. Here was the attitude of the woman whose
soul is like crystal. It seems to me that most women would have
blushed, or dissented, or simulated anger, or failed to conceal vanity.
But Mrs Coclough might have been reading a fairy tale, for any emotion
she displayed.

'Yes,' she said blandly; 'from the things Annie used to tell me about
him sometimes, I should say that was just how he WOULD talk. They seem
to have thought quite a lot of him in London, then?'

'Oh, rather!' I said. 'I suppose your sister knew him pretty well?'

'Annie? I don't know. She knew him.'

I distinctly observed a certain self-consciousness in Mrs Colclough as
she made this reply. Mrs Brindley had risen and with wifely
attentiveness was turning over the music page for her husband.

VIII

Soon afterwards, for me, the night began to grow fantastic; it took on
the colour of a gigantic adventure. I do not suppose that either Mr
Brindley or Mr Colclough, or the other person who presently arrived,
regarded it as anything but a pleasant conviviality, but to a man of my
constitution and habits it was an almost incredible occurrence. The
other person was the book-collecting doctor. He arrived with a discreet
tap on the window at midnight, to spend the evening. Mrs Brindley had
gone home and Mrs Colclough had gone to bed. The book-collecting doctor
refused champagne; he was, in fact, very rude to champagne in general.
He had whisky. And those astonishing individuals, Messieurs Brindley
and Colclough, secretly convinced of the justice of the attack on
champagne, had whisky too. And that still most astonishing individual,
Loring of the B.M., joined them. It was the hour of limericks.
Limericks were demanded for the diversion of the doctor, and I
furnished them. We then listened to the tale of the doctor's
experiences that day amid the sturdy, natural-minded population of a
muling village not far from Bursley. Seldom have I had such a bath in
the pure fluid of human nature. All sense of time was lost. I lived in
an eternity. I could not suggest to my host that we should depart. I
could, however, decline more whisky. And I could, given the chance,
discourse with gay despair concerning the miserable wreck that I should
be on the morrow in consequence of this high living. I asked them how I
could be expected, in such a state, to judge delicate points of
expertise in earthenware. I gave them a brief sketch of my customary
evening, and left them to com