I
understand, early next week. Your mother will expect you home after
that."

"Mothers are often disappointed," I said. "Look at Hilda's, for
instance. And in any case my mother is a reasonable woman. She'll
respect a doctor's certificate, and McMeekin will give me that if I ask
him."

The Canon had evidently not been attending to what Miss Pettigrew and I
were saying to one another. He broke in rather abruptly:

"Is there any other place more attractive than Brazil?"

He was thinking of Lalage, not of himself. I do not think he cared much
where he went so long as he got far from Ireland.

"There are, I believe," I said, "still a few cannibal tribes left in the
interior of Borneo. There are certainly head hunters there."

"Dyaks," said Miss Pettigrew.

"I might try her with them," said the Canon.

"If Miss Pettigrew," I suggested, "will manage Hilda's mother, the
thing might possibly be arranged. Selby-Harrison could practise being a
missionary."

"I shouldn't like Hilda to be eaten," said Miss Pettigrew.

"There's no fear of that," I said. "Lalage is well able to protect her
from any cannibal."

"I'll make the offer," said the Canon. "Anything would be better than
having Lalage attempting to make speeches at the Diocesan Synod."

Miss Pettigrew had her packing to do and left shortly afterward. The
Canon, who seemed to be really depressed, sat on with me and made plans
for Lalage's immediate future. From time to time, after I exposed
the hollow mockery of each plan, he complained of the tyranny of
circumstance.

"If only the bishop hadn't died," he said.

The dregs of the influenza were still hanging about me. I lost my temper
with the Canon in the end.

"If only," I said, "you'd brought up Lalage properly."

"I tried governesses," he said, "and I tried school."

"The only thing you did not try," I said, "was what the Archdeacon
recommended, a firm hand."

"The Archdeacon never married," said the Canon. "I'm often sorry he
didn't. He wouldn't say things like that if he had a child of his own."

CHAPTER XVII

There was a great deal of angry feeling in Ballygore and indeed all
through the constituency when Lalage went home. It was generally
believed that O'Donoghue, Vittie, and I had somehow driven her away,
but this was quite unjust to us and we all three felt it. We felt it
particularly when, one night at about twelve o'clock, a large crowd
visited us in turn and groaned under our window