With a jocular reference or two to goods trains at a shunting station the priest retired from the dilemma. But when they had all reached the safety of the broad paving again he seemed to have shed his desire to cross the gate. He was by himself, which he detested; there were countless morals to be humorously drawn from the Canal, and nobody to point them out to. “This is a marvel of workmanship, is it not?” he said to Miss Brown, pointedly excluding the suffragette. Miss Brown agreed, and asked whether he had felt pretty well on the voyage so far. Thus the Canal introduced them, and when the acquaintance was safely formed, Miss Brown strove to introduce the suffragette. “Yerce, yerce,” said the priest hurriedly. “We have met before. An introduction is unnecessary.” Fortunately for the suffragette she saw a dog at a little distance, and hurried to speak to it. The dog is blessedly cosmopolitan. Wherever you may meet him he speaks your home tongue to you, and his eyes are the eyes of a friend in a strange land. The suffragette and the dog walked along the side of the Lock some twenty yards behind their elders and betters, and the suffragette watched her character falling in shreds between them. Some people like safe hunting, and there is no prey so defenceless as prey that is not there. The priest’s conscience had been for some time accumulating reasons why the modest Miss Brown should be warned of the true character of her immodest companion. The suffragette allowed them half an hour to finish the destruction, and joined them at the train, when the dog reluctantly remembered another engagement. The party returned to the town in dead silence. At the station the priest left them, with promises to come and read to Albert. The suffragette and Miss Brown made their way across the gardens to the quay. Under a great palm, Miss Brown stopped tragically, and spoke to her companion for the first time since leaving the Lock. “I trusted you,” she said, rather dramatically, though, of course, she was too ladylike for melodrama. “I gave you my hospitality, I succoured you when you needed help (this was an echo of the priest), and all the while you deceived me, you took advantage of my kindness.” “Certainly you were all that to me,” said the suffragette mildly, “and certainly I am very grateful for all your kindness. But I don’t remember deceiving you.” “You are an immoral woman,” said Miss Brown, with a great effort, “and you never told me.” “It is hardly expected that I should have told you that. Partly because it would have been silly, and partly because it would have been quite untrue.” “No one could dislike gossip more than I do,” said Miss Brown, who loved it. “But a priest is a priest, and this one is such a truly nice man, so good-hearted, never said a word yesterday when the steward upset the soup into his lap. Why did you never tell me that you travelled from England in company with a man who was not your husband?”