The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection. W. Somerset Maugham

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      She had a class of village maidens, to whom she taught sewing, respect for their betters, and other useful things.

      "I was just telling Captain Parsons that you were an angel of mercy, Miss Clibborn."

      "I'm afraid I'm not that," replied Mary, gravely. "But I try to do my duty."

      "Ah!" cried Mr. Dryland, raising his eyes so that he looked exactly like a codfish, "how few of us can say that!"

      "I'm seriously distressed about my girls. They live in nasty little cottages, and eat filthy things; they pass their whole lives under the most disgusting conditions, and yet they're happy. I can't get them to see that they ought to be utterly miserable."

      "Oh, I know," sighed the curate; "it makes me sad to think of it."

      "Surely, if they're happy, you can want nothing better," said James, rather impatiently.

      "But I do. They have no right to be happy under such circumstances. I want to make them feel their wretchedness."

      "What a brutal thing to do!" cried James.

      "It's the only way to improve them. I want them to see things as I see them."

      "And how d'you know that you see them any more correctly than they do?"

      "My dear Jamie!" cried Mary; and then as the humour of such a suggestion dawned upon her, she burst into a little shout of laughter.

      "What d'you think is the good of making them dissatisfied?" asked James, grimly.

      "I want to make them better, nobler, worthier; I want to make their lives more beautiful and holy."

      "If you saw a man happily wearing a tinsel crown, would you go to him and say, 'My good friend, you're making a fool of yourself. Your crown isn't of real gold, and you must throw it away. I haven't a golden crown to give you instead, but you're wicked to take pleasure in that sham thing.' They're just as comfortable, after their fashion, in a hovel as you in your fine house; they enjoy the snack of fat pork they have on Sunday just as much as you enjoy your boiled chickens and blanc-manges. They're happy, and that's the chief thing."

      "Happiness is not the chief thing in this world, James," said Mary, gravely.

      "Isn't it? I thought it was."

      "Captain Parsons is a cynic," said Mr. Dryland, with a slightly supercilious smile.

      "Because I say it's idiotic to apply your standards to people who have nothing in common with you? I hate all this interfering. For God's sake let us go our way; and if we can get a little pleasure out of dross and tinsel, let us keep it."

      "I want to give the poor high ideals," said Mary.

      "I should have thought bread and cheese would be more useful."

      "My dear Jamie," said Mary, good-naturedly, "I think you're talking of things you know nothing about."

      "You must remember that Miss Clibborn has worked nobly among the poor for many years."

      "My own conscience tells me I'm right," pursued Mary, "and you see Mr. Dryland agrees with me. I know you mean well, Jamie; but I don't think you quite understand the matter, and I fancy we had better change the conversation."

      VII

      Next day Mary went into Primpton House. Colonel Parsons nodded to her as she walked up the drive, and took off his spectacles. The front door was neither locked nor bolted in that confiding neighbourhood, and Mary walked straight in.

      "Well, my dear?" said the Colonel, smiling with pleasure, for he was as fond of her as of his own son.

      "I thought I'd come and see you alone. Jamie's still out, isn't he? I saw him pass our house. I was standing at the window, but he didn't look up."

      "I daresay he was thinking. He's grown very thoughtful now."

      Mrs. Parsons came in, and her quiet face lit up, too, as she greeted Mary. She kissed her tenderly.

      "Jamie's out, you know."

      "Mary has come to see us," said the Colonel. "She doesn't want us to feel neglected now that she has the boy."

      "We shall never dream that you can do anything unkind, dear Mary," replied Mrs. Parsons, stroking the girl's hair. "It's natural that you should think more of him than of us."

      Mary hesitated a moment.

      "Don't you think Jamie has changed?"

      Mrs. Parsons looked at her quickly.

      "I think he has grown more silent. But he's been through so much. And then he's a man now; he was only a boy when we saw him last."

      "D'you think he cares for me any more?" asked Mary, with a rapid tremor in her voice.

      "Mary!"

      "Of course he does! He talks of you continually," said Colonel Parsons, "and always as if he were devoted. Doesn't he, Frances?"

      The old man's deep love for Mary had prevented him from seeing in Jamie's behaviour anything incongruous with that of a true lover.

      "What makes you ask that question, Mary?" said Mrs. Parsons.

      Her feminine tact had led her to notice a difference in Jamie's feeling towards his betrothed; but she had been unwilling to think that it amounted even to coldness. Such a change could be explained in a hundred natural ways, and might, indeed, exist merely in her own imagination.

      "Oh, he's not the same as he was!" cried Mary, "I don't know what it is, but I feel it in his whole manner. Yesterday evening he barely said a word."

      James had dined with the Clibborns in solemn state.

      "I daresay he's not very well yet. His wound troubles him still."

      "I try to put it down to that," said Mary, "but he seems to force himself to speak to me. He's not natural. I've got an awful fear that he has ceased to care for me."

      She looked from Colonel Parsons to his wife, who stared at her in dismay.

      "Don't be angry with me," she said; "I couldn't talk like this to anyone else, but I know you love me. I look upon you already as my father and mother. I don't want to be unkind to mamma, but I couldn't talk of it to her; she would only sneer at me. And I'm afraid it's making me rather unhappy."

      "Of course, we want you to treat us as your real parents, Mary. We both love you as we love Jamie. We have always looked upon you as our daughter."

      "You're so good to me!"

      "Has your mother said anything to annoy you?"

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