ince these visitors?

"I suppose, madam," Henry continued, addressing Alice in impressive
tones as if she were a crowded congregation, "that at any rate you and
my father are--er--living here together under the name of Mr. and Mrs.
Henry Leek?"

Alice merely lifted her eyebrows.

"It's all a mistake," said Priam impatiently. Then he had a brilliant
inspiration. "As if there was only one Henry Leek in the world!"

"Do you really recognize my husband?" Alice asked.

"Your husband, madam!" Matthew protested, shocked.

"I wouldn't say that I recognized him as he _was_," said the real Mrs.
Henry Leek. "No more than he recognizes me. After thirty years!....Last
time I saw him he was only twenty-two or twenty-three. But he's the same
sort of man, and he has the same eyes. And look at Henry's eyes.
Besides, I heard twenty-five years ago that he'd gone into service with
a Mr. Priam Farll, a painter or something, him that was buried in
Westminster Abbey. And everybody in Putney knows that this gentleman----"

"Gentleman!" murmured Matthew, discontented.

"Was valet to Mr. Priam Farll. We've heard that everywhere."

"I suppose you'll not deny," said Henry the younger, "that Priam Farll
wouldn't be likely to have _two_ valets named Henry Leek?"

Crushed by this Socratic reasoning, Priam kept silence, nursing his
knees and staring into the fire.

Alice went to the sideboard where she kept her best china, and took out
three extra cups and saucers.

"I think we'd all better have some tea," she said tranquilly. And then
she got the tea-caddy and put seven teaspoonfuls of tea into one of the
tea-pots.

"It's very kind of you, I'm sure," whimpered the authentic Mrs. Henry
Leek.

"Now, mother, don't give way!" the curates admonished her.

"Don't you remember, Henry," she went on whimpering to Priam, "how you
said you wouldn't be married in a church, not for anybody? And how I
gave way to you, like I always did? And don't you remember how you
wouldn't let poor little Johnnie be baptized? Well, I do hope your
opinions have altered. Eh, but it's strange, it's strange, how two of
your sons, and just them two that you'd never set eyes on until this
day, should have made up their minds to go into the church! And thanks
to Johnnie there, they've been able to. If I was to tell you all the
struggles we've had, you wouldn't believe me. They were clerks, and they
might have been clerks to this day, if it hadn't been for Johnnie. Bu