Then in a little while Cleg went down the Avenue with a sense that the heavens had fallen, and that angels were getting quite common about the garden gates of the South Side. He carried the arm on which Celie had laid her hand a little apart from him. It was as blissfully sensitive as if he had been ten years older. Celie stood a moment at the gate looking after him. She shaded her eyes from the sunset and looked down the long street. It is a charming pose when one is sure of one's arms and shoulders. At this moment one of the young men in the garden sent a ball over the house, and the eyes of his partner met those of the other girl. Peace was upon the earth at that sweet hour of sunset, but good-will to women was not in their two hearts. Celie felt that the light summer silk had already paid for itself. "I don't believe a bit in religion—so there!" said the girl next door to her friend over the net. At that moment Celie gave a little sigh to think that her first night in the new garment was so nearly over. "And father wanted to give me a black silk," said Celie Tennant to herself. Celie felt that she had not wasted her time nor her father's money. So to show her gratitude she went and found her father. He was slowly walking up and down the little plot of garden, meditatively smoking his large evening pipe. He stopped now before a favourite row of cabbages, and now at the end of the strawberry bed. He regarded them equally with the same philosophical and meditative attention. He was a practical man and insisted on growing vegetables in his own private domains at the back, leaving his daughter to cultivate roses and the graces in the front garden. Celie elevated her nose and sniffed as she came out. "O father, what a horrid smell of tobacco you are making!" "It is almost inevitable," he said, apologetically; "you see it is tobacco I am smoking." If it had been asafœtida, Celie could not have appeared more disgusted. "I thought your young thieves smoked at that club of yours," said her father. "Oh, yes; but that is different," she answered. "Yes, it _is_ different," chuckled her parent, thinking of what his tobacco cost him. Then Celie went on to explain all about Cleaver's boy and his trouble, telling the sad tale of the "failing" of Janet of Inverness, as, well—as I should like to have the tale of my weaknesses told, if it were necessary that they should be told at all. Her father smoked and listened. Sometimes he lifted a snail from the leaf of a cabbage with care. Anon he kicked a stone sideways off the path, and ever he smoked, listened, and nodded without comment. "These are all your orders, ma'am?" he asked slowly, when his daughter had finished. "I'll pull your ears, father, now I will," said she, with equal want of connection. And did it. "Oh, I had forgotten Mr. Iverach!" she cried, running off towards the house with a little gesture of despair; "what shall I do?"