She smiled to show her really beautiful teeth. "I should like to kiss you, James. May I, Mrs. Parsons?" "Certainly," replied Jamie's mother, who didn't approve of Mrs. Clibborn at all. She turned her cheek to James, and assumed a seraphic expression while he lightly touched it with his lips. "I'm only an old woman," she murmured to the company in general. She seldom made more than one remark at a time, and at the end of each assumed an appropriate attitude--coy, Madonna-like, resigned, as the circumstances might require. Mr. Jackson came forward to shake hands, and she turned her languishing glance on him. "Oh, Mr. Jackson, how beautiful your sermon was!" * * * They sat down to dinner, and ate their ox-tail soup. It is terrible to think of the subtlety with which the Evil One can insinuate himself among the most pious; for soup at middle-day is one of his most dangerous wiles, and it is precisely with the simple-minded inhabitants of the country and of the suburbs that this vice is most prevalent. James was sitting next to Mrs. Clibborn, and presently she looked at him with the melancholy smile which had always seemed to her so effective. "We want you to tell us how you won your Victoria Cross, Jamie." The others, eager to hear the story from the hero's lips, had been, notwithstanding, too tactful to ask; but they were willing to take advantage of Mrs. Clibborn's lack of that quality. "We've all been looking forward to it," said the Vicar. "I don't think there's anything to tell," replied James. His father and mother were looking at him with happy eyes, and the Colonel nodded to Mary. "Please, Jamie, tell us," she said. "We only saw the shortest account in the papers, and you said nothing about it in your letters." "D'you think it's very good form of me to tell you about it?" asked James, smiling gravely. "We're all friends here," said the Vicar. And Colonel Clibborn added, making sheep's eyes at his wife: "You can't refuse a lady!" "I'm an old woman," sighed Mrs. Clibborn, with a doleful glance. "I can't expect him to do it for me." The only clever thing Mrs. Clibborn had done in her life was to acknowledge to old age at thirty, and then she did not mean it. It had been one of her methods in flirtation, covering all excesses under a maternal aspect. She must have told hundreds of young officers that she was old enough to be their mother; and she always said it looking plaintively at the ceiling, when they squeezed her hand. "It wasn't a very wonderful thing I did," said James, at last, "and it was completely useless." "No fine deed is useless," said the Vicar, sententiously. James looked at him a moment, but proceeded with his story. "It was only that I tried to save the life of a sub who'd just joined--and didn't." "Would you pass me the salt?" said Mrs. Clibborn. "Mamma!" cried Mary, with a look as near irritation as her gentle nature permitted. "Go on, Jamie, there's a good boy," said Mrs. Parsons.