“Talking about sackmakers,” said Montgomery, “I can tell you a true story of one, quite true, every word of it.  I knew a fellow who had been awfully wild when he was young, but he was converted, as they call it, and turned city missionary.  He came to know in this way one of these sackmaking women.  She was above the usual run, well-behaved, and very good-looking.  He fell desperately in love with her, and she with him, but he always thought she held back a little.  At last she told him she had lived with a man, and that he had left her.  The missionary said he did not care, and would marry her, but she refused.  She was bound, she said, and nothing could get that notion out of her head.  The missionary was in despair; he was trained for foreign service, and went to India.  There he married, well enough, I was told, and was happy; but the sackmaker was never forgotten.  He became the minister of a big chapel in Calcutta, but he always somehow, through somebody in London, managed to find out what the girl was doing.  When he was forty-five, his wife died.  They had no children, and he came back to England.  One fine morning he knocked at his old friend’s door.  You may imagine their meeting!  The man with whom she had lived was dead.  The missionary and she were married.  He gave up his preaching; he had saved up a bit of money, and took his wife and himself off to America.  What do you think of her, Andrew?”

Andrew’s notions on social and moral questions were what are commonly called “views.”  They were not thoughts, and furthermore they were “average views.”  Having had some whisky, his views were very average—­that is to say, precisely what is usual and customary.  “I suppose it was the best thing he could do,” he somewhat sleepily replied.

“The best thing he could do!” retorted Miriam, with much scorn.  “I would have worn that woman like a jewel, if I had been her husband.  He ought never to have married his first wife.”

Six months afterwards, the position of affairs in the little household in Nelson Square had changed.  Andrew, finding that vegetation in London was very slow work, had contracted the habit of taking whisky a little more frequently, and had even—­not unnoticed by Mr. Dabb—­provided himself with a small flask, from which he was accustomed to solace himself by “nips” during business hours when he thought he was not seen.  Once or twice he had been late in the morning, and had been reminded by Mr. Dabb.  “Sharp’s the word in my establishment, nephew, and I show no favour.”

Mr. Montgomery, too, had become a constant visitor at the Tacchis’ on Sunday, and Miriam had found herself beginning on the Monday morning to count the hours till the next Sunday should arrive.  She had told Mr. Montgomery that she should like to hear him sing in his own hall, but he did not receive the proposal very graciously.

“They are a rough set that go there, and you would not like to mix with them.”