In her earlier life Mrs. Podmore had been able to ‘do for’ her curates, as she called it, with her own unassisted labour. She had cooked for them, and Mrs. Podmore’s cookery was one of the charms by which she subjugated the clerical mind; she had kept their rooms clean and neat, and had even looked to their shirt buttons and darned their socks. But with advancing years and increasing obesity, Mrs. Podmore found herself compelled to take ‘a girl,’ and a series of neat-handed Phillises followed one another in a line as long as Banquo’s issue. Mrs Podmore’s requirements were high, and she demanded an amount of virtue and industry from the genus girl which very few specimens of that class were able to maintain for more than a twelvemonth at a stretch. Either the girl was saucy, and ‘answered’ when Mrs. Podmore reproved her; or she was slovenly, and left the flue in the corners of the rooms; or she was that fearful animal, a breaker, and heralded her approach by a crash of dropped crockery, or a shiver of smashed glass. For the period of her service, however, Mrs. Podmore’s girl was always neat and pleasant to see. She was generally fresh-coloured, and wore lavender gowns, with the sleeves rolled up above the elbow, and her elbows as a rule were rosier than Aurora’s fingers. To the curates she was rarely saucy. They did not try her temper so severely as Mrs. Podmore tried it. In these quiet old-world lodgings Cyril Culverhouse awoke on the morning after the experiment. The bells were ringing for the early morning service. Cyril’s usual hour for rising was full an hour earlier. To-day it was only the sound of the bells close at hand that awakened him. When he tried to lift his head from the pillow it was as heavy as lead. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to be ill,’ he thought. He got up, took his cold bath, which revived him a little, struggled into his clothes, feeling weak and giddy and miserable all the while, and ran across to the church. The choir boys were filing into the chancel as he got to the vestry. The Vicar was looking glum. ‘I say, Culverhouse, as this early service is your fad, you might at least be punctual,’ he grumbled, as Cyril was pulling on his surplice. ‘I’m sorry to be late, but I don’t feel well this morning.’ ‘Eh? Nothing bad, I hope. You’re as white as your surplice. You go too much among those poor creatures. Very proper, of course; but a man owes something to himself, even if he hasn’t a wife and family to consider.’