t contained a goodly sprinkling of sarcasms and
grumblings at his, Morris's, bad management of various little matters
which the Colonel considered important. Most of all, however, was his
parent indignant at his neglect to furnish him with details sufficiently
ample of the progress of the new buildings. Lastly, he desired, by
return of post, a verbatim report of the quarrel that, as he was
informed, had occurred on the school board when a prominent Roman
Catholic threatened to throw an inkstand at a dissenting minister who,
_coram populo_, called him the son of "a Babylonian woman."

By the time that Morris had finished this epistle, and two others
which accompanied it, he was in no mood for further reflections of an
unpractical or dreamy nature. Who can wonder when it is stated that
they contained, respectively, a summary demand for the amount of a
considerable bill which he imagined he had paid, and a request that he
would read a paper before a "Science Institute" upon the possibilities
of aerial telephones, made by a very unpleasing lady whom he had once
met at a lawn-tennis party? Indeed it would not be too much to say that
if anyone had given him the opportunity he would have welcomed a chance
to quarrel, especially with the lady of the local Institute. Thus, cured
of all moral distempers, and every tendency to speculate on feminine
charms, hidden or overt, did he descend to the Sabbath breakfast.

That morning Morris accompanied Stella to church, where the services
were still being performed by a stop-gap left by Mr. Tomley. Here,
again, Stella was a surprise to him, for now her demeanour, and at a
little distance her appearance also, were just such as mark ninety-eight
out of every hundred clergyman's daughters in the country. So quiet
and reserved was she that anyone meeting her that morning might have
imagined that she was hurrying from the accustomed Bible-class to sit
among her pupils in the church. This impression indeed was, as it were,
certificated by an old-fashioned silk fichu that she had been obliged to
borrow, which in bygone years had been worn by Morris's mother.

Once in church, however, matters changed. To begin with, finding it
warm, Stella threw off the fichu, greatly to the gain of her personal
appearance. Next, it became evident that the beauties of the ancient
building appealed to her, which was not wonderful; for these old,
seaside, eastern counties churches, relics of long past wealth and