his slight vexation, Penhallow said presently, "He told me his
mother was sick."

"She was not yesterday. I took her our monthly allowance and some towels
I wanted hemmed and marked. He lied to you, James. Did you believe him
even for a moment?"

"But she might be sick, Ann. I meant you to stop and ask."

"I will, of course." This time she held her tongue, and left him at
Grace's door.

The perfect sweetness of her husband's generous temperament was sometimes
trying to Ann in its results, but now it had helped her out of an awkward
position, and with pride and affection she watched his soldierly figure
for a moment and then went on her way.

Intent with gladness on fulfilling his wife's errand, he went up the
steps of the small two-storey house of the Baptist preacher. He had
difficulty in making any one hear where there was no one to hear. If at
Westways the use of the rare bells or more common knockers brought no one
to the door, you were free to walk in and cry, "Where are you, Amanda
Jane, and shall I come right up?" Penhallow had never set foot in the
house, but had no hesitation in entering the front room close to the
narrow hall which was known as the front entry. The details of men's
surroundings did not usually interest Penhallow, but in the mills or the
far past days of military service nothing escaped him that could be of
use in the work of the hour. The stout little Baptist preacher, with his
constant every-day jollity and violent sermons, of which he had heard
from Rivers, in no way interested Penhallow. When he once said to Ann,
"The man is unneat and common," she replied, "No, he is homely, but
neither vulgar nor common. I hate his emotional performances, but the man
is good, James." "Then I do wish, Ann, he would button his waistcoat and
pull up his socks."

Now he looked about him with some unusual attention. There was no carpet.
A set of oddly coloured chairs and settees which would have pleased Ann,
a square mahogany table set on elephantine legs, completed the
furnishings of a whitewashed room, where the flies, driven indoors by
cool weather, buzzed on window glasses dull with dust. The back room had
only a writing-table, a small case of theological books, and two or
three much used volumes of American history. Penhallow looked around him
with unusually awakened pity. The gathered dust, the battered chairs, the
spider-webs in the darker corners, would have variously annoyed and
disgusted Ann P