Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 1.pdf/176

Rh once. He, too, was horror-struck. So were the two girls and Mrs. Jehoram. All horror-struck. The Angel stared in astonishment at the horror-struck group. You see, he had never seen any one horror-struck before.

"Mis—ter Hillyer!" said the Curate's wife. "This is too much!" She stood speechless for a moment. "Oh!"

She swept round upon the rigid girls. "Come!" The Vicar opened and shut his voiceless mouth. The world hummed and spun about him. There was a whirling of zephyr skirts, four impassioned faces sweeping towards the open door of the passage that ran through the Vicarage. He felt his position went with them.

"Mrs. Mendham," said the Vicar, stepping forward. "Mrs. Mendham. You don't understand"

"Oh!" they all said again.

One, two, three, four skirts vanished in the doorway. The Vicar staggered half-way across the lawn and stopped, aghast. "This comes," he heard the Curate's wife say, out of the depth of the passage, "of having an unmarried vicar—." The umbrella-stand wobbled. The front door of the Vicarage slammed like a minute-gun. There was silence for a space.

"I might have thought," he said. "She is always so hasty."

He put his hand to his chin—a habit with him. Then turned his face to his companion. The Angel was evidently wellbred. He was holding up Mrs. Jehoram's sunshade—she had left it on one of the 144