Skinner's eldest daughter, not so
very long ago. Dr. Skinner had long left Roughborough, and had
become Dean of a Cathedral in one of our Midland counties -a
position which exactly suited him. Finding himself once in the
neighbourhood Ernest called, for old acquaintance sake, and was
hospitably entertained at lunch.
Thirty years had whitened the Doctor's bushy eyebrows-his hair
they could not whiten. I believe that but for that wig he would have
been made a bishop.
His voice and manner were unchanged, and when Ernest, remarking upon
a plan of Rome which hung in the hall, spoke inadvertently of the
Quirinal, he replied with all his wonted pomp: "Yes, the Quirinal-
or as I myself prefer to call it, the Quirinal." After this triumph he
inhaled a long breath through the corners of his mouth, and flung it
back again into the face of Heaven, as in his finest form during his
head-mastership. At lunch he did indeed once say, "next to
impossible to think of anything else," but he immediately corrected
himself and substituted the words, "next to impossible to entertain
irrelevant ideas," after which he seemed to feel a good deal more
comfortable. Ernest saw the familiar volumes of Dr.
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