as it might help me to forget Father's
bein' away at the War. Mr Nanjivell said as I couldn' learn too
early to lay by against a rainy day, and I was to take it to Missis
Pengelly's and if it took the form of trousers he didn' mind.
Mother wanted me to put it in the savings bank, but he wouldn' hear
of it. He said they weren't to be trusted any longer--not savings
banks. He said--"

"But where did _he_ get it?"

'Biades blinked, and set his face hardily. He had the haziest
notions of how money was acquired. But from infancy he had perforce
attended chapel.

"He took up a collection."

"_What?_"

"He took up a collection, Miss: the same as Mr Pamphlett does on
Sunday. Back-along, when he was at sea--"

"Alcibiades," said Miss Oliver on a sudden impulse, feeling for her
purse. "What would you say if I gave you two pennies for your bright
new one? Two pennies will buy twice as much as one, you know."

"O' course I know _that_," said 'Biades cunningly. "But what for?"

"Because you have told me such a pretty story."

'Biades hesitated. He had been driven--in self-defence, to be sure--
into saying things at the bare thought of which he felt a premonitory
tingling in the rearward part of his person. But somehow the feel of
the coin in his hand seemed to enfranchise him. He had at once a
sense of manly solidity, and of having been floated off into a giddy
atmosphere in which nothing succeeded like success and the law of
gravity had lost all spanking weight. He backed towards Mrs
Pengelly's shop door, greedy, suspicious, irresolute.

Miss Oliver produced two copper coins, and laid them in his palm.
As the exchange was made he backed upon Mrs Pengelly's shop door, and
the impact set a bell clanging. The sense of it shot up his spine of
a sudden, and at each stroke of the clapper he felt he had sold his
soul to the devil. But Miss Oliver stood in front of him, with a
smile on her face that seemed to waver the more she fixed it: and at
this moment the voice of Mrs Pengelly--a deep contralto--called--

"Come in!"

Some women are comfortable, others uncomfortable. In the language of
Polpier, "there be bitter and there be bowerly." Mrs Pengelly was a
bowerly woman, and traded in lollipops. Miss Oliver--

Anyhow, the child 'Biades turned and took refuge in the shop, hurling
back the door-flap and its clanging bell.

This left Miss Oliver without, in the awkwardest of situations: since
she had a