If I had my way with them gentry——" Mr. Swindles finished his beer at a gulp, and he put down his glass as firmly as he desired to put down the horse watchers. At the end of a long silence Mr. Leopold said—

"Come into my pantry and smoke a pipe. Mr. Arthur will be down presently.
Perhaps he'll tell us what weight he was riding this morning."

"Cunning old bird," said Mr. Swindles, as he rose from the table and wiped his shaven lips with the back of his hand; "and you'd have us believe that you didn't know, would you? You'd have us believe, would you, that the Gaffer don't tell you everything when you bring up his hot water in the morning, would you?"

Mr. Leopold laughed under his breath, and looking mysterious and very rat-like he led the way to his pantry. Esther watched them in strange trouble of soul. She had heard of racecourses as shameful places where men were led to their ruin, and betting she had always understood to be sinful, but in this house no one seemed to think of anything else. It was no place for a Christian girl.

"Let's have some more of the story," Margaret said. "You've got the new number. The last piece was where he is going to ask the opera-singer to run away with him."

Sarah took an illustrated journal out of her pocket and began to read aloud.

III

Esther was one of the Plymouth Brethren. In their chapel, if the house in which they met could be called a chapel, there were neither pictured stories of saints, nor vestments, nor music, nor even imaginative stimulant in the shape of written prayers. Her knowledge of life was strictly limited to her experience of life; she knew no drama of passion except that which the Gospels relate: this story in the Family Reader was the first representation of life she had met with, and its humanity thrilled her like the first idol set up for worship. The actress told Norris that she loved him. They were on a balcony, the sky was blue, the moon was shining, the warm scent of the mignonette came up from the garden below, the man was in evening dress with diamond shirt studs, the actress's arm was large and white. They had loved each other for years. The strangest events had happened for the purpose of bringing them together, and, fascinated against her will, Esther could not but listen. But at the end of the chapter the racial instinct forced reproval from her.

"I am sure it is wicked to read such tales."

Sarah looked at her in mute astonishment. Grover said—

"You shouldn't be here at all. Can't Mrs. Latch find nothing for you to do in the scullery?"

"Then," said Sarah, awaking to a sense of the situation, "I suppose that where you come from you were not so much as allowed to read a tale; … dirty little chapel-going folk!"

The incident might have closed with this reproval had not Margaret volunteered the information that Esther's box was full of books.

"I should like to see them books," said Sarah. "I'll be bound that they are only prayer-books."

"I don't mind what you say to me, but you shall not insult my religion."

"Insult your religion! I said you never had read a book in your life unless it was a prayer-book."

"We don't use prayer-books."

"Then what books have you read?"

Esther hesitated, her manner betrayed her, and, suspecting the truth,
Sarah said:

"I don't believe that you can read at all. Come, I'll bet you twopence that you can't read the first five lines of my story."

Esther pushed the paper from her and walked out of the room in a tumult of grief and humiliation. Woodview and all belonging to it had grown unbearable, and heedless to what complaint the cook might make against her she ran upstairs and shut herself into her room. She asked why they should take pleasure in torturing her. It was not her fault if she did not know how to read. There were the books she loved for her mother's sake, the books that had brought such disgrace upon her. Even the names she could not read, and the shame of her ignorance lay upon her heavier than a weight of lead. "Peter Parley's Annual," "Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands," "Children of the Abbey," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Lamb's "Tales of Shakespeare's Plays," a Cooking Book, "Roda's Mission of Love," the Holy Bible and the Common Prayer Book.

She turned them over, wondering what were the mysteries that this print held from her. It was to her mysterious as the stars.

Esther Waters came from Barnstaple.