we have relatives in the country, and they would be almost
certain, the Mallings, at any rate, to give hints.'

Darnell saw the force of the argument and gave way. But he was bitterly
disappointed.

'It would have been very nice, wouldn't it?' he said with a sigh.

'Never mind, dear,' said Mary, who saw that he was a good deal cast
down. 'We must think of some other plan that will be nice and useful
too.'

She often spoke to him in that tone of a kind mother, though she was by
three years the younger.

'And now,' she said, 'I must get ready for church. Are you coming?'

Darnell said that he thought not. He usually accompanied his wife to
morning service, but that day he felt some bitterness in his heart, and
preferred to lounge under the shade of the big mulberry tree that stood
in the middle of their patch of garden--relic of the spacious lawns that
had once lain smooth and green and sweet, where the dismal streets now
swarmed in a hopeless labyrinth.

So Mary went quietly and alone to church. St. Paul's stood in a
neighbouring street, and its Gothic design would have interested a
curious inquirer into the history of a strange revival. Obviously,
mechanically, there was nothing amiss. The style chosen was 'geometrical
decorated,' and the tracery of the windows seemed correct. The nave, the
aisles, the spacious chancel, were reasonably proportioned; and, to be
quite serious, the only feature obviously wrong was the substitution of
a low 'chancel wall' with iron gates for the rood screen with the loft
and rood. But this, it might plausibly be contended, was merely an
adaptation of the old idea to modern requirements, and it would have
been quite difficult to explain why the whole building, from the mere
mortar setting between the stones to the Gothic gas standards, was a
mysterious and elaborate blasphemy. The canticles were sung to Joll in B
flat, the chants were 'Anglican,' and the sermon was the gospel for the
day, amplified and rendered into the more modern and graceful English of
the preacher. And Mary came away.

After their dinner (an excellent piece of Australian mutton, bought in
the 'World Wide' Stores, in Hammersmith), they sat for some time in the
garden, partly sheltered by the big mulberry tree from the observation
of their neighbours. Edward smoked his honeydew, and Mary looked at him
with placid affection.

'You never tell me about the men in your office,' she said at length.
'Some of them are