ud
of its virility.

The Sunday school, marshalled by curates and teachers, awaited the
party from the vicarage. The thick and darkened sunshine of Bludston
flooded the asphalt of the yard, which sent up a reek of heat, causing
curates to fan themselves with their black straw hats, and little boys
in clean collars to wriggle in sticky discomfort, while in the still
air above the ignoble town hung the heavy pall of smoke. Presently
there was the sound of wheels and the sight of the head of the vicar's
coachman above the coping of the schoolyard wall. Then the gates opened
and the vicar and his wife and Miss Merewether, her daughter, and
Maisie Shepherd appeared and were immediately greeted by curates and
teachers.

Maisie Shepherd, a stranger in a strange land, pretty, pink, blushing,
hatefully self-conscious, detached herself, after a minute or two, from
the group and looked with timid curiosity on the children. She was a
London girl, her head still dancing with the delights of her first
season, and she had never been to a Sunday-school treat in her life.
Madge Merewether, her old schoolfellow, had told her she was to help
amuse the little girls. Heaven knew how she was to do it. Already the
unintelligibility of Lancashire speech had filled her with dismay. The
array of hard-faced little girls daunted her; she turned to the boys,
but she only saw one--the little hatless, coatless scarecrow with the
perfect features And arresting grace, who stood out among his smug
companions with the singularly vivid incongruity of a Greek Hermes in
the central hall of Madame Tussaud's waxwork exhibition. Fascinated,
she strayed down the line toward him. She halted, looked for a second
or two into a pair of liquid black eyes and then blushed in agonized
shyness. She stared at the beautiful boy, and the beautiful boy stared
at her, and not a word could she find in her head to speak. She turned
abruptly and moved away. The boy broke rank and slowly followed her.

For little Paul Kegworthy the heavens had opened and flooded his
senses, till he nearly fainted, with the perfume of celestial lands.
The intoxicating sweetness of it bewildered his young brain. It was
nothing delicate, evanescent, like the smell of a flower. It as thick,
pungent, cloying, compelling. Mouth agape and nostril wide, he followed
the exquisite source of the emanation like one in a dream, half across
the yard. A curate laughingly and unsuspectingly brought him back