barmaid. "She'll be
wearing the--well, b-dashes, as the sayin' is. I can't think what girls
is comin' to."

This depreciation of the Young Lady in Grey was hardly to Hoopdriver's
taste.

"Fashion," said he, taking up his change. "Fashion is all the go with
you ladies--and always was. You'll be wearing 'em yourself before a
couple of years is out."

"Nice they'd look on my figger," said the barmaid, with a titter. "No--I
ain't one of your fashionable sort. Gracious no! I shouldn't feel as
if I'd anything on me, not more than if I'd forgot--Well, there! I'm
talking." She put down the glass abruptly. "I dessay I'm old fashioned,"
she said, and walked humming down the bar.

"Not you," said Mr. Hoopdriver. He waited until he caught her eye, then
with his native courtesy smiled, raised his cap, and wished her good
evening.

XIX.

Then Mr. Hoopdriver returned to the little room with the lead-framed
windows where he had dined, and where the bed was now comfortably made,
sat down on the box under the window, stared at the moon rising on
the shining vicarage roof, and tried to collect his thoughts. How they
whirled at first! It was past ten, and most of Midhurst was tucked
away in bed, some one up the street was learning the violin, at rare
intervals a belated inhabitant hurried home and woke the echoes, and a
corncrake kept up a busy churning in the vicarage garden. The sky was
deep blue, with a still luminous afterglow along the black edge of the
hill, and the white moon overhead, save for a couple of yellow stars,
had the sky to herself.

At first his thoughts were kinetic, of deeds and not relationships.
There was this malefactor, and his victim, and it had fallen on Mr.
Hoopdriver to take a hand in the game. HE was married. Did she know he
was married? Never for a moment did a thought of evil concerning her
cross Hoopdriver's mind. Simple-minded people see questions of morals so
much better than superior persons--who have read and thought themselves
complex to impotence. He had heard her voice, seen the frank light in
her eyes, and she had been weeping--that sufficed. The rights of the
case he hadn't properly grasped. But he would. And that smirking--well,
swine was the mildest for him. He recalled the exceedingly unpleasant
incident of the railway bridge. "Thin we won't detain yer, thenks,"
said Mr. Hoopdriver, aloud, in a strange, unnatural, contemptible voice,
supposed to represent that of Bechamel. "Oh,