“Upset Symford?”

“New people holding wrong tenets coming to such a small place do sometimes, you know, and you say he is eloquent.  And we are such a simple and God-fearing little community.  A few years ago we had a great bother with a Dissenting family that came here.  The cottagers quite lost their heads.”

“I think I can promise that my uncle will not try to convert anybody,” said Priscilla.

“Of course you mean pervert.  It would be a pity if he did.  It wouldn’t last, but it would give us a lot of trouble.  We are very good Churchmen here.  The vicar, and my son too when he’s at home, set beautiful examples.  My son is going into the Church himself.  It has been his dearest wish from a child.  He thinks of nothing else—­of nothing else at all,” she repeated, fixing her eyes on Priscilla with a look of defiance.

“Really?” said Priscilla, very willing to believe it.

“I assure you it’s wonderful how absorbed he is in his studies for it.  He reads Church history every spare moment, and he’s got it so completely on his mind that I’ve noticed even when he whistles it’s ‘The Church’s One Foundation.’”

“What is that?” inquired Priscilla.

“Mr. Robin Morrison,” announced Mrs. Pearce.

The sitting-room at Baker’s was a small, straightforward place, with no screens, no big furniture, no plants in pots, nothing that could for a moment conceal the persons already in it from the persons coming in, and Robin entering jauntily with the umbrella under his arm fell straight as it were into his mother’s angry gaze.  “Hullo mater, you here?” he exclaimed genially, his face broadening with apparent satisfaction.

“Yes, Robin, I am here,” she said, drawing herself up.

“How do you do, Miss Schultz.  I seem to have got shown into the wrong room.  It’s a Mr. Neumann I’ve come to see; doesn’t he live here?”

Priscilla looked at him from her sofa seat and wondered what she had done that she should be scourged in this manner by Morrisons.

“You know my son, I believe?” said Mrs. Morrison in the stiffest voice; for the girl’s face showed neither recognition nor pleasure, and though she would have been angry if she had looked unduly pleased she was still angrier that she should look indifferent.

“Yes.  I met him yesterday.  Did you want my uncle?  His name is Neumann.  Neumann-Schultz.  He’s out.”

“I only wanted to give him this umbrella,” said Robin, with a swift glance at his mother as he drew it from under his arm.  Would she recognize it?  He had chosen one of the most ancient; the one most appropriate, as he thought, to the general appearance of the man Neumann.

“What umbrella is that, Robin?” asked his mother suspiciously.  Really, it was more than odd that Robin, whom she had left immersed in study, should have got into Baker’s Farm so quickly.  Could he have been expected?  And had Providence, in its care for the righteous cause of mothers, brought her here just in time to save him from this girl’s toils?  The girl’s indifference could not be real; and if it was not, her good acting only betrayed the depths of her experience and balefulness.  “What umbrella is that?” asked Mrs. Morrison.