"Look at that queer old girl coming down the road," she tittered, feeling that she must laugh at something.
"Queer old girl!" repeated Horatio, focusing his vision in this new direction. "Why, bless my soul, it's Harriet!"
A moment later Mrs. Merle joined them, stern of aspect, a female inquisitioner, with power of life or death, her husband felt, over wayward though well meaning naturalists.
"Horatio!" breathed the lady, and that one word held such depths of scorn and menace that the curate never again doubted the possibility of eternal punishment.
"My dear Harriet," he began weakly, but she cut him short.
"Who is this person?" she demanded, with a freezing glance at Hester.
Then came Horatio's great moment when, inspired with the courage of despair, he rallied against the breaking storm and, for once in his life, as Hiram Baxter would have expressed it, played Harriet to a standstill. Not one instant did he give his wife to press her attack, not one word of explanation or apology did he vouchsafe, but, by a masterly use of the feminine method, he put the astounded lady at once on the defensive, then held her there with admirable strategy, then drove her back, point by point, until she was utterly and ignominiously vanquished.
"I have just been in great peril, my dear," he answered gravely. "In my stained and disordered garments you may see evidence of the—er—struggle."
"The struggle? Horatio? You have been attacked?" his wife cried in alarm.
Realizing the value of this suggestion and gaining confidence with every word, the curate continued, facing Harriet almost sternly now.