The conversation dragged. Laura and her host talked a little about the
country and the weather. Father Bowles and Augustina tried to pick up the
dropped threads of thirteen years; and Mrs. Fountain was alternately
eager for Whinthorpe gossip, or reduced to an abrupt unhappy silence by
some memory of the past.

Suddenly Father Bowles got up from his chair, ran across the room to the
window with his napkin in his hand, and pounced eagerly upon a fly that
was buzzing on the pane. Then he carefully opened the window, and flicked
the dead thing off the sill.

"I beg your pardon," he said humbly to Mrs. Fountain as he returned to
his seat. "It was a nasty fly. I can't abide 'em. I always think of
Beelzebub, who was the prince of the flies."

Laura's mouth twitched with laughter. She promised herself to make a
study of Father Bowles.

And, indeed, he was a character in his own small way. He was a priest of
an old-fashioned type, with no pretensions to knowledge or to manners.
Wherever he went he was a meek and accommodating guest, for his
recollection went back to days when a priest coming to a private house to
say Mass would as likely as not have his meals in the pantry. And he was
naturally of a gentle and yielding temper--though rather sly.

But he had several tricks as curious as they were persistent. Not even
the presence of his bishop could make him spare a bluebottle. And he had,
on the other hand, a peculiar passion for the smell of wax. He would blow
out a candle on the altar before the end of Mass that he might enjoy the
smell of it. He disliked Jesuits, and religious generally, if the truth