated by Hood's prevarications, were resolved
to pin his successor to an immediate decision. Of this the new bishop
was unaware. Mindful of a bishop's constant need to travel, he was
disposed to seek a home within easy reach of Pringle Junction, from
which nearly every point in the diocese could be simply and easily
reached. This fell in with Lady Ella's liking for the rare rural
quiet of the Kibe valley and the neighbourhood of her cousins the
Walshinghams. Unhappily it did not fall in with the inflexible
resolution of each and every one of the six leading towns of the see to
put up, own, obtrude, boast, and swagger about the biggest and showiest
thing in episcopal palaces in all industrial England, and the new