uickness that prevented any answer or comment of mine, she
returned to our business.

So I stayed and watched--there was nothing else to do. If anybody
objects that the spectacle which I watched was not a pleasant one, I
will not argue with him. If anyone asserts that it was not a moral one,
not tending to edification, I may perhaps have to concede the point. I
can only plead that to me it was interesting--painful, perhaps, but
interesting. I believed that she would win; we who were about her got
into the way of expecting her to win. We looked for some mistakes, but
we looked also for dexterous recoveries and ultimate victories won even
in the face of odds. I will volunteer one more confession--I wanted her
to win--to win the respite she craved without detection and without
disaster. The sternness of morality is apt to weaken before the appeal
of a gallant fight--valor of spirit, and dexterity, and resource in
maneuver. We forget the merits of the cause in the pluck of the
combatant. As I believed, as I hoped, that Jenny would win, I also hoped
that she would not take too great, too long, a risk. The signal pointed
straighter to "Danger" every day.

Chat--whom I have been in danger of forgetting, though I am sure I mean
her no disrespect--had her work in the campaign. It was to create
diversions, to act as buffer, to cover up Jenny's tracks when that was
necessary, to give plausible reasons for Jenny's movements when such
were needed; above all, delicately to imply to the neighborhood that the
Fillingford matter was all right--only they must give Miss Driver time!
Chat was a loyal, nay, rabid Octonite herself, but she was also a
faithful hound. She obeyed orders--and obeyed them with a certain skill.
On the subject of Jenny's shrinking timidity when faced with an offer of
marriage, Chat was beautifully convincing--I heard her do the trick once
for Mrs. Jepps's edification. The ladies were good enough not to make a
stranger of me. Mrs. Jepps, I may observe in passing, took a
healthy--and somewhat imperious--interest in one's marriage, and one's
means, and so on, as well as in one's religious opinions.

"Always the same from a girl, Mrs. Jepps!" said Chat. "And after five
years of her I ought to know. I assure you we couldn't get her to speak
to a young man!"

"Very unusual with girls nowadays," observed Mrs. Jepps.

"Ah, our little village wasn't like Catsford! We were, I suppose you'd
call it, behind the times ther