Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/17

 said, "and found a few books that we might put there for him. They were stacked away in the box-room, but I had them brought down and dusted. There are five volumes by a man called Paley, who seems to have been an archdeacon. I glanced into them and they looked all right. They are theology, aren't they, Ronald?"

"They won't do at all," said Minnie. "Bishops don't read books of that sort. What we want in the sanctum is a few novels of a rather You know the sort I mean, Ronald. I see that you have got 'On the Edge of a Precipice.' Now that would be the exact thing."

"Minnie," said Mrs. Mendel, "surely you haven't read that book! Ronald, I told you not to let it out of the smoking-room."

"Of course I've read it," said Minnie. "That's how I know the bishop will like it. Bessie Langworthy's busband, who is a canon"

"I won't give that book to any bishop," said Ronald.

"I'm not asking you to force it on him," said Minnie. "I simply say that it should be left in the sanctum so that he can get it when he wants it. Bessie Langworthy's husband"

"Bessie Langworthy's husband be hanged!"

"If you swear while the bishop's here, Ronald," said Minnie, "you'll shock him. I must also have a pound of tobacco for the sanctum; not cigars. Bishops don't smoke cigars. The reason is that it