n a pause of dry-towelling, and goes
back to her room not quite convinced. Persons of the same blood,
living constantly together, are sometimes quite embarrassed by their
own brain-waves, and very often misled.

Exigencies of teeth and hair cut the talk short about Mr. Fenwick. But
he gets renewed at breakfast, and, in fact, goes on more or less until
brought up short by the early service at St. Satisfax, when he is
extinguished by a preliminary hymn. But not before his whole story,
so far as is known, has been passed in review. So that an attentive
listener might have gathered from their disjointed chat most of the
particulars of his strange appearance on the scene, and of the
incidents of the next few weeks, and their result in the foundation
of what seemed likely to be a permanent friendship between himself and
Krakatoa Villa, and what certainly was (all things considered) that most
lucrative and lucky post in a good wine-merchant's house in the City.
For Mr. Fenwick had nothing to recommend him but his address and
capacity, brought into notice by an accidental concurrence of
circumstances.

It had been difficult to talk much about him to himself without
seeming to wish to probe into his past life; and as Mrs. Nightingale
impressed on Sally for the twentieth time, just as they arrived at
St. Satisfax, they really knew nothing of it. How could they even know
that this oblivion was altogether genuine? It might easily have been
so at first, but who could say how much of his past had come back to
him during the last six months? An unwelcome past, perhaps, and one
he was glad to help Oblivion in extinguishing.

As this was on the semi-circular path in front of the Saint's shrine,
between two ramparts of swept-up snow, and on a corrective of
cinder-grit, Sally ascribed this speculation to a disposition on her
mother's part to preach, she having come, as it were, within the scope
and atmosphere of a pending decalogue. Also, she thought the
ostentatious way in which Mr. Fenwick had gone away to skate had
something to do with it.

But she was at all times conscious of a certain access of severity in
her mother as she approached altars--rather beyond the common attitude
of mind one ascribes to the bearer of a prayer-book when one doesn't
mean to go to church oneself. (We are indebted for this piece of
information to an intermittent church-goer; it is on a subject on
which our own impressions have little value.) In the pre