The Post-Girl. Edward Charles Booth

advice..." He paused inferentially.

      "With a view," asked the Spawer, "to what is diabolically called the profession?"

      Father Mostyn caught the note of dissuasive alarm.

      "Ha! not exactly the profession..." he said. "I was n't so much meaning that. But I thought, you see, she 'd appreciate it so much ... and there 'd be no fear of her abusing your favor in the slightest degree. Unfortunately ... I 'm afraid you 'd find our piano rather below par ... the Ullbrig air has a peculiar corrodent action upon the strings. Tuning 's no good; indeed, it only seems to unsettle 'em. But if ... sometime when you 're here you would n't mind my asking her in ... just for a short while?"

      "Not the least bit in the world," said the Spawer. "And for as long as you like."

      "Ha!" The fog lifted off Father Mostyn's utterance in sudden illumination of sunlight, and he rubbed his knees jocosely. "I thought we should manage it. Capital! capital! We must fix up a sort of a soirée some night. That 's what we must do. Fix up a sort of soiree some night and feed you. We won't speak of dining; that 's a word we leave behind us when we come to Ullbrig. But we 'll feed you, and give Pamela a chance to display her culinary skill. Of course, we know all about our little business of last night, so we need n't speak darkly...."

      "The deuce we do!" exclaimed the Spawer, laughing. "And I 've been thinking all the time we did n't."

      Father Mostyn spread his fingers with priestly unction.

      "That," said he, "is one of our fatal Ullbrig errors; always to think that his Reverence does n't know things. No matter how many times we prove to our cost that he does, we go on acting upon the supposition that he does n't. It 's a source of endless trouble to us. Of course, in the present instance, we absolve you. Your tongue was honorably tied. Pamela told me all about it this morning—she was full of the music and your goodness, and the desire to tell me what she 'd done before silence made a hypocrite of her. Indeed, she was horribly afraid, poor girl, that she was becoming an Ullbrig hypocrite already. As though there were a grain of hypocrisy in the whole of her nature. But that 's what we must do. We must rig up a sort of soirée some night and feed you."

      How the soirée and the feeding were going to affect the vital question of the girl's future did not altogether transpire—though this one subject carried them henceforth into the small hours, and the Spawer used no inconsiderable skill to elicit some clear understanding on the point, and when finally the Spawer slid away from the Vicarage gate under a deep July skyful of stars, the words floated in mystic meaning about his ears like the ringing of sanctus bells.

      And as far away as the very last gate of all, when the Spawer turned his head back towards the scene of his evening, he seemed to hear the bells wafting to him over the corn, as though languid with pursuit:

      "... Feed you. Feed you. Feed ... you."