Jinny suppressed a smile. Despite her respect for Miss Gentry she had never accepted her standing invitation to explore the Colchester romance. Unread in the literature of love though she was, the girl’s natural instinct refused to see the middle-aged moustachio’d dressmaker as the heroine of a love-drama. Her affair with the angel seemed, indeed, to place her apart. “I think it’s disgraceful to have had three husbands,” she insisted. “Not at all, when each is a Christian marriage, and the first two spouses have been duly taken by an overruling Providence. Of course the unhallowed romance one inspires is another thing. As I always say to Bundock—oh, we ought not to have mentioned names, ought we, Squibs dear? Please forget it.” She stroked the cat in her arms. “But there, Jinny! You can’t understand these things—you too were born under Saturn.” “How do you know that?” Jinny was vaguely resentful. “You’re so cold-blooded—perhaps it was even under the constellation of the Pisces—the Fishes, that is. You’ve never taken the faintest interest in Love. Do you know, I made a rhyme about you the other day.” “A rhyme!” Jinny was excited. “Do tell me!” Miss Gentry shook her head. “You wouldn’t like it.” “Oh, but I _must_ hear it.” Miss Gentry continued obstinately to stroke Squibs. But finally, as if electrified by the fur, she broke out like an inspired pythoness, in a weird chanting voice: “_When the Brad in opposite ways shall course,_ _Lo! Jinny’s husband shall come on a horse,_ _And Jinny shall then learn Passion’s force._” Jinny was so overwhelmed with admiration at the poetry—quite on a par, she felt, with the pieces of “The Universal Spelling-Book,” especially as the Rhyme or “_jingle in the ear_” was on the very pattern of the model verse there given: _Prostrate my contrite Heart I bend,_ _My God, my Father and my Friend,_ _Do not forsake me in the end_ —that she could hardly take in the sense at the moment. “How lovely!” she said. “I’m glad you’re satisfied. It means, of course”—Miss Gentry firmly explained the oracle—“that you’ll never marry, being as incapable of Passion as the Brad of flowing backwards and forwards at the same time.” A strange protest as written in letters of fire crept through all Jinny’s veins. Even her face flamed. She began “clucking” to Methusalem to start. “And I’ve made one about Mrs. Mawhood too,” pursued the pythoness, now irrepressible. “I don’t wish her ill, but I’m afraid it’ll prove true, poor thing.” And without waiting to be discouraged, indeed, following the already moving cart, she chanted: “_She may look to South, she may look to North,_ _But the finger of fate hath forbidden a fourth,_ _And the rat-slayer, clinging to life and his gold,_ _Shall dance on the grave where she lieth cold._” “Not dance!” laughed Jinny, relieved at this diversion.