Simeon had been right. He did catch the train.
It was fortunate that there was a wide margin between the advertised
time of arrival of the Loop-Line train at Knype and the departure
therefrom of the London express. For, beyond Hanbridge, the Loop-Line
train came to a standstill, and obstinately remained at a standstill for
near upon forty minutes. Dawn began and completed itself while that
train reposed there. Things got to such a point that, despite the
intense cold, the few passengers stuck their heads out of the windows
and kept them there. Arthur suffered unspeakably. He imparted his awful
anxiety to an old man in the same compartment. And the old man said:

"They always keep the express waiting for the Loop. Moreover, you've
plenty o' time yet."

He knew that the Loop was supposed to catch the express, and that in
actual practice it did catch it. He knew that there was yet enough time.
Still, he continued to suffer. He continued to believe, at the bottom of
his heart, that on this morning, of all mornings, the Loop would not
catch the express.

However, he was wrong. The Loop caught the express, though it was a
nearish thing. He dashed down into the subterranean passage at Knype
Station, reappeared on the up-platform, ran to the fore-part of the
express, which was in and waiting, and jumped; a porter banged the door,
a guard inspired the driver by a tune on a whistle, and off went the
express. Arthur was now safe. Nothing ever happened to a North-Western
express. He was safe. He was shorn of his luggage (almost, but not
quite, indispensable) and of Simeon; but he was safe. He could not be
disgraced in the world's eye. He thought of poor, gallant,
imperturbable, sprained Simeon freezing on the trunk in the middle of
the cinder-waste.


III


The train stopped momentarily at a station which he thought to be
Lichfield. Then (out of his waking dreams) it seemed to him that
Lichfield Station had strangely grown in length, and just as the train
was drawing out he saw the word "Stafford" in immense white enamelled
letters on a blue ground. There was nobody else in the compartment. His
heart and stomach in a state of frightful torture, he sprang out of
it--not on to the line, but into the corridor (for it was a corridor
train) and into the next compartment, where were seated two men.

"Is this the London train?" he demanded, not concealing his terror.

"No, it isn't. It's the Birmingham train," said one of the men
fiercely--a sort of a Levite.

"Great heavens!" ejaculated Arthur Cotterill.

"You ought to inquire before you get into a train," said the Levite.

"The fact is," said the other man, who was perhaps a cousin of a Good
Samaritan, "the express from Manchester is split up at Knype--one part
for London, and the other part for Birmingham."

"I know that," said Arthur Cotterill.

"Ever since I can remember the London part has gone off first."

"Of course," said Arthur; "I've travelled by it lots of times."

"But they altered it only last week."

"I only just caught the train," Arthur breathed.

"Seems to me you didn't catch it," said the Levite.

"_I must be in London before two o'clock_," said Arthur, and he said it
so solemnly, he said it with so much of his immortal soul, that even the
Levite was startled out of his callous indifference.

"There are expresses from Birmingham to London that do the journey in
two hours," said he.

"Let us see," said the cousin of a Good Samaritan, kindly, opening a bag
and producing Bradshaw.

And he explained to Arthur that the train reached New Street,
Birmingham, at 10.45, and that, by a singular good fortune, a very fast
express left New Street at 11.40, and arrived at Euston at 1.45.

Arthur thanked him and retired with his pincers and anvil to his own
compartment.

He was a ruined man, a disgraced man. The loss of his trunk was now
nothing. At the best he would be over half an hour late, and it was
quite probable that he would be too late altogether. He pictured the
other people waiting, waiting for him anxiously, as minute after minute
passed, until the fatal hour struck. The whole affair was unthinkable.
Simeon's fault, of course. Simeon had convinced him that to go up to
London on Christmas Day would be absurd, whereas it was now evident that
to go up to London on Christmas Day was obviously the only prudent thing
to do. Awful!

The train to Birmingham was in an ironical mood, for it ran into New
Street to the very minute of the time-table. Thus Arthur had fifty-five
futile minutes to pass. At another time New Street, as the largest
single station in the British Empire, might have interested him. But now
it was no more interesting than Purgatory when you know where you are
ultimately going to. He sought out the telegraph-office, and
telegraphed to London--despairing, yet a manly telegram. Then he sought
out the refreshment-room, and ordered a whisky. He was just putting the
whisky to his lips when he remembered that if, after all, he did arrive
in time, the whisky would amount to a serious breach of manners. So he
put the glass down untasted, and the barmaid justifiably felt herself to
have been insulted.

He watched the slow formation of the Birmingham-London express. He also
watched the various clocks. For whole hours the fingers of the clocks
never budged, and even then they would show an advance of only a minute
or two.

"Is this the train for London?" he asked an inspector at 11.35.

"Can't you see?" said the inspector, brightly. As a fact, "Euston" was
written all over the train. But Arthur wanted to be sure this time.

The express departed from Birmingham with the nicest exactitude, and
covered itself with glory as far as Watford, when it ran into a mist,
and lost more than a quarter of an hour, besides ruining Arthur's
career.

Arthur arrived in London at one minute past two. He got out of the train
with no plan. The one feasible enterprise seemed to be that of suicide.

"Come on, now," said a voice--a voice that staggered Arthur. It was a
man with a crutch who spoke. It was Simeon. "Come on, quick, and don't
talk too much! To the hotel first." Simeon hobbled forward rapidly, and
somehow (he could not explain how) the anvil and pincers had left
Arthur.

"I got hold of a milk-cart with a sharpened horse, and drove to Knype.
Horse fell once, but he picked himself up again. Cost me a sovereign.
Only just caught the train. Shouldn't have caught it if they hadn't sent
off the Birmingham part before the London part. I was astonished, I can
tell you, not to find you at Euston. Went to the hotel. Found 'em all
waiting, of course, and practically weeping over a telegram from you.
However, I soon arranged things. Had to buy a crutch.... Here, boy,
lift!" They were in the hotel.

On a bed all Arthur's finest clothes were laid out. The famous trunk was
at the foot of the bed.

"Quick!"

"But look here!" Arthur remonstrated. "It's after two now."

"Well, if it is? We've got till three. I've arranged with the mandarin
chap for a quarter to three."

"I thought these things couldn't occur after two o'clock--by law."

"That's what's the matter with you," said Simeon; "you think too much.
The two o'clock law was altered years ago. Had anything to eat?" He was
helping Arthur with buttons.

"No."

"I expected not. Here! Swallow this whisky."

"Not I!" Arthur protested in a startled tone.

"Why not?"

"Because I shall have to kiss her after the ceremony."

"Bosh!" said Simeon. "Drink it. Besides, there's no kissing in a
Registry Office. You're thinking of a church. I wish you wouldn't think
so much. Here! Now the necktie, you cuckoo!"

In three minutes they were driving rapidly through the London mist
towards the other sex, and in a quarter of an hour there was one
bachelor the less in this vale of tears.




THE WIDOW OF THE BALCONY

I


They stood at the window of her boudoir in the new house which Stephen
Cheswardine had recently bought at Sneyd. The stars were pursuing their
orbits overhead in a clear dark velvet sky, except to the north, where
the industrial fires and smoke of the Five Towns had completely put them
out. But even these distant signs of rude labour had a romantic aspect,
and did not impair the general romance of the scene. Charlie had loved
her; he loved her still; and she gave him odd minutes of herself when
she could, just to keep him alive. Moreover, there was the log fire
richly crackling in the well-grate of the boudoir; there was the
feminineness of the boudoir (dimly lit), and the soft splendour of her
gown, and behind all that, pervading the house, the gay rumour of the
party. And in front of them the window-panes, and beyond the
window-panes the stars in their orbits. Doubtless it was such influences
which, despite several degrees of frost outside, gave to Charlie
Woodruff's thoughts an Italian, or Spanish, turn. He said:

"Stephen ought to have this window turned into a French window, and
build you a balcony. It could easily be done. Just the view for a
balcony. You can see Sneyd Lake from here." (You could. People were
skating on it.)

He did not add that you could see the Sneyd Golf Links from there, and
_vice versa_. I doubt if the idea occurred to him, but as he was an
active member of the Sneyd Golf Club it would certainly have presented
itself to him in due season.

"What a lovely scheme!" Vera exclaimed enthusiastically.

It appealed to her. It appealed to all that was romantic in her
bird-like soul. She did not see the links; she did not see the lake; she
just saw herself in exquisite frocks, lightly lounging on the balcony in
high summer, and dreaming of her own beauty.

"And have a striped awning," she said.

"Yes," he said. "Make Stephen do it."

"I will," she said.

At that moment Stephen came in, with his bald head and his forty years.

"I say!" he demanded. "What are you up to?"

"We were just watching the skaters," said Vera.

"And the wonders of the night," said Charlie, chuckling
characteristically. He always laughed at himself. He was a philosopher.
He and Stephen had been fast friends from infancy.

"Well, you'd just better skate downstairs," said Stephen. (No romance in
Stephen! He was netting a couple of thousand a year out of the
manufacture of toilet-sets, in all that smoke to the north. How could
you expect him to be romantic?)

"Charlie was saying how nice it would be for me to have a French window
here, and a marble balcony," Vera remarked. It had not taken her long to
think of marble. "You must do it for me, Steve."

"Bosh!" said Stephen. "That's just like you, Charlie. What an ass you
are!"

"Oh, but you _must_!" said Vera, in that tone which meant business, and
which also meant trouble for Stephen.

"_She's_ come," Stephen announced curtly, determined to put trouble off.

"Oh, has she?" cried Vera. "I thought you said she wouldn't."

"She hesitated, because she was afraid. But she's come after all,"
Stephen answered.

"What fun!" Vera murmured.

And ran off downstairs back again into the midst of the black coats and
the white toilettes and the holly-clad electricity of her Christmas
gathering.


II


The news that _she_ had come was all over the noisy house in a minute,
and it had the astonishing effect of producing what might roughly be
described as a silence. It stopped the reckless waltzing of the piano in
the drawing-room; it stopped the cackle incident to cork-pool in the
billiard-room; it even stopped a good deal of the whispering under the
Chinese lanterns beneath the stairs and in the alcove at the top of the
stairs. What it did not stop was the consumption of mince-pies and
claret-cup in the small breakfast-room; people mumbled about _her_
between munches.

_She_, having been sustained with turkey and beer in the kitchen, was
led by the backstairs up to Vera's very boudoir, that being the only
suitable room. And there she waited. She was a woman of about
forty-five; fat, unfair (in the physical sense), and untidy. Of her
hands the less said the better. She had probably never visited a
professional coiffeur in her life. Her form was straitly confined in an
atrocious dress of linsey-woolsey, and she wore an apron that was
neither white nor black. Her boots were commodious. After her meal she
was putting a hat-pin to a purpose which hat-pins do not usually serve.
She gained an honest living by painting green leaves on yellow
wash-basins in Stephen's renowned earthenware manufactory. She spoke the
dialect of the people. She had probably never heard of Christian
Science, bridge, Paquin, Panhard, Father Vaughan, the fall of consols,
osprey plumes, nor the new theology. Nobody in the house knew her name;
even Stephen had forgotten it. And yet the whole house was agog
concerning her.

The fact was that in the painting-shops of the various manufactories
where she had painted green leaves on yellow wash-basins (for in all her
life she had done little else) she possessed a reputation as a prophet,
seer, oracle, fortune-teller--what you will. Polite persons would
perhaps never have heard of her reputation, the toiling millions of the
Five Towns being of a rather secretive nature in such matters, had not
the subject of fortune-telling been made prominent in the district by
the celebrated incident of the fashionable palmist. The fashionable
palmist, having thriven enormously in Bond Street, had undertaken a tour
through the provinces and had stopped several days at Hanbridge (our
metropolis), where he had an immense vogue until the Hanbridge police
hit on the singular idea of prosecuting him for an unlawful vagabond.
Stripped of twenty pounds odd in the guise of a fine and costs, and
having narrowly missed the rigours of our county jail, that fashionable
palmist and soothsayer had returned to Bond Street full of hate and
respect for Midland justice, which fears not and has a fist like a
navvy's. The attention of the Five Towns had thus been naturally drawn
to fortune-telling in general. And it was deemed that in securing a
local celebrity (quite an amateur, and therefore, it was uncertainly
hoped, on the windy side of the law) for the diversion of his Christmas
party Stephen Cheswardine had done a stylish and original thing.

Of course no one in the house believed in fortune-telling. Oh no! But as
an amusement it was amusing. As fun, it was fun. She did her business
with tea-leaves: so the tale ran. This was not considered to be very
distinguished. A crystal, or even cards, or the anatomy of a sacrificed
fowl, would have been better than tea-leaves; tea-leaves were decidedly
lower class. And yet, despite these drawbacks, when the question arose
who should first visit the witch of Endor, there was a certain
hesitation.

"You go!"

"No, _you_ go."

"Oh! _I'm_ not going," (a superior laugh), etc.

At last it was decided that Jack Hall and Cissy Woodruff (Charlie's much
younger sister), the pair having been engaged to be married for exactly
three days, should make the first call. They ascended, blushing and
brave. In a moment Jack Hall descended alone, nervously playing with the
silk handkerchief that was lodged in his beautiful white waistcoat. The
witch of Endor had informed him that she never received the two sexes
together, and had expelled him. This incident greatly enhanced the
witch's reputation. Then Stephen happened to mention that he had heard
that the woman's mother, and her grandmother before her, had been
fortune-tellers. Somehow that statement seemed to strike everybody full
in the face; it set a seal on the authority of the witch, made her
genuine. And an uncanny feeling seemed to spread through the house as
the house waited for Cissy to reappear.

"She's very _good_," said Cissy, on emerging. "She told me all sorts of
things."

A group formed at the foot of the stairs.

"What did she tell you?"

"Well, she said I must expect a very important letter in a few days, and
much would depend on it, and next year there will be a big removal, and
a large lumbering piece of furniture, and I shall go a journey over
water. It's quite right, you know. I suppose the letter's from grandma;
I hope it is, anyway. And if we go to France--"

Thenceforward the witch without a name held continuous receptions in
the boudoir, and the boudoir gradually grew into an abode of mystery and
strangeness, hypnotizing the entire house. People went thither; people
came back; and those who had not been pictured to themselves something
very incantatory, and little by little they made up their minds to go.
Some thought the woman excellent, others said it was all rot. But none
denied that it was interesting. None could possibly deny that the
fortune-telling had killed every other diversion provided by the
hospitable Stephen and Vera (except the refreshments). The most scornful
scoffers made a concession and kindly consented to go to the boudoir.
Stephen went. Charlie went. Even the Mayor of Hanbridge went (not being
on the borough Bench that night).

But Vera would not go. A genuine fear was upon her. Christmases had
always been unlucky for her peace of mind. And she was highly
superstitious. Yet she wanted to go; she was burning to go, all the
while assuring her guests that nothing would induce her to go. The party
drew to a close, and pair by pair the revellers drove off, or walked,
into the romantic night. Then Stephen told Vera to give the woman
half-a-sovereign and let her depart, for it was late. And in paying the
half-sovereign to the woman Vera was suddenly overcome by temptation and
asked for her fortune. The woman's grimy simplicity, her smiling face,
the commonness of her teapot, her utter unlikeness to anything in the
first act of _Macbeth_, encouraged Vera to believe in her magic powers.
Vera's hand trembled as, under instructions, she tipped the tea-leaves
into the saucer.

"Ay!" said the witch, in broadest Staffordshire, running her
objectionable hand up and down the buttons of her linsey-woolsey bodice,
and gently agitating the saucer. "Theer's a widder theer." [There's a
widow there.] "Yo'll be havin' a letter, or it mit be a talligram--"

Vera wouldn't hear any more. Her one fear in life was the fear of
Stephen's death (though she _did_ console Charlie with nice smiles and
lots of _tête-à-tête)_, and here was this fiendish witch directly
foreseeing the dreadful event.


III


Every day for many days Stephen expected to have to take part in a
pitched battle about the proposed balcony. The sweet enemy, however, did
not seem to be in fighting form. It is true that she mentioned the
balcony, but she mentioned it in quite a reasonable spirit. Astounding
as the statement may appear to any personal acquaintance of Vera's, Vera
showed a capacity to perceive that there were two sides to the question.
When Stephen pointed out that balconies were unsuited to the English
climate, she almost agreed. When he said that balconies were dangerous
and that to have a safe one would necessitate the strengthening of the
wall, she merely replied, with wonderful meekness, that she only weighed
seven stone twelve. When he informed her that the breakfast-room,
already not too light, was underneath the proposed balcony, which would
further darken it, she kept an angelic silence. And when he showed her
that the view from the proposed balcony would in any case be marred by
the immense pall of Five Towns smoke to the south, she still kept an
angelic silence.

Stephen could not understand it.

Nor was this all. She became extraordinarily solicitous for his welfare,
especially in the matter of health. She wrapped him up when he went out,
and unpacked him when he came in. She cautioned him against draughts,
overwork, microbes, and dietary indiscretions. Thanks to regular boxing
exercise, his old dyspepsia had almost entirely disappeared, but this
did not prevent her from watching every mouthful that vanished under the
portals of his moustache. And she superintended his boxing too. She made
a point of being present whenever he and Charlie boxed, and she would
force Charlie to cease fighting at the oddest moments. She was flat
against having a motor-car; she compelled Stephen to drive to the
station in the four-wheeler instead of in the high dogcart. Indeed, from
the way she guarded him, he might have been the one frail life that
stood between England and anarchy.

And she was always so kind, in a rather melancholy, resigned, wistful
fashion.

No. Stephen could _not_ understand it.

There came a time when Stephen could neither understand it nor stand it.
And he tried to worm out of her her secret. But he could not. The
fascinating little liar stoutly stuck to it that nothing was the matter
with her, and that she had nothing on her mind. Stephen knew
differently. He consulted Charlie Woodruff. She had not made a confidant
of Charlie. Charlie was exactly as much in the dark as Stephen. Then
Stephen (I regret to have to say it) took to swearing. For instance, he
swore when she hid all his thin socks and so obliged him to continue
with his thick ones. And one day he swore when, in answer to his query
why she was pale, she said she didn't know.

He thus, without expecting to do so, achieved a definite climax.

For she broke out. She ceased in half a second to be pale. She gave him
with cutting candour all that had been bottled up in her entrancing
bosom. She told him that the witch had foreseen her a widow (which was
the same thing as prophesying his death), and that she had done, and was
doing, all that the ingenuity of a loving heart could suggest to keep
him alive in spite of the prediction, but that, in face of his infamous
brutality, she should do no more; that if he chose to die and leave her
a widow he might die and leave her a widow for all she cared; in brief,
that she had done with him.

When she had become relatively calm Stephen addressed her calmly, and
even ingratiatingly.

"I'm sorry," he said, and added, "but you know you did say that you were
hiding nothing from me."

"Of course," she retorted, "because I _was_." Her arguments were usually
on this high plane of logic.

"And you ought not to be so superstitious," Stephen proceeded.

"Well," said she, with truth, "one never knows." And she wiped away a
tear and showed the least hint of an inclination to kiss him. "And
anyhow my only anxiety was for you."

"Do you really believe what that woman said?" Stephen asked.

"Well," she repeated, "one never knows."

"Because if you do, I'll tell you something."

"What?" Vera demanded.

At this juncture Stephen committed an error of tactics. He might have
let her continue in the fear of his death, and thus remained on velvet
(subject to occasional outbreaks) for the rest of his life. But he gave
himself utterly away.

"She told _me_ I should live till I was ninety," said he. "So you can't
be a widow for quite half a century, and you'll be eighty yourself
then."


IV


Within twenty-four hours she was at him about the balcony.

"The summer will be lovely," she said, in reply to his argument about
climate.

"Rubbish," she said, in reply to his argument about safety.

"Who cares for your old breakfast-room?" she said, in reply to his
argument about darkness at breakfast.

"We will have trees planted on that side--big elms," she said, in reply
to his argument about the smoke of the Five Towns spoiling the view.

Whereupon Stephen definitely and clearly enunciated that he should not
build a balcony.

"Oh, but you must!" she protested.

"A balcony is quite impossible," said Stephen, with his firmest
masculinity.

"You'll see if it's impossible," said she, "_when I'm that widow_."

The curious may be interested to know that she has already begun to
plant trees.




THE CAT AND CUPID

I


The secret history of the Ebag marriage is now printed for the first
time. The Ebag family, who prefer their name to be accented on the first
syllable, once almost ruled Oldcastle, which is a clean and conceited
borough, with long historical traditions, on the very edge of the
industrial, democratic and unclean Five Towns. The Ebag family still
lives in the grateful memory of Oldcastle, for no family ever did more
to preserve the celebrated Oldcastilian superiority in social, moral and
religious matters over the vulgar Five Towns. The episodes leading to
the Ebag marriage could only have happened in Oldcastle. By which I mean
merely that they could not have happened in any of the Five Towns. In
the Five Towns that sort of thing does not occur. I don't know why, but
it doesn't. The people are too deeply interested in football, starting
prices, rates, public parks, sliding scales, excursions to Blackpool,
and municipal shindies, to concern themselves with organists as such. In
the Five Towns an organist may be a sanitary inspector or an auctioneer
on Mondays. In Oldcastle an organist is an organist, recognized as such
in the streets. No one ever heard of an organist in the Five Towns being
taken up and petted by a couple of old ladies. But this may occur at
Oldcastle. It, in fact, did.

The scandalous circumstances which led to the disappearance from the
Oldcastle scene of Mr Skerritt, the original organist of St Placid, have
no relation to the present narrative, which opens when the ladies Ebag
began to seek for a new organist. The new church of St Placid owed its
magnificent existence to the Ebag family. The apse had been given
entirely by old Caiaphas Ebag (ex-M.P., now a paralytic sufferer) at a
cost of twelve thousand pounds; and his was the original idea of
building the church. When, owing to the decline of the working man's
interest in beer, and one or two other things, Caiaphas lost nearly the
whole of his fortune, which had been gained by honest labour in mighty
speculations, he rather regretted the church; he would have preferred
twelve thousand in cash to a view of the apse from his bedroom window;
but he was man enough never to complain. He lived, after his
misfortunes, in a comparatively small house with his two daughters, Mrs
Ebag and Miss Ebag. These two ladies are the heroines of the tale.

Mrs Ebag had married her cousin, who had died. She possessed about six
hundred a year of her own. She was two years older than her sister, Miss
Ebag, a spinster. Miss Ebag was two years younger than Mrs Ebag. No
further information as to their respective ages ever leaked out. Miss
Ebag had a little money of her own from her deceased mother, and
Caiaphas had the wreck of his riches. The total income of the household
was not far short of a thousand a year, but of this quite two hundred a
year was absorbed by young Edith Ebag, Mrs Ebag's step-daughter (for Mrs
Ebag had been her husband's second choice). Edith, who was notorious as
a silly chit and spent most of her time in London and other absurd
places, formed no part of the household, though she visited it
occasionally. The household consisted of old Caiaphas, bedridden, and
his two daughters and Goldie. Goldie was the tomcat, so termed by reason
of his splendid tawniness. Goldie had more to do with the Ebag marriage
than anyone or anything, except the weathercock on the top of the
house. This may sound queer, but is as naught to the queerness about to
be unfolded.


II


It cannot be considered unnatural that Mrs and Miss Ebag, with the
assistance of the vicar, should have managed the affairs of the church.
People nicknamed them "the churchwardens," which was not quite nice,
having regard to the fact that their sole aim was the truest welfare of
the church. They and the vicar, in a friendly and effusive way, hated
each other. Sometimes they got the better of the vicar, and, less often,
he got the better of them. In the choice of a new organist they won.
Their candidate was Mr Carl Ullman, the artistic orphan.

Mr Carl Ullman is the hero of the tale. The son of one of those German
designers of earthenware who at intervals come and settle in the Five
Towns for the purpose of explaining fully to the inhabitants how
inferior England is to Germany, he had an English mother, and he himself
was violently English. He spoke English like an Englishman and German
like an Englishman. He could paint, model in clay, and play three
musical instruments, including the organ. His one failing was that he
could never earn enough to live on. It seemed as if he was always being
drawn by an invisible string towards the workhouse door. Now and then he
made half a sovereign extra by deputizing on the organ. In such manner
had he been introduced to the Ebag ladies. His romantic and gloomy
appearance had attracted them, with the result that they had asked him
to lunch after the service, and he had remained with them till the
evening service. During the visit they had learnt that his grandfather
had been Court Councillor in the Kingdom of Saxony. Afterwards they
often said to each other how ideal it would be if only Mr Skerritt
might be removed and Carl Ullman take his place. And when Mr Skerritt
actually was removed, by his own wickedness, they regarded it as almost
an answer to prayer, and successfully employed their powerful interest
on behalf of Carl. The salary was a hundred a year. Not once in his life
had Carl earned a hundred pounds in a single year. For him the situation
meant opulence. He accepted it, but calmly, gloomily. Romantic gloom was
his joy in life. He said with deep melancholy that he was sure he could
not find a convenient lodging in Oldcastle. And the ladies Ebag then
said that he must really come and spend a few days with them and Goldie
and papa until he was "suited." He said that he hated to plant himself
on people, and yielded to the request. The ladies Ebag fussed around his
dark-eyed and tranquil pessimism, and both of them instantly grew
younger--a curious but authentic phenomenon. They adored his playing,
and they were enchanted to discover that his notions about hymn tunes
agreed with theirs, and by consequence disagreed with the vicar's. In
the first week or two they scored off the vicar five times, and the
advantage of having your organist in your own house grew very apparent.
They were also greatly impressed by his gentleness with Goldie and by
his intelligent interest in serious questions.

One day Miss Ebag said timidly to her sister: "It's just six months
to-day."

"What do you mean, sister?" asked Mrs Ebag, self-consciously.

"Since Mr Ullman came."

"So it is!" said Mrs Ebag, who was just as well aware of the date as the
spinster was aware of it.

They said no more. The position was the least bit delicate. Carl had
found no lodging. He did not offer to go. They did not want him to go.
He did not offer to pay. And really he cost them nothing except
laundry, whisky and fussing. How could they suggest that he should pay?
He lived amidst them like a beautiful mystery, and all were seemingly
content. Carl was probably saving the whole of his salary, for he never
bought clothes and he did not smoke. The ladies Ebag simply did what
they liked about hymn-tunes.


III