esumably
wished to form on account of her child. The more she considered his
claim, the more irrational and impertinent did it seem that he should
dare assume any share in the unborn miracle worked by Jenny Pearl.

Trewhella pulled himself together, still progressing slowly, even
painfully, but braced to snap if necessary every strand of barbed wire
still between him and his object.

"What I were going to say to 'ee was, now that there's this lill baby,
I'd like for 'ee both to go chapel. I've said nothing so far about your
not going; but I daren't run up against the dear Lord's wrath in the
matter of my baby."

"Don't be silly," said Jenny. "How can anything happen to _my_ baby
without its happening to me?"

"Well, I'd like for 'ee to come," Trewhella persisted.

Here was Jenny in a quandary. If she refused, according to her fiery
first impulse, what religious pesterings would follow her round the
garden. How he would drawl in that unnatural manner of speech a lot of
rubbish which had nothing to do with her. He might even take to
preaching in bed. He had once frightened her by demanding in a
sepulchral speculation whether she had ever reflected that the flames of
hell were so hot that there a white-hot poker would be cool as
ice-cream. If on the other hand she submitted to a few hours' boredom,
what an amount of treasured liberty would be sacrificed and what more
intrusive attempts might not be made upon the inviolable egoism.

"But I don't like church and chapel," said Jenny. "It doesn't interest
me."

Then she saw her husband gathering his eloquence for wearisome argument
and decided to compromise--and for Jenny to compromise meant character
in the melting-pot.

"I might come once and again," she said.

Trewhella seemed relieved and, after a moment's awkwardness in which he
gave her the idea that he was on the verge of thanks, departed to his
business.

So, not on the following Sunday, for that would have looked like too
easy a surrender, but on the Sunday after that, Jenny and May went in
the wake of the household to the Free Church--a gaunt square of
whitewashed stone, whose interior smelt of varnish and stale hymn-books
and harmonium dust. The minister, a compound of suspicion, petty
authority and deep-rooted servility, had bicycled from Camston and had
in consequence a rash of mud on his coat. Without much fire, gnawing his
mustache when in need of a word, he gave a dreary political address in
which