choed, "you call it beautiful that so many poor men
should work hard so long, and then have to see the lazy ones who came
in late be paid as much as they for one-tenth as much work? I do not
know what you mean by beautiful; it was certainly very unfair."

"My dear, my dear!" poor Barbara fluttered, "it had the approval of
our Lord, remember."

"He was probably not one of the ones who had worked all day, then,"
Margarita replied blandly.

"It was not an actual occurrence," said Miss Jencks, a little coldly,
as Roger's irrepressible chuckle echoed from the porch outside, "it
was merely a parable--a lesson."

"Oh!" (The exquisite, falling melody of that simple monosyllable
expressed so perfectly, through such a trained larynx, all the sudden
lack of interest!) "It never happened, then? So of course it does not
matter. But why do you call it a lesson, Miss Jencks?"

"Because it teaches Christian charity," said Barbara firmly.

Margarita turned away and dismissed the subject.

"If I ever hired myself to anybody, I would rather he had been taught
fairness than Christian charity," she observed, and left Miss Jencks
clutching the fruit plate pathetically, her eyes fixed hopelessly on
me. For it was always my delicate task to soothe the poor lady after
these theological encounters: Roger's uncompromising treatment of the
situation had a way of uncomfortably resembling his wife's!

"You know, dear Miss Jencks," I began, as seriously as I could, "she
is not really cynical--she is no more irreverent than a child would
be. Surely some of your pupils, sometimes ..."

"Never, Mr. Jerrolds, never!" the bulwark of the Governor-General's
family protested tearfully, "never, I assure you!"

"Well, well," I said, "it's all the same--they might have. You see,
she pays these things the great compliment of taking them
seriously--and literally. And they wouldn't work, Miss Jencks, some of
them, if one tried them, you know. Just consider the labour unions for
one thing: suppose Roger were to pay off his workmen on that
principle--they'd fling his money in his face."

[Illustration: HE SKETCHED HER IN CHARCOAL, DRESSED (HE WOULD HAVE IT)
IN BLACK]

"Then what would you say to the Prodigal Son?" she shot at me
defiantly.

"I say that it's very beautiful and that I'm old enough to hope it may
be true," I told her, "but for heaven's sake, Miss Jencks, don't try
Mrs. Bradley with it--not just now, at any rate!"

Then there was her g