In fact, there was a piece of parish work here that it took the Reverend Fareforth half an hour to attend to standing the while in earnest colloquy with the two ladies under the shadow of the elm trees.

But a clergyman must never be grudging of his time.
"Goodbye then," they said at last.

"Are you coming to the Browning Club this morning?
Oh, so sorry! but we shall see you at the musicale this afternoon, shall we not ?" "Oh, I trust so," said the rector.
"How dreadfully hard he works," said the ladies to one another as they moved away.
Thus slowly and with many interruptions the rector made his progress along the avenue.

At times he stopped to permit a pink-cheeked infant in a perambulator to beat him with a rattle while he inquired its age of an episcopal nurse, gay with flowing ribbons.

He lifted his hat to the bright parasols of his parishioners passing in glistening motors, bowed to episcopalians, nodded amiably to presbyterians, and even acknowledged with his lifted hat the passing of persons of graver forms of error.
Thus he took his way along the avenue and down a side street towards the business district of the City, until just at the edge of it, where the trees were about to stop and the shops were about to begin, he found himself at the door of the Hymnal Supply Corporation, Limited.
The premises as seen from the outside combined the idea of an office with an ecclesiastical appearance.