It wasn’t, but it was rather too often his father’s, and Lance was emulous, and, frightened a little of his own suggestion, carried things now with a rush. “We’re the Hell-Fire Club,” he said, “and champagne is the dew of Hell. Any member shirking will be held under the tap for half an hour.” They braved it out, most of them conscience-stricken, and the Hell-fire Club almost deserved its name in the hour of its extinction. Things might have been serious had not Sam, by a well-timed push, caused Lance to shatter a full magnum on the floor. As it was, five hangdog members reached home late, but presentable. But they were most unhappy boys. The sixth boy was happy. He had consumed a sober and interesting meal at other people’s expense, encountering several delectable sorts of food for the first time and experiencing that human but reprehensible thrill which results from feeling that one is a clever fellow. Distance of course lent enchantment to the Hell-fire Club. When school reassembled and boys fresh from the seaside tried to excite the jealousy of the stay-at-homes with tales of land and sea, they were loftily put in their places and struck to dumb admiration by legends of the dashing vice of the Hell-fire Club. It lived in story as it had never lived in fact. Sam visited the premises, on the day after the Club died, to wipe up the mess, thriftily to salve some untouched edibles for a coming wedding-feast, and by receiving and installing the bed to dedicate the house to better uses. Then he put the key in his pocket and took it to George. He had kept his bargain and now it was for George to keep his. There remained the question of Anne, and as a preliminary to its solution Sam had recommended Madge to look peaked. Madge, naturally inclined to that condition, had no difficulty in accentuating its appearance by recourse to the vinegar bottle until even Anne, intolerant as she was of small weaknesses, had to own that Madge looked unhappy and unwell. On the night before her wedding, Madge shut herself up in her bedroom whence the sounds as of a very ecstasy of woe penetrated to the kitchen. Yet her woe was not ecstatic and hardly woe at all. She wept because she was going to be married next day, because when one is going to be married next day one weeps. One brims with undefinable emotion and overflows into tears. But Anne, listening from the kitchen, where she sat with Sam, was moved to unaccustomed softness. “That girl is fretting sadly,” she said. “It’s a mort of trouble to be taking over a wastrel like George Chappie.” “Mother,” said Sam speculatively, “I wonder whether you have ever considered the influence of matter over mind?” “I’m considering the influence of something that does not matter,” she replied. “The influence of George Chappie.”