Whoever thinks this an easily natural answer to make, may know something about love, but evidently knows little about ambition.  Still, life seldom sets us such silly examination questions as that, and need one say that that question was never put to Jenny’s lover?  He was far too proud of the woman he had made of that little measure of porcelain and that handful of stars.

CHAPTER XII

HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION

The winter months had gone by; all but one of those incendiary lectures had been given, not without storm and tempest; “The Dawn” still came up each week with anger and singing, and the first year of Londonderry’s ministry at New Zion neared its close.  The lecture season was presently to end, on the last Friday in March, with a concert which was to include a series of recitations by a lady-reciter from London.  Londonderry had written to a lecture agency for the name of a likely reciter, man or woman, and they had sent him the name of Isabel Strange.

On the occasion of the last lecture, Mr. Moggridge had not been satisfied with the colour of the platform.  It wanted repainting, and I think it very likely that it was a strain of that boyishness which I hope survives in us all, and one of whose quaint fancies is an envy of house-painters, so happy all day with paint-pot and brush and great smooth boards to dab and smooth, that decided him to do the job himself.  Mr. Moggridge had this great element of refinement, that he thought nothing honest beneath him.

It was the Friday of the entertainment, about one o’clock, and though Mr. Moggridge had practically finished the work the day before, he had slipped in during his lunch-hour to give it a final touch or two.  He had brought his lunch in the form of a pork-pie, and while with one hand he plunged the pie occasionally among his red whiskers, with the other he would lean forward and touch up a knot or a nail-hole that needed a little more paint.  And he was proud as a boy of the simple bit of slap-dashing, and entirely absorbed in it and the pork-pie.

Presently he became aware that he was not alone.  Someone had entered the schoolroom at the far end.  He turned round, with the paint-brush in one hand and the pork-pie in the other, and became abashed, for a beautiful lady had entered the room and was evidently about to make an enquiry.  The surreptitiousness that seems to inhere in pork-pies prompted Mr. Moggridge to slip the pie into his trousers’ pocket—­for his coat was off, and a white apron had taken its place.

“Just doing a little bit of amateur painting,” he explained rather awkwardly, advancing to the lady.

“So I see,” said the lady, with a pleasant smile.  “This, I believe, is Zion Chapel—­and I suppose this is the room where I am to recite.  My name is Isabel Strange, and I have come a little earlier, I daresay, than you expected; but I always like to see the room I’m to recite in—­just to try my voice in and run over my pieces.”