Tell me your story."

The little clergyman called Brown thanked him with
unquestionable warmth, but still with a queer kind of simplicity.
It was rather as if he were thanking a stranger in a smoking-room
for some trouble in passing the matches, than as if he were (as he was)
practically thanking the Curator of Kew Gardens for coming with him
into a field to find a four-leaved clover. With scarcely a semi-colon
after his hearty thanks, the little man began his recital:

"I told you my name was Brown; well, that's the fact,
and I'm the priest of the little Catholic Church I dare say you've seen
beyond those straggly streets, where the town ends towards the north.
In the last and straggliest of those streets which runs along the sea
like a sea-wall there is a very honest but rather sharp-tempered
member of my flock, a widow called MacNab. She has one daughter,
and she lets lodgings, and between her and the daughter,
and between her and the lodgers--well, I dare say there is a great deal
to be said on both sides. At present she has only one lodger,
the young man called Todhunter; but he has given more trouble
than all the rest, for he wants to marry the young woman of the house."

"And the young woman of the house," asked Dr Hood, with huge and
silent amusement, "what does she want?"

"Why, she wants to marry him," cried Father Brown, sitting up eagerly.
"That is just the awful complication."

"It is indeed a hideous enigma," said Dr Hood.