n
the doors that, as a rule, hid them from public view. She knew the
hobbies of the average prosperous member at large of the flock
ecclesiastical, and made a series of elaborate calculations regarding
the intersecting social orbits of those same members. As for the other,
lesser members of the congregation, she had an especial kind of smile,
half of sweetness, half of deprecation, that she bestowed upon each one
of them in turn; but she never made the slightest effort to separate
them, one from another, in her mind, or to return any of their calls.
To Catia's astute brain, the duty of a rector's lady consisted in
helping her husband up, not on.

It was at about this epoch, too, that Catia ceased to be Catia and
became Kathryn. In some respects, the most remarkable thing about the
change was the suddenness with which it was announced to Scott.

A dozen of them had been dining at the Keltridges', one night, six
months or so after Brenton had come to take charge of the congregation
of Saint Peter's. It was essentially a church-warden kind of dinner,
with all the other wardens and their wives to meet the rector and his
lady, the kind of dinner that one gives and goes to, out of stern
necessity, when, all the time, one longs for something just a little
less made up by rule of thumb. The one exception to the prevailing
ecclesiastical flavour, that night, was in the person of a local
novelist who, albeit suave and very bald, wrote novels of the raucous,
woolly West. Moreover, like all other novelists, he rejoiced in talking
shop. Accordingly, with the utmost expedition, he dragged the talk
around to the law regarding the choice of names.

"Of course," he expounded, for the benefit of whom it might concern;
"the first thing I always do, when I go to work, is to name my
characters. It's the hardest thing in the world to do--properly. You
can stick any sort of name to any sort of character, I know; but that's
not naming them. Not at all. The name must be a label; it must fit like
a glove, and yet the character must be fitted to it. And most of the
names I find are so trite."

"Likewise the characters," Dolph Dennison assured him, _sotto voce_.

Dolph, by way of his older brother, who was vestryman, might be termed
sub-ecclesiastical. However, in any case, he would have been sure of a
seat at the Keltridge dinner, even if all the other guests had been
archbishops. It needs at least one such irresponsible youngster to act
as