eem other than grossly unfair to
him, an imposition on his good-nature.

"Think it over," she said abruptly, after he had assisted her to alight
at the top of Trafalgar Road. "Think it over, to oblige me."

"I'd do anything to oblige you," he replied. "But I'll tell you
this"--he put his mouth to her ear and whispered, half-smiling at the
confession. "You call me a generous man, but whenever that organ's
mentioned I feel just like a miser--yes, as hard as a miser. Good-bye!
I'm very glad to have had the pleasure of driving you up." He beamed on
her as the horse shot forward.

III

This was on Tuesday. During the next few days Peake went through a novel
and very disturbing experience. He gradually became conscious of the
power of that mysterious and all-but-irresistible moral force which is
called public opinion. His own public of friends and acquaintances
connected with the chapel seemed to be, for some inexplicable reason,
against him on the question of the organ subscription. They visited him,
even to the Rev. Mr Copinger (whom he heartily admired as having
"nothing of the parson" about him), and argued quietly, rather severely,
and then left him with the assurance that they relied on his sense of
what was proper. He was amazed and secretly indignant at this combined
attack. He thought it cowardly, unscrupulous; it resembled brigandage.
He felt most acutely that no one had any right to demand from him that
hundred pounds, and that they who did so transgressed one of those
unwritten laws which govern social intercourse. Yet these transgressors
were his friends, people who had earned his respect in years long past
and kept it through all the intricate situations arising out of daily
contact. They could defy him to withdraw his respect now; and, without
knowing it, they did. He was left brooding, pained, bewildered. The
explanation was simply this: he had failed to perceive that the
grandiose idea of the ninefold organ fund had seized, fired, and
obsessed the imaginations of the Wesleyan community, and that under the
unwonted poetic stimulus they were capable of acting quite differently
from their ordinary selves.

Peake was perplexed, he felt that he was weakening; but, being a man of
resourceful obstinacy, he was by no means defeated. On Friday morning he
told his wife that he should go to see a customer at Blackpool about a
contract, and probably remain at the seaside for the week-end.
Accustomed to thes