Nurse Branscome looked at him squarely.

"If I could save her from that!"

"You would risk appearances?"

"Gladly. . . . Will you show me the letter?"

Brother Copas shook his head.

"You must take it on faith from me for a while . . . at any rate until I find out who in St. Hospital begins her 'w's' with a curl like a ram's horn. Did you leave the child with her father?"

"No; she had run out to the kitchen garden. Since she has discovered it she goes there regularly twice a day, morning and evening. I can't think why, and she won't tell. She is the queerest child."

The walled kitchen garden of St. Hospital lies to the south, between the back of the "Nunnery" and the River Mere. It can be reached from the ambulatory by a dark, narrow tunnel under the nurses' lodgings. The Brethren never went near it. For years old Battershall, the gardener, had dug there in solitude—day in, day out—and had grown his vegetables, hedged in from all human intercourse, nor grumbling at his lot.

Corona, exploring the precincts, had discovered this kitchen garden, found it to her mind, and thereafter made free of it with the cheerfullest insouciance. The dark tunnel, to begin with, put her in mind of some adventure in a fairy tale she could not recall; but it opened of a sudden and enchantingly upon sunshine and beds of onions, parsley, cabbages, with pale yellow butterflies hovering. Old Battershall, too, though taciturn, was obviously not displeased by her visits. He saw that while prying here and there—especially among the parsley beds, for what reason he could not guess—the child stole no fruit, did no harm. She trampled nothing. She lifted no leaf to harm it. When she stopped to speak with him her talk was "just nonsense, you know." Unconsciously, by the end of the third day he had looked up twice or thrice from his delving, asking himself why she was late.

And what (do you suppose) did Corona seek in the kitchen garden? She too, unknowing, was lonely. Unknowing, this child felt a need for children, companions. Uncle Copas's doll—well meant and priced at 1s. 3d.—had somehow missed to engage her affections. She could not tell him so, but she hated it.

Like every woman-child of her age she was curious about babies. She had heard, over in America, that babies came either at early morning or at shut of eve, and were to be found in parsley beds. Now old Mr. Battershall grew parsley to make you proud. At the Merchester Rural Gardening Show he regularly took first prize; his potting-shed, in the north-east angle of the wall, was papered with winning tickets from bench to roof. At first when he saw Corona moving about the bed, lifting the parsley leaves, he had a mind to chide her away; for, as he put it, "Children and chicken be always a-pickin'—the mischief's in their natur'." Finding, however, that she did no damage, yet harked back to the parsley again and again, he set her down for an unusually intelligent child, who somehow knew good gardening when she saw it.

"Glad to see you admirin' it, missie," he said one morning, coming up behind her unperceived.

Corona, in the act of upturning a leaf, started and drew back her hand. Babies—she could not tell why—made their appearance in this world by stealth, and must be searched for furtively.

"A mort o' prizes I've took with that there parsley one time and another," pursued Mr. Battershall, not perceiving the flush of guilt on her face (for his eyesight was, in his own words, not so young as it used to be). "Goodbody's Curly Mammoth is the strain, and I don't care who knows it, for the secret's not in the strain, but in the way o' raisin' it. I grows for a succession, too. Summer or winter these six-an'-twenty years St. Hospital's ne'er been without a fine bed o' parsley, I thank the Lord!"

Six-and-twenty years. . . . It was comforting in a way to know that parsley grew here all the seasons round. But—six-and-twenty years, and not one child in the place save herself, who had come over from America! Yet Mr. Battershall was right; it seemed excellent parsley.

"You don't find that anything comes and—and takes away—" she hazarded, but came to a full stop.

"There's slugs," answered Mr. Battershall stolidly, "and there's snails. Terrible full o' snails the old wall was till I got the Master to repoint it."

"Would snails—"

"Eh?" he asked as she hesitated.

"They might take away the—the flowers, for instance."

Old Battershall guffawed.

"You wasn' sarchin' for flowers, was you? Dang me, but that's a good 'un! . . . I don't raise my own seed, missie, if that's your meanin'; an' that bein' so, he'd have to get up early as would find a flower in my parsley."

Ah, this might explain it! As she eyed him, her childish mind searching the mystery, yet keeping its own secret, Corona resolved to steal down to the garden one of these fine mornings very early indeed.

"Now I'll tell you something about parsley," said Mr. Battershall; "something very curious, and yet it must be true, for I heard the Master tell it in one of his sermons. The ancients, by which I mean the Greeks, set amazin' store by the yerb. There was a kind of Athletic Sports—sort of Crystal Palace meetin'—the great event, as you might say, and attractin' to sportsmen all over Greece—"

"All over what?"

"Greece. Which is a country, missy, or, at any rate, was so. The meeting was held every four years; and what d'ye suppose was the top prize, answerin', as you may say, to the Championship Cup? Why, a wreath o' parsley! 'Garn!' says you. And 'Parsley!' says you. Which a whole wreath of it might cost fivepence at the outside. . . ."

Now Corona, whose mind was ever picking up and hoarding such trifles, had heard Uncle Copas two days before drop a remark that the Greeks knew everything worth knowing. Plainly, then, the parsley held some wonderful secret after all. She must contrive to outwit old Battershall, and get to the garden ahead of him, which would not be easy, by the way.

To begin with, on these summer mornings old Battershall rose with the lark, and boasted of it; and, furthermore, the door of her father's bedroom stood open all night. To steal abroad she must pass it, and he was the lightest of sleepers. She did not intend to be beaten, though; and meanwhile she punctually visited the parsley morning and evening.

Heaven knows how the day-dream came to take possession of her. She was not consciously lonely. She worshipped this marvellous new home. Sometimes in her rambles she had to pinch herself to make sure this was all really happening. But always in her rambles she saw St. Hospital peopled with children—boys, girls, and little toddlers—chasing one another across the lawns, laughing at hide-and-seek in the archways, bruising no flower-bed, filling old souls with glee. They were her playmates, these innocents of her fancy, the long day through. At evening in her prayers she called them home, and they came reluctant—

No, no, let us play, for it is yet day And we cannot go to sleep; Besides, in the sky the little birds fly And the hills are all covered with sheep.

The tunnel was populous with them as she passed through it from the garden to the ambulatory, and at the end of the tunnel she came plump upon Branny and Uncle Copas in converse. They started guiltily.

"I've been looking for you this half-hour," said Brother Copas, recovering himself. "Didn't a certain small missy make an appointment with me to be shown the laundry and its wonders? And isn't this Tuesday—ironing day?"

"You promised to show it to me some time," answered Corona, who was punctilious in small matters; "but you never fixed any time in p'tic'lar."

"Oh, then I must have made the appointment with myself! Never mind; come along now, if you can spare the time."

Nurse Branscome nodded and left them, turning in at the stairway which led to her quarters in the Nunnery. At the foot of it she paused to call after them—

"Mind, Corona is not to be late for her tea! I've invited myself this evening, and there is to be a plum cake in honour of the occasion."

Brother Copas and Corona passed down the ambulatory and by the porter's lodge to the outer court. Of a sudden, within a few paces of the laundry, Brother Copas halted to listen.

"You had better stop here for a moment," he said, and walked forward to the laundry door, the hasp of which he lifted after knocking sharply with his staff. He threw the door open and looked in, surveying the scene with an angry disgust.

"Hallo! More abominations?" exclaimed Brother Copas.

The quarrel had started in the forenoon over a dirty trick played by Brother Clerihew, the ex-butler. (Brother Clerihew had a name for underhand practice; indeed, his inability to miss a chance of it had cost him situation after situation, and finally landed him in St. Hospital.) This time he had played it upon poor old doddering Brother Ibbetson. Finding Ibbetson in the porter's gateway, with charge of a lucrative-looking tourist and in search of the key of the Relique Room, he noted that the key, usually handed out by Porter Manby, hung on a hook just within the doorway; but old Ibbetson, being purblind, could not see it, or at all events could not recognise it, and Manby happened to be away at the brewhouse on some errand connected with the Wayfarers' Dole. Brother Clerihew, who had left him there, sent Ibbetson off on a chase in the wrong direction, loitered around for a couple of minutes chatting about the weather, and then, with a remark that it was shameful to keep gentlefolks waiting so, looked casually in at the doorway.

"Why the key is here all the time!" he exclaimed. "If you are in any hurry, sir, permit me to take brother Ibbetson's place, and show you round. Oh," he added falsely, seeing the visitor hesitate, "it won't hurt him at all! I don't like to mention it, but any small gratuities bestowed on the Brethren are carried to a common fund."

Ibbetson, harking back from a vain search to find his bird had flown, encountered Porter Manby returning with Brother Warboise from the brew-house, and tremulously opened up his distress.

"Eh?" snapped Warboise, after exchanging glances with the Porter. "Clerihew said Manby was in the kitchen, did he? But he'd left us at the brewhouse not a minute before."

"And the key! gone from the hook!" chimed in Porter Manby, "where I'll swear I left it. This is one of Clerihew's monkeyings, you bet."

"I'll monkey him," growled Brother Warboise.

The three kept sentry, knowing that Clerihew must sooner or later return with his convoy, there being no other exit. When at length he hove in sight with his convoy his face wore an uneasy, impudent smile. He was the richer by half a crown. They stood aside and let him brazen it past them; but Manby and Ibbetson were still waiting for him as he came back alone. Ibbetson was content with a look of reproach. Manby told him fair and straight that he was a swindling cur. But meanwhile Warboise had stumped off and told Ibbetson's wife. This done, he hurried off, and catching Clerihew by the steps of the Hundred Men's Hall, threatened the rogue with his staff. Manby caught them in altercation, the one aiming impotent blows, the other evading them still with his shameless grin, and separated them. Brother Ibbetson looked on, feebly wringing his hands.

But Mrs. Ibbetson was worth three of her husband, and a notorious scold. In the laundry, later on, she announced within earshot of Mrs. Clerihew that, as was well beknown, Clerihew had lost his last three places for bottle-stealing; and Mrs. Royle, acknowledged virago of St. Hospital, took up the accusation and blared it obscenely. For a good five minutes the pair mauled Mrs. Clerihew, who, with an air of high gentility, went on ironing shirts. She had been a lady's maid when Clerihew married her, and could command, as a rule, a high-bred, withering sneer. Unhappily, the united attack of Mrs. Ibbetson and Mrs. Royle goaded her so far beyond the bounds of breeding that of a sudden she upped and called the latter a bitch; whereupon, feeling herself committed, this ordinarily demure woman straightened her spine and followed up the word with a torrent of filthy invective that took the whole laundry aback.

Her success was but momentary. Mrs. Royle had a character to maintain. Fetching a gasp, she let fly the dirtiest word one woman can launch at another, and on the instant made a grab at Mrs. Clerihew's brow. . . . It was a matter of notoriety in St. Hospital that Mrs. Clerihew wore a false "front." The thing came away in Mrs. Royle's clutch, and amid shrieks of laughter Mrs. Royle tossed it to Mrs. Ibbetson, who promptly clapped down a hot flat-iron upon it. The spectators rocked with helpless mirth as the poor woman strove to cover her bald brows, while the thing hissed and shrivelled to nothing, emitting an acrid odour beneath the relentless flat-iron.

"Ladies! ladies!" commanded Brother Copas. "A visitor, if you please!"

The word—as always in St. Hospital—instantly commanded a hush. The women fled back to their tables, and started ironing, goffering, crimping for dear life, with irons hot and cold. Brother Copas, with a chuckle, leant back and beckoned Corona in from the yard.

At sight of her on the threshold Mrs. Royle broke into a coarse laugh. It found no echo, and died away half-heartedly. For one thing, there might yet be a real visitor behind the child; for another, these women stood in some little awe of Brother Copas, who paid well for his laundry-work, never mixed himself up with gossip, and moreover had a formidable trick of lifting his hat whenever he passed one of these viragoes, and after a glance at her face, fixing an amused stare at her feet.

"Pardon me, ladies," said he; "but my small laundry-work has hitherto gone, as you know, to old Mrs. Vigurs in St. Faith's Road. Last week she sent me word that she could no longer undertake it, the fact being that she has just earned her Old Age Pension and is retiring upon it. I come to ask if one of you will condescend to take her place and oblige me."

He paused, tasting the fun of it. As he well knew, they all feared and hated him for his trick of irony; but at least half a dozen of them desired his custom, for in St. Hospital (where nothing escaped notice) Brother Copas's fastidious extravagance in body-linen and his punctuality in discharging small debts were matters of common knowledge. Moreover, in their present mood each of these women saw a chance of spiting another by depriving her of the job.

Brother Copas eyed them with an amiable smile.

"Come," he said, "don't all speak at once! . . . I'll not ask you to bid for my little contract just now when I see you are all so busy. But seriously, I invite tenders, and will ask any one of you who cares for my custom to send me (say by to-morrow evening) a list of her prices in a sealed envelope, each envelope to bear the words 'Washing List' in an upper corner, that I may put all the tenders aside and open them together. Eh? What do you say, ladies?"

"I shall be happy for one," said Mrs. Clerihew, laying stress on the aspirate. She was always careful of this, having lived with gentlefolks. She burned to know if Brother Copas had heard her call Mrs. Royle a bitch. Mrs. Royle (to do her justice) when enraged recked neither what she said nor who overheard. But Mrs. Clerihew, between her lapses, clung passionately to gentility and the world's esteem. She was conscious, moreover, that without her false "front" she must be looking a fright. . . . In short, the wretched woman rushed into speech because for the moment anything was more tolerable than silence.

"I thank you, ma'am."

Neither voice nor look betrayed that Brother Copas had overheard or perceived anything amiss.

Mrs. Clerihew, baffled, began desperately to curry favour.

"And you've brought Brother Bonaday's pretty child, I see. . . . Step over here, my dear, and watch me—when I've heated this iron. 'Crimping,' they call it, and I've done it for titled folks in my time. One of these days, I hope, you'll be going into good service yourself. There's nothing like it for picking up manners."

She talked for talking's sake, in a carneying tone, while her bosom still heaved from the storm of battle.

Mrs. Royle attempted a ribald laugh, but it met with no success, and her voice died down under a disapproving hush.

Mrs. Clerihew talked on, gaining confidence. She crimped beautifully, and this was the more remarkable because (as Corona noted) her hand shook all the while.

In short, the child had, as she put it, quite a good time.

When it was time to be going she thanked Mrs. Clerihew very prettily, and walked back with Brother Copas to her father's room. They found Nurse Branscome there and the table already laid for tea; there was a plum cake, too.

After tea Branny told them all very gravely that this must be her last visit. She was giving over the care of Corona's father to Nurse Turner, whose "case" it had really been from the first. She explained that the nurses, unless work were extra heavy, had to take their patients in a certain order, by what she called a rota.

"But he's bettering every day now, so I don't mind." She nodded cheerfully towards Brother Bonaday, and then, seeing that Corona's face was woebegone, she added: "But you will often be running across to the Nunnery to see me. Besides, I've brought a small parting gift to console you."

She unwrapped a paper parcel, and held out a black boy-doll, a real Golliwog, with white shirt buttons for eyes and hair of black Berlin wool.

"Oh, Branny!"

Corona, after holding the Golliwog a moment in outstretched hands, strained it to her breast.

"Oh, Branny! And till this moment I didn't know how much I've wanted him!"



CHAPTER XIV.

BROTHER COPAS ON THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

All love being a mystery, I see no reason to speculate how or why it came to pass that Corona, who already possessed two pink and waxen girl-dolls, and treated them with the merest contempt, took this black manikin of a Golliwog straight to her heart to share its innermost confidences.

It happened so, and there's no more to be said. Next morning Corona paid an early call at the Nunnery.

"I'm afraid," she said in her best society manner, "this is a perfeckly ridiklous hour. But you are responsible for Timothy in a way, aren't you?"

"Timothy?" echoed Nurse Branscome.

"Oh, I forgot!" Corona patted the red-trousered legs of the Golliwog, which she held, not as little girls usually hold dolls, but tucked away under her armpit. "Timothy's his name, though I mean to call him Timmy for short. But the point is, he's becoming rather a question."

"In what way?"

"Well, you see, I have to take him to bed with me. He insists on it, which is all very well," continued Corona, nodding sagely, "but one can't allow it in the same clothes day and night. It's like what Uncle Copas says of Brother Plant's linen; it positively isn't sanitary."

"I see," said Branny, laughing. "You want me to make a change of garments for him?"

"I've examined him," answered Corona. "There's a stitch here and there, but on the whole he'll unbutton quite easily; only I didn't like to do it until I'd consulted you. . . . And I don't want you to bother about the clothes, if you'll only show me how to cut out. I can sew quite nicely. Mamma taught me. I was making a sampler all through her illness—Corona Bonaday, Aged Six Years and Three Months; then the big and little ABC, and the numbers up to ten; after that the Lord's Prayer down to Forgive us our trespasses. When we got to that she died. . . . I want to begin with a suit of pajamas—no, I forgot; they're pyjamas over here. Whatever happens, I do want him to be a gentleman," concluded Corona earnestly.

The end was that Nurse Branscome hunted up a piece of coloured flannel, and Master Timothy that same evening was stripped to indue a pyjama suit. Corona carried him thus attired off to her bed in triumph—but not to sleep. Brother Bonaday, lying awake, heard her voice running on and on in a rapid monotone. Ten o'clock struck, and he could endure the sound no longer. It seemed to him that she must be rambling in delirium, and slipping on his dressing-gown, he stole to her chamber door.

"Cannot you get to sleep, little maid?"

"Is that you, daddy?" answered Corona. "I am so sorry, but Timmy and I have been arguing. He's such a queer child; he has a lingering belief in the House of Lords!"

"Now I wonder how she gets at that?" mused Brother Bonaday when he reported the saying to Copas.

"Very simply we shall find; but you must give me a minute or so to think it out."

"To be sure, with her American up-bringing there might naturally grow an instinctive disrespect for the hereditary principle."

"I have not observed that disrespect in Americans," answered Brother Copas dryly. "But we'll credit it to them if you will; and there at once you have a capital reason why our little Miss Bull should worship the House of Lords as a fetish—whereas, it appears, she doesn't."

"It's the queerer because, when it comes to the King, she worships the 'accident of birth,' as you might call it. To her King Edward is nothing less than the Lord's Anointed."

"Quite so. . . . But please, my dear fellow, don't clap into my mouth that silliest of phrases. 'Accident of birth!' I once heard parturition pleaded as an accident—by a servant girl in trouble. Funny sort of accident, hey? Does ever anyone—did she, your own daughter, for example—come into this world fortuitously?"

Brother Copas, taking snuff, did not perceive the twitch of his friend's face. His question seemed to pluck Brother Bonaday up short, as though with the jerk of an actual rope.

"Maybe," he harked back vaguely, "it's just caprice—the inconsequence of a child's mind—the mystery of it, some would say."

"Fiddlestick-end! There's as much mystery in Corona as in the light of day about us at this moment; just so much and no more. If anything, she's deadly logical; when her mind puzzles us it's never by hocus-pocus, but simply by swiftness in operation. . . . I've learnt that much of the one female child it has ever been my lot to observe; and the Lord may allow me to enjoy the success towards the close of a life largely spent in misunderstanding boys. Stay a moment—" Brother Copas stood with corrugated brow. "I have it! I remember now that she asked me, two days ago, if I didn't think it disgusting that so many of our English Peers went and married American heiresses merely for their money. Probably she supposes that on these means our ancient nobility mainly finances itself. She amused me, too, by her obvious reluctance to blame the men. 'Of course,' she said, 'the real fault is the women's, or would be if they knew what's decent. But you can't expect anything of them; they've had no nurture.' That was her word. So being a just child, she has to wonder how Englishmen 'with nurture' can so demean themselves to get money. In short, my friend, your daughter—for love of us both maybe—is taking our picturesqueness too honestly. She inclines to find a merit of its own in poverty. It is high time we sent her to school."

It was high time, as Brother Bonaday knew; if only because every child in England nowadays is legally obliged to be educated, and the local attendance officer (easily excused though he might be for some delay in detecting the presence of a child of alien birth in so unlikely a spot as St. Hospital) would surely be on Corona's track before long. But Brother Bonaday hated the prospect of sending her to the parish school, while he possessed no money to send her to a better. Moreover, he obeyed a lifelong instinct in shying away from the call to decide.

"But we were talking about the House of Lords," he suggested feebly. "The hereditary principle—"

Brother Copas inhaled his snuff, sideways eyeing this friend whose weakness he understood to a hair's-breadth. But he, too, had his weakness—that of yielding to be led away by dialectic on the first temptation.

"Aye, to be sure. The hereditary—principle, did you say? My dear fellow, the House of Lords never had such a principle. The hereditary right to legislate slipped in by the merest slant of a side wind, and in its origin was just a handy expedient of the sort so dear to our Constitution, logically absurd, but in practice saving no end of friction and dispute."

"You will grant at any rate that, having once adopted it, the Lords exalted it to rank as a principle."

"Yes, and for a time with amazing success. That was their capital error. . . . Have you never observed, my good Bonaday, how fatally miracles come home to roost? Jonah spends three days and three nights in the whale's belly—why? Simply to get his tale believed. Credo quia impossibile seldom misses to work well for a while. He doesn't foresee, poor fellow, that what makes his fortune with one generation of men will wreck his credit with another. . . . So with the House of Lords—though here a miracle triumphantly pointed out as happening under men's eyes was never really happening at all. That in the loins of every titled legislator should lie the germ of another is a miracle (I grant you) of the first order, and may vie with Jonah's sojourn in the whale's belly; nay, it deserved an even longer run for its money, since it persuaded people that they saw the miraculous succession. But Nature was taking care all the time that it never happened. Actually our peerages have perished, and new ones have been born at an astonishing rate; about half of them at this moment are younger than the great Reform Bill. A shrewd American remarked the other day, that while it is true enough a son may not inherit his father's ability, yet if the son of a Rothschild can keep the money his father made he must in these days of liquid securities be a pretty able fellow. Weaklings (added my American) don't last long, at any rate in our times. 'God and Nature turn out the incompetents almost as quickly as would the electorate.' . . . But my point is that the House of Lords, having in the past exploited this supposed miracle for all it was worth, are now (if the Liberals have any sense) to be faced with the overdraft which every miracle leaves to be paid sooner or later. The longer-headed among the Peers perceived this some years ago; they all see it now, and are tumbling over each other in their haste to dodge the 'hereditary principle' somehow. It is for the Liberals to hold them firmly to the dear old miracle and rub their noses in it. So, and so only, will this electorate of ours rid itself, under a misapprehension, of a real peril, to which, if able to see the thing in its true form and dimensions, it would in all likelihood yield itself grovelling."

"Eh? I don't follow—"

"I tell you, Bonaday, the House of Lords is in fact no hereditary curse at all. What the devil has it to do with the claims of old descent? Does it contain a man whose ancestor ever saw Agincourt? Bankers, brewers, clothiers, mine-owners, company-promoters, journalists—our Upper House to-day is a compact, fairly well-selected body of men who have pushed to success over their fellows. Given such a body of supermen, well agreed among themselves, and knowing what they want, supplied with every temptation to feed on the necessities of the weak, armed with extravagant legal powers, even fortified with a philosophy in the sham Darwin doctrine that, with nations as with men, the poverty of one is the wealth of another—there, my dear sir, you have a menace against which, could they realise it, all moderate citizens would be fighting for their lives. . . . But it is close upon dinner-time, and I refuse to extend these valuable but parenthetical remarks on the House of Lords one whit farther to please your irresolution. . . . It's high time Corona went to school."

"I have not been well lately, as you know, Brother. I meant all along, as soon as I picked up my strength again, to—"

"Tilly vally, tilly vally!" snapped Brother Copas. "Since we are making excuses shall we add that, without admitting ourselves to be snobs, we have remarked a certain refinement—a delicacy of mind—in Corona, and doubt if the bloom of it will survive the rough contact of a public elementary school? . . . Come, I've thought of that, as a godfather should. You're aware that, a couple of years ago, a small legacy dropped in upon me—a trifling windfall of ten guineas a year. Well, I've been wasting it on luxuries—a few books I don't read, a more expensive brand of tobacco, which really is no better than the old shag, some extra changes of body-linen. Now since the Education Act of 1902 the fees in the public secondary day schools have been cut down to a figure quite ridiculously low, and the private day schools have been forced to follow suit. I dare say that seven pounds a year will send Corona, say, to Miss Dickinson's genteel seminary—nay, I'll undertake to beat the lady down to that sum—and I shall still be left with three pounds and ten shillings to squander on shirts. Now if you start thanking me—Ah, there goes the dinner-bell! Hurry, man—you're first on the roster!"



CHAPTER XV.

CANARIES AND GREYCOATS.

So Corona was sent to school; but not, as it befell, to Miss Dickinson's.

Brother Copas, indeed, paid a visit to Miss Dickinson, and, warned by some wise instinct, took the child with him.

Miss Dickinson herself opened the front door, and explained with an accent of high refinement that her house-parlourmaid was indisposed that morning, and her cook busy for the moment.

"You have some message for me?" she asked graciously; for the Brethren of St. Hospital pick up a little business as letter-carriers or commissionaires.

On learning her visitor's errand, of a sudden she stiffened in demeanour. Corona, watching her face intently, noted the change.

"Dear me, what a very unusual application!" said Miss Dickinson, but nevertheless invited them to step inside.

"We can discuss matters more freely without the child," she suggested.

"As you please, ma'am," said Copas, "provided you don't ask her to wait in the street."

Corona was ushered into an apartment at the back—the boudoir, its mistress called it—and was left there amid a din of singing canaries, while Miss Dickinson carried off Brother Copas to the drawing-room.

The boudoir contained some scholastic furniture and a vast number of worthless knick-knacks in poker-work, fret-work, leathern applique-work, gummed shell-work, wool-work, tambour-work, with crystoleum paintings and drawings in chalk and water-colour. On a table in front of the window stood a cage with five canaries singing in it. Corona herself felt a sense of imprisonment, but no desire to sing. The window looked upon a walled yard, in which fifteen girls of various ages were walking through some kind of drill under an instructress whose appearance puzzled her until she remembered that Miss Dickinson's cook was "busy for the moment."

Corona watched their movements with an interest begotten of pity. The girls whispered and prinked, and exchanged confidences with self-conscious airs. They paid but a perfunctory attention to the drill. It was clear they despised their instructress. Yet they seemed happy enough in a way.

"I wonder why?" thought Corona. "I don't like Miss Dickinson; first, because she has the nose of a witch, and next because she is afraid of us. I think she is afraid of us because we're poor. Well, I'm not afraid of her—not really; but I'd feel mighty uncomfortable if she had dear old daddy in there alone instead of Uncle Copas."

Meanwhile in the drawing-room—likewise resonant with canaries—Miss Dickinson was carefully helping Brother Copas to understand that as a rule she excluded all but children of the upper classes.

"It is not—if you will do me so much credit—that I look down upon the others; but I find that the children themselves are not so happy when called upon to mix with those of a different station. The world, after all, is the world, and we must face facts as they are."

"You mean, ma'am, that your young ladies—or some of them—might twit Corona for having a father who wears the Beauchamp robe."

"I would not say that. . . . In fact I have some influence over them, it is to be hoped, and should impress upon them beforehand that the—er—subject is not to be alluded to."

"That would be extremely tactful," said Brother Copas.

He rose.

"Pray be seated. . . . As I dare say you know, Mr.—"

"Copas."

"—As I dare say you know, Mr. Copas, higher education in England just now is passing through a—er—phase: it is (to use a forcible, if possibly vulgar, expression) in a state of flux. I do not conceal from myself that this must be largely attributed to the Education Act of 1902."

"Ah!"

Brother Copas dived finger and thumb into his waistcoat pocket in search of his snuff-box, but, recollecting himself, withdrew them hastily.

"Mr Balfour, whether he meant it or no, hit the private-venture schools beyond a doubt."

"One may trust that it is but a temporary blow. I have, let me say, the utmost confidence in Mr. Balfour's statesmanship. I believe— far-sighted man that he is, and with his marvellous apprehension of the English character—"

"'Tis a Scotchman's first aptitude," murmured Brother Copas, nodding assent.

"—I believe Mr. Balfour looked beyond the immediate effect of the Act and saw that, after the Municipalities' and County Councils' first success in setting up secondary schools of their own, each with its quota of poor, non-paying children, our sturdy British independence would rise against the—er—contact. The self-respecting parent is bound to say in time, 'No, I will not have my son, still less my daughter, sitting with Tom, Dick and Harry.' Indeed, I see signs of this already—most encouraging signs. I have two more pupils this term than last, both children of respectable station."

"I congratulate you, ma'am, and I feel sure that Mr. Balfour would congratulate himself, could he hear. But meantime the private-venture schools have been hit, especially those not fortunate enough to be 'recognised' by the Board of Education."

"I seek no such recognition, sir," said Miss Dickinson stiffly.

Brother Copas bowed.

"Forgive, ma'am, the intrusive ghost of a professional interest. I myself once kept a private school for boys. A precarious venture always, and it required no Education Act to wreck mine."

"Indeed?" Miss Dickinson raised her eyebrows in faint surprise, and anon contracted them. "Had I known that you belonged to the scholastic profession—" she began, but leaving the sentence unfinished, appeared to relapse into thought.

"Believe me, ma'am," put in Brother Copas, "I mentioned it casually, not as hinting at any remission of your fees."

"No, no. But I was thinking that it might considerably soften the—er—objection. You are not the child's parent, you say? Nor grandparent?"

"Her godparent only, and that by adoption. In so much as I make myself responsible for her school fees, you may consider me her guardian. Her father, Brother Bonaday, is a decayed gentleman, sometime of independent means, who married late in life, and, on top of this, was indiscreet enough to confide his affairs to a trusted family solicitor."

"Dear, dear! Why did you not tell me all this to begin with?" demanded Miss Dickinson, rising. "Shall we consider it agreed, then?—the child to come to me as soon as you wish."

"I think we must first discover if she's willing," answered Brother Copas, rubbing his chin.

"We will go to her."

They found Corona at the window of the boudoir. As the door opened she turned, ran to Brother Copas, and clung to him.

"Take me home! Oh, please take me home!"

"Hey?" Brother Copas soothed her, patting the back of her head. "Why, what is the matter, little maid? Who has been frightening you?"

"She turns them all into canaries—I know she does!" the child asserted, still shaking pitiably, but facing Miss Dickinson with accusation in her eyes. "You can tell it by her nose and chin. I—I thought you had gone away and left me with her."

"You did not tell me she was hysterical," said Miss Dickinson.

"It's news to me, ma'am. I'd best get her out into the fresh air at once."

Without waiting for permission, he swept Corona out into the passage, and forth into the street. It is a question which felt the happier when they gained it, and stood drawing long breaths; but, of course, Brother Copas had to put on a severe face.

"All very well, little maid!"

"Oh, I know you're disappointed with me," gasped Corona. "I'm disappointed with myself. But it was all just like Jorinda and Jorindel; and if she's not a witch, and doesn't turn them into canaries, why does she keep all those cages?" She halted suddenly. "I hate to be a coward," she said. "If you'll come with me, Uncle Copas, I'll start back right here, and we'll go in and rescue them. It was the waiting I couldn't stand."

"Canaries?" Brother Copas stood and looked down on her. Some apprehension of the absurd fancy broke on him, and he chuckled. "Now you come to mention it, I dare say she does turn 'em into canaries."

"Then we ought to go straight back and set them free," insisted Corona. "If only we had the magic flower!"

"I think I know who has it. . . . Yes, you may take it from me, little one, that there's someone charged to put an end to Miss Dickinson's enchantments, and we may safely leave it to him."

"Who is he?"

"The deliverer's name is County Council. . . . But look here, child— if you make a fuss like this whenever I try to find a school for you—"

"I won't make a fuss. And I do want to go to school," interrupted Corona. "I want to go to the Greycoats."

"The Greycoats?" This was an ancient foundation in the city, in origin a charity-school, but now distinguished from the ordinary Elementary Schools in that its pupils paid twopence a week, and wore a grey uniform provided per contra from the funds of the charity. "The Greycoats?" repeated Brother Copas. "But I had a mind for you to fly higher, if you understand—"

Corona nodded.

"And so I shall; that is, uncle, if you'll teach me Latin, as you promised."

She was easy in mind, since Miss Dickinson's canaries would be delivered. The name "County Council" meant nothing to her, but it had affinity with other names and titles of romance—Captain Judgment, for instance, in The Holy War, and County Guy in the poetry book—

Ah! County Guy, the hour is nigh—

Since Uncle Copas had said it, Miss Dickinson's hour was assuredly nigh.

"This is not the way, though," Corona protested. "We are walking right away from the Greycoats!"

Brother Copas halted.

"I supposed that I was taking you back to St. Hospital."

"But you came out to put me to school, and I want to go to the Greycoats."

He pondered a moment.

"Ah, well, have it your own way!"

They turned back toward the city. The Greycoats inhabited a long, single-storeyed building on the eastern boundary of the Cathedral Close, the boys and girls in separate schools under the same high-pitched roof. As our two friends came in sight of it, Corona— who had been running ahead in her impatience—hesitated of a sudden and turned about.

"Uncle Copas, before we go in I want to tell you something. . . . I was really frightened—yes, really—in that wicked house. But I wanted to be a Greycoat all the time. I want to wear a cloak that means I belong to Merchester, same as you and daddy."

"Lord forgive me, she's proud of us!" murmured Brother Copas. "And I set out this morning to get her taught to despise us!"



CHAPTER XVI.

THE SECOND LETTER.

Meanwhile certain small events not unconnected with this history were happening at St. Hospital.

At ten o'clock punctually Mr. Colt waited on the Master. This was a part of the daily routine, but ninety-nine times in a hundred the Chaplain's report resolved itself into a chat on the weather, the Master's roses, some recent article in the Church Times or the Guardian. The talk was never very strenuous; for whereas Mr. Colt could never learn to distinguish one rose from another, on Church affairs or on politics the Master was hopelessly tolerant, antiquated, incurious even. What could one do with a dear old gentleman who, when informed of the latest, most dangerous promotion to a bishopric, but responded with "Eh? 'So-and-so,' did you say? . . . Yes, yes. I knew his father . . . an excellent fellow!"

This morning, however, the Chaplain wore a grave face. After a few words he came to business.

"It concerns a letter I received this morning. The writer, who signs himself 'Well Wisher,' makes a disgusting allegation against old Bonaday—an incredibly disgusting allegation. You will prefer to read it for yourself."

Mr. Colt produced the letter from his pocket-book, and held it out.

"Eh?" exclaimed Master Blanchminster, receding. "Another?"

"I beg your pardon—?"

The Master adjusted his glasses, and bent forward, still without offering to touch the thing or receive it from Mr. Colt's hand.

"Yes, yes. I recognise the handwriting. . . . To tell the truth, my dear Colt, I received just such a letter one day last week. For the moment it caused me great distress of mind."

Mr. Colt was vexed, a little hurt, that the Master had not consulted him about it.

"You mean to say it contained—"

"—The same sort of thing, no doubt: charges against Brother Bonaday and against one of the nurses: incredibly disgusting, as you say."

"May I be allowed to compare the two letters? . . . I do not," said Mr. Colt stiffly, "seek more of your confidence than you care to bestow."

"My dear fellow—" protested the Master.

"I merely suggest that, since it concerns the discipline of St. Hospital—for which in the past you have honoured me with some responsibility—"

"My dear fellow, you should see it and welcome; but the fact is—" Here the Master broke off. "I ought, no doubt, to have put it straight into the fire."

"Why?" asked Mr. Colt.

"But the fact is, I gave it away."

"Gave it away! . . . To whom, may I ask?"

"To Brother Copas, of all people," confessed the Master with a rueful little chuckle. "Yes, I don't wonder that you stare: yet it happened very simply. You remember the day I asked you to send him to me for a talk about the Petition? Well, he found me in distress over this letter, which I had just received, and on an impulse I showed it to him. I really wanted his assurance that the charge was as baseless as it was foul, and that assurance he gave me. So you may with an easy mind put your letter in the fire."

"It would at any rate be a safer course than to give it away," said the Chaplain, frowning.

"A hit—a palpable hit! . . . I ought to have added that Brother Copas has a notion he can discover the writer, whom he positively asserts to be a woman. So I allowed him to take the thing away with him. I may as well confess," the old man added, "that I live in some dread of his making the discovery. Of course it is horrible to think that St. Hospital harbours anyone capable of such a letter; but to deal adequately with the culprit—especially if she be a woman—will be for the moment yet more horrible."

"Excuse me, Master, if I don't quite follow you," said the Chaplain unsympathetically. "You appear to be exercised rather over the writer than over Brother Bonaday, against whom the charge lies."

"You have hit on the precise word," answered Master Blanchminster, smiling. "Brother Copas assures me—"

"But is Brother Copas an entirely credible witness?"

The Master lifted his eyebrows in astonishment.

"Why, who should know better? He is Brother Bonaday's closest friend. Surely, my dear fellow, I had thought you were aware of that!"

In the face of this simplicity the Chaplain could only grind his teeth upon a helpless inward wrath. It took him some seconds to recover speech.

"On my way here," he said at length, "I made some small inquiries, and find that some days ago Nurse Branscome ceased her attendance on Bonaday, handing over the case to our excellent Nurse Turner. This, of course, may mean little."

"It may mean that Brother Copas has taken occasion to warn her."

"It means, anyhow, that—whether prudently or by accident—she has given pause to the scandal. In this pause I can, perhaps, make occasion to get at the truth; always with your leave, of course."

"There can be no question of my giving leave or withholding it. You have received a private letter, which you perceive I have no desire to read. You must act upon it as directed by your own—er— taste. And now shall we talk of something else?"

He said it with a mild dignity which effectively closed the discussion and left Mr. Colt raging. In and about St. Hospital nine observers out of ten would have told you that the Chaplain held this dear, do-nothing old Master in the hollow of his hand, and on nine occasions out of ten the Chaplain felt sure of it. On the tenth he found himself mocked, as a schoolboy believes he has grasped a butterfly and opens his fingers cautiously, to find no prisoner within them. He could never precisely understand how it happened, and it never failed to annoy him heavily.

After bidding the Master good morning he went straight to Brother Bonaday's lodging. Brother Bonaday, now fairly convalescent, was up and dressed and seated in his arm-chair, whiling away the morning with a newspaper. In days of health he had been a diligent reader of dull books; had indeed (according to his friend Copas—but the story may be apocryphal) been known to sit up past midnight with an antiquated Annual Report of the Registrar-General, borrowed from the shelf of Brother Inchbald, whose past avocations had included the registering of Births, Deaths and Marriages somewhere in Wiltshire. But of late, as sometimes happens in old age, books had lost their savour for him, and he preferred to let his eyes rest idly on life's passing show as reflected in the camera obscura of a halfpenny paper.

He rose respectfully as the Chaplain entered.

"Be seated, please," said Mr. Colt. Declining a chair for himself, he planted his feet astraddle on the worn hearthrug.

Standing so, with his back to the grate, his broad shoulders blocking out the lower half of a picture of the Infant Samuel above the mantel-shelf, he towered over the frail invalid, concerning whose health he asked a few perfunctory questions before plunging into business.

"You're wondering what brings me here. Fact is," he announced, "I've come to ask you a plain question—a question it's my duty to ask; and I think you're strong enough to answer it without any beating about the bush on either side. For six months now I haven't seen you at Holy Communion. Why?"

Brother Bonaday's face twitched sharply. For a moment or two he seemed to be searching for an answer. His lips parted, but still no answer came.

"I know, you know," said the Chaplain, nodding down at him. "I keep a record of these things—names and dates."

Brother Bonaday might have answered—

"Quite so—and that is why."

Some churchmen—of the type for which Mr. Colt adequately catered— revel in professing their faith, and will parade for its holiest sacrament with an unabashed and hail-fellow sociability; and doubtless for these 'brass-band communicants' (as Brother Copas called them) a great deal may be said. But Brother Bonaday was one of those others who, walking among mysteries, must hush the voice and bow the head; to whom the Elements are awful, and in whom awe begets a sweet and tender shame. To be docketed as having, on such and such a day at such and such an hour, partaken of them was to him an intolerable thought. To quote Brother Copas again, "These Neo-Catholics may well omit to fence the tables, confident in the protection of their own vulgarity."

Yet Brother Bonaday had another reason, on which the Chaplain hit— though brutally and by accident—in his next question.

"Haven't anything on your conscience, hey?"

Brother Bonaday had something on his conscience. His face twitched with the pain of it; but still he made no answer.

"If so," Mr. Colt pursued, "take my advice and have it out." He spoke as one recommending the extraction of a tooth. "You're a Protestant, I know, though you didn't sign that Petition; and I'm not here to argue about first principles. I'm come as a friend. All I suggest is, as between practical men, that you just give the thing a trial. It may be pretty bad," suggested Mr. Colt, dropping his air of authority and picking up his most insinuating voice. "I hear some pretty bad things; but I'll guarantee your feeling all the better for a clean breast. Come, let me make a guess. . . . It has something to do with this child of yours!"

Mr. Colt, looking down from his great height, saw the invalid's face contracted by a sharp spasm, noted that his thin hands gripped upon the arms of the chair so tightly that the finger-nails whitened, and smiled to himself. Here was plain sailing.

"I know more than you guessed, eh? Well, now, why not tell me the whole truth?"

Brother Bonaday gazed up as if appealing for mercy, but shook his head.

"I cannot, sir."

"Come, come—as to a friend, if you won't as to a priest? . . . Hang it all, my good man, you might give me credit for that, considering the chance I'm holding out! You don't surely suppose that St. Hospital will continue to suffer this scandal in its midst?" Still as Brother Bonaday shook his head, the Chaplain with a sign of impatience enlarged his hint. "Copas knows: I have it on the best authority. Was it he that dropped the hint to Nurse Branscome? or did she herself scent the discovery and give over attending on you?"

"You won't—send her—away!" pleaded Brother Bonaday, thinking only of Corona.

His voice came in a whisper, between gasps for breath.

Mr. Colt stared.

"Well, of all the calm requests—!" he began.

But here the sound of a light running footstep cut him short. The door was pushed open, and on the threshold stood Corona, flushed, excited.

"Daddy, guess! Oh, but you'll never! I'm a real live Greycoat, and if I don't tell Timmy before you ask a single question I shall burst!"

She came to a halt, her eyes on Mr. Colt.

"'Tis the truth," announced Brother Copas, overtaking her as she paused in the doorway. "We shot at a canary, and—Good God!" he exclaimed, catching sight of Brother Bonaday's face. "Slip away and fetch the nurse, child!"

Corona ran. While she ran Brother Copas stepped past Mr. Colt, and slid an arm under his friend's head as it dropped sideways, blue with anguish. He turned on the tall Chaplain fiercely.

"What devil's game have you been playing here?"



CHAPTER XVII.

PUPPETS.

Throughout the night Brother Bonaday hovered between life and death, nor until four days later did the doctor pronounce him out of danger—that is to say, for the time, since the trouble in his heart was really incurable, and at best the frail little man's remaining days could not be many. Nurse Turner waited on him assiduously, always with her comfortable smile. No trouble came amiss to her, and certainly Nurse Branscome herself could not have done better.

In a sense, too, Corona's first experiences of school-going befell her most opportunely. They would distract her mind, Brother Copas reflected, and tore up the letter he had written delaying her noviciate on the ground of her father's illness. They did; and, moreover, the head mistress of the Greycoats, old Miss Champernowne, aware that the child's father was ill, possibly dying, took especial pains to be kind to her.

Corona was dreadfully afraid her father would die. But, in the main most mercifully, youth lives for itself, not for the old. At home she could have given little help or none. The Brethren's quarters were narrow—even Brother Bonaday's with its spare chamber—and until the crisis was over she could only be in the way. She gave up her room, therefore, to Nurse Turner for the night watching, and went across to the Nunnery to lodge with Nurse Branscome. This again was no hardship, but rather, under all her cloud of anxiety, a delightful adventure; for Branny had at once engaged with her in a conspiracy.

The subject—for a while the victim—of this conspiracy was her black doll Timothy. As yet Timothy knew nothing, and was supposed to suspect nothing, of her goings to school. She had carefully kept the secret from him, intending to take him aback with it when she brought home the Greycoat uniform—frock and cloak and hood of duffle grey— for which Miss Champernowne had measured her. Meanwhile it was undoubtedly hard on him to lie neglected in a drawer, and be visited but twice in the twenty-four hours, to have his garments changed. Corona, putting him into pyjamas, would (with an aching heart) whisper to him to be patient for a little while yet, and all would come right.

"It is hard, Branny," she sighed, "that I can't even take him to bed with me. . . . But it's not to be thought of. I'd be sure to talk in my sleep."

"He seems to be a very unselfish person," observed Branny. "At any rate, you treat him as such, making him wait all this while for the delight of seeing you happy."

Corona knit her brow.

"Now you're talking upsi-downly, like Uncle Copas," she said. "You don't mean that Timmy's unselfish, but that I'm selfish. Of course, you don't realise how good he is; nobody does but me, and it's not to be es-pected. But all the same, I s'pose I've been thinking too much about myself."

Corona's was a curiously just mind, as has already been said.

Nurse Branscome had a happy inspiration.

"Couldn't we make new clothes for Timmy, and surprise him with them at the same time?"

Corona clapped her hands.

"Oh, Branny, how beautiful! Yes—a Beauchamp gown, just like Daddy's! Why-ever didn't we think of it before?"

"A what?"

"A Beauchamp gown. . . . Do you know," said Corona gravely, "it's a most 'stonishing thing I never thought of it, because— I'll tell you why. When I first came to St. Hospital often and often I couldn't get to sleep for thinking how happy I was. Daddy got worried about it, and told me it was a good cure to lie still and fancy I saw a flock of sheep jumping one after another through a hedge. . . . Well, that didn't answer—at least, not ezactly; for you see I wanted to be coaxed off, and I never took any partic'lar truck in sheep. But one night—you know that big stone by the gate of the home-park? the one Uncle Copas calls the Hepping-stone, and says the great Cardinal used to climb on to his horse from it when he went hunting?" (Nurse Branscome nodded.) "Well, one night I closed my eyes, and there I saw all the old folks here turned into children, and all out and around the Hepping-stone, playing leap-frog. . . . The way they went over each other's backs! It beat the band. . . . Some were in Beauchamp gowns and others in Blanchminster—but all children, you understand? Each child finished up by leap-frogging over the stone; and when he'd done that he'd run away and be lost among the trees. I wanted to follow, but somehow I had to stand there counting. . . . And that's all there is to it," concluded Corona, "'cept that I'd found the way to go to sleep."

Nurse Branscome laughed, and suggested that no time should be lost in going off to call on Mr. Colling, the tailor, and begging or borrowing a scrap of the claret-coloured Beauchamp cloth. Within ten minutes—for she understood the impatience of children—they had started on this small expedition. They found in Mr. Colling a most human tailor. He not only gave them a square yard of cloth, unsoiled and indeed brand-new, but advised Nurse Branscome learnedly on the cutting-out. There were certain peculiarities of cut in a Beauchamp gown: it was (he could tell them) a unique garment in its way, and he the sole repository of its technical secret. On their way back Corona summarised him as "a truly Christian tradesman."

So the miniature gown was cut out, shaped, and sewn, after the unsuspecting Timothy had been measured for it on a pretence of Corona's that she wanted to discover how much he had grown during his rest-cure. (For I regret to say that, as one subterfuge leads to another, she had by this time descended to feigning a nervous breakdown for him, due to his outgrowing his strength.) Best of all, and when the gown was finished, Nurse Branscome produced from her workbox a lucky threepenny-bit, and sewed it upon the breast to simulate a Beauchamp rose.

When Corona's own garments arrived—when they were indued and she stood up in them, a Greycoat at length from head to heel—to hide her own feelings she had to invent another breakdown (emotional this time) for Timothy as she dangled the gown in front of him.

"Be a man, Timmy!" she exhorted him.

Having clothed him and clasped him to her breast, she turned to Nurse Branscome, who had been permitted, as indeed she deserved, to witness the coup de theatre.

"If you don't mind, Branny, I think we'll go off somewhere— by ourselves."

She carried the doll off to the one unkempt corner of Mr. Battershall's garden, where in the shadow of a stone dovecot, ruinated and long disused, a rustic bench stood deep in nettles. On this she perched herself, and sat with legs dangling while she discoursed with Timothy of their new promotion.

"Of course," she said, "you have the best of it. Men always have." Nevertheless, she would have him know that to be a Greycoat was good enough for most people. She described the schoolroom. "It's something like a chapel," she said, "and something like a long whitewashed bird-cage, with great beams for perches. You could eat your dinner off the floor most days; and Miss Champernowne has the dearest little mole on the left side of her upper lip, with three white hairs in it. When she looks at you over her glasses it's like a bird getting ready to drink; and when she plays 'Another day is done' on the harmonium and pitches the note, it's just the way a bird lifts his throat to let the water trickle down inside. She has the loveliest way of putting things, too. Only yesterday, speaking of China, she told us that words would fail her to describe one-half the wonders of that enchanted land. . . . After that there's going to be no rest for me until I've seen China for myself. Such a nice lot of children as they are, if it weren't for Marty Jewell. She sits next to me and copies my sums, and when I remind her of it she puts out her tongue; but she has a sister in the infant class at the end of the room with the same trick, so I s'pose it runs in the family. . . . I'm forgetting, though," she ran on. "You're Brother Timothy now, a Beauchamp Brother, and the Lord knows how I'm to make you sensible of it! I heard Brother Clerihew taking a party around yesterday, and played around close to hear what he had to tell about the place. All he said was that if these old walls could speak what a tale might they not unfold? And then a lady turned round and supposed that the child (meaning me) was following them on the chance of a copper. So I came away. . . . I've my belief," announced Corona, "Brother Clerihew was speaking through his hat. There's nobody but Uncle Copas knows anything about this place—him and the Lord Almighty; and as the chief engineer told me aboard the Carnatic, when I kept asking him how soon we should get to England, He won't split under a quart. The trouble is, Uncle Copas won't lay up for visitors. Manby, at the lodge, says he's too proud. . . . But maybe he'll take me round some day if I ask him nicely, and then you can come on my arm and pretend you're not listening. . . . No," announced Corona, after musing awhile, "that would be deception. I'll have to go to him and make a clean breast of it."

It occurred to her that Brother Manby was a friend of hers. He didn't know much, to be sure; but he was capable of entering into a joke and introducing Timothy to the Wayfarers' Dole. She tucked the doll under her arm and wended towards the porter's lodge, where, as it happened, she met Brother Copas coming through the gateway in talk with the Chaplain.

The Chaplain in fact had sought out Brother Copas, had found him in his customary haunt, fishing gloomily and alone beside the Mere, and had opened his purpose for once pretty straightly, yet keeping another in reserve.

"The Master has told me he gave you an anonymous letter that reached him concerning Brother Bonaday. I have made up my mind to ask you a question or two quite frankly about it."

"Now what in the world can he want?" thought Copas, continuing to whip the stream. Aloud he said: "You'll excuse me, but I see no frankness in your asking questions before telling me how much you know."

"I intended that. I have received a similar letter."

"I guessed as much. . . . So you called on him with it and bullied him into another attack of angina pectoris? That, too, I guessed. Well?"

The Chaplain made no answer for a moment. Then he said with some dignity—

"I might point out to you—might I not?—that both your speech and the manner of it are grossly insubordinate."

"I know it. . . . I am sorry, sir; but in some way or another—by showing him your letter, I suppose—you have come near to killing my only friend."

"I did not show him the letter."

"Then I beg your pardon." Brother Copas turned and began to wind in his line. "If you wish to talk about it, I recognise that you have the right, sir; but let me beg you to be brief."

"The more willingly because I wish to consult you afterwards on a pleasanter subject. . . . Now in this matter, I put it to you that— the Master choosing to stand aside—you and I have some responsibility. Try, first, to understand mine. So long as I have to account for the discipline of St. Hospital I can scarcely ignore such a scandal, hey?"

"No," agreed Brother Copas, after a long look at him. "I admit that you would find it difficult." He mused a while. "No," he repeated; "to be quite fair, there's no reason why you—who don't know Bonaday—should assume him to be any better than the rest of us."

"—While you, on your part, will naturally be eager to clear your friend."

"If I thought the accusation serious."

"Do you mean to say that you have simply ignored it?"

Now this happened to be an awkward question; and Brother Copas, seeking to evade it, jumped (as they say) from the frying-pan into the fire.

"Tut, sir! The invention of some poisonous woman!"

"You are sure the letter was written by a woman?"

Brother Copas was sure, but had to admit that he lacked evidence. He did not confess to having laid a small plot which had failed him. He had received no less than eleven tenders for his weekly laundry, but not one of the applicants had written the 'W' in 'Washing List' with that characteristic initial curl of which he was in search.

"Then you have made some investigations? . . . Nay, I don't wish more of your confidence than you choose to give me. So long as I know that you are not treating the business as negligible—"

"I don't promise to inquire one inch farther."

"But you will, nevertheless," concluded Mr. Colt with the patronising laugh of one who knows his man.

"Damn the fellow!" thought Copas. "Why cannot he be always the fool he looks?"

"And now," pursued Mr. Colt blithely, "I want to engage your interest in another matter—I mean the Pageant."

"Oh!" said Brother Copas. "Is that still going forward?"

"Settled, my dear sir! When Mr. Bamberger once puts his hand to the plough. . . . A General Committee has been formed, with the Lord-Lieutenant himself for President. The guarantee fund already runs to 1,500 pounds, and we shall get twice that amount promised before we've done. In short, the thing's to come off some time next June, and I am Chairman of the Performance Committee, which (under Mr. Isidore Bamberger) arranges the actual Pageant, plans out the 'book,' recruits authors, performers, et cetera. There are other committees, of course: Finance Committee, Ground and Grand Stand Committee, Costume Committee, and so on; but ours is the really interesting part of the work, and, sir, I want you to join us."

"You flatter me, sir; or you fish with a narrow mesh indeed."

"Why, I dare swear you would know more of the past history of Merchester than any man you met at the committee-table."

Brother Copas eyed him shrewdly.

"H'm! ... To be sure, I have been specialising of late on the Reformation period."

"I—er—don't think we shall include any episode dealing specially with that period."

"Too serious, perhaps?"

"Our—er—object is to sweep broadly down the stream of time, embodying the great part our city played for hundreds of years in the history of our nation—I may say of the Anglo-Saxon race."

"I shouldn't, if I were you," said Brother Copas, "not even to please Mr. Bamberger. . . . As a matter of fact, I had guessed your object to be something of the sort," he added dryly.

"As you may suppose—and as, indeed, is but proper in Merchester— special stress will be laid throughout on the ecclesiastical side of the story: the influence of Mother Church, permeating and at every turn informing our national life."

"But you said a moment ago that you were leaving out the Reformation."

"We seek rather to illustrate the continuity of her influence."

Brother Copas took snuff.

"You must not think, however," pursued the Chaplain, "that we are giving the thing a sectarian trend. On the contrary, we are taking great care to avoid it. Our appeal is to one and all: to the unifying civic sense and, through that, to the patriotic. Several prominent Nonconformists have already joined the Committee; indeed, Alderman Chope—who, as you know, is a Baptist, but has a remarkably fine presence—has more than half consented to impersonate Alfred the Great. If further proof be needed, I may tell you that, in view of the coming Pan-Anglican Conference, the Committee has provisionally resolved to divide the proceeds (if any) between the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel."

"Ah!" murmured Brother Copas, maliciously quoting Falstaff. "'It was alway yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common.'"

The Chaplain did not hear.

"I earnestly hope," said he, "you will let me propose you for my Committee."

"I would not miss it for worlds," said Brother Copas gravely.

He had disjointed and packed up his rod by this time, and the two were walking back towards St. Hospital.

"You relieve me more than I can say. Your help will be invaluable."

Brother Copas was apparently deaf to this compliment.

"You'll excuse me," he said after a moment, "but I gather that the whole scheme must be well under weigh, since you have arrived at allocating the proceeds. Experience tells me that all amateurs start with wanting to act something; when they see that desire near to realisation, and not before, they cast about for the charity which is to deserve their efforts. . . . May I ask what part you have chosen?"

"I had thoughts of Alberic de Blanchminster, in an Episode of the 'Founding of St. Hospital.'"

"Alberic de Blanchminster?"

They had reached the outer court of the hospital, and Brother Copas, halting to take snuff, eyed the Chaplain as if taking his measure.

"But the Committee, in compliment to my inches, are pressing me to take William the Conqueror," said Mr. Colt almost bashfully.

"I, too, should advise it, if we are to adhere to history; though, to be sure, from the sole mention of him in the chronicle, our founder Alberic appears to have been a sportsman. ' Nam, quodam die, quia perdiderat accipitrem suum cum erat sub divo, detrexit sibi bracas et posteriora nuda ostendit caelo in signum opprobrii et convitii atque derisionis.'—You remember the passage?"

He paused mischievously, knowing well enough that the Chaplain would laugh, pretending to have followed the Latin. Sure enough, Mr. Colt laughed heartily.

"About William the Conqueror, though—"

But at this moment Corona came skipping through the archway.

"Uncle Copas!" she hailed, the vault echoing to her childish treble. "You look as though you had mistaken Mr. Colt for a visitor, and were telling him all about the history of the place. Oh! I know that you never go the round with visitors; but seeing it's only me and Timmy— look at him, please! He's been made a Beauchamp Brother, not half an hour ago. If only you'd be guide to us for once, and make him feel his privileges. . . . I dare say Mr. Colt won't mind coming too," she wound up tactfully.

"Shall we?" suggested the Chaplain, after asking and receiving permission to inspect the doll.

"Confound it!" muttered Brother Copas to himself. "I cannot even begin to enjoy a fool nowadays but that blessed child happens along to rebuke me."

Aloud he said—

"If you command, little one. . . . But where do we begin?"

"At the beginning." Corona took charge of him with a nod at the Chaplain. "We're pilgrims, all four of us, home from the Holy Land; and we start by knocking up Brother Manby and just perishing for a drink."



CHAPTER XVIII.

THE PERVIGILIUM.

'Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew! It is Spring, it is chorussing Spring: 'tis the birthday of earth, and for you! It is Spring; and the Loves and the birds wing together, and woo to accord Where the bough to the rain has unbraided her locks as a bride to her lord. For she walks—She our Lady, our Mistress of Wedlock,—the woodlands atween, And the bride-bed she weaves them, with myrtle enlacing, with curtains of green. Look, list ye the law of Dione, aloft and enthroned in the blue:— Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew!'

"H'm, h'm—tolerable only! 'Aloft and established in blue'—is that better?"

"Uncle Copas, whatever are you doing?"

Corona looked up from her page of irregular verbs, and across to her preceptor as he sat muttering and scribbling.

"The idlest thing in the world, child. Translating."

"But you told me that next week, if I learned these verbs, you would let me begin to translate."

"To be sure I did. You must go on translating and translating until, like me, you ought to know better. Then you throw it all away."

"I suppose I shall understand, one of these fine days," sighed Corona. "But, uncle, you won't mind my asking a question? I really do want to find out about these things. . . . And I really do want to learn Latin, ever since you said it was the only way to find out all that St. Hospital means."

"Did I say that? I ought, of course, to have said that Latin was worth learning for its own sake."

"I guess," said Corona sagely, "you thought you'd take the likeliest way with me."

"O woman! woman! . . . But what was your question?"

"Sometimes I wake early and lie in bed thinking. I was thinking, only yesterday morning, if people are able to put into English all that was ever written in Latin, why don't they do it and save other people the trouble?"

"Now I suppose," said Brother Copas, "that in the United States of America—land of labour-saving appliances—that is just how it would strike everyone?"

He knew that this would nettle her. But, looking up hotly, she caught his smile and laughed.

"Well, but why?" she demanded.

"Because the more it was the same thing the more it would be different. There's only one way with Latin and Greek. You must let 'em penetrate: soak 'em into yourself, get 'em into your nature slowly, through the pores of the skin."

"It sounds like sitting in a bath."

"That's just it. It's a baptism first and a bath afterwards; but the more it's a bath, the more you remember it's a baptism."

"I guess you have that right, though I don't follow," Corona admitted. "There's something in Latin makes you proud. Only yesterday I was gassing to three girls about knowing amo, amas, amat; and, next thing, you'll say, 'I'd like you to know Ovid,' and I'll say,' Mr. Ovid, I'm pleased to have met you'—like what happens in the States when you shake hands with a professor. All the same, I don't see what there is in amo, amas, amat to make the gas."

"Wait till you come to cras amet qui nunquam amavit."

"Is that what you were translating?"

"Yes."

"Then translate it for me, please."

"You shall construe for yourself. Cras means 'to-morrow.' Amet—"

"That's the present subjunctive. Let me see—'he may love.'"

"Try again."

"Or 'let him love.'"

"Right. 'To-morrow let him love.' Qui?"

"'Who.'"

"Nunquam?"

"'Never'—I know that too."

"Amavit?"

"Perfect, active, third person singular—'he has loved.'"

"Qui being the subject—"

"'Who—never—has loved.'"

"Right as ninepence again. 'To-morrow let him love who has never loved.'"

"But," objected Corona, "it seems so easy!—and here you have been for quite half an hour muttering and shaking your head over it, and taking you can't think what a lot of nasty snuff."

"Have I?" Brother Copas sought for his watch. "Heavens, child! The hour has struck these ten minutes ago. Why didn't you remind me?"

"Because I thought 'twouldn't be manners. But, of course, if I'd known you were wasting your time, and over anything so easy—"

"Not quite so easy as you suppose, miss. To begin with, the original is in verse; a late Latin poem in a queer metre, and by whom written nobody knows. But you are quite right about my wasting my time. . . . What troubles me is that I have been wasting yours, when you ought to have been out at play in the sun."

"Please don't mention that," said Corona politely. "It has been fun enough watching you frowning and tapping your fingers, and writing something down and scratching it out the next moment. What is it all about, Uncle Copas?"

"It—er—is called the Pervigilium Veneris; that's to say The Vigil of Venus. But I suppose that conveys nothing to you?"

He thrust his spectacles high on his forehead and smiled at her vaguely across the table.

"Of course it doesn't. I don't know what a Vigil means; or Venus— whether it's a person or a place; or why the Latin is late, as you call it. Late for what?"

Brother Copas laughed dryly.

"Late for me, let's say. Didn't I tell you I was wasting my time? And Venus is the goddess of Love: some day—alas the day!—you'll be proud to make her acquaintance. . . . Cras amet qui nunquam amavit."

"Perhaps if you read it to me—"

He shook his head.

"No, child: the thing is late in half a dozen different ways. The young, whom it understands, cannot understand it: the old, who arrive at understanding, look after it, a thing lost. Go, dear: don't let me waste your time as well as an old man's."

But when she had gone he sat on and wasted another hour in translating—

Time was that a rain-cloud begat her, impregning the heave of the deep. 'Twixt hooves of sea-horses a-scatter, stam- peding the dolphins as sheep, Lo! born of that bridal Dione, rainbowed and bespent of its dew:— Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew!

She, she, with her gem-dripping finger enamels the wreath of the year; She, she, when the maid-bud is nubile and swelling, winds—whispers anear, Disguising her voice in the Zephyr's—'So secret the bed! and thou shy? 'She, she, when the midsummer night is a-hush draws the dew from on high; Dew bright with the tears of its origin, dew with its weight on the bough, Misdoubting and clinging and trembling— 'Now, now must I fall? Is it now?'

Brother Copas pushed the paper from him.

"What folly is this," he mused, "that I, who have always scoffed at translations, sit here trying to translate this most untranslatable thing? Pah! Matthew Arnold was a great man, and he stood up to lecture the University of Oxford on translating Homer. He proved excellently well that Homer was rapid; that Homer was plain and direct; that Homer was noble. He took translation after translation, and proved—proved beyond doubting—that each translator had failed in this or in that; this or that being alike essential. Then, having worked out his sum, he sat down and translated a bit or two of Homer to encourage us, and the result was mere bosh."

—"The truth being, he is guilty of a tomfoolery among principles at the start. If by any chance we could, in English, find the right way to translate Homer, why should we waste it on translating him? We had a hundred times better be writing Epics of our own."

—"It cannot be done. If it could, it ought not. . . . The only way of getting at Homer is to soak oneself in him. The average Athenian was soaked in him as the average Englishman is in the Authorised Version of the Psalms. . . ."

—"Yet I sit here, belying all my principles, attempting to translate a thing more difficult than Homer."

—"It was she, this child, set me going upon it!"

Brother Copas pulled the paper towards him again.

By the end of another hour he had painfully achieved this:—

"'Go, Maidens,' Our Lady commands, 'while the myrtle is green in the grove, Take the Boy to your escort.' But 'Ah!' cry the maidens, 'What trust is in Love Keeping holiday too, while he weareth his archery, tools of his trade?' —'Go: he lays them aside, an apprentice released—you may wend unafraid: See, I bid him disarm, he disarms. Mother- naked I bid him to go, And he goes mother-naked. What flame can he shoot without arrow or bow?' —Yet beware ye of Cupid, ye maidens! Be- ware most of all when he charms As a child: for the more he runs naked, the more he's a strong man-at-arms."



CHAPTER XIX.

MERCHESTER PREPARES.

I must not overload these slight pages by chronicling at length how Merchester caught and developed the Pageant fever. But to Mr Colt must be given his share of the final credit. He worked like a horse, no doubt of it; spurred constantly on his tender side—his vanity—by the hard riding of Mr. Julius Bamberger, M.P. He pioneered the movement. He (pardon this riot of simile and metaphor) cut a way through the brushwood, piled the first faggots, applied the torch, set the heather afire. He canvassed the Bishop, the Dean and Chapter, the Sunday Schools, the Church Lads' Brigade, the Girls' Friendly Society, the Boy Scouts. He canvassed the tradespeople, the professional classes, the widowed and maiden ladies resident around the Close.

In all these quarters he met with success—varying, indeed, but on the whole gratifying. But the problem was, how to fan the flame to reach and take hold of more seasoned timber?—opulent citizens, county magnates; men who, once committed, would not retract; ponderable subscribers to the Guarantee Fund; neither tinder nor brushwood, but logs to receive the fire and retain it in a solid core. For weeks, for a couple of months, the flame took no hold of these: it reached them only to die down and disappoint.

Nor was Mr. Isidore, during this time, the least part of our Chaplain's trial. Mr. Julius might flatter, proclaiming him a born organiser: but this was small consolation when Mr. Isidore (an artist by temperament) stamped and swore over every small hitch.

"Sobscribtions? Zat is your affaire, whad the devil!"

Or again: "Am I a dog to be bozzered by your General Committees or your influential batrons? . . . You wandt a Bageant, hein? Var'y well, I brovide it: It is I will mek a sogcess. Go to hell for your influenzial batrons: or go to Julius. He can lick ze boot, not I!"

On the other hand, Mr. Julius, while willing enough to spend money for which he foresaw a satisfactory return, had no mind to risk it until assured of the support of local 'Society.' He could afford some thousands of pounds better than a public fiasco.

"We must have the County behind us," he kept chanting.

Afterwards, looking back on the famous Merchester Pageant, Mr. Colt accurately dated its success from the hour when he called on Lady Shaftesbury and enlisted her to open the annual Sale of Work of the Girls' Friendly Society. Sir John Shaftesbury, somewhat late in life, had married a wife many years his junior; a dazzling beauty, a dashing horsewoman, and moreover a lady who, having spent the years of her eligible maidenhood largely among politicians and racehorses, had acquired the knack and habit of living in the public eye. She adored her husband, as did everyone who knew him: but life at Shaftesbury Court had its longueurs even in the hunting season. Sir John would (he steadily declared) as lief any day go to prison as enter Parliament—a reluctance to which Mr. Bamberger owed his seat for Merchester. Finding herself thus headed off one opportunity of making tactful little public speeches, in raiments to which the Press would give equal prominence, Lady Shaftesbury had turned her thoughts to good work, even before Mr. Colt called with his petition.

She assented to it with a very pretty grace. Her speech at the Sale of Work was charming, and she talked to her audience about the Empire; reminded them that they were all members of one body; called them her "dear Girl Friendlies": and hoped, though a new-comer, in future to see a great deal more of them. They applauded this passage de bon coeur, and indeed pronounced the whole speech "So womanly!" At its close Mr. Colt, proposing a vote of thanks, insinuated something "anent a more ambitious undertaking, in which (if we can only engage Lady Shaftesbury's active sympathy) we may realise a cherished dream. I fear," proceeded Mr. Colt, "that I am a sturdy beggar. I can only plead that the cause is no mere local one, but in the truest sense national—nay imperial. For where but in the story of Merchester can be found the earliest inspiration of those countless deeds which won the Empire?"

Later, when Lady Shaftesbury asked to what he alluded, he discoursed on the project of the Pageant with dexterity and no little tact.

"What a ripping idea! . . . Now I come to remember, my husband did say casually, the other day, that Mr. Bamberger had been sounding him about something of the sort. But Jack is English, you know, and a Whig at that. The mere notion of dressing-up or play-acting makes him want to run away and hide. . . . Oh, my dear sir, I know all about pageants! I saw one at Warwick Castle—was it last year or the year before? . . . There was a woman on horseback—I forget what historical character she represented: it wasn't Queen Elisabeth, I know, and it couldn't have been Lady Godiva because—well, because to begin with, she knew how to dress. She wore a black velvet habit, with seed-pearls, which sounds like Queen Henrietta Maria. Anyway, everyone agreed she had a perfect seat in the saddle. Is that the sort of thing—'Fair Rosamund goes a-hawking with King, er, Whoever-he-was?'"

Mr. Colt regretted that Fair Rosamund had no historical connection with Merchester. . . . No, and equally out of the question was Mary, Queen of Scots laying her neck on the block.

"Besides, she couldn't very well do that on horseback. And Maseppa was a man, wasn't he?"

"If," said Mr. Colt diplomatically, "we can only prevail upon one or two really influential ladies to see the thing in that light, details could be arranged later. We have not yet decided on the Episodes. . . . But notoriously where there's a will there's a way."

Lady Shaftesbury pondered this conversation while her new car whirled her homewards. She had begun to wish that Jack (as she called her lord) would strike out a bolder line in county affairs, if his ambition confined him to these. He was already (through no search of his own) Chairman of the County Council, and Chairman of Quarter Sessions, and was pricked to serve as High Sheriff next year. He ought to do something to make his shrievalty memorable . . . and, moreover, the Lord-Lieutenant was an old man.

In the library that evening after dinner she opened fire. The small function at the Girls' Friendly had been a success; but she wished to do something more for Merchester—"where we ought to be a real influence for good—living as we do so close to it."

She added, "I hear that Mr. Bamberger's seat is by no means safe, and another General Election may be on us at any moment. . . . I know how little you like Mr. Bamberger personally: but after all, and until you will consent to take his place—Mr. Bamberger stands between us and the rising tide of Socialism. I was discussing this with Mr. Colt to-day."

"Who is Mr. Colt?" asked Sir John.

"You must have met him. He is Chaplain of St. Hospital, and quite a personality in Merchester . . . though I don't know," pursued Lady Shaftesbury, musing, "that one would altogether describe him as a gentleman. But ought we to be too particular when the cause is at stake, and heaven knows how soon the Germans will be invading us?"

The end was that Sir John, who loved his young wife, gave her a free hand, of which she made the most. Almost before he was aware of it, he found himself Chairman of a General Committee, summoning a Sub-Committee of Ways and Means. At the first meeting he announced that his lady had consented to set aside, throughout the winter months, one day a week from hunting, and offered Shaftesbury Hall as head-quarters of the Costume Committee.

Thereupon it was really astonishing with what alacrity not only the "best houses" around Merchester, but the upper-middle-class (its damsels especially) caught the contagion. Within a week "Are you Pageantising?" or, in more condensed slang, "Do you Padge?" became the stock question at all social gatherings in the neighbourhood of the Close. To this a stock answer would be—

"Oh, I don't know! I suppose so." Here the respondent would simulate a slight boredom. "One will have to mix with the most impossible people, of course"—Lady Shaftesbury had won great popularity by insisting that, in a business so truly national, no class distinctions were to be drawn—"but anyhow it will fill up the off-days this winter."

Lady Shaftesbury herself, after some pretty deliberation, decided to enact the part of the Empress Maud, and escape on horseback from King Stephen of Blois. Mr. Colt and Mr. Isidore Bamberger together waited on Brother Copas with a request that he would write the libretto for this Episode.

"But it was only last week you turned me on to Episode VI—King Hal and the Emperor Charles the Fifth," Copas protested.

"We are hoping you will write this for us too," urged Mr. Colt. "It oughtn't to take you long, you know. To begin with, no one knows very much about that particular period."

"The less known the better, if we may trust the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A few realistic pictures of the diversions of the upper classes—"

"Hawking was one, I believe?" opined Mr. Colt.

"Yes, and another was hanging the poor by their heels over a smoky fire, and yet another was shutting them up in a close cell into which had been inserted a few toads and adders."

"Her ladyship suggests a hawking scene, in the midst of which she is surprised by King Stephen and his, er, myrmidons—if that be the correct term—"

"It is at least as old as Achilles."

"She escapes from him on horseback. . . . At this point she wants to know if we can introduce a water-jump."

"Nothing could be easier, in a blank verse composition," assented Brother Copas gravely.

"You see, there is very little writing required. Just enough dialogue to keep the thing going. . . . Her ladyship is providing her own riding-habit and those of her attendant ladies, for whom she has chosen six of the most beautiful maidens in the neighbourhood, quite irrespective of class. The dresses are to be gorgeous."

"They will form a pleasing contrast, then, to King Stephen, whose riding-breeches, as we know, 'cost him but a crown.' . . . Very well, I will 'cut the cackle and come to the hosses.' And you, Mr. Isidore? Do I read in your eye that you desire a similar literary restraint in your Episode of King Hal?"

"Ach, yes," grinned Mr. Isidore. "Cut ze caggle—cabital! I soggest in zat Ebisode we haf a Ballet."

"A Ballet?"

"A Ballet of Imberial Exbansion—ze first English discofferies ofer sea—ze natives brought back in brocession to mek sobmission—"

"Devilish pretty substitute for Thomas Cromwell and the Reformation!"

"It was zere lay ze future of Englandt, hein?"

"I see," said Brother Copas thoughtfully; "provided you make the ballets of our nation, you don't care if your brother makes its laws."

These preparations (he noted) had a small byproduct pleasantly affecting St. Hospital. Mr. Colt, in his anxiety to enlist the whole-hearted services of the Brethren (who according to design were to serve as a sort of subsidiary chorus to the Pageant, appearing and reappearing, still in their antique garb, in a succession of scenes supposed to extend over many centuries), had suddenly taken the line of being 'all things to all men,' and sensibly relaxed the zeal of his proselytising as well as the rigour of certain regulations offensive to the more Protestant of his flock.

"You may growl," said Brother Copas to Brother Warboise: "but this silly Pageant is bringing us more peace than half a dozen Petitions."

Brother Warboise was, in fact, growling because for three months and more nothing had been heard of the Petition.

"You may depend," said Copas soothingly, "the Bishop put the thing away in his skirt pocket and forgot all about it. I happen to know that he must be averse to turning out his skirt pockets, for I once saw him surreptitiously smuggle away a mayonnaise sandwich there. It was at a Deanery garden party; and I, having been invited to hand the ices and look picturesque, went on looking picturesque and pretended not to see. . . . I ought to have told you, when you asked me to write it, that such was the invariable fate of my compositions."

Meanwhile, it certainly seemed that a truce had been called to the internal dissensions of St. Hospital. On the pageant-ground one afternoon, in the midst of a very scratchy rehearsal, Brother Copas found himself by chance at the Chaplain's side. The two had been watching in silence for a full five minutes, when he heard Mr. Colt addressing him in a tone of unusual friendliness.

"Wonderful how it seems to link us up, eh?"

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"I was thinking, just then, of the St. Hospital uniform, which you have the honour to wear. It seems—or Mr. Isidore has the knack of making it seem—the, er, foil of the whole Pageant. It outlasts all the more brilliant fashions."

"Poverty, sir, is perduring. It is in everything just because it is out of everything. We inherit time, if not the earth."

"But particularly," said Mr. Colt, "I was thinking of the corporate unity it seems to give us, and to pass on, through us, to the whole story of Merchester."

"Aye, we are always with you."

Afterwards Brother Copas repented that he had not answered more graciously: for afterwards, looking back, he perceived that, in some way, the Pageant had actually helped to bring back a sense of "corporate unity" to St. Hospital.

Even then, and for months later, he missed to recognise Corona's share in it. What was she but a child?

"Is it true what I hear?" asked Mrs. Royle, intercepting him one day as he carried his plate of fast-cooling meat from the kitchen.

"Probably not," said Brother Copas.

"They tell me Bonaday's daughter has been singled out among all the school children—Greycoats and others—to be Queen of the May, or something of the kind, in this here Pageant."

"Yes, that is a fact."

"Oh! . . . I suppose it's part of your sneering way to make little of it. I call it an honour to St. Hospital."

"The deuce you do?"

"And what's more," added Mrs. Royle, "she mustn't let us down by appearing in rags."

"I hope we can provide against that."

"What I meant to say," the woman persisted, "was that you men don't probably understand. If there's to be a dance, or any such caper, she'll be lifting her skirts. Well, for the credit of St. Hospital, I'd like to overhaul the child's under-clothing, and see that she goes shipshape and Bristol fashion."

Brother Copas thanked her. He began to perceive that Mrs. Royle, that detestable woman, had her good points—or, at any rate, her soft spot.

It became embarrassing, though, when Mrs. Clerihew accosted him next day with a precisely similar request.

"And I might mention," added Mrs. Clerihew, "that I have a lace stomacher-frill which was gove to me by no less than the late honourable Edith, fifth daughter of the second Baron Glantyre. She died unmarried, previous to which she used frequently to honour me with her confidence. This being a historical occasion, I'd spare it."

Yes; it was true. Corona was to be a Queen, among many, in the Merchester Pageant.

It all happened through Mr. Simeon.

Mr. Simeon's children had, one and all, gone for their education to the Greycoats' School, which lies just beyond the west end of the Cathedral. He loved to think of them as growing up within its shadow. . . . One Tuesday at dinner the five-year-old Agatha popped out a question—

"Daddy, if the Cafederal fell down while we were in school, would it fall on top of us?"

"God forbid, child. But why ask such a question?"

"Because when we went to school this morning some workpeople had dug a hole, close by that end—quite a big pit it was. So I went near the edge to look down, and one of the men said, 'Take care, missy, or you'll tumble in and be drowned.' I told him that I knew better, because people couldn't build cafederals on water. He told me that was the way they had built ours, and he held my hand for me to have a look. He was right, too. The pit was half-full of water. He said that unless we looked sharp the whole Cafederal would come down on our heads. . . . I don't think it's safe for me to go to school any more, do you?" insinuated small Agatha.

Now it chanced that Mr. Simeon had to visit the Greycoats that very afternoon. He had written a little play for the children—boys and girls—to act at Christmas. It was not a play of the sort desiderated by Mrs. Simeon—the sort to earn forty thousand pounds in royalties; nor, to speak accurately, had he written it. He had in fact patched together a few artless scenes from an old Miracle Play— The Life of Saint Meriadoc—discovered by him in the Venables Library; and had tinkered out some rhymes (the book being a prose translation from the Breton original). "A poor thing," then, and very little of it his own—but Miss Champernowne opined that it would be a novelty, while the children enjoyed the rehearsals, and looked forward to the fun of "dressing-up."

Rehearsals were held twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, in the last hour of the afternoon session. This afternoon, on his way to the school, Mr. Simeon found that Agatha had indeed spoken truth. Five or six men were busy, digging, probing, sounding, around a large hole close under the northeast corner of the Lady Chapel. The foreman wore a grave face, and in answer to Mr. Simeon's inquiries allowed that the mischief was serious; so serious that the Dean and Chapter had sent for a diver to explore the foundations and report. The foreman further pointed out certain ominous cracks in the masonry overhead.

Just then the great clock chimed, warning Mr. Simeon away. . . . But the peril of his beloved Cathedral so haunted him that he arrived at the school-door as one distraught.

Rehearsal always took place in the girls' schoolroom, the boys coming in from their part of the building to clear the desks away and arrange them close along the walls. They were busy at it when he entered. He saw: but—

"He heeded not—his eyes Were with his heart,"

And that was in the Close outside—anthi, phile en patridi gaie.

From the start he allowed the rehearsal to get hopelessly out of hand. The children took charge; they grew more and more fractious, unruly. Miss Champernowne chid them in vain. The schoolroom, in fact, was a small pandemonium, when of a sudden the door opened and two visitors entered—Mr. Colt and Mr. Isidore Bamberger.