ading yesterday's daily paper,
and enjoying his pipe. Never before had his pipe been allowed in the
kitchen; but he had just been graciously told he might bring it in, if
he wouldn't be "messy with the _h_ashes"; Mrs. Jenkins volunteering the
additional remarkable information, that it was "good for the beetles."
Jenkins was doubtful as to whether this meant that his pipe gave
pleasure to the beetles, or the reverse; but experience had taught him
that a condition of peaceful uncertainty in his own mind was to be
preferred to a torrent of vituperative explanation from Martha. He
therefore also received in silence the apparently unnecessary
injunction not to go "crawlin' about all over the floor"; it took "a
figure to do that!"

Eight o'clock came, and Miss Charteris had not returned.

"Remaining with 'er for dinner," pronounced Martha, flinging open the
oven, and wrathfully relegating to the larder the chicken she had been
roasting with extreme care; "an' a precious poor dinner it'll be!
Jenkins, _you_ may 'ave this sparrow-grass. _I_ 'aven't the 'eart.
An' me 'oping she'd 'ave 'ad the sense to keep _'im_ to dinner; knowing
as there was a chicking an' 'grass for two. Now what's took Miss
_H_ann 'urgent and immediate,' I'd like to know!" continued Martha,
deriving considerable comfort from banging the plates and tumblers on
to the kitchen table, with just as much violence as was consistent with
their personal safety, as she walked round it, laying the table for
supper. "Ate a biscuit, I should think, an' flown to 'er cheat. I've
no patience; no, _that_ I 'aven't!" And Martha attacked the loaf, with
fury.

At a quarter before nine, Miss Charteris returned. In a few moments
the bell summoned Jenkins. The note he was to take was also marked
"Immediate." He left it on the kitchen table, and, while he changed
his coat, Martha fetched her glasses. Then she followed him to the
pantry.

"'Ere, run man!" she said, "run! Never mind your muffler. Who wants a
muffler in June? _'E_'s in it! It's something more than a biscuit.
Drat that woman!"

* * * * *

A quarter of an hour later, a tall white figure moved noiselessly down
the lawn, to the seats beneath the mulberry. The full moon was just
rising above the high red wall, gliding up among the trees, huge and
golden through their branches. Christobel Charteris waited in the
garden for the Boy.

He came.

By then, the lawn was bathe