"Well, I sha'n't say anything I don't really feel," stipulated Mr.
Pennycoop.

"That will be all right, dear," laughed his wife, "so long as you
don't say what you do feel. And we'll both of us keep our temper,"
further suggested the little woman, "whatever happens. Remember, it
will be for the last time."

Little Mrs. Pennycoop's intention was kind and Christianlike. The
Rev. Augustus Cracklethorpe would be quitting Wychwood-on-the-Heath
the following Monday, never to set foot--so the Rev. Augustus
Cracklethorpe himself and every single member of his congregation
hoped sincerely--in the neighbourhood again. Hitherto no pains had
been taken on either side to disguise the mutual joy with which the
parting was looked forward to. The Rev. Augustus Cracklethorpe, M.A.,
might possibly have been of service to his Church in, say, some
East-end parish of unsavoury reputation, some mission station far
advanced amid the hordes of heathendom. There his inborn instinct of
antagonism to everybody and everything surrounding him, his
unconquerable disregard for other people's views and feelings, his
inspired conviction that everybody but himself was bound to be always
wrong about everything, combined with determination to act and speak
fearlessly in such belief, might have found their uses. In
picturesque little Wychwood-on-the-Heath, among the Kentish hills,
retreat beloved of the retired tradesman, the spinster of moderate
means, the reformed Bohemian developing latent instincts towards
respectability, these qualities made only for scandal and disunion.

For the past two years the Rev. Cracklethorpe's parishioners, assisted