Part 8 (1/2)

That very afternoon Mr. Arthur had received the intimation at his bank that he was shortly to be made a cas.h.i.+er. He glowed with the prospect. His conversation that evening was of the brightest. The poisoned shafts of Miss Hallard's satire met the armoured resistance of his high spirits. They fell--pointless and unavailing--from his unbounded faith in himself. A man who, after a comparatively few years' service in a bank, is deemed fitted for the responsible duties of a cas.h.i.+er, is qualified to express an opinion, even on art. Mr.

Arthur expressed many.

”Don't see how you can say a thing's artistic if you don't like it,”

he declared.

”I think you're quite right, Mr. Arthur,” said Mrs. Hewson. ”If I like a thing--like that picture in one of the Christmas Annuals--I always say, 'Now I call that artistic,' don't I, Ern?”

Her husband nodded with his mouth full of the best bloater.

”Well, you couldn't call that thing artistic, Mrs. Hewson, if you mean the thing that's over the piano in the sitting-room?”

”Why not?” asked Janet; ”don't you like it?”

”No,” said Mr. Arthur emphatically, ”nor any one else either, I should think. I bet you a s.h.i.+lling they wouldn't.”

”But Mrs. Hewson does,” Janet replied quietly. ”Doesn't that satisfy you that it must be artistic, since some one likes it?”

Mrs. Hewson, finding herself suddenly the object of the conversation, picked her teeth in hurried confusion. Her husband surveyed the company over the rim of his cup and then returned to his reading of the evening paper.

During the weighted silence that followed Janet's last remark, he laid down his paper.

”I see,” he said, ”as 'ow there are some people up in the north of England 'aving what they call Pentecostal visitations.”

Mrs. Hewson laughed tentatively, the uncertain giggle that scarcely dares to come between the teeth. She knew her husband's leaning towards the arid humour of an obscure joke.

”What's that, Ern?”

”Well, 'cording to the paper, they get taken with it sudden. They can't stand up. They fall down in the middle of the service and roll about, just as if they'd 'ad too much to drink.”

Mrs. Hewson's laugh became genuine and unafraid, a hysterical clattering of sounds that tumbled from her mouth.

”Silly fools,” she said; ”the way people go on. Read it--what is it?

Read it.”

Mr. Hewson picked some bones out of the bloater with a dirty hand, placed the filleted morsel in his mouth, washed it down with a mouthful of tea, and then cleared his throat and began to read.

Mr. Arthur seized this opportunity. ”It's quite fine again now,” he said in an undertone to Sally.

She expressed mild surprise--the lifting of her eyebrows, the casual ”Really.” Then it seemed to her that he did not exactly deserve to be treated like that and she told him how she had got wet through, coming home.

”Changed your clothes, I hope,” he whispered.

”Oh yes.”

”You might get pneumonia, you know,” he said.

She smiled at that. ”And of such are the Kingdom of Heaven.”

He gazed at her in surprise. ”Why should you say that?” he asked.