“What’s your work?”

“I haven’t any.”

“Why’s that?”

Frank shrugged his shoulders a little.

“I do it when I can get it,” he said.

“You speak like an educated man.”

“I am pretty well educated.”

The priest laughed shortly.

“What’s that bruise on your cheek?”

“I was in a street fight, yesterday, father.”

“Oh, this is ridiculous!” he said.  “Where did you come from last?”

Frank paused a moment.  He was very hot and very tired....  Then he spoke.

“I was in prison till Friday,” he said.  “I was given fourteen days on the charge of robbing a child, on the twenty-sixth.  I pleaded guilty.  Will you help me, father?”

If the priest had not been still half stupid with sleep and indigestion, and standing in the full blaze of this hot sun, he might have been rather struck by this last sentence.  But he did have those disadvantages, and he saw in it nothing but insolence.

He laughed again, shortly and angrily.

“I’m amazed at your cheek,” he said.  “No, certainly not!  And you’d better learn manners before you beg again.”

Then he banged the door.

* * * * *

About ten minutes later he woke up from a doze, very wide awake indeed, and looked round.  There lay on the table by him a Dutch cheese, a large crusty piece of bread and some very soft salt butter in a saucer.  There was also a good glass of beer left—­not claret-cup—­in a glass jug, very much as Frank had pictured it.

He got up and went out to the street door, shading his eyes against the sun.  But the street lay hot and dusty in the afternoon light, empty from end to end, except for a cat, nose in tail, coiled on the grocery door-step.

Then he saw two children, in white frocks, appear round a corner, and he remembered that it was close on time for Catechism.

CHAPTER VI

(I)

About the time that Frank was coming into the village where the priest lived, Jenny had just finished lunch with her father.  She took a book, two cigarettes, a small silver matchbox and a Japanese fan, and went out into the garden.  She had no duties this afternoon; she had played the organ admirably at the morning service, and would play it equally admirably at the evening service.  The afternoon devotions in the little hot Sunday school—­she had decided, in company with her father a year or two ago—­and the management of the children, were far better left in the professional hands of the schoolmistress.

She went straight out of the drawing-room windows, set wide and shaded by awnings, and across the lawn to the seat below the ancient yews.  There she disposed herself, with her feet up, lit a cigarette, buried the match and began to read.

* * * * *