now." She put her head on one side
and surveyed him critically.

"What do you mean?" he asked, smiling.

Ethel laughed. "I've known you to make love more ardently. Oh, yes. I
have a very good memory. Still, I won't tell Vera. And now I'm going to
write to your sister May and gloat over her. Of course I shall gloat,
because I suggested getting you married off when we first heard you were
coming home, and May got furious with me. Will you write too?"

Jimmy shook his head. "No, yours will do, at least for a start. I've got
to write to Canon Farlow. Vera says he won't be home from Switzerland
for another week. Otherwise, I would have gone to see him."

"He's rather an old stick, if I may say that of your beloved's father,"
Ethel went on. "You will find that out, and his sermons are very long,
so don't live in his parish if you can help it. You'll have plenty of
church in any case, you poor Jimmy."

"Why 'poor Jimmy,' when you've just been congratulating me?"

Ethel gave an impatient little sigh. "I don't know, I'm sure. Now I've
done it I'm wondering if I was right. It's a big responsibility, and you
may both end by hating me ever after. Promise me you won't, Jimmy, do
promise that." Her voice had grown unusually earnest, and her eyes were
suspiciously bright.

"Of course I promise, Ethel," he said gravely. "But I don't think there
is much fear of my feeling anything except gratitude."

But Mrs. Grimmer was not satisfied. "I wish I had left it alone. I don't
know how it is, but you're not the old Jimmy any longer, and I can't
understand you. You're not half as happy as you ought to be under the
circumstances. Now, are you?"

He protested vigorously against the idea, and yet he left her so
entirely unconvinced that, instead of going to Vera, she sought out her
husband and had a good cry on his shoulder.

"I ought not to have done it, Billy," she sobbed. "If anything goes
wrong when it's too late, Jimmy will take it to heart so terribly. I
wish I wasn't responsible, but I am, and I can't deny it."

Billy tried to comfort her. "My dear, they seem happy enough over it. I
know Vera is very grateful to you."

Ethel shrugged her shoulders. "Vera! Oh, she would be happy, because she
doesn't feel very deeply. She never did about anything. It was always
the same with her when she was a child. But Jimmy is different. He's not
in love."

"Then why did he propose?" Billy retorted. "Was it her money?"

"No, no," Ethel r