as thinking about tea in
Kensington Gardens on Sunday. We have both of us a perfect right to
have tea independently, and the only question is about separate tables."

"Suppose I come--to make it square."

"Suppose you do, dear." And the proposal is a relief evidently.

A very slight insight into the little drama that is going on at
Ladbroke Grove Road is all that is wanted for the purposes of this
story. The foregoing dialogue, ending at the point at which the two
young women disappear into the door of No. 287, will be sufficient to
give a fairly clear idea of the plot of the performance, and to point
to its _denouement_. The exact details may unfold themselves as
the story proceeds. The usual thing is a stand-up fight over the
love-affair, both parties to which have made up their minds--becoming
more and more obdurate as they encounter opposition from without--followed
by reconciliations more or less real. Let us hope for the former in the
present case, and that Miss Wilson and Mr. Bradshaw's lot may not be
crossed by one of those developments of strange inexplicable fury which
so often break out in families over the schemes of two young people to
do precisely what their parents did before them; and most ungovernably,
sometimes, on the part of members who have absolutely no suggestion
to make of any alternative scheme for the happiness of either.

CHAPTER XIX

HOW FENWICK KNEW ALL ABOUT THE MASS. AND HOW BARON KREUTZKAMMER
RECOGNISED MR. HARRISSON. LONDON AGAIN!

"Why do they call it the _messe des paresseux_?" The question must have
been asked just as Sally looked at her watch because she saw the clock
had stopped. But the nave of the Cathedral of Rheims was very unlike
that of St. Satisfax as the bride and bridegroom lingered in out of the
sunshine, and the former took the unwarrantable liberty, for a heretic,
of crossing herself from the Holy Water at the foot of the column near
the door. But she made up for it by the amount of _sous_ she gave to
the old blind woman, who must have been knitting there since the days
of Napoleon at least, if she began in her teens.

"You haven't done it right, dearest. I knew you wouldn't. Look here."
And Fenwick crosses himself _secundum artem_, dipping his finger first
to make it valid.

"But how came you to know?" His wife does not say this; she only thinks
it. And how came he to know about the _messe des paresseux_? She
repeats her question aloud.

"Because th