By this time Plucritus had recovered his good temper. I never yet had known him upset for long, since though by nature he never forgave he never let this interfere with his good-companionship. “Now,” said he, “look around, do, and don’t miss anything worth seeing.” “But what is there to see?” “A church service. And the church and the theatre are much united, so that when you go to church you see a play, and when you visit a theatre you see the other thing. Now, observe.” When we had entered the church had been empty, but now it began to fill. The first to enter was a most elegantly-gowned woman accompanied by two children. She rustled up the central aisle and took her position, as did the girl and boy to the further side of her. Next she brought out a silver smelling-salts bottle, and a bottle of scent with a silver stopper, and other paraphernalia, and set them by the side of her. “She has nerves,” Plucritus remarked soothingly to me. “Poor thing! what it must be to be afflicted like that!” The children, in the meantime, having stared about, began whispering to one another. She smiled maternally, but let them be. “Poor little things,” he observed. “What an affliction for them to be mewed up here.” “If you talk so loud,” said I, laughing despite myself, for he took such evident interest in them, “they will hear you.” “Not they,” he remarked; “they are blind and deaf or they wouldn’t be here. When the choir comes in we shall have to move away, but we shall never be seen nor heard. Vestasian and I once stood at either end of this large building and shouted to one another as loud as we could on matters secular.” “And what followed?” “Nothing appreciable. They sang the Athanasian Creed from memory, I believe.” Next came a rather poor girl, who walked up the aisle in a very undecided way and turned to the left, to a seat opposite the lady. She knelt down and prayed for a long time, and when she got up Plucritus noted the time in a little note-book he carried. Then he said to me,— “Would you be kind enough to go and see what is the particular scent that lady carries—eau-de-Cologne or lavender?” “It won’t be lavender,” I replied, “that’s for the toilet.” “But we must make sure.” When I had discovered I returned to him. “It is eau-de-Cologne, and there is a smaller bottle of wood violet.” “Out of fashion, but still....” said he, and made a note of it.