* Festival-making women.

# “Whoever is there?”

He heard somewhere within the noise of a chair pushed back, and a door farther down the passage opened outwards, disclosing Laura Filbert with her hand upon the handle.  She made a supple, graceful picture.  “Good-evening, Mr. Lindsay,” she said as he advanced.  “Won’t you come in?” She clung to the handle until he had passed into the room, then she closed the door after him.  “I was expecting you,” she said.  “Mr. Harris, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Lindsay.  Mr. Lindsay, Mr. Harris.”

Mr. Harris was sitting sideways on one of the three cheap little chairs.  He was a clumsily built youth, and he wore the private’s garb of the Salvation Army.  It was apparent that he had been reading a newspaper; he had a displeasing air of possession.  At Laura’s formula he looked up and nodded without amiability, folded his journal the other side out and returned to it.

“Please take a seat,” Laura said, and Lindsay took one.  He had a demon of self-consciousness that possessed him often, here he felt dumb.  Nor did he in the very least expect Mr. Harris.  He crossed his legs in greater discomfort than he had dreamed possible, looking at Laura, who sat down like a third stranger, curiously detached from any sense of hospitality.

“Mr. Lindsay is anxious about his soul, Mr. Harris,” she said pleasantly.  “I guess you can tell him what to do as well as I can.”

“Oh!” Lindsay began, but Mr. Harris had the word.  “Is he?” said Mr. Harris, without looking up from his paper.  “Well, what I’ve got to say on that subject I say at the evenin’ meetin’, which is a proper an’ a public place.  He can hear it there any day of the week.”

“I think I have already heard,” remarked Lindsay, “what you have to say.”

“Then that’s all right,” said Mr. Harris, with his eyes still upon his newspaper.  He appeared to devour it.  Laura looked from one to the other of them and fell upon an expedient.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I’ll just get you that bicycle story you were kind enough to lend me, Mr. Harris, and you can take it with you.  The Ensign’s got it,” and she left the room.  Lindsay glanced round, and promptly announced to himself that he could not come there again.  It was taking too violent an advantage.  The pursuit of an angel does not imply that you may trap her in her corner under the Throne.  The place was divided by a calico curtain, over which plainly showed the top of a mosquito curtain—­ she slept in there.  On the walls were all tender texts about loving and believing and bearing others’ burdens, interspersed with photographs, mostly of women with plain features and enthusiastic eyes, dressed in some strange costume of the Army in Madras, Ceylon, China.  A little wooden table stood against the wall holding an album, a Bible and hymn-books, a work-basket and an irrelevant Japanese doll which seemed to stretch