The Club of Queer Trades
is the author of several small works of devotion, and of a book of verse, entitled (unless my memory misleads me) Eglantine."
He uttered all this not only with deliberation, but with something that can only be called, by a contradictory phrase, eager deliberation. He had, I think, a vague memory in his head of the detectives in the detective stories, who always sternly require that nothing should be kept back.
"I then proceeded," he went on, with the same maddening conscientiousness of manner, "to Mr. Carr (not Mr. James Carr, of course; Mr. Robert Carr), who is temporarily assisting our organist, and, having consulted with him (on the subject of a choir boy who is accused, I cannot as yet say whether justly or not, of cutting holes in the organ pipes), I finally dropped in upon a Dorcas meeting at the house of Miss Brett. The Dorcas meetings are usually held at the vicarage, but, my wife being unwell, Miss Brett, a new-comer in our village, but very active in church work, had very kindly consented to hold them. The Dorcas society is en-
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