, and strings of
motors with wedding-favours on imported chauffeurs, and all that goes
to invest marriage on Plutoria Avenue with its peculiar sacredness. The
face of the young rector, Mr. Fareforth Furlong, wore the added
saintliness that springs from a five-hundred dollar fee. The whole town
was there, or at least everybody that was anybody; and if there was one
person absent, one who sat by herself in the darkened drawing-room of a
dull little house on a shabby street, who knew or cared?

So after the ceremony the happy couple--for were they not so?--left for
New York. There they spent their honeymoon. They had thought of
going--it was Mr. Spillikins's idea--to the coast of Maine. But Mrs.
Everleigh-Spillikins said that New York was much nicer, so restful,
whereas, as everyone knows, the coast of Maine is frightfully noisy.

Moreover, it so happened that before the Everleigh-Spillikinses had
been more than four or five days in New York the ship of Captain
Cormorant dropped anchor in the Hudson; and when the anchor of that
ship was once down it generally stayed there. So the captain was able
to take the Everleigh-Spillikinses about in New York, and to give a tea
for Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins on the deck of his vessel so that she
might meet the officers, and another tea in a private room of a
restaurant on Fifth Avenue so that she might meet no one but himself.

And at this tea Captain Cormorant said, among other things, "Did he
kick up rough at all when you told him about the money?"

And Mrs. Everleigh, now Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins, said, "Not he! I
think he is actually pleased to know that I haven't any. Do you know,
Arthur, he's really an awfully good fellow," and as she said it she
moved her hand away from under Captain Cormorant's on the tea-table.

"I say," said the Captain, "don't get sentimental over him."

* * * * *

So that is how it is that the Everleigh-Spillikinses came to reside on
Plutoria Avenue in a beautiful stone house, with a billiard-room in an
extension on the second floor. Through the windows of it one can almost
hear the click of the billiard balls, and a voice saying, "Hold on,
father, you had your shot."

CHAPTER SIX: The Rival Churches of St. Asaph and St. Osoph

The church of St. Asaph, more properly call St. Asaph's in the Fields,
stands among the elm trees of Plutoria Avenue opposite the university,
its tall spire pointing to the blue sky. Its rector is f