learn to suffer Mr. Doestick's friends, gladly. Read your Bible,
and you'll know where that comes from! I tell you, friend
Ferguson, you ought to thank God every day that you weren't born
a fool; and so ought I. Well what can I do for you?"

"I am bothered about Elizabeth and Blair."

She looked at him blankly for a moment. "Elizabeth? Blair? What
about Elizabeth and Blair?"

"It appears," Robert Ferguson said, and shoved the door shut with
his foot, "it appears that there has been some love-making."

"Love-making?" she repeated, bewildered.

"Blair has been talking to Elizabeth," he explained. "I believe
they call themselves engaged."

Mrs. Maitland flung her head back with a loud laugh. At the shock
of such a sound in such a place, one of the clerks in the other
room spun round on his stool, and Mrs. Maitland, catching sight
of him through the glass partition, broke the laugh off in the
middle. "Well, upon my word!" she said.

"Of course it's all nonsense, but it must be stopped."

"Why?" said Mrs. Maitland. And her superintendent felt a jar of
astonishment.

"They are children."