the following morning.  I realised at every moment how entirely everything at Aveley was centred upon Father Payne, and how he was both in the foreground as well as in the background of all that we did or thought.  Our journey passed almost in silence, and we drove straight to the nursing home in Mayfair.  We were admitted to a little waiting-room in a bright, fresh-looking house, and were presently greeted by a genial and motherly old lady, dressed in a sort of nursing uniform, who told us that Mr. Payne was expecting us.  We asked anxiously how he was.  “Oh, he is very cheerful,” she said; “his nurse, Sister Jane, thinks he is the most amusing man she ever saw.  You must not worry about him.  The operation is to be on Friday—­he seems very well and strong in himself, and we will soon have him all right again—­you will see!  He is just the sort of man to make a good recovery.”  Then she added, “Mr. Payne said he thought you would like to see the doctor, so he is going to look in here in half an hour from now—­he will see Mr. Payne first, and then you can have a good talk to him.  You are going back this afternoon, I think?”

“That depends!” said Barthrop.

“Oh, Mr. Payne is expecting you to go back, I know—­we will just run up and see him now.”

We went up two flights of stairs:  the matron knocked at a door in the passage, and we went in.  Father Payne was sitting up in bed, in a sort of blue wrapper which gave him, I thought, a curiously monastic air—­he was reading quietly.  The room was large and airy, and looked out on the backs of tall houses:  it was quiet enough:  there was just a far-off murmur of the town in the air.

He greeted us with much animation, and smiled at me.  “It’s good of you to come, I’m sure,” he said, “with your feeling about ill people.  I don’t object to that,” he added in the familiar manner.  “I think it’s a sign of health, you know!” We sat down beside him.  “Now,” said Father Payne, “don’t let’s have any grave looks or hushed voices—­you remember what Baines told us, when he joined the Church of Rome, that when he got back after his reception, his friends all spoke to him as if he had had a serious illness.  The matter is simple enough—­and I’m going to speak plainly.  I have got some internal mischief, something that obstructs the passages, and it has got to be removed.  There’s a risk, of course—­they never can tell exactly what they will find, but they don’t think it has gone too far to be remedied.  I don’t pretend to like it—­in fact it’s decidedly inconvenient.  I like my own little plans as well as anyone! and this time I don’t seem able to look ahead—­there’s a sort of wall ahead of me.  I feel as if I had come, like the boy in the Water Babies, to the place which was called Stop!” He paused a moment and smiled on us, his big good-natured smile.