Then Miss Botterill sniffed and pulled out her handkerchief, and Mr. Maidstone closed the street door, and but for a diverting sequel upon the following Friday, the incident closed very satisfactorily. Upon that morning, however, Mr. Maidstone’s three elder children, a girl and two boys, all apparently under fourteen, entered the show-room and peremptorily demanded to be taken upstairs to Mr. Chrysostom Lorton. By names, Polly, Arthur, and George, they had come to apply for their father’s reinstatement, chiefly, as they alleged, on account of their mother, whom they described as suffering from pulmonary consumption. Needless to say, much to their obvious discomfiture, Mr. Chrysostom refused to see them, and after a brief consultation, they filed out again very much more humbly than they had come in. Unpleasant children, it was an amusing episode, and I could not help laughing somewhat heartily, although Polly, who appeared to be the eldest, made a grimace at me as she went out. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XV Happy years. A typical day. Simeon Whey is at last ordained. His first sermon at St. Sepulchre’s, Balham. Intensive campaign of the _A.D.S.U._ I meet Miss Moonbeam and call her Mary. Affecting appeal not to leave her in darkness. I promise not to do so. A face to lean on. Will I come again? Adventure on the stage of the Empresses Theatre. I HAVE said that this incident ended satisfactorily, but, as I shall very shortly have to demonstrate, it was subsequently to become associated with what I have always regarded as the most tragic event of my career—an event so annihilating in its ultimate consequences, and so misunderstood in its immediate details, that few less proven and resilient characters could have emerged from it unimpaired. Nor could my physique, I think, have stood the strain but for the four or five years that now intervened, during which I was enabled, in a life of comparative calm, to add very considerably to my bodily weight. Indeed in many respects, uneventful as they were, these were amongst the happiest years of my earlier manhood, and I cannot do better, perhaps, than describe for the benefit of my readers a typical day of this period of my life.