You would not have found the Rev. Samuel Bishop agreeing to this.
How could any man consent to give up his livelihood, even for the
truth? This gentleman would have stayed on in his parish, happy in
his hopeless incompetence, until his parishioners might have sent
in a third request for his retirement, had not the irony of
circumstance broken him upon its unyielding anvil.

For ten years, as has been said, he had held the rectorship of the
parish of Cailsham. Sally was then fourteen years of age. Her mother,
one of those hard yet well-featured women upon whom the struggle of
life wears with but little ill-effect, had endeavoured to bring her
up in the first belief of social importance consistent, to an
illogical mind, with the teachings of her husband's calling. But she
had failed. It was grained in the nature of Sally to let the morrow
take thought for the things of itself. The other three children, the
boy up at Oxford, the two girls, one older, the other younger than
Sally, were different. With them she succeeded. Into their minds she
instilled the knowledge that, of all professions, the Church takes
the highest rank in the social scale, and though in the world itself
they might have found that hard to believe, yet in the little town
of Cailsham Mrs. Bishop had discovered her capacity for draining from
her husband's parishioners a certain social deference and respect.

By persuading the Rev. Samuel to utilize his priestly influence upon
the declining years of an old lady of title in the neighbourhood,
Mrs. Bishop had stolen her way into the very best society which
Cailsham had to offer. And Sally was the only one of her children
who did not thoroughly appreciate it.

With what deftness she had induced her husband to make his spiritual