“Do you suggest that Morris is contemplating this experiment?”
“I? I suggest nothing; all I know is——”
“Well, now, what do you know?”
“If you wish me to tell you, as perhaps I ought, I know this, Colonel Monk, that the other night, when I was driving along the Rectory road, I saw your son, Mr. Monk, kissing this wonderful Miss Fregelius; that is all, and Stephen saw it also, you ask him.”
“Thank you; I think I would rather not. But what an odd place for him to choose for this interchange of early Christian courtesies! Also—if you are not mistaken—how well it illustrates that line in the hymn this morning:
“‘How many a spot defiles the robe that wraps an earthly saint.’
Such adventures seem scarcely in Morris’s line, and I should have thought that even an inexperienced saint would have been more discreet.”
“Men always jest at serious things,” said Eliza severely.
“Which do you mean—the saints or the kissing? Both are serious enough, but the two in combination——”
“Don’t you believe me?” asked Eliza.