in getting anywhere, while Miss Mapp, with
the halo of martyrdom round her head, had once arrived at a Summer-time
party an hour late, in order to bear witness to the truth, and, in
consequence, had got only dregs of tea and the last faint strawberry.
But the Major and Captain Puffin used the tram so often, that they had
fallen into the degrading habit of dislocating their clocks and watches
on the first of May, and dislocating them again in the autumn, when they
were forced into uniformity with properly-minded people. Irene was
flippant on the subject, and said that any old time would do for her.
The Poppits followed convention, and Mrs. Poppit, in naming the hour for
a party to the stalwarts, wrote "4.30 (your 3.30)." The King, after
all, had invited her to be decorated at a particular hour, summer-time,
and what was good enough for the King was good enough for Mrs. Poppit.

The sermon was quite uncompromising. There was summer and winter, by
Divine ordinance, but there was nothing said about summer-time and
winter-time. There was but one Time, and even as Life only stained the
white radiance of eternity, as the gifted but, alas! infidel poet
remarked, so, too, did Time. But ephemeral as Time was, noon in the
Bible clearly meant twelve o'clock, and not one o'clock: towards even,
meant towards even, and not the middle of a broiling afternoon. The
sixth hour similarly was the Roman way of saying twelve. Winter-time, in
fact, was God's time, and though there was nothing wicked (far from it)
in adopting strange measures, yet the simple, the childlike, clung to
the sacred tradition, which they had received from their fathers and
forefathers at their mother's knee. Then followed a long and eloquent
passage, which recapitulated the opening about unhappy divisions, and
contained several phrases, regarding the lengths to which such divisions
might go, which were strikingly applicable to duelling. The peroration
recapitulated the recapitulation, in case anyone had missed it, and the
coda, the close itself, in the full noon of the winter sun, was full of
joy at the healing of all such unhappy divisions. And now.... The rain
rattling against the windows drowned the Doxology.

The doctrine was so much to her mind that Miss Mapp gave a shilling to
the offertory instead of her usual sixpence, to be devoted to the
organist and choir fund. The Padre, it is true, had changed the hour of
services to suit the heresy of the majority, and