ly, "nor any one else either, I
should think. I bet you a shilling they wouldn't."

"But Mrs. Hewson does," Janet replied quietly. "Doesn't that satisfy
you that it must be artistic, since some one likes it?"

Mrs. Hewson, finding herself suddenly the object of the conversation,
picked her teeth in hurried confusion. Her husband surveyed the
company over the rim of his cup and then returned to his reading of
the evening paper.

During the weighted silence that followed Janet's last remark, he
laid down his paper.

"I see," he said, "as 'ow there are some people up in the north of
England 'aving what they call Pentecostal visitations."

Mrs. Hewson laughed tentatively, the uncertain giggle that scarcely
dares to come between the teeth. She knew her husband's leaning
towards the arid humour of an obscure joke.

"What's that, Ern?"

"Well, 'cording to the paper, they get taken with it sudden. They
can't stand up. They fall down in the middle of the service and roll
about, just as if they'd 'ad too much to drink."

Mrs. Hewson's laugh became genuine and unafraid, a hysterical
clattering of sounds that tumbled from her mouth.

"Silly fools," she said; "the way people go on. Read it--what is it?
Read it."

Mr. Hewson picked some bones out of the bloater with a dirty hand,
placed the filleted morsel in his mouth, washed it down with a
mouthful of tea, and then cleared his throat and began to read.

Mr. Arthur seized this opportunity. "It's quite fine again now," he
said in an undertone to Sally.

She expressed mild surprise--the lifting of her eyebrows, the casual
"Really." Then it seemed to her that he did not exactly deserve to
be treated like that and she told him how she had got wet through,
coming home.

"Changed your clothes, I hope," he whispered.

"Oh yes."

"You might get pneumonia, you know," he said.

She smiled at that. "And of such are the Kingdom of Heaven."

He gazed at her in surprise. "Why should you say that?" he asked.

"Don't know--why shouldn't I?"

He looked down at his empty plate. There was something he wanted to
say to her. He kept looking round the table for inspiration. At last,
with Mrs. Hewson's burst of laughter at the paper's description of
the Pentecostal visitations, he took the plunge--head down--the
words spluttering in whispers out of his lips.

"Would you care to come for a little walk down the Strand-on-Green?"
he asked. "It's a lovely night now."

In the half