were no cards; they
talked of the Eardley affair.

"You'll have to manage with the old organ now," was one of the first
things that Peake said to Mrs Lovatt, after he had recited his own woe.
He smiled grimly as he said it.

"I don't see why," Sneyd remarked. It was not true; he saw perfectly;
but he enjoyed the rousing of Jim Peake into a warm altercation.

"Not at all," said Mrs Lovatt, proudly. "We shall have the organ, I'm
sure. There was an urgency committee meeting last night. Titus
Blackhurst has most generously given another hundred; he said it would
be a shame if the bankruptcy of professed Methodists was allowed to
prejudice the interests of the chapel. And the organ-makers have taken
fifty pounds off their price. Now, who do you think has given another
fifty? Mr Copinger! He stood up last night, Mr Blackhurst told me this
morning, and he said, 'Friends, I've only seventy pounds in the world,
but I'll give fifty pounds towards this organ.' There! What do you think
of that? Isn't he a grand fellow?"

"He is a grand fellow," said Peake, with emphasis, reflecting that the
total income of the minister could not exceed three hundred a year.

"So you see you'll _have_ to give your hundred," Mrs Lovatt continued.
"You can't do otherwise after that."

There was a pause.

"I won't give it," said Peake. "I've said I won't, and I won't."

He could think of no argument. To repeat that Eardley's bankruptcy would
cost him dear seemed trivial. Nevertheless, the absence of any plausible
argument served only to steel his resolution.

At that moment the servant opened the door.

"Mr Titus Blackhurst, senior, to see you, sir."

Peake and his wife looked at one another in amazement, and Sneyd laughed
quietly.

"He told me he should come up," Mrs Lovatt explained.

"Show him into the breakfast-room, Clara," said Mrs Peake to the
servant.

Peake frowned angrily as he crossed the hall, but as he opened the
breakfast-room door he contrived to straighten out his face into a
semblance of urbanity. Though he could have enjoyed accelerating the
passage of his visitor into the street, there were excellent commercial
reasons why he should adopt a less strenuous means towards the end which
he had determined to gain.

"Glad to see you, Mr Blackhurst," he began, a little awkwardly.

"You know, I suppose, what I've come for, Mr Peake," said the old man,
in that rich, deep, oily voice of which Mrs Lovatt, in one of those
gr