at about? About almost everything. Nature,
art, science, poetry, the stars, spiritualism, the relations of the
sexes, music, religion. Ivor, she thought, had an interesting mind.

The two young ladies parted affectionately.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The nearest Roman Catholic church was upwards of twenty miles away.
Ivor, who was punctilious in his devotions, came down early to breakfast
and had his car at the door, ready to start, by a quarter to ten. It was
a smart, expensive-looking machine, enamelled a pure lemon yellow and
upholstered in emerald green leather. There were two seats--three if you
squeezed tightly enough--and their occupants were protected from
wind, dust, and weather by a glazed sedan that rose, an elegant
eighteenth-century hump, from the midst of the body of the car.

Mary had never been to a Roman Catholic service, thought it would be an
interesting experience, and, when the car moved off through the great
gates of the courtyard, she was occupying the spare seat in the sedan.
The sea-lion horn roared, faintlier, faintlier, and they were gone.

In the parish church of Crome Mr. Bodiham preached on 1 Kings vi. 18:
"And the cedar of the house within was carved with knops"--a sermon of
immediately local interest. For the past two years the problem of the
War Memorial had exercised the minds of all those in Crome who had
enough leisure, or mental energy, or party spirit to think of such
things. Henry Wimbush was all for a library--a library of local
literature, stocked with county histories, old maps of the district,
monographs on the local antiquities, dialect dictionaries, handbooks
of the local geology and natural history. He liked to think of the
villagers, inspired by such reading, making up parties of a Sunday
afternoon to look for fossils and flint arrow-heads. The villagers
themselves favoured the idea of a memorial reservoir and water supply.
But the busiest and most articulate party followed Mr. Bodiham in
demanding something religious in character--a second lich-gate, for
example, a stained-glass window, a monument of marble, or, if possible,
all three. So far, however, nothing had been done, partly because the
memorial committee had never been able to agree, partly for the more
cogent reason that too little money had been subscribed to carry out any
of the proposed schemes. Every three or four months Mr. Bodiham preached
a sermon on the subject. His last had been delivered in March; it was