"Of course," he returned readily, though he looked a little doubtful at the mention of fun. "Christmas festivities are going out of fashion," he added slowly. "I am not sure it is not as well that is so. Too much merry-making leads to unseemly behaviour. It unsettles the people." "If anyone behaves in an unseemly manner we will put his name in the _Parish Magazine_," Mrs Chadwick said. "That punishment should act as a sufficient restraint on future occasions. The _Parish Magazine_ is the only thing that appals me in Moresby. I mistrust that organ. I am informed that in every issue there appears a sonnet by an anonymous poet. Where in Moresby do you conceal a poet?" She addressed this question to Mr Musgrave; but though she looked towards him expectantly, and waited a sufficient interval for his reply, there was no response forthcoming. Mr Musgrave evaded her glance, and appeared to regard the question as put generally, and the questioner as not expecting a reply. He looked, Mrs Chadwick observed, guilty. So John Musgrave was an anonymous poet as well as a confirmed bachelor. She determined to read before leaving his house some of John Musgrave's sonnets. CHAPTER EIGHT. Mrs Chadwick's departure was as abrupt, and therefore as disconcerting to Mr Musgrave, as her arrival had been. She announced her intention of going one morning, and on the following morning she left. This rapidity of movement, and extraordinary energy, reduced Mr Musgrave to a condition of bewildered breathlessness. He fetched Bradshaw's Guide for the purpose of looking up her train; but she had learnt all about the train service beforehand, and knew to the minute the time of her departure. There was nothing left for Mr Musgrave to do save order his car for a certain hour to take the ladies into Rushleigh. Most people would have been relieved to be spared further trouble; but John Musgrave was old-fashioned. He felt that in these matters it was fitting that the woman should depend on the man; just as he would prefer that a woman confronted with a burglar should scream for assistance rather than attempt an encounter with the intruder, physical courage being no more a womanly attribute than independence. But Mrs Chadwick belonged to a type of womanhood he had not met with before. She had made herself independent of the sterner sex. She would in all probability, if she encountered a burglar, tackle him; it was inconceivable that she would stop to scream. He supposed that residence abroad accounted possibly for these peculiarities. Women who lived in semi-civilised lands acquired characteristics unbecoming to their sex.