symbolic purport. They were bound to respect his views, for Mr. Ashmill had given out, with a hint of sardonic humour, that "Young Minas" was "indispensable" to him in his government shipbuilding project. Old Dave was universally suspected of a penchant for cheating all forms of orthodoxy on the sly, while conspicuously upholding them.
As befitted the leading family of Hale's Turning, the Ashmills patronized education. Mrs. Ashmill awarded an annual scholarship, and her daughter gave an annual "strawberry social" at which objects were sold for the purpose of raising funds to buy plaster models of "The Winged Victory" and lithographs of the Colosseum for the schoolhouse. The teachers were also invited once a year to dinner, and it was this rite that brought Paul into contact with Phœbe Meddar. So far he had only exchanged casual phrases with her at the post office where the villagers repaired every evening, ostensibly to collect letters, inostensibly to gossip. The ladylikeness which had vexed him on his first glimpse of Phœbe he now put down to constraint. It was most marked in the presence of Flora Ashmill, whose method of establishing her own superiority was to place everybody else at a disadvantage.
"How do you ever manage to keep it up year in and year out, Miss Meddar?" Flora murmured, referring to Phœbe's position in the village school.
"Oh, really, Miss Ashmill, it isn't so bad," Phœbe explained, hesitating between natural shyness and a desire to be hearty. "I actually enjoy it."
Paul leapt to the rescue. "Of course she does. You ladies who've been sheltered like beautiful greenhouse roses"—he paused a second to let Flora revel in it—"often miss one of life's best thrills: the thrill of fulfilling a responsibility."
Flora, who was plain and unloved, let her soul linger
