Part 19 (1/2)
She suddenly flushed a deep scarlet.
”What are these?” she said, pointing with a shaking finger to the things on the table.
”Them?” said Mr. Hamlyn in cheerful surprise. ”Ma.s.s wafers, my dear. I buy them in a shop in Covent Garden. We distribute them among the Luther Lecturers, for object lessons to the poor deluded Ritualists.”
The girl had crouched to the wall of the room. Hamlyn was seriously alarmed. Her face was almost purple, her eyes started out of her head.
”They're not con--_consecrated_?” she gasped.
Hamlyn could not understand her emotion. ”No,” he said; ”why, Gussie, what a superst.i.tious little thing you are. And if they were, what then?”
Frank amazement showed on his face.
”Oh, nothing, Mr. Hamlyn,” the girl said at length, becoming more normal in her manner.
In a few minutes, Hamlyn left the house, leaving the girl in her ordinary manner, eating the chocolates that he had brought her.
His able mind was busily at work. He knew that during Miss Pritchett's adhesion to St. Elwyn's Gussie had, perforce, been one of the congregation there and had been taught and trained by the clergy.
”No wonder,” he thought bitterly to himself; ”no wonder that they can win along the line, when they can sow seeds like that in a girl's mind.
Why, she's a thorough little Protestant at heart. To think that those things should have startled her so! It's a lingering prejudice, I suppose. They _are_ a queer lot--the Romanists!”
As he communed thus with himself, a swift thought came to him. At the moment of its arrival in his brain, he almost staggered. Then, pulling himself together, he walked rapidly to his own house.
He thought he saw his way to a _coup_ that would make all his previous efforts as nothing. How wonderfully simple it was! Why had he never thought of it before--_what_ a fool he had been! Here was the solution of all the difficulties he was in. The answer seemed to have come to his conversation with Samuel in the morning.
He went to his study and fortunately found that Sam was already there.
Miss Maud Hamlyn sat in the room also, but when she saw her father's face, she left the room at once. It wore the ”business look” she knew well, and, though she but dimly understood what her brother and father were engaged in, she knew it had brought great prosperity and honour to all of them, and was loath to intrude upon any profitable confabulation.
”Have you got it, Pa?” said Samuel, eagerly.
”Yes, I _'ave_,” answered the secretary, ”and very fine it is too!”
”How much?” asked Sam.
”What do you mean?”
”The cheque, Miss Pritchett's latest.”
”Oh, _that_,” said Hamlyn. ”Two hundred, what we expected. I meant something else. I've got the new scheme to wake things up! The best thing we've done yet, my boy!”
Sam rubbed his hands. ”What did I say this morning? I knew you'd do it, Pa. Well, let's have it.”
Mr. Hamlyn sat back in his chair, willing to dally a moment with his triumph and enjoy the full savour of it.
”Why we never thought of it before,” he said, ”beats me entirely!
Something suggested it to me to-night, and I've been wondering at our neglecting such a move.”