church-people."

"Is it taboo, then, to face the clergy with a Gladstone bag?" Bertram
asked quite seriously, in that childlike tone of simple inquiry that
Philip had noticed more than once before in him. "Your bonzes object to
meet a man with luggage? They think it unlucky?"

Frida and Philip looked at one another with quick glances, and laughed.

"Well, it's not exactly tabooed," Frida answered gently; "and it's
not so much the rector himself, you know, as the feelings of one's
neighbours. This is a very respectable neighbourhood--oh, quite
dreadfully respectable--and people in the houses about might make a talk
of it if a cab drove away from the door as they were passing. I
think, Phil, you're right. He'd better wait till the church-people are
finished."

"Respectability seems to be a very great object of worship in your
village," Bertram suggested in perfect good faith. "Is it a local cult,
or is it general in England?"

Frida glanced at him, half puzzled. "Oh, I think it's pretty general,"
she answered, with a happy smile. "But perhaps the disease is a little
more epidemic about here than elsewhere. It affects the suburbs: and my
brother's got it just as badly as any one."

"As badly as any one!" Bertram repeated with a puzzled air. "Then you
don't belong to that creed yourself? You don't bend the knee to this
embodied abstraction?--it's your brother who worships her, I suppose,
for the family?"

"Yes; he's more of a devotee than I am," Frida went on, quite frankly,
but not a little surprised at so much freedom in a stranger. "Though
we're all of us tarred with the same brush, no doubt. It's a catching
complaint, I suppose, respectability."

Bertram gazed at her dubiously. A complaint, did she say? Was she
serious or joking? He hardly understood her. But further discussion was
cut short for the moment by Frida good-humouredly running upstairs
to see after the Gladstone bag and brown portmanteau, into which
she crammed a few useless books and other heavy things, to serve as
make-weights for Miss Blake's injured feelings.

"You'd better wait a quarter of an hour after we go to church," she
said, as the servant brought these necessaries into the room
where Bertram and Philip were seated. "By that time nearly all the
church-people will be safe in their seats; and Phil's conscience will
be satisfied. You can tell Miss Blake you've brought a little of your
luggage to do for to-day, and the rest will follow fro