Brother Copas. Arthur Quiller-Couch

as a Protestant I promise you to shine. If you must have my reason, or reasons, say that I am playing for safety."

      Here Brother Copas laid down his rod on the grassy bank and felt for his snuff-box. As he helped himself to a pinch he slyly regarded the faces of his companions; and his own, contracting its muscles to take the dose, seemed to twist itself in a sardonic smile.

      "Unlike Colt," he explained, "I read history sometimes, and observe its omens. You say that our clergy are active just now in building and restoring churches. Has it occurred to you that they were never so phenomenally active in building and rebuilding as on the very eve of the Reformation crash? Ask and inquire, my friend, what proportion of our English churches are Perpendicular; get from any handbook the date of that style of architecture; and apply the omen if you will."

      "That sounds reassuring," said Brother Warboise. "And so you really think we Protestants are going to win?"

      "God forbid! What I say is, that the High Anglicans will probably lose."

      "One never knows when you are joking or when serious." Brother Warboise, leaning on his staff, pondered Brother Copas's face. It was a fine face; it even resembled the conventional portrait of Dante, but—I am asking the reader to tax his imagination—with humorous wrinkles set about the eyes, their high austerity clean taken away and replaced by a look of very mundane shrewdness, and lastly a grosser chin and mouth with a touch of the laughing faun in their folds and corners. "You are concealing your real reasons," said Brother Warboise.

      "That," answered Brother Copas, "has been defined for the true function of speech. … But I am quite serious this time, and I ask you again to let Brother Bonaday off and take me on. You will find it worth while."

      Brother Warboise could not see for the life of him why, at a time when it behoved all defenders of the reformed religion to stand shoulder to shoulder, Brother Bonaday should want to be let off.

      "No?" said Brother Copas, picking up his rod again. "Well, those are my terms … and, excuse me, but was not that a fish over yonder? They are beginning to rise. … "

      Brother Warboise muttered that he would think it over, and resumed his walk.

      "He'll agree, safe enough. And now, no more talking!"

      But after a cast or two Brother Copas broke his own injunction.

      "A Protestant! … I'm doing a lot for you, friend. But you must go to the Master this very evening. No time to be lost, I tell you! Why, if he consent, there are a score of small things to be bought to make the place fit for a small child. Get out pencil and paper and make a list. … Well, where do we begin?"

      "I—I'm sure I don't know," confessed Brother Bonaday helplessly. "I never, so to speak, had a child before, you see."

      "Nor I … but damn it, man, let's do our best and take things in order! When she arrives—let me see—the first thing is, she'll be hungry. That necessitates a small knife and fork. Knife, fork and spoon; regular godfather's gift. You must let me stand godfather and supply 'em. You don't happen to know if she's been christened, by the way?"

      "No—o. I suppose they look after these things in America?"

      "Probably—after a fashion," said Brother Copas with a fine smile. "Heavens! if as a Protestant I am to fight the first round over Infant Baptism—"

      "There is a font in the chapel."

      "Yes. I have often wondered why."

      Brother Copas appeared to meditate this as he slowly drew back his rod and made a fresh cast. Again the fly dropped short of the alder stump by a few inches, and fell delicately on the dark water below it. There was a splash—a soft gurgling sound dear to the angler's heart. Brother Copas's rod bent and relaxed to the brisk whirr of its reel as a trout took fly and hook and sucked them under.

      Then followed fifteen minutes of glorious life. Even Brother Bonaday's slow blood caught the pulse of it. He watched, not daring to utter a sound, his limbs twitching nervously.

      But when the fish—in weight well over a pound—had been landed and lay, twitching too, in the grasses by the Mere bank, Brother Copas, after eyeing it a moment with legitimate pride, slowly wound up his reel.

      "And I am to be a Protestant! … Saint Peter—King Fisherman—forgive me!"

CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      CORONA COMES.

      When Nurse Branscome reached the docks and inquired at what hour the Carnatic might be expected, the gatekeeper pointed across a maze of dock-basins, wharves, tramway-lines, to a far quay where the great steamship lay already berthed.

      "She've broken her record by five hours and some minutes," he explained. "See that train just pulling out of the station? That carries her mails."

      Nurse Branscome—a practical little woman with shrewd grey eyes—neither fussed over the news nor showed any sign of that haste which is ill speed. Scanning the distant vessel, she begged to be told the shortest way alongside, and noted the gatekeeper's instructions very deliberately, nodding her head. They were intricate. At the close she thanked him and started, still without appearance of hurry, and reached the Carnatic without a mistake. She arrived, too, a picture of coolness, though the docks lay shadeless to the afternoon sun, and the many tramway-lines radiated a heat almost insufferable.

      The same quiet air of composure carried her unchallenged up a gangway and into the great ship. A gold-braided junior officer, on duty at the gangway-head, asked politely if he could be of service to her. She answered that she had come to seek a steerage passenger—a little girl named Bonaday.

      "Ach!" said a voice close at her elbow, "that will be our liddle Korona!"

      Nurse Branscome turned. The voice belonged to a blond, middle-aged German, whose gaze behind his immense spectacles was of the friendliest.

      "Yes—Corona: that is her name."

      "So!" said the middle-aged German. "She is with my wive at this moment. If I may ascort you? … We will not then drouble Mister Smid' who is so busy."

      He led the way forward. Once he turned, and in the faint light between-decks his spectacles shone palely, like twin moons.

      "I am habby you are come," he said. "My wive will be habby. … I told her a dozzen times it will be ol' right—the ship has arrived before she is agspected. … But our liddle Korona is so agscited, so imbatient for her well-belovèd England."

      He pronounced "England" as we write it.

      "So!" he proclaimed, halting before a door and throwing it open.

      Within, on a cheap wooden travelling-trunk, sat a stout woman and a child. The child wore black weeds, and had—as Nurse Branscome noted at first glance—remarkably beautiful eyes. Her right hand lay imprisoned between the two palms of the stout woman, who, looking up, continued to pat the back of it softly.

      "A friendt—for our Mees Korona!"

      "Whad did I not tell you?" said the stout woman to the child, cooing the words exultantly, as she arose to meet the visitor.

      The two women looked in each other's eyes, and each divined that the other was good.

      "Good afternoon," said Nurse Branscome. "I am sorry to be late."

      "But it is we who are early. … We tell the liddle one she must have bribed the cabdain, she was so craved to arr-rive!"

      "Are you related to her?"

      "Ach, no," chimed in husband and wife together as soon as they understood. "But friendts—friendts, Korona—hein?"

      The