Lastly, he desired, by return of post, a verbatim report of the quarrel that, as he was informed, had occurred on the school board when a prominent Roman Catholic threatened to throw an inkstand at a dissenting minister who, _coram populo_, called him the son of "a Babylonian woman." By the time that Morris had finished this epistle, and two others which accompanied it, he was in no mood for further reflections of an unpractical or dreamy nature.

Who can wonder when it is stated that they contained, respectively, a summary demand for the amount of a considerable bill which he imagined he had paid, and a request that he would read a paper before a "Science Institute" upon the possibilities of aerial telephones, made by a very unpleasing lady whom he had once met at a lawn-tennis party?
Indeed it would not be too much to say that if anyone had given him the opportunity he would have welcomed a chance to quarrel, especially with the lady of the local Institute.

Thus, cured of all moral distempers, and every tendency to speculate on feminine charms, hidden or overt, did he descend to the Sabbath breakfast.
That morning Morris accompanied Stella to church, where the services were still being performed by a stop-gap left by Mr.Tomley.

Here, again, Stella was a surprise to him, for now her demeanour, and at a little distance her appearance also, were just such as mark ninety-eight out of every hundred clergyman's daughters in the country.

So quiet and reserved was she that anyone meeting her that morning might have imagined that she was hurrying from the accustomed Bible-class to sit among her pupils in the church.