A more solemn-looking, sober congregation than the congregation that emerged that Sunday morning from St. Jude's in Wychwood-on-the-Heath had never, perhaps, passed out of a church door.

“He'll have more time upon his hands,” said Mr. Biles, retired wholesale ironmonger and junior churchwarden, to Mrs. Biles, turning the corner of Acacia Avenue—“he'll have more time to make himself a curse and a stumbling-block.”

“And if this 'near relation' of his is anything like him—”

“Which you may depend upon it is the Case, or he'd never have thought of him,” was the opinion of Mr. Biles.

“I shall give that Mrs. Pennycoop,” said Mrs. Biles, “a piece of my mind when I meet her.”

But of what use was that?