* * * * *

Down by the road which runs past the hotel, sunken ten feet below its level, are the tennis-courts, and soldiers in scarlet and khaki, and blue-jackets with floating ribbons, and negro bell-boys returning from errands, and white-gowned American women with flowery hats, and men in summer flannels stop as they pass, and sit on the low wall and watch the games.  There is always a gallery for the tennis-players.  But on a Tuesday morning about eleven o’clock the audience began to melt away in disgust.  Without doubt they were having plenty of amusement among themselves, these tennis-players grouped at one side of the court and filling the air with explosions of laughter.  But the amusement of the public was being neglected.  Why in the world, being rubber-shod as to the foot and racqueted as to the hand, did they not play tennis?  A girl in a short white dress, wearing white tennis-shoes and carrying a racquet, came tripping down the flight of stone steps, and stopped as she stood on the last landing and seemed to ask the same question.  She came slowly across the empty court, looking with curiosity at the bunch of absorbed people, and presently she caught her breath.  The man who was the centre of the group, who was making, apparently, the amusement, was the young clergyman, Norman North.

There was an outburst, a chorus of:  “You can’t have that one, Mr. North!” “That’s been used!” “That’s Mr. Dennison’s!”

A tall English officer—­a fine, manly mixture of big muscles and fresh color and khaki—­looked up, saw the girl, and swung toward her.  “Good morning, Miss Newbold.  Come and join the fun.  Devil of a fellow, that North,—­they say he’s a parson.”

“What is it?  What are they laughing at?” Katherine demanded.

“They’re doing a Limerick tournament, which is what North calls the game.  Mr. Gale is timekeeper.  They’re to see which recites most rhymes inside five minutes.  The winner picks his court and plays with Miss Lee.”

Captain Comerford imparted this in jerky whispers, listening with one ear all the time to a sound which stirred Katherine, the voice which she had heard yesterday in the church at St. George’s.  The Englishman’s spasmodic growl stopped, and she drifted a step nearer, listening.  As she caught the words, her brows drew together with displeasure, with shocked surprise.  The inspired saint of yesterday was reciting with earnestness, with every delicate inflection of his beautiful voice, these words: 

    “There was a young curate of Kidderminster,
    Who kindly, but firmly, chid a spinster,
        Because on the ice
        She said something not nice
    When he quite inadvertently slid ag’inst her.”