y. "Gimme yer fist."

Jonah stayed to tea that night, contrary to his usual habit, for Mrs
Yabsley was anxious to have the matter settled.

"Wot's wrong wi' you an' me gittin' married, Ada?" he said. Ada nearly
dropped her cup.

"Garn, ye're only kiddin'!" she cried with an uneasy grin.

"Fair dinkum!" said Jonah.

"Right-oh," said Ada, as calmly as if she were accepting an invitation
to a dance.

But she thought with satisfaction that this was the beginning of a
perpetual holiday. For she was incorrigibly lazy and hated work, going
through the round of mechanical toil in a slovenly fashion, indifferent
to the shower of complaints, threats and abuse that fell about her ears.

"Where was yer thinkin' of gittin' married, Joe?" inquired Mrs Yabsley
after tea.

"I dunno," replied Jonah, suddenly remembering that he knew no more of
weddings than a crow.

"At the Registry Office, of course," said Ada. "Yer walk in an' yer
walk out, an' it's all over."

"That's the idea," said Jonah, greatly relieved. He understood vaguely
that weddings were expensive affairs, and he had thirty shillings in
his pocket.

"Don't tell me that people are married that goes ter the Registry
Office!" cried Mrs Yabsley. "They only git a licence to 'ave a family.
I know all about them. Yer sign a piece of paper, an' then the bloke
tells yer ye're married. 'Ow does 'e know ye're married? 'E ain't a
parson. I was married in a church, an' my marriage is as good now as
ever it was. Just yous leave it to me, an' I'll fix yez up."

Ever since Ada was a child, Mrs Yabsley had speculated on her marriage,
when all the street would turn out to the wedding. And now, after
years of planning and waiting, she was to be married on the quiet, for
there was nothing to boast about.

"Well, it's no use cryin' over skimmed milk," she reflected, adapting
the proverb to her needs.

But she clung with obstinacy to a marriage in a church, convinced that
none other was genuine. And casting about in her mind for a parson who
would marry them without fuss or expense, she remembered Trinity
Church, and the thing was done.

Canon Vaughan, the new rector of Trinity Church, had brought some
strange ideas from London, where he had worked in the slums. He had
founded a workman's club, and smoked his pipe with the members; formed
a brigade of newsboys and riff-raff, and taught them elementary
morality with the aid of boxing-gloves; and offended his co