tches
and an ash-tray. Then he sat down himself, took a long pull at his
cocoa, and waited with a certain apprehensiveness.

"Who else is here?" asked Frank abruptly.

The other ran through the three names, with a short biography of each.
Frank nodded, reassured at the end.

"That's all right," he said. "All before my time, I expect. They might
come in, you know."

"Oh, no!" said the clergyman. "I told them not, and--"

"Well, let's come to business," said Frank. "It's about a girl. You saw
that man to-day? You saw his sort, did you? Well, he's a bad hat. And
he's got a girl going about with him who isn't his wife. I want to get
her home again to her people."

"Yes?"

"Can you do anything? (Don't say you can if you can't, please....) She
comes from Chiswick. I'll give you her address before I go. But I don't
want it muddled, you know."

The clergyman swallowed in his throat. He had only been ordained
eighteen months, and the extreme abruptness and reality of the situation
took him a little aback.

"I can try," he said. "And I can put the ladies on to her. But, of
course, I can't undertake--"

"Of course. But do you think there's a reasonable chance? If not, I'd
better have another try myself."

"Have you tried, then?"

"Oh, yes, half a dozen times. A fortnight ago was the last, and I really
thought--"

"But I don't understand. Are these people your friends, or what?"

"I've been traveling with them off and on since June. They belong to
you, so far as they belong to anyone. I'm a Catholic, you know--"

"Really? But--"

"Convert. Last June. Don't let's argue, my dear chap. There isn't time."

Mr. Parham-Carter drew a breath.

There is no other phrase so adequate for describing his condition of
mind as the old one concerning head and heels. There had rushed on him,
not out of the blue, but, what was even more surprising, out of the very
dingy sky of Hackney Wick (and Turner Road, at that!), this astonishing
young man, keen-eyed, brown-faced, muscular, who had turned out to be a
school-fellow of his own, and a school-fellow whose reputation, during
the three hours since they had parted, he had swiftly remembered point
by point--Guiseley of Drew's--the boy who had thrown off his coat in
early school and displayed himself shirtless; who had stolen four out of
the six birches on a certain winter morning, and had conversed affably
with the Head in school yard with the ends of the birches sticking out
be