ng its name."

"Yes," said her husband gravely; "the Kaiser wrote to the Town Clerk
suggesting the Globe as more appropriate: but the Town Council, while
willing to make some alteration, is divided between the Blue Boar and
the Boot. . . . But that reminds me. If I am to attend your meeting,
let us call in the Wesleyan Minister as a set-off. There's nothing
makes a Woman's Meeting so womanly as a sprinkling of ministers of
religion."

"Robert, you are talking odiously, and you know it. I hate people to
be satirical or sarcastic. To begin with, I never understand what
they mean, so that I am helpless as well as uncomfortable."

The Vicar had taken a step or two to the bay-window, where, with
hands thrust within his trouser-pockets, he stood staring gloomily
out on the bright flower-beds that, next to the comeliness and order
of her ministering to the Church--garnishing of the altar, lustration
of the holy vessels, washing and mending of vestments,--were the
pride of Mrs Steele's life.

"See how the flowers, as at parade,
Under their colours stand display'd:
Each regiment in order grows,
That of the tulip, pink, and rose.--
O thou, that dear and happy Isle,
The garden of the world erstwhile,
Thou Paradise of the four seas
Which Heaven planted us to please,
But, to exclude the world, did guard
With wat'ry, if not flaming, sword;
Unhappy! shall we never more
That sweet militia restore?
When gardens only had their towers,
And all the garrisons were flowers. . . ."

He murmured Marvell's lines to himself and, with a shake of the
shoulders coming out of his brown study, swung round to the
writing-table again.

"Dear, I beg your pardon! . . . The truth is, I feel savage with
myself: and, being a condemned non-combatant, I vented it on the most
sensitive soul I could find, knowing it to be gentle, and taking care
(as you say) to catch and render it helpless." He groaned.
"Yes, yes--I am a brute! Even now I am using that same tone which
you detest. You do right to detest it. But will it comfort you a
little to know that when a man takes that tone, often enough it's
because he too feels helpless as well as angry? 'Mordant' is the
word, I believe: which means that the poor fool bites _you_ to get
his teeth into himself."

She rose from her writing-chair and touched him by the arm.

"Robert!" she appealed.

"Oh, yes--'What i