original design, except that the nether garments or knickerbockers were of rather a light and conspicuous shade of blue—I believe this colour tone is known vernacularly as robin blue—and she had

   seen fit to garnish their outer seams and the cuffs of the blouse with rows of white buttons of a pearl-like material and rather augmented size, which added a decorative but perhaps unnecessary touch of adornment.

   Also, if I may so express myself, there was a feeling of undue publicity about the throat, this being due to the open collar, and in the vicinity of the knees. I am somewhat slender of form, though not too slender, I take it, for my height, standing, as I do, five feet six inches in my half hose, and I trust I am free from the sin of personal vanity; but I confess that at the moment, contemplating my likeness in the mirror, I could have wished my knees had not been quite so prominently conspicuous, and that the projection of the thyroid cartilage of the larynx, called vulgarly Adam's apple, had been perhaps a trifle less obtrusive.

   To my slenderness I also attribute a feeling as though all was not well in the vicinity of the waistline, even though I tightened and retightened my belt so snugly as to cause some difficulty in respiring properly. From

   the time when I ceased to wear short trousers, which buttoned on, I have ever had recourse to braces or suspenders; and the lack of these useful but perhaps not beautiful adjuncts to a wardrobe gave a sensation of insecurity which, for the nonce, proved disconcerting in the extreme.

   Emotions that at this moment I find it hard to interpret in words actuated me to leave the house in a quiet and unostentatious fashion—by the back door, in fact—and to proceed on my way to the parish house, two blocks distant, along a rather obscure side street. I was perhaps halfway there when through the falling dusk I discerned, approaching from the opposite direction, three of my parishioners—a Mr. G. W. Pottinger, whom from our first acquaintance I suspected of possessing an undue sense of humour, and his daughters, the Misses Mildred and Mabel Pottinger.

   For the moment I was possessed by a mental condition I may define as being akin to embarrassment. Involuntarily I turned into the nearest doorway. My object was to avoid a meeting; I tell you this frankly. Immediately,

   however, I noted that the door I was about to enter was the door of a tobacco dealer's shop. As though 

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