riding a dolphin, I shall be entirely at your service," said he. "No
considerations of respect and attachment to the Church or fear of the Army
can influence me just now."

The two gentlemen begged that he would go on; the ladies came in, and
together they passed an agreeable morning, Sir Robert declaring that on
the scaffold he was entitled to benefit of clergy, and begging the eminent
divine when he left to let him have his ghostly counsel every day for at
least a week. In spite of his eminence, this gentleman had no very great
breadth of view. To sit about on boxes and window-seats, picnicking in an
empty room, while the stranger upon whom he had come to call lay above him
in red pajamas, painting Cupids on the ceiling, was to his mind
monstrously indecorous. It was amusing to see the dignified way in which
he took the pleasantries of the party; and he made no response to Sir
Robert's farewell overture except a bow. "Your guest is a very
entertaining man," he said to Mr. Ketchum, who accompanied him to the
hat-rack, "but is he quite--quite--you understand?"

"Perfectly so," said Job, with a laugh. "Head and heart both of the best,
as you will find out when you know him better. You are coming back to
dinner, ain't you, to help us out with the fatted calf?"

The dinner was a very elegant affair of twenty-five covers, given to the
guests, the first of a series of entertainments planned in their honor.
All the notable people of the neighborhood were represented at it. The
scandalized divine returned to partake of it, and, seeing Sir Robert in a
dress-suit, dignified, polished, of preternatural respectability, not to
say distinction, looking the pillar of Church and State that he was, and
talking with due gravity of the tariff, free trade, and the like ponderous
subjects, concluded to overlook the mad behavior of the morning, and,