ldren and took them back to the house through
the kitchen garden.

"Don't say we have arrived," whispered Rachel to her. "I will come on
with him presently." And she sat down near the prostrate vine-grower.
The president of the South Australian Vine-Growers' Association looked
very large when he was down.

Presently he sat up. His face was drawn and haggard, but he met Rachel's
dog-like glance of silent sympathy with a difficult, crooked smile.

"He is such a jolly little chap," he said, winking his hawk eyes.

"It was not your fault."

"That would not have made it any better for the parents," said Dick. "I
had time to think of that while I was shaking that little money-box.
Besides, it was my fault, in a way. I'll never play with other people's
children again. They are too brittle. I've had shaves up the Fly River
and in the South Sea Islands, but never anything as bad as this, in this
blooming little Vicarage garden with a church looking over the wall."

Hester was skimming back towards them.

"Don't mention it to James and his wife," she said to Dick. "He has to
speak at a temperance meeting to-night. I will tell them when the
meeting is over."

"That's just as well," said Dick, "for I know if James jawed much at me
I should act on the text that it is more blessed to give than to
receive."

"In what way?"

"Either way," said Dick. "Tongue or fist. It does not matter which, so
long as you give more than you get. And the text is quite right. It is
blessed, for I've tried it over and over again, and found it true every
time. But I don't want to try it on James if he's anything like what he
was as a curate."

"He is not much altered," said Hester.

"He is the kind of man that would not alter much," said Dick. "I expect
God Almighty likes him as he is."

Mr. and Mrs. Gresley, meanwhile, were receiving Mrs. Pratt and the two
Misses Pratt in the drawing-room. Selina and Ada Pratt were fine,
handsome young women, with long upper lips, who wore their smart sailor
hats tilted backwards to show their bushy fringes, and whose
muff-chains, with swinging pendent hearts, silk blouses and sequin belts
and brown boots represented to Mrs. Gresley the highest pinnacle of the
world of fashion.

Selina was the most popular, being liable to shrieks of laughter at the
smallest witticisms, and always ready for that species of amusement
termed "bally-ragging" or "hay-making." But Ada was the most admired.
She belonged to t