squire
smiled.

"There is no other safe way, madam, than the way of Truth, and I am
treading it now. Even if the woman be a nuisance, even if the mission
be unworthy, she who makes it hers may be ennobled. Let us assume that
she believes with all her heart that she has been sent into the world
for one definite purpose--shall we say to work for the abatement of the
smoke nuisance? That involves, amongst other things----"

"Depriving poor weak man of his chief solace--tobacco," snapped the
vicar's wife.

"Exactly. Now see how this strengthens her character, and calls out
qualities of endurance and self-sacrifice. The poor weak man, her
husband, deprived of his chief solace, tobacco, turns to peppermints,
moroseness and bad language. His courtesy is changed to boorishness,
his placidity to snappishness. All this is trying to his wife, but
being a woman with a mission she regards these things philosophically
as incidental to a transition period, and she bears her cross with
ever-increasing gentleness and----"

"Drives her husband to the devil and herself into the widows'
compartment," interrupted the vicar's wife, with disgust in her voice.
"Miss Holden, do you sing?"

"I have no music," I replied, "but may I 'say a piece' instead, as the
village children put it?" I turned to the Cynic and made him a mock
curtsey:

"Small blame is ours
For this unsexing of ourselves, and worse
Effeminising of the male. We were
Content, sir, till you starved us, heart and brain.
All we have done, or wise or otherwise
Traced to the root was done for love of you.
Let us taboo all vain comparisons,
And go forth as God meant us, hand in hand.
Companions, mates and comrades evermore;
Two parts of one divinely ordained whole."

"Bravo!" said the squire, and the vicar murmured, "Thank you," very
politely. The Cynic laughed and rose from his chair.

"I will take it lying down," he said. "Mr. Evans, may I look in the
cabinet and see if there is anything Miss Holden can sing?"

I had to do it, because the cabinet contained all the Scotch songs I
love so well. I was my own accompanist, _faute de mieux_, but the
Cynic turned the leaves, and contributed a couple of songs himself. He
talks better than he sings. The squire wanted us to try a duet, and
the vicar's wife was also very pressing, but one has to draw the line
somewhere. The only pieces we both knew were so sentimental that my
sens