eat threateningly against the
windows, and night after night it dripped with a melancholy patter
from the eaves. On three successive Sundays Dale considered the rain
an adequate excuse for not going to chapel. He and Norah had a very
short informal service within sound and within smell of the roast beef
that was being cooked close by in the kitchen, and afterward he
meditatively read the Bible to himself while Norah laid the cloth for
dinner.

He had said that he did not want to fold his hands and sit quiet for
the remainder of his existence; but that was precisely what he desired
to do for the moment. He allowed Norah to relieve him of more and more
of his office duties, and he idly watched her as she stood bending her
neck over the tall desk or sat stooping her back and squaring her
elbows at the writing-table. And still sitting himself, he would
maintain long desultory conversations with her about nothing in
particular when, having completed the tasks that he had entrusted to
her, she moved here and there about the office tidying up for the
night.

Thus on an evening toward the end of June he talked to her about love
and the married state. It had been raining all day long, and though no
rain fell at the moment, one felt that more was coming. The air was
saturated with moisture; heavy odors of sodden vegetation crept
through the open window; and one saw a mist like steam beginning to
rise from the fields beyond the roadway. Mr. Furnival, the new pastor,
had just passed by; and it was his appearance that started the
conversation.

"He is a conscientious talented young man," said Dale; "and with
experience he will ripen. At present he seems to me deficient in
sympathy."

"Yes, so he does," said Norah, as she opened the desk drawer.

"He hasn't the knack of putting himself in the place of other people.
There's something cold and cheerless in his preaching--I don't say as
if he didn't feel it all himself, but as if he hadn't yet caught the
knack of imparting his feelings to others."

"No more he has," said Norah, putting away her papers.

"Between you and me and the post," said Dale, "I don't like him."

"No more do I."

"What! Don't you like Mr. Furnival either?"

Norah shook her head and said "No" emphatically.

"But he is handsome, Norah. I call him undoubtedly a handsome man.
And they tell me that the girls are falling in love with him."

Norah laughed, and said that, if Mr. Dale had been correctly inf