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It was not every woman in Glastonbury for instance, who, running down now to answer a light ring at the closed chemist's door, and finding her husband's relative Tossie, obviously pretty far advanced in her pregnancy, standing in the doorway, would have greeted her with the lively hug and kiss of Nancy's welcome.

Tossie, however, showed no sign of being surprised at these manifestations. Everyone knew that Nancy “were one for kissing and cuddling,” and the younger damsel behaved now with a grave, indulgent toleration, and an air that seemed to say, “We women have a right to be made a fuss of by you girls, but if you'd had our experience of life you would be less excited.”

The two of them moved together into the back garden and sat down on the bench under the wall, lately occupied by Harry and Red. The yellow cat was no longer in sight and the young mistress of the house very soon carried off the unsightly scrubbing mops. She even picked up the fragments of the earthenware bowl and carried them in. Tossie, sitting with folded hands, took no notice of these movements.

“I shan't be going to hospital till after Christmas,” she remarked. “Maybe not till the New Year.”

“Will ye be staying where ye be till your time be come?”

“That's what Missus do say; but her'11 have to get a girl to help soon in house, me being liable to be taken wi' dizzies.”

“Do it feel pretty lonesome-like when you do have they dizzies?”

“Not particular,” replied the other carelessly.

As a matter of fact, up to this day, and indeed up to the day of her delivery, Tossie never had a flicker of either dizziness or faintness.

“Who be Miss Crow going to have into house to help 'ee?”

Tossie proceeded to add to her air of a mother of the generations the air of a bestower of sinecures.

“She have asked I if I know'd of a friend of me own maybe; and I told she, I'll go round, I said, and see Harry's wife, Nancy; but of course, I said, being well-to-do people, as you might say, and high-class tradesmen, it's doubtful if Nancy would come.”

“I might come—afternoons and evenings,” said Nancy pensively.

She was thinking to herself—and yet not thinking—for it was a less definite process than that—feeling rather, with every ounce of her flesh, every nerve of her body, every pulse-beat of her blood, that it would be extraordinarily pleasant to walk over to Benedict Street every afternoon and ha\e tea ^ith Tossie instead of at home. "Harry rather likes getting his own lea/* she said to herself.

“Could 'ee cook dinner and help I washing up?” cried Tossie eagerly. “They'd be having nothing to speak of for lunch. Goodness, Nance! but I'd dearly love for 'ee to come. Twould drive all they faintings away to have thee there wi” I!"

Nancy pondered. “I expect,” she said, “Harry wouid be pleased for me to go. He's been making terrible little in shop this last year, owing to competition.”

“Does Harry let 'ee see what he do make,*' asked the sagacious Tossie, ”or does he take it out of till and tell 'ee anv tale *a likes?"

“Men prefers to manage their own business, as a general rule/” replied Nancy cautiously; and then to change the subject, she asked Tossie about Lady Rachel.

Tossie became, in a second, extremely secretive and extremely consequential.

“She's unhappy. Anyone can see that But she doesn't tell things to everyone. She only tells things to folks as she do know very well . . . folks in house.”

“Does Mr. Athling come over regular to see her?”

The importance printed on Tossie's countenance as she prepared to reply to this question delighted Nancy. All this was part of those undertones of life that she enjoyed quite as much as the littered surface.

“People can meet people, when they wants to—especially if them be Ladies of Title—without coming to house, can't they?”

Nancy's eyes sparkled with glee. The idea of being initiated into fashionable intrigue thrilled her.

“Maybe you'd like to walk up wi' I now, and see Miss Crow?” said Tossie casually.

She spoke with the airy negligence of one royal ambassador throwing out a bait to another royal ambassador. Nancy got up from the bench, went to the window of the back room, the chemi cal dispensing-room, and looked into the house. It was only five minutes to three by the clock in that small back room. The litter in that room, its hand-to-mouth look—not like a real chemist's shop at all; like an extremely humble apothecary's place, where there might be a barber's chair!—made her feel more than ever sure that Harry would agree to her going.

“Yes, if you have rested long enough, Toss, and are sure the walk won't tire you, Fd love to go with you now. I'm not a bit afraid of Miss Crow. She talked to me once on the cricket-field for a long time. I like her. She's nice.”

On their way the two young women caught sight of John Crow, hurrying along on the other side of the street.

“Is that there Mr. Crow still working for the Mayor, Toss?” enquired Nancy.

“Sure he is; and what is more he's married his cousin who do live with old Miss Drew out to Abbey House. Missus went to call on 'em one day last week in Mrs. Boul's house in North-load. They ain't only got one room; they ain't; and 'tis all crowded with curtings and cushings and such like oddments. 'Tain't like a real room, Missus did say; 'tis like a Stoodio in Chelsea-town.”

“Did she tell you that, Toss?”

“Me and Lady Rachel,” replied Tossie.

“Be Mr. Crow working for the Mayor still, Toss?”

“Some say he be, and some say he baint. Some say he be a Roosian Spy. But anyway he be Philip Crow's cousin, though they aren't on speaking terms.”

“What's this I hear, Toss, about the Mayor digging great pits in Chalice Hill for to find Jesus Christ's Supper Cup?”

“That's just ignorant talk,” explained Tossie from her superior level. “Mr. Geard baint digging pits; he be setting up foundations. He be going to build a girt arch, so they do tell at our place, and make thik red spring run under 'un.”

“There be a wonderful lot of they foreigners come to Glaston since Pageant-day.”

“Stop a minute, Nance, while I gets me breath. When you be as I be you won't skip as you walks.”

Nancy obeyed and they paused by the wall of St. Benignus'.

“Sally Jones told I,” whispered Tossie, in a tone as pregnant as her own form, “that she heard the Mayor tell his lady there'd be a girt miracle when thik red water do run under his new arch. Sal said he looked like a prophet when he spoke of it. She said he told his wife about some Welshmen of ancient days, with a name what begun with a T' like me own name, vhat writ about this here miracle afore King Arthur's time.”

Nancy contemplated the tower of St. Benignus' Church round which several black swifts were cutting the misty air, as they swayed and circled. Her eyes had an entranced faraway look in them.

“These be wondrous exciting times we do live in, Toss. I've always had a mind that I'd live to see a miracle since I wTere confirmed in cathedral.”

As Nancy uttered these words she laid her hand upon the wall of St. Benignus' graveyard, and gently stroked its green cushion of thick moss.

“Think, Toss, what it would be like,” she went on in a lowT, awed voice, “if there were a real miracle in Glastonbury!”

Tossie Stickles felt she was deriving more comfort from the gentle pressure of that old wall against her fecund frame than from any conceivable departure from the normal system of things.

“I don't lay no stock on miracles,” she said. "I reckon 'tis because I've got so much on me mind.'9

Tossie Stickles was not the only person in the town that fine afternoon whose mind was preoccupied. Philip Crow7, after an interview with Harry the chemist, looked at the clock in his study. Only half-past three! He'd got rid of that greedy dwTarf in double-quick time. What a funny-looking man—his face so round and smooth and his eyes so hungry for bank-notes! He hurried out of the study, where he had been showing Mr. Stickles his own specimens of Wookey Hole tin, and went down the passage. The drawing-room door was open. He looked in. How nice those phloxes smelt! How well Tilly arranged flowers in a room —so different from those untidy wildflower bunches, that Aunt Elizabeth always left about! Dear old Tilly! He closed the door, thinking to himself: “It must be very unpleasant in those countries where the rooms have no doors to shut!”

He stood for a second in the hall, listening. The rich, misty autumn sunlight poured through the lozenge-shaped panes ol mid-Victorian coloured glass, inset above the front door, fell upon the hall table, throwing a rosy light upon the tray of calling cards that stood there, upon the top of which Emma, true daughter of Sly the shepherd, had placed the virgin card of Lady Rachel Zoyland, fell upon the stufEed pike, brought, like the famous picture of the poet Cowper's mother, “out of Norfolk,” and fell finally upon a leather-bound Bradshaw with a brass paperweight laid upon it.

No! There wasn't a sound in the house. It must be the servants' day out; and Emma must be "lying down/' upstairs. His eyes fell by chance—perhaps because it was so rosy from that coloured glass above the door—upon the Bradshaw, and upon that little brassy Lion of Saint Mark which kept it in its place. He sighed—a quick, little, deep-drawn sigh. Persephone had brought him that absurd little brass object from Venice. What a strange girl! What on earth had he done to offend her, to make her so cold to him? He had been tender, considerate, tactful. He had been everything they liked! He couldn't help making love to her when they slept in those places—Taunton, Bath, Exeter, Bristol. What else did she expect? Did she think men and women could lie quietly side by side, like two girls? That was precisely —as far as he could make out—what she did think. Why on earth, else, had she turned against him? Well! Let her go. Alone! That was his manifest destiny; to wrestle with this chaotic world alone; without the warm comfort of a girl's faithful sweetness. For the flicker of a second as he stared at that rosy gleam, and the slanting, dust-mote sunglide that led down to it, he thought that it would be nice, as he got older, if Tilly would consent to adopt his little Morgan daughter. But her mother would never give her up; and Tilly would never consent. Besides ---what a handle to his enemies!

He took down his grey felt hat and chose a stick from half a dozen that stood there, huddling, as if for protection, in their painted stand round Tilly's big umbrella. He never bothered much about sticks. Who was it he'd come across in the last week who made such a fuss of his stick? Oh? that scallywag John!

tix m

He'd met the scamp only the other day, at Aunt Elizabeth's and, do what he could, he couldn't keep his temper with the fellow.

Well! He must hurry up now and get to the office. But he wished that rosy light on that brass thing hadn't made him think of that sweet waist and those boy's hips! He opened the door and walked with his quick short steps down the drive and into the Wells Road. It didn't take him long—he had often timed it exactly, not more than a quarter of an hour—to get to his office.

"No! It would never have done to fly to the Continent todayV he thought, as he was greeted by a chorus of anxious appeals from his young men and saw the applicants for his attention waiting in his ante-room and the pile of letters, come by the second post, on his desk.

He settled himself in his swivel-chair in front of the big, familiar blotting-pad, covered with neat calculations. He gave one quick glance out of the window at the well-known factory chimney. “Ha!” he said to himself, “There'll be some more of you, my fine boys, spouting your smoke, before Philip Crow is done for!”

It took him three-quarters of an hour to dictate his most important answers, and then another twenty minutes to deal with his two most important visitors. Then there came a call for him to go to the telephone.

“That'll be the chap I want,” he thought. “That'll be my good Will!”

Will Zoyland indeed it was; and so pressing and crucial was the Bastard's communication, that there was a violent running to and fro in the office of the Crow Dye Works.

“No tea at home today,” thought Philip, as he hurriedly set about despatching the rest of that day's business. He dismissed all his local suppliants now, telling them to come again tomorrow; and he gave just ten minutes apiece to a man from London and a man from Birmingham.

“A busy cove, our gentleman seems to be,” *aid the London man to the Birmingham man as they went off together. “When does your train go? The five o'clock to Bristol? I'm going to take the Somerset and Dorset to Wareham and catch the old six-thirty to town.”

“This little hole's going to look up, I shouldn't wonder,” said the Birmingham man presently when they were halfway down Benedict Street. “It's a nice little place.”

“So long as this freak Mayor they've elected,” assented the other, “doesn't ruin things with his damned Socialism! They tell me that the bloke's starting a regular commune down here. They'll be hoisting the red flag next. But they've got a tough customer to deal with, that's evident, in our friend Crow.”

Philip himself, later that afternoon, was walking rapidly, from where he had left Zoyland, to the exit out of Wookey Hole Wood. “I'll start contracting at once over that tin,” he thought. “I'll not draw in one bit with the new Dye Works business. Ill play 'em off against each other! If the tin does come out in good quantities, 111 begin that piece of road too, straight away. If the Romans had a road there, I can have a road there. The good Will got pretty excited? How his beard wagged.”

Philip's mind now ceased to adumbrate forth even the most blurred sentences. It ceased to evoke even those mysterious shorthand hieroglyphs, half-word, half-picture, that we so often use. In the orbic emanation from his body, projected like a moving nimbus round his figure as he moved, enormous images built themselves up, and then annihilating themselves as if by the mandate of some interior stage-manager, built themselves up anew, in other, stranger shapes.

His energy as he walked along with those quick, short, commander-of-men steps that were so characteristic of him seemed to be simply limitless! He felt it pouring through him, like some as yet unnamed magnetic fluid. He felt as if he were tapping some immense reservoir of power, stored up in those caverns he was leaving—power that had accumulated there for centuries and centuries, like the metallic deposit he would soon quarry out—and in the strength of which nothing could balk him, nothing could frustrate him. The curious thing was that as he gave himself up to this intoxicating feeling he felt an excitement that was actually phallic. Nor was there anything unnatural in this.