“Yes, you will, Peake,” he repeated.

“I shanna’, Sneyd.”

“I can read you like a book, Peake.”  This was a favourite phrase of Sneyd’s, which Peake never heard without a faint secret annoyance.  “At the bottom of your mind you mean to give that hundred.  It’s your duty to do so, and you will.  You’ll let them persuade you.”

“I’ll bet thee a shilling I don’t.”

“Done!”

“Ssh!” murmured Mrs Lovatt, “I’m ashamed of both of you, betting on such a subject—­or on any subject,” she added.  “And Ella here too!”

“It’s a bet, Sneyd,” said Peake, doggedly, and then turned to Lovatt.  “What do you say about this, Enoch?”

But Enoch Lovatt, self-trained to find safety in the middle, kept that neutral and diplomatic silence which invariably marked his demeanour in the presence of an argument.

“Now, Nan, you’ll talk to James,” said Mrs Lovatt, when they all stood at the front-door bidding good-night.

“Nay, I’ve nothing to do with it,” Mrs Peake replied, as quickly as at dinner she might have set down a very hot plate.  In some women profound affection exists side by side with a nervous dread lest that affection should seem to possess the least influence over its object.

II

Peake dismissed from his mind as grotesque the suggestion that he should contribute a hundred pounds to the organ fund; it revolted his sense of the fitness of things; the next morning he had entirely forgotten it.  But two days afterwards, when he was finishing his midday dinner with a piece of Cheshire cheese, his wife said: 

“James, have you thought anything more about that organ affair?” She gave a timid little laugh.

He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, holding a morsel of cheese on the end of his knife; then he ate the cheese in silence.

“Nan,” he said at length, rather deliberately, “have they been trying to come round you?  Because it won’t work.  Upon my soul I don’t know what some people are dreaming of.  I tell you I never was more surprised i’ my life than when your sister made that suggestion.  I’ll give ’em a guinea towards their blooming organ if that’s any use to ’em.  Ella, go and see if the horse is ready.”

“Yes, father.”

He felt genuinely aggrieved.

“If they’d get a new organist,” he remarked, with ferocious satire, five minutes later, as he lit a cigar, “and a new choir—­I could see summat in that.”

In another minute he was driving at a fine pace towards his colliery at Toft End.  The horse, with swift instinct, had understood that to-day its master was not in the mood for badinage.

Half-way down the hill into Shawport he overtook a lady walking very slowly.

“Mrs Sutton!” he shouted in astonishment, and when he had finished with the tense frown which involuntarily accompanied the effort of stopping the horse dead within its own length, his face softened into a beautiful smile.  “How’s this?” he questioned.