was eventually
decided upon.

The conversazione was held in the Chapel school-room. A considerable
portion of Mr. Hearty's drawing-room furniture had been requisitioned
in order to give to the place an appearance of "homeiness" and
comfort. Mr. Hearty's clock and lustres were upon the mantelpiece, and
Mr. Hearty's pink candles were in the lustres. Chains of coloured
paper, to Mr. Hearty the extreme evidences of festivity, stretched
from the corners of the room to the central gas bracket on which had
been placed opaque pink globes.

Nothing, however, could mitigate the hardness of the scriptural texts
in oak Oxford frames that garnished the walls. "Prepare to Meet Thy
God," even when in gold letters entwined with apple-blossom, seemed
scarcely the greeting for those who had been invited to revel. "The
Wages of Sin is Death," with violets coquetting in and out the
letters, is sound theology; but not a convincing invitation to
merry-making. "And So Shall Ye All Likewise Perish," with primroses
that seemed to have paled through long association with so terrible a
menace, threw out its uncompromising warning from immediately above
the refreshment-table. On the table itself was everything that a
little money could buy, from fish-paste sandwiches to home-made
three-cornered tarts, with raspberry-jam baked hard peeping out at the
joins, as if to advertise that there was no deception.

Millie Hearty had striven to mitigate the uncompromising gloom of the
texts by placing evergreens above the frames; but with no very
pronounced success.

Mr. Hearty had supplied the fruit and Mr. Black the groceries at
"cost-price." That is to say, Mr. Hearty had taken off a halfpenny a
pound from his tenpenny apples, and Mr. Black three farthings a bottle
from his one and ninepenny lemon-squash.

On the night of the conversazione, Mr. Hearty and Mrs. Bindle arrived
early in order to put finishing touches to everything. Mrs. Bindle was
wearing a new dress of puce-coloured merino, and Mr. Hearty had donned
a white tie in honour of the occasion. His trousers still
concertinaed mournfully down his legs until they despairedly met his
large and shapeless boots.

Millie Hearty was also an early arrival. In her white frock she looked
strangely out of place associated with her father and aunt.

Mr. Hearty fidgeted about from place to place in a state of acute
nervousness. His eyes, roving round in search of some defect in the
arrangements, fixe