Of course, the ritual was finished; one cannot be ritualistic and conscious of aitchlessness. Ritual implies the superhuman, the something, at least, which sets the executant above the common clay, and to drop an aitch is human. In the moment of solemnity, in the mouth of the ritualist, it is drolly human. We find incongruity amusing, and the more solemn the occasion the more readily does an impish mirth intrude on light pretext. Effie giggled. She did not mean to be unkind, but the spectacle of his confusion was too much for her. She hadn’t the strength to resist, and though she turned her giggle, quite neatly, into a cough, it was not before he had seen. This was his great moment, to which he had looked forward, and she giggled at him! He felt himself writ down an ass, and wondered for the fraction of a second whether he would get more satisfaction from smacking her or from kicking himself. Then he saw her looking at him, and nothing seemed to matter. He dropped aitches and she giggled. Very well, then he wasn’t a superman, and she wasn’t divine. They were human beings, at this moment in the relationship of employer and employed. “In future, you will sit at the little desk in here, Miss Mannering.” He met her eye defiantly as he spoke the “here.” “If you have your notebook you can take this letter down.” He was running away from his ruined situation. To dictate a letter to her had not been in the scheme at all, as he had planned it. It was a refuge, and a safe one, but as he dictated he saw in the letter his opportunity to indicate to her that he forgave the giggle. He was writing to an author about a manuscript, which he intended to publish, but broke off before he reached that decisive point of his letter. “Wait a bit,” he said. “Here is the novel I am writing about. I want your opinion of it to fortify my own before I do anything definite. Will you have a look at it in here? I’m due at a Council meeting and must go.” “Certainly, Mr. Branstone,” she said; “but my judgment isn’t very reliable.” “We don’t know that until you try,” he said, escaping from his office to the Town Hall, where he kicked his heels for an hour till the meeting began Nor did he return to business that day. He had a shyness and a feeling of deflation. He needed time before he could expand again. Effie took her reading of the novel conscientiously rather than seriously, not supposing that her verdict either way would go for anything, but appreciating his hint of confidence, and the fact that, considered as work, novel-reading was pleasant. And not finishing the manuscript at the office, she took it home with her to Rusholme.