CHAPTER XXXVII.
BRUISED NOT BROKEN.
"Come with me, uncle!" said Judith.
"My dear, I will follow you like a dog, everywhere."
"I want to go to the rectory."
"To the rectory! At this time of night?"
"At once."
When the down was left there was no longer necessity for hiding the lantern, as they were within lanes, and the light would not be seen at sea.
The distance to the parsonage was not great, and the little party were soon there, but were somewhat puzzled how to find the door, owing to the radical transformations of the approaches effected by the new rector.
Mr. Desiderius Mules was not in bed. He was in his study, without his collar and necktie, smoking, and composing a sermon. It is not only lucus which is derived from non lucendo. A study in many a house is equally misnamed. In that of Mr. Mules's house it had some claim, perhaps, to its title, for in it, once a week, Mr. Desiderius cudgelled his brains how to impart form to an inchoate mass of notes; but it hardly deserved its name as a place where the brain was exercised in absorption of information. The present study was the old pantry. The old study had been occupied by a man of reading and of thought. Perhaps it was not unsuitable that the pantry should become Mr. Mules's study, and where the maid had emptied her slop-water after cleaning forks and plates should be the place for the making of the theological slop-water that was to be poured forth on the Sunday. But—what a word has been here used—theological—another lucus a non lucendo, for there was nothing of theology proper in the stuff compounded by Mr. Mules.
We shall best be able to judge by observing him engaged on his sermon for Sunday.
