Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/234

210 to fetch yer out. They didn't want to let me in—ah! I'd 'ave showed what for, in about another minute—and then I see yer comin'!" The baby began to cry feebly. The man hushed it awkwardly, stopping in his walk to do so. He would not give it up to the girl though; and she hung on his arm looking up into his face, transfigured, unrecognisable; then they passed out of our sight.

The Organist laid her hand upon my arm, her eyes glistening. "We may as well go home, I think, mayn't we?" she said.

It was nearly a month later, when I found a letter from the Organist on my breakfast table.

"If you could take me to the parish church on Saturday morning—yes, I mean Saturday, not Sunday—" she wrote, "I could show you the finish of an affair that I think you are interested in."

I wondered, vaguely, what the "affair" was, and, having been a little late in presenting myself, did not succeed, in a hurried walk to the church, in eliciting an explanation of the summons. "Make haste, and you will see," said the Organist; and she would tell me no more.

We found the church almost empty, save for a little group, facing an ascetic-looking young priest in the chancel.

"Well, what is it, then?" I whispered. The Organist answered me by a motion of the head altarwards, and I recognised my friend the sailor, looking very uncomfortable in a stiff suit of tweeds. Then the words which the priest was reciting gave me a last clue to the situation.

Rh