better nature to induce her to study for the Cambridge Local. She waited
until the cold and her fear of being discovered spying forced her to
creep upstairs, ashamed of having enjoyed a silly entertainment, and of
conniving at a breach of the rules rather than face a fresh quarrel with
Agatha.

There was one particular in which matters between Agatha and the college
discipline did not go on exactly as before. Although she had formerly
supplied a disproportionately large number of the confessions in the
fault book, the entry which had nearly led to her expulsion was the last
she ever made in it. Not that her conduct was better--it was rather the
reverse. Miss Wilson never mentioned the matter, the fault book being
sacred from all allusion on her part. But she saw that though Agatha
would not confess her own sins, she still assisted others to unburden
their consciences. The witticisms with which Jane unsuspectingly
enlivened the pages of the Recording Angel were conclusive on this
point.

Smilash had now adopted a profession. In the last days of autumn he
had whitewashed the chalet, painted the doors, windows, and veranda,
repaired the roof and interior, and improved the place so much that the
landlord had warned him that the rent would be raised at the expiration
of his twelvemonth's tenancy, remarking that a tenant could not
reasonably expect to have a pretty, rain-tight dwelling-house for the
same money as a hardly habitable ruin. Smilash had immediately promised
to dilapidate it to its former state at the end of the year. He had
put up a board at the gate with an inscription copied from some printed
cards which he presented to persons who happened to converse with him.

*****

JEFFERSON SMILASH

PAINTER, DECORATOR, GLAZIER, PLUMBER & GARDENER. Pianofortes tuned.
Domestic engineering in all its Branches. Families waited upon at table
or otherwise.

CHAMOUNIX VILLA, LYVERN. (N.B. Advice Gratis. No Reasonable offer
refused.)

*****

The business thus announced, comprehensive as it was, did not
flourish. When asked by the curious for testimony to his competence and
respectability, he recklessly referred them to Fairholme, to Josephs,
and in particular to Miss Wilson, who, he said, had known him from his
earliest childhood. Fairholme, glad of an opportunity to show that he
was no mealy mouthed parson, declared, when applied to, that Smilash was
the greatest rogue in the co