Dick, who had been finishing his cigarette outside, entered a moment later, and stood in the gangway, entirely filling it up, his eye travelling over the assembly, and, as Rachel well knew, looking for her. Presently he caught sight of her, wedged in four or five deep by the last arrivals. There was a vacant space between her and the wall, but it was apparently inaccessible. Entirely disregarding the anxious church-wardens who were waving him forward, Dick disappeared among the young men at the back, and Rachel thought no more of him until a large Oxford shoe descended quietly out of space upon the empty seat near her, and Dick, who had persuaded the young men to give him foot-room on their seats, and had stepped over the high backs of several "school forms," sat down beside her.

It was neatly done, and Rachel could not help smiling. But the thought darted through her mind that Dick was the kind of man who, somehow or other, would succeed where he meant to succeed, and would marry the woman he intended to marry. There was no doubt that she was that woman, and as he sat tranquilly beside her she wished, with a nervous tremor, that his choice had fallen on some one else.

The meeting opened with nasal and fervent prayer on the part of a neighboring Archdeacon. No one could kneel down except the dignitaries on the platform, but every one pretended to do so. Mr. Pratt, who was in the chair, then introduced the principal speaker. Mr. Pratt's face, very narrow at the forehead, became slightly wider at the eyes, widest when it reached round the corners of the mouth, and finally split into two long, parti-colored whiskers. He assumed on these occasions a manner of pontifical solemnity towards his "humble brethren," admirably suited to one who, after wrestling for many years with a patent oil, is conscious that he has blossomed out into a "county family."

The Warpington parishioners listened to him unmoved.

The deputation from Liverpool followed, a thin, ascetic-looking man of many bones and little linen, who spoke with the concentrated fury of a fanatic against alcohol in all its varieties. Dick, who had so far taken more interest in Rachel's gloves, which she had dropped, and with which he was kindly burdening himself, than in the proceedings, drew himself up and fixed his steel eyes on the speaker.

A restive movement in the audience followed the speech, which was loudly clapped by Mr. Gresley and the Pratts.

Mr. Gresley then mounted the platform.

Mr. Gresley had an enormous advantage as a platform speaker, and as a preacher in the twin pulpits of church and home, owing to the conviction that he had penetrated to the core of any subject under discussion, and could pronounce judgment upon it in a conclusive manner. He was wont to approach every subject by the preliminary statement that he had "threshed it out." This threshing-out had been so thorough that there was hardly a subject even of the knottiest description which he was unable to dismiss with a few pregnant words. "Evolution! Ha! ha! Descended from an ape. I don't believe that for one." While women's rights received their death-blow from a jocose allusion to the woman following the plough while the man sat at home and rocked the cradle.