Nobody likes a smart aleck! Beryl and Nigel get together again six years after their college graduation and resume their word-slinging ways. One is a country pastor and the other is president of a small Christian college. Beryl is suffering the boredom of not having enough to do in his small village church. Nigel is challenged by colorful faculty members with questionable doctrinal positions, a micromanaging board, and a property developer who wants to buy the campus out from under the school. Beryl is persuaded to take classes in Nigel's seminary as a way to isolate some of the problems. They also enlist Beryl's father Daryl, a wealthy real estate developer and businessman, to track down some of the irregularities in the management of the school. Beryl's life is complicated by the need to manage both his class work and his pastorate. After being smitten by Nigel's blonde secretary, the resulting tumultuous relationship distracts everyone. Even after Daryl, Nigel and Beryl remove the board chairman, the tension rapidly builds to a series of events which threaten the lives of the three main characters.

The day had been very hot even for the Transvaal, where the days still know how to be hot in the autumn, although the neck of the summer is broken-especially when the thunder-storms hold off for a week or two, as they do occasionally. Even the succulent b