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 or another of her chapel friends. But Mrs. Newt had fallen away from grace, as it was termed, and was no longer in touch with her former circle. She had given back her fine tombstone to old Batson the stonemason who, not knowing what else to do with it, had used it to replace a broken doorstep leading to his office. She had come to picture her safe arrival at the gates of Endless Bliss with less complacency. She no longer felt sure of her welcome.

"Don't see what I've done to deserve it," she said. "All that I've ever tried to do has been to make myself comfortable in this world and to take good care, as I thought, to be on the right road for the next. I used to think it all depended upon faith: that all you had to do was to believe. But your poor uncle used to say it sounded a bit too cheap to be true. And if he was right and the Lord demands works, guess I'll cut a poor figure."

The idea had come to her to replace the optimism of her discarded tombstone by a simple statement of facts with underneath: "Lord be merciful to me, a sinner." But the head sexton, on being consulted as a friend, had objected to the quotation as one calculated to let down the tone of the cemetery, and had urged something less committal.

So the two old ladies remained at Bruton Square, keeping for themselves the basement and the three