oritative manner; "I shall order you to rest on your couch at once.
I will copy this for you. What is it on?"

"Cremation," said Erica, smiling a little. "A nice funereal subject for
a dreary day. Generally, if I'm in wild spirits, Mr. Bircham sends me
the very gloomiest subject to write on, and if I'm particularly blue, he
asks for a bright, lively article."

"Oh! He tells you what to write on?"

"Yes, did you think I had the luxury of choosing for myself? Every day,
about eleven o'clock a small boy brings me my fate on a slip of paper.
Let me dictate this to you. I'm sure you can't read that penciled
scribble."

"Yes, I can," said Brian. "You go and rest."

She obeyed him, thankful enough to have a moment's pause in which to
think out the questions that came crowding into her mind. She hardly
dared to think what Brian might be to her, for just now she needed him
so sorely as friend and adviser, that to admit that other perception,
which made her feel shy and constrained with him, would have left her
still in her isolation. After all, he was a seven years' friend, no mere
acquaintance, but an actual friend to whom she was her unreserved and
perfectly natural self.

"Brian," she said presently when he had finished her copying, "you don't
think I'm bound to tell my father about this afternoon, do you?"

A burning, painful blush, the sort of blush that she never ought to have
known, never could have known but for that shameful slander, spread over
her face and neck as she spoke.

"Perhaps not," said Brian, "since the man has been properly punished."

"I think I hope it need never get round to him in any other way," said
Erica. "He would be so fearfully angry, and just now scarcely a day
passes without bringing him some fresh worry."

"When will the Pogson affair come on?"

"Oh! I don't know. Not just yet, I'm afraid. Things in the legal world
always move at the rate of a fly in a glue pot."

"What sort of man is Mr. Pogson?"

"He was in court today, a little, sleek, narrow-headed man with cold,
gray eyes. I have been trying to put myself in his place, and realize
the view he takes of things; but it is very, very hard. You don't know
what it is to live in this house and see the awful harm his intolerance
is bringing about."

"In what way did you specially mean?"

"Oh! In a thousand ways. It is bringing Christianity into discredit,
it is making them more bitter against it, and who can wonder. It is
bringi