ed.

"Ouch!" whispered the voice. That madman!

"I assure you, madam," replied Mr. Lavender, striving to regain contact,
"I wouldn't harm you for the world. Can you tell me in what portion of
the hall we are?" And crouching down he stretched out his arms and felt
about him. No answer came; but he could tell that he was between two
rows of chairs, and, holding to the top of one, he began to sidle along,
crouching, so as not to lose touch with the chairs behind him. He had
not proceeded the length of six chairs in the pitchy darkness when the
light was suddenly turned up, and he found himself glaring over the backs
of the chairs in front into the eyes of a young woman, who was crouching
and glaring back over the same chairs.

"Dear me," said Mr. Lavender, as with a certain dignity they both rose to
their full height, "I had no conception----"

Without a word, the young woman put her hand up to her back hair, sidled
swiftly down the row of chairs, ran down the aisle, and vanished. There
was no one else in the chapel. Mr. Lavender, after surveying the
considerable wreckage, made his way to the door and passed out into the
night. "Like a dream," he thought; "but I have done my duty, for no
meeting was ever more completely broken up. With a clear conscience and
a good appetite I can how go home."

XII

SPEEDS UP TRANSPORT, AND SEES A DOCTOR

Greatly cheered by his success at the Peace meeting, Mr. Lavender
searched his papers next morning to find a new field for his activities;
nor had he to read far before he came on this paragraph:

"Everything is dependent on transport, and we cannot sufficiently
urge that this should be speeded up by
every means in our power."

"How true!" he thought. And, finishing his breakfast hastily, he went
out with Blink to think over what he could do to help. "I can exhort,"
he mused, "anyone engaged in transport who is not exerting himself to the
utmost. It will not be pleasant to do so, for it will certainly provoke
much ill-feeling. I must not, however, be deterred by that, for it is
the daily concomitant of public life, and hard words break no bones, as
they say, but rather serve to thicken the skins and sharpen the tongues
of us public men, so that, we are able to meet our opponents with their
own weapons. I perceive before me, indeed, a liberal education in just
those public qualities wherein I am conscious of being as yet deficient."
And his heart sank within him,