gh words, with Mrs. Arbuthnot.

She saw her marshalling the children of the poor into pews. She
would come in at the head of the procession from the Sunday School
exactly five minutes before the choir, and get her boys and girls
neatly fitted into their allotted seats, and down on their little knees
in their preliminary prayer, and up again on their feet just as, to the
swelling organ, the vestry door opened, and the choir and clergy, big
with the litanies and commandments they were presently to roll out,
emerged. She had a sad face, yet she was evidently efficient. The
combination used to make Mrs. Wilkins wonder, for she had been told my
Mellersh, on days when she had only been able to get plaice, that if
one were efficient one wouldn't be depressed, and that if one does
one's job well one becomes automatically bright and brisk.

About Mrs. Arbuthnot there was nothing bright and brisk, though
much in her way with the Sunday School children that was automatic; but
when Mrs. Wilkins, turning from the window, caught sight of her in the
club she was not being automatic at all, but was looking fixedly at one
portion of the first page of The Times, holding the paper quite still,
her eyes not moving. She was just staring; and her face, as usual, was
the face of a patient and disappointed Madonna.

Mrs. Wilkins watched her a minute, trying to screw up courage to
speak to her. She wanted to ask her if she had seen the advertisement.
She did not know why she wanted to ask her this, but she wanted to.
How stupid not to be able to speak to her. She looked so kind. She
looked so unhappy. Why couldn't two unhappy people refresh each
other on their way through this dusty business of life by a little
talk--real, natural talk, about what they felt, what they would have
liked, what they still tried to hope? And she could not help thinking
that Mrs. Arbuthnot, too, was reading that very same advertisement.
Her eyes were on the very part of the paper. Was she, too, picturing
what it would be like--the colour, the fragrance, the light, the soft
lapping of the sea among little hot rocks? Colour, fragrance, light,
sea; instead of Shaftesbury Avenue, and the wet omnibuses, and the fish
department at Shoolbred's, and the Tube to Hampstead, and dinner, and
to-morrow the same and the day after the same and always the same . . .

Suddenly Mrs. Wilkins found herself leaning across the table.
"Are you reading about the mediaeval cast