as
those Injuns he was talking about last week hunt for scalps. They can't
get to heaven without a certain number of 'em slung about 'em.'

'Wait a bit!' said the gasfitter, his quick dark eyes betraying a
certain raised inner temperature.

Next morning the North R---- Club was placarded with announcements that
on Easter Eve next Robert Elsmere, Esq., would deliver a lecture in the
Debating Hall on 'The Claim of Jesus upon Modern Life'; to be followed,
as usual, by general discussion.

CHAPTER XXXIX

It was the afternoon of Good Friday. Catherine had been to church at St.
Paul's, and Robert, though not without some inward struggle, had
accompanied her. Their midday meal was over, and Robert had been
devoting himself to Mary, who had been tottering round the room in his
wake, clutching one finger tight with her chubby hand. In particular, he
had been coaxing her into friendship with a wooden Japanese dragon which
wound itself in awful yet most seductive coils round the cabinet at the
end of the room. It was Mary's weekly task to embrace this horror, and
the performance went by the name of 'kissing the Jabberwock.' It had
been triumphantly achieved, and, as the reward of bravery, Mary was
being carried round the room on her father's shoulder, holding on
mercilessly to his curls, her shining blue eyes darting scorn at the
defeated monster.

At last Robert deposited her on the rug beside a fascinating farmyard
which lay there spread out for her, and stood looking, not at the child,
but at his wife.

'Catherine, I feel so much as Mary did three minutes ago!'

She looked up startled. The tone was light, but the sadness, the emotion
of the eyes, contradicted it.

'I want courage,' he went on--'courage to tell you something that may
hurt you. And yet I ought to tell it.'

Her face took the shrinking expression which was so painful to him. But
she waited quietly for what he had to say.

'You know, I think,' he said, looking away from her to the gray Museum
outside, 'that my work in R---- hasn't been religious as yet at all. Oh,
of course, I have said things here and there, but I haven't delivered
myself in any way. Now there has come an opening.'

And he described to her--while she shivered a little and drew herself
together--the provocations which were leading him into a tussle with the
North R---- Club.

'They have given me a very civil invitation. They are the sort of men
after all whom it pays to get