hey had been living in of late. Sue silently took
her companion's hand, and with eyes on each other they heard these
passing remarks--the quaint and mysterious personality of Father
Time being a subject which formed a large ingredient in the hints and
innuendoes. At length the auction began in the room below, whence
they could hear each familiar article knocked down, the highly prized
ones cheaply, the unconsidered at an unexpected price.

"People don't understand us," he sighed heavily. "I am glad we have
decided to go."

"The question is, where to?"

"It ought to be to London. There one can live as one chooses."

"No--not London, dear! I know it well. We should be unhappy there."

"Why?"

"Can't you think?"

"Because Arabella is there?"

"That's the chief reason."

"But in the country I shall always be uneasy lest there should be
some more of our late experience. And I don't care to lessen it by
explaining, for one thing, all about the boy's history. To cut him
off from his past I have determined to keep silence. I am sickened
of ecclesiastical work now; and I shouldn't like to accept it, if
offered me!"

"You ought to have learnt classic. Gothic is barbaric art, after
all. Pugin was wrong, and Wren was right. Remember the interior of
Christminster Cathedral--almost the first place in which we looked
in each other's faces. Under the picturesqueness of those Norman
details one can see the grotesque childishness of uncouth people
trying to imitate the vanished Roman forms, remembered by dim
tradition only."

"Yes--you have half-converted me to that view by what you have said
before. But one can work, and despise what one does. I must do
something, if not church-gothic."

"I wish we could both follow an occupation in which personal
circumstances don't count," she said, smiling up wistfully. "I am
as disqualified for teaching as you are for ecclesiastical art. You
must fall back upon railway stations, bridges, theatres, music-halls,
hotels--everything that has no connection with conduct."

"I am not skilled in those... I ought to take to bread-baking. I
grew up in the baking business with aunt, you know. But even a baker
must be conventional, to get customers."

"Unless he keeps a cake and gingerbread stall at markets and fairs,
where people are gloriously indifferent to everything except the
quality of the goods."

Their thoughts were diverted by the voice of the auctioneer: "Now