That night, as Rachel sat in her room, she went over that half-made, ruthlessly interrupted confidence.

"He does repent," she said to herself, recalling the careworn face. "If he does, can I overlook the past? Can I help him to make a fresh start? If he had not done this one dishonorable action, I could have cared for him. Can I now?"

Chapter XXX

*

"A fool's mouth is his destruction."

The superficial reader of these pages may possibly have forgotten, but the earnest one will undoubtedly remember that in an earlier chapter a sale of work was mentioned which was to take place in the Wilderleigh gardens at the end of August.

The end of August had now arrived, and with it two white tents, which sprang up suddenly one morning, like giant mushrooms, on one of Doll's smooth-shaven lawns. He groaned in spirit as he watched their erection. They would ruin the turf.

"Might as well iron it with a hot iron," he said, disconsolately to Hugh. "But, of course, this sort of thing—Diocesan Fund, eh? In these days we must stand by our colors." He repeated Mr. Gresley's phrase. Doll seldom ventured on an opinion not sanctioned by the ages, or that he had not heard repeated till its novelty had been comfortably rubbed off by his wife or the Gresleys.

The two men watched the proceedings mournfully. They could not help, at least they were told they could not help the women busily engaged in draping and arranging the stalls. They were still at large, but Doll knew, as well as a dog who is going to be washed, what was in store for him in the afternoon, and he was depressed beforehand.

"Don't let yourself be run in," he said, generously to Hugh. "You're not up to it. It takes a strong man to grapple with this sort of thing. Kills off the weakly ones like flies. You lie low in the smoking-room till it's all over."

*

"All I can say is," remarked Mrs. Gresley, as she and Hester led the Vicarage donkey and cart up the drive, heavily laden with the work of many months, "that the Pratts have behaved exceedingly badly. Here they are, the richest people by far in the parish, and they would not even take a stall, they would not even furnish half of one, and they said they would be away, and they are at the Towers, after all. No one likes the Pratts more than I do, or sees their good points as I do, but I can't shut my eyes to the fact that they are the meanest of the mean."

The Pratts had only contributed two "bed-spreads," and a "sheet-sham," and a set of antimacassars. If the reader wishes to know what "bed-spreads" and "sheet-shams" are, let him ask his intended, and let him see to it that he marries a woman who cannot tell him.

Mrs. Pratt had bought the antimacassars for the Towers, and secretly adored them until Ada pronounced them to be vulgar. The number of things which Ada discovered to be vulgar increased every day, and included the greater part of her mother's wardrobe, much to the distress of that poor lady. Mrs. Pratt had reached the size when it is prudent to concentrate a love of bright colors in one's parasol. On this particular afternoon she shed tears over the fact that Ada refused to accompany her if her mother wore a unique garment of orange satin, covered with what appeared to be a plague of black worms.