“Good morning,” said Miss Gentry. But she omitted to slam the door in his face as he expected, indeed she had gradually advanced into the porch, stitching unrelaxingly. And Bundock now became acutely aware that he could not turn his back on her without revealing the stain on Her Majesty’s uniform, that even by lowering the mail-bag he had just hitched up, he could not cover up what certain rude ploughboys had already commented on. He understood it was green. In this dreadful situation he began backing slowly as from the presence of royalty, making desperate conversation to cover his retreat. “I did give you your tracts, didn’t I?” he babbled. “If you mean the packet,” said Miss Gentry in stern rebuke, “there it lies. _I_ haven’t opened it!” “Do you mean that _I_ have?” he asked indignantly, gaining another yard in this rear-guard action. “We don’t have to open an oyster to know what’s inside.” Miss Gentry’s brow grew as swarthy as her moustache—at the reminder of her lost oysterman, Bundock supposed in dismay. “Don’t you always send out tracts after I bring you packets?” he explained hastily, still retreating with his face to the foe. “Not when they’re patterns,” said Miss Gentry crushingly. “And how do you know it’s not _The Englishwomen’s Magazine_?” She turned back into the passage, and he hoped she would slam the door on her triumph, but she took up the packet instead. “We shall soon see,” and snipping the string with mysteriously produced scissors, she read out unctuously: “Ishmael and the Wilderness.” Bundock did not know which way to turn. Why in the name of propriety did she not go back to her workroom and close her door? Miss Gentry, without the clue to his lingering attitude, observed invitingly, tapping the packet: “If this won’t make you see the beauties of the Establishment, nothing will.” He grinned uncomfortably. “Always willing to see the beauties of any establishment.” It was very strange. Give him a female, even with a moustache, even tepefied by tracts, and something from the deeps rose up to philander. Not that there wanted a lurid fascination in this exotic and literate lady: his very loathing was a tribute to a vivid personality. Miss Gentry, however, was shocked. She put down the tracts. She knew herself “born under Venus,” but romance and respectability were never disjoined in her day-dreams, and as the channel of a revelation she felt profaned. “Don’t talk like that,” she said sharply. “You’re a married man.” “’Tis a married man knows how to appreciate beauty,” he replied, receding farther nevertheless as in ironic commentary. “For shame!” Her needle stabbed on. “And you setting up to be holy!” “Me?” Surprise brought his strategic retreat to a standstill. “I never set up to be a stained-glass saint.” Again he had blundered. The black eyes flashed fire. “You who move mountains!” she cried angrily. “Me move mountains?” Bundock was bewildered.