I was jealous the cast wouldn't go round, for they all insisted on having the dole, and a full slice, too--the gentlemen declaring they were hungry after their drive.

But," added Brother Manby, with a glance at a card affixed by the archway and announcing that tickets to view the hospital could be procured at sixpence a head, "they were most appreciative, I must say." The Master smiled, nodded, and passed on.

He gathered that someone had profited by something over and above the twelve sixpences.
But how gracious, how serenely beautiful, how eloquent of peace and benediction, the scene that met him as he crossed the threshold of the great quadrangle! Some thousands of times his eyes had rested on it, yet how could it ever stale?
"_In the evening there shall be light_."-- The sun, declining in a cloudless west behind the roof-ridge and tall chimneys of the Brethren's houses, cast a shadow even to the sundial that stood for centre of the wide grass-plot.

All else was softest gold--gold veiling the sky itself in a powdery haze; gold spread full along the front of the 'Nunnery,' or row of upper chambers on the eastern line of the quadrangle, where the three nurses of St.Hospital have their lodgings; shafts of gold penetrating the shaded ambulatory below; gold edging the western coigns of the Norman chapel; gold rayed and slanting between boughs in the park beyond the railings to the south.
Only the western side of the quadrangle lay in shadow, and in the shadow, in twos and threes, beside their doors and tiny flower-plots (their pride), sat the Brethren, with no anxieties, with no care but to watch the closing tranquil hour: some with their aged wives (for the Hospital, as the Church of England with her bishops, allows a Brother to have one wife, but ignores her existence), some in monastic groups, withdrawn from hearing of women's gossip.
The Master chose the path that, circumventing the grass-plot, led him past these happy-looking groups and couples.

To be sure, it was not his nearest way to the home-park, where he intended to think out his peroration; but he had plenty of time, and moreover he delighted to exchange courtesies with his charges.