On the particular afternoon from which Sylvia dated the preparation of the quarrel, they were all at tea with Mr. Dorward in his cottage. The conversation came round to Sirene, and Sylvia told how she had always thought that the vicar resembled a Roman Emperor. Was it Nero? He was perhaps flattered by the comparison, notwithstanding the ladies' loud exclamations of dissent, and was anxious to test the likeness from a volume of engraved heads which he produced. With Gladys sitting on one arm of his chair and Enid on the other, the pages were turned over slowly to allow time for a careful examination of each head, which involved a good deal of attention to Mr. Dorward's own. In the end Nero was ruled out and a more obscure Emperor was hailed as his prototype, after which the twins rushed out into the garden and gathered strands of ivy to encircle his imperial brow; Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, who had taken no part in the discussion, left immediately after the coronation, and though it was a perfectly fine evening, they announced, as they got into their vehicle, that it looked very much like rain. Next Sunday the ladies came to church as usual, but Mr. Dorward kept them waiting half an hour for lunch while he showed the twins his ornaments and vestments, which they looked at solemnly as a penance for having spent most of the service with their handkerchiefs in their mouths. What Miss Horne and Miss Hobart said at lunch Sylvia never found out, but they drove away before Sunday-school and never came back to Green Lanes, either on that Sunday or on any Sunday afterward. All that Mr. Dorward would say about the incident was: "Church fowls! Chaste fowls! Chaste and holy, but tiresome. The vicar mustn't be managed. Doesn't like it. Gets frightened. Felt remote at lunch. That was all. Would keep on talking. Got bored and more remote. Vicar got so remote that he had to finish his lunch under the table." "Oh no, you didn't really?" cried the twins, in an ecstasy of pleasure. "You didn't really get under the table, Mr. Dorward?" "Of course, of course, of course. Vicar always speaks the truth. Delicious lunch." Sylvia had to tell Philip about this absurd incident, but he would only say that the man was evidently a buffoon in private as well as in public. "But, Philip, don't you think it's a glorious picture? We laughed till we were tired." "Gladys and Enid laugh very easily," he answered. "Personally I see nothing funny in a man, especially a clergyman, behaving like a clown." "Oh, Philip, you're impossible!" Sylvia cried. "Thanks," he said, dryly. "I've noticed that ever since the arrival of our young guests you've found more to complain of in my personality even than formerly." "Young guests!" Sylvia echoed, scornfully. "Who would think, to hear you talk now, that you married a child? Really you're incomprehensible." "Impossible! Incomprehensible! In fact thoroughly negative," Philip said. Sylvia shrugged her shoulders and left him.