y look that had never been seen on it
before. He watched the congregation drifting from St. Asaph's to St.
Osoph's and was powerless to prevent it. His sadness reached its climax
one bright afternoon in the late summer, when he noticed that even his
episcopal blackbirds were leaving his elms and moving westward to the
spruce trees of the manse.

He stood looking at them with melancholy on his face. "Why, Edward,"
cried his sister, Philippa, as her motor stopped beside him, "how
doleful you look! Get into the car and come out into the country for a
ride. Let the parish teas look after themselves for today."

Tom, Philippa's husband, was driving his own car--he was rich enough to
be able to--and seated with Philippa in the car was an unknown person,
as prettily dressed as Philippa herself. To the rector she was
presently introduced as Miss Catherine Something--he didn't hear the
rest of it. Nor did he need to. It was quite plain that her surname,
whatever it was, was a very temporary and transitory affair.

So they sped rapidly out of the City and away out into the country,
mile after mile, through cool, crisp air, and among woods with the
touch of autumn bright already upon them, and with blue sky and great
still clouds white overhead. And the afternoon was so beautiful and so
bright that as they went along there was no talk about religion at all!
nor was there any mention of Mothers' Auxiliaries, or Girls' Friendly
Societies, nor any discussion of the poor. It was too glorious a day.
But they spoke instead of the new dances, and whether they had come to
stay, and of such sensible topics as that. Then presently, as they went
on still further, Philippa leaned forwards and talked to Tom over his
shoulder and reminded him that this was the very road to Castel
Casteggio, and asked him if he remembered coming up it with her to join
the Newberry's ever so long ago. Whatever it was that Tom answered it
is not recorded, but it is certain that it took so long in the saying
that the Reverend Edward talked in tete-a-tete with Catherine for
fifteen measured miles, and was unaware that it was more than five
minutes. Among other things he said, and she agreed--or she said and he
agreed--that for the new dances it was necessary to have always one and
the same partner, and to keep that partner all the time. And somehow
simple sentiments of that sort, when said direct into a pair of
listening blue eyes behind a purple motor veil, acqui