that contrasted sadly with the
charming clerical costumes of white and pink and the broad episcopal
hats with flowers in them that Philippa used to wear for morning work
in the parish.

"For what time shall I order dinner?" she asked. "You and Philippa used
to have it at half-past seven, did you not? Don't you think that rather
too late?"

"A trifle perhaps," said the rector uneasily. He didn't care to explain
to Juliana that it was impossible to get home any earlier from the kind
of _the dansant_ that everybody was giving just now. "But don't trouble
about dinner. I may be working very late. If I need anything to eat I
shall get a biscuit and some tea at the Guild Rooms, or--"

He didn't finish the sentence, but in his mind he added, "or else a
really first-class dinner at the Mausoleum Club, or at the Newberrys'
or the Rasselyer-Browns'--anywhere except here."

"If you are going, then," said Juliana, "may I have the key of the
church."

A look of pain passed over the rector's face. He knew perfectly well
what Juliana wanted the key for. She meant to go into his church and
pray in it.

The rector of St. Asaph's was, he trusted, as broad-minded a man as an
Anglican clergyman ought to be. He had no objection to any reasonable
use of his church--for a thanksgiving festival or for musical recitals
for example--but when it came to opening up the church and using it to
pray in, the thing was going a little too far. What was more, he had an
idea from the look on Juliana's face that she meant to pray for _him_.
This, for a clergy man, was hard to bear. Philippa, like the good girl
that she was, had prayed only for herself, and then only at the proper
times and places, and in a proper praying costume. The rector began to
realize what difficulties it might make for a clergyman to have a
religious sister as his house-mate.

But he was never a man for unseemly argument. "It is hanging in my
study," he said.

And with that the Rev. Fareforth Furlong passed into the hall took up
the simple silk hat, the stick and gloves of the working clergyman and
walked out on to the avenue to begin his day's work in the parish.

The rector's parish viewed in its earthly aspect, was a singularly
beautiful place. For it extended all along Plutoria Avenue, where the
street is widest and the elm trees are at their leafiest and the motors
at their very drowsiest. It lay up and down the shaded side streets of
the residential district, darke