“You’re worse than Claire,” said Kay, her eyes ceasing to glitter. “You both conspire to coddle me. I’m young and strong, and I ought to be earning my living. But,” she went on, tapping his head with her finger to emphasise her words, “I will not continue in a job which involves being kissed by worms like Claude Bates. No, no, no, sir!” Mr. Wrenn raised a shocked and wrathful face. “He kissed you?” “Yes. You had an article in the _Home Companion_ last week, uncle, saying what a holy and beautiful thing the first kiss is. Well, Claude Bates’ wasn’t. He hadn’t shaved and he was wearing a dressing gown. Also, he was pallid and greenish, and looked as if he had been out all night. Anything less beautiful and holy I never saw.” “He kissed you! What did you do?” “I hit him very hard with a book which I was taking to read to Mrs. Bates. It was the Rev. Aubrey Jerningham’s _Is There a Hell?_ and I’ll bet Claude thought there was. Until then I had always rather disliked Mrs. Bates’ taste in literature, which shows how foolish I was. If she had preferred magazines, where would I have been? There were about six hundred pages of Aubrey Jerningham, bound in stiff cloth, and he blacked Claude’s eye like a scholar and a gentleman. And at that moment in came Mrs. Bates.” “Yes?” said Mr. Wrenn, enthralled. “Well, a boy’s best friend is his mother. Have you ever seen one of those cowboy films where there is trouble in the bar-room? It was like that. Mrs. Bates started to dismiss me, but I got in first with my resignation, shooting from the hip, as it were. And then I came away, and here I am.” “The fellow should be horsewhipped,” said Mr. Wrenn, breathing heavily. “He isn’t worth bothering about,” said Kay. The riot of emotion into which she had been plunged by the addresses of the unshaven Bates had puzzled her. But now she understood. It was galling to suppose so monstrous a thing, but the explanation was, she felt, that there had been condescension in his embrace. If she had been Miss Derrick of Midways, he would not have summoned up the nerve to kiss her in a million years; but his mother’s secretary and companion had no terror for him. And at the thought a deep thrill of gratitude to the Rev. Aubrey Jerningham passed through Kay. How many a time, wearied by his duties about the parish, must that excellent clergyman have been tempted to scamp his work and shirk the labour of adding that extra couple of thousand words which just make all the difference to literature when considered in the light of a missile. But he had been strong. He had completed his full six hundred pages and seen to it that his binding had been heavy and hard and sharp about the edges. For a moment, as she sat there, the Rev. Aubrey Jerningham seemed to Kay the one bright spot in a black world. She was still meditating upon him when there was a hearty smack on the door and Sam came in. “Good morning, good morning,” he said cheerily.