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Solution Manual for Contemporary Auditing
Real Issues and Cases 8th Edition by Knapp
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CASE 1.1
ENRON CORPORATION
Synopsis
Arthur Edward Andersen built his firm, Arthur Andersen & Company, into one of the
largest and most respected accounting firms in the world through his reputation for honesty and
integrity. “Think straight, talk straight” was his motto and he insisted that his clients adopt that
same attitude when preparing and issuing their periodic financial statements. Arthur Andersen’s
auditing philosophy was not rule-based, that is, he did not stress the importance of clients
complying with specific accounting rules because in the early days of the U.S. accounting
profession there were few formal rules and guidelines for accountants and auditors to follow.
Instead, Andersen invoked a substance-over-form approach to auditing and accounting issues. He
passionately believed that the primary role of the auditor was to ensure that clients reported fully
and honestly to the public, regardless of the consequences for those clients.
Ironically, Arthur Andersen & Co.’s dramatic fall from prominence resulted from its
association with a client known for aggressive and innovative uses of “accounting gimmicks” to
window dress its financial statements. Enron Corporation, Andersen’s second largest client, was
involved in large, complex transactions with hundreds of special purpose entities (SPEs) that it
used to obscure its true financial condition and operating results. Among other uses, these SPEs
allowed Enron to download underperforming assets from its balance sheet and to conceal large
operating losses. During 2001, a series of circumstances, including a sharp decline in the price of
Enron’s stock, forced the company to assume control and ownership of many of its troubled SPEs.
As a result, Enron was forced to report a large loss in October 2001, restate its earnings for the
previous five years, and, ultimately, file for bankruptcy in December 2001.
During the early months of 2002, Andersen became the focal point of attention among law
enforcement authorities searching for the parties responsible for Enron’s sudden collapse. The
accusations directed at Andersen centered on three key issues. The first issue had to do with the

2 Case 1.1 Enron Corporation
scope of professional services that Andersen provided to Enron. Critics charged that the enormous
consulting fees Enron paid Andersen impaired the audit firm’s independence. The second issue
stemmed from Andersen’s alleged role in Enron’s aggressive accounting and financial reporting
treatments for its SPE-related transactions. Finally, the most embarrassing issue was the massive
effort of Andersen’s Houston office to shred Enron audit documents, which eventually led to the
demise of the firm.

Case 1.1 Enron Corporation 3
Enron Corporation—Key Facts
1. Throughout Arthur E. Andersen’s life, “Think straight, talk straight” served as a guiding
principle for himself and Arthur Andersen & Co., the accounting firm that he founded.
2. Arthur Andersen’s reputation for honesty and integrity resulted in Arthur Andersen & Co.
gaining stature in the business community and growing into one of the nation’s leading accounting
firms by the time of his death in 1947.
3. Leonard Spacek succeeded Arthur Andersen as managing partner of Arthur Andersen & Co.
in 1947 and continued Andersen’s legacy of lobbying for more rigorous accounting, auditing, and
ethical standards for the public accounting profession.
4. When Spacek retired in 1973, Arthur Andersen & Co. was one of the largest and, arguably,
the most prominent accounting firm worldwide
5. The predecessor of Enron Corporation was an Omaha-based natural gas company created in
1930; steady growth in profits and sales and numerous acquisitions allowed Enron to become the
largest natural gas company in the United States by the mid-1980s.
6. During the 1990s, Kenneth Lay, Enron’s CEO, and his top subordinate, Jeffrey Skilling,
transformed the company from a conventional natural gas supplier into an energy trading
company.
7. Lay and Skilling placed a heavy emphasis on “strong earnings performance” and on increasing
Enron’s stature in the business world.
8. Enron executives used hundreds of SPEs (special purpose entities) to arrange large and
complex related party transactions that served to strengthen Enron’s reported financial condition
and operating results.
9. During 2001, Enron’s financial condition deteriorated rapidly after many of the company’s
SPE transactions unraveled; in December 2001, Enron filed for bankruptcy.
10. Following Enron’s collapse, the business press and other critics began searching for parties to
hold responsible for what, at the time, was the nation’s largest corporate bankruptcy.
11. Criticism of Andersen’s role in the Enron debacle focused on three key issues: the large
amount of consulting revenue the firm earned from Enron, the firm’s role in many of Enron’s SPE
transactions, and the efforts of Andersen personnel to destroy Enron audit documents.
12. Andersen’s felony conviction in June 2002 effectively ended the firm’s long and proud history
in the public accounting profession.
Instructional Objectives

1. To provide students with a brief overview of the history and development of the public
accounting profession in the United States.
2. To examine the “scope of services” issue, that is, the threats to auditor independence posed
by audit firms providing consulting services to their audit clients.
3. To examine the extent to which independent auditors should be involved in their clients’
decisions regarding important accounting and financial reporting issues.
4. To review recent recommendations made to strengthen the independent audit function.
5. To review auditors’ responsibilities regarding the preparation and retention of audit
workpapers.
Suggestions for Use
I typically begin an auditing course by discussing a major and widely publicized audit case.
Clearly, the Enron case satisfies those criteria. The purpose of presenting such a case early in the
semester is not only to acquaint students with the nature of auditing but also to make them aware
of why the independent audit function is so important. Many accounting students are not well
acquainted with the nature of the independent auditor’s work environment, nor are they generally
familiar with the critical role the independent audit function plays in our national economy.
Hopefully, cases such as this one provide students with a “reality jolt” that will stimulate their
interest in auditing and, possibly, make them more inclined to pursue a career in the auditing field.
The Enron case also serves as a good starting point for an auditing course since it provides
students with an overview of how the auditing profession developed and evolved in the United
States over the past century. The vehicle used to present this overview is the history of Arthur
Andersen & Co. You will find that the case attempts to contrast the “think straight, talk straight”
philosophy of Arthur E. Andersen, the founder of the Andersen firm, with the more business-
oriented approach to auditing that his predecessors adopted in the latter decades of the twentieth
century.
Consider asking one or more of your students to interview former Andersen personnel who
are graduates of your school. I have found that many former Andersen partners and employees
are more than willing to discuss their former employer and the series of events that led to the firm’s
sudden collapse. These individuals typically suggest that federal prosecutors’ efforts to “bring
down” the entire Andersen firm as a result of the document-shredding incident was not only
unnecessary but also inequitable, an argument that many members of the accounting profession—
including academics—find hard to refute.
Suggested Solutions to Case Questions
1. A large number of parties bear some degree of direct or indirect responsibility for the problems
that the Enron fiasco ultimately posed for the public accounting profession and the independent
audit function. The following bullet items identify several of these parties [see bold-facing] and
the role they played in the Enron drama.

•The leadership of the Andersen firm that allegedly focused too much attention on practice
development activities at the expense of the public service ideal embraced by Arthur E. Andersen
and other early leaders of the profession.
•Impertinent corporate executives who insisted on aggressive, if not illegal, accounting and
financial reporting treatments.
•Individual auditors who made shortsighted and/or unprofessional decisions that tainted the
perceived integrity of all auditors.
•Regulatory authorities that failed to take proactive measures to limit the ability of rogue
corporate executives, accountants, and auditors to circumvent their professional responsibilities.
•Academics who failed to goad their students into internalizing the accounting profession’s high
ethical principles.
2. One approach to answering this question is to review with your students the eight specific
types of non-audit services that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 prohibited auditors of public
companies from providing to their clients. Listed next are those eight non-audit services.
•Bookkeeping or other services related to the accounting records or financial statements of
the audit client
•Financial information systems design and implementation
•Appraisal or valuation services, fairness opinions, or contribution-in-kind reports
•Actuarial services
•Internal audit outsourcing services
•Management functions or human resources functions
•Broker or dealer, investment adviser, or investment banking services
•Legal services and expert services unrelated to the audit
Many of these services would eventually place auditors in situations in which they had to
effectively audit their own work. For example, auditors providing “financial information systems
design services” could be forced to evaluate the integrity of an accounting system they had
designed for an audit client.
Providing “human resources” functions, such as executive search services, to audit clients
could threaten auditors’ independence by causing them to evaluate the work product of high-
ranking client employees who they had recommended that a client hire.
An audit firm that provided some type of “expert service unrelated to the audit” could find
itself in a dicey situation if the given service proved to be less than expert quality. For example,
if an audit firm recommended to a client a strategy for dealing with a labor strike or other work
stoppage and that strategy proved ineffective, client executives would potentially have some
degree of leverage to extract concessions from the audit firm during subsequent audit
engagements.
3. Given the assumption that the Powers Report excerpts included in Exhibit 3 are accurate, one
could plausibly argue that Arthur Andersen violated several of the ten generally accepted auditing
standards, including the following:
•Independence (second general standard): by becoming too involved in Enron’s decisions for
important accounting and financial reporting treatments, the Arthur Andersen auditors may have
forfeited some degree of objectivity when they reviewed those decisions during the course of
subsequent audits.

•Due professional care (third general standard): any violation of one of the other nine GAAS
effectively results in a violation of the catchall due professional care standard.
•Planning and supervision (first fieldwork standard): a reliable quality control function,
including proper audit planning decisions and effective supervision/review during an audit, should
result in the identification of problematic situations in which auditors have become too involved
in client accounting and financial reporting decisions.
•Internal control evaluation (second fieldwork standard): one could argue that given the
critical and seemingly apparent defects in Enron’s internal controls, Andersen auditors failed to
gain a “sufficient understanding” of the client’s internal control system.
•Sufficient competent evidential matter (third fieldwork standard—under the current third
fieldwork standard the auditor must obtain “sufficient appropriate” audit evidence): many critics
suggest that Andersen’s deep involvement in Enron’s aggressive accounting and financial
reporting treatments may have precluded the firm from collecting sufficient competent evidence
to support the audit opinions issued on the company’s financial statements (that is, the Andersen
auditors may have been less than objective in reviewing/corroborating the client’s aggressive
accounting and financial reporting treatments).
•Reporting (fourth reporting standard): If Andersen did not maintain its independence and
objectivity while auditing Enron, the audit firm should have issued a disclaimer of opinion on the
company’s periodic financial statements.
4. Note: The PCAOB has established the documentation requirements for the audits of publicly
owned companies in PCAOB Auditing Standard No. 3, “Audit Documentation.” The
documentation requirements that pertain to audits of other organizations can be found in Statement
on Auditing Standards No. 103, “Audit Documentation,” that became effective for audits of
financial statements for periods ending on or after December 15, 2006.
SAS No. 103:
This standard has been integrated into AU Section 339. Paragraph .03 of AU 339 provides
the following general guidance to independent auditors.
“The auditor must prepare audit documentation in connection with each engagement in
sufficient detail to provide a clear understanding of the work performed (including the nature,
timing, extent, and results of audit procedures performed), the audit evidence obtained and its
source, and the conclusions reached. Audit documentation:
a. Provides the principal support for the representation in the auditor’s report that the
auditor performed the audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing
standards.
b. Provides the principal support for the opinion expressed regarding the financial
information or the assertion to the effect that an opinion cannot be expressed.”
Paragraph .32 of AU 339 notes that the “auditor should adopt reasonable procedures to retain
and access audit documentation for a period of time sufficient to meet the needs of his or her
practice and to satisfy any applicable legal or regulatory requirements for records retention.”
This paragraph goes on to note that the retention period for audit documentation “should not
be shorter than five years from the report release date.”

PCAOB No. 3:
This standard defines audit documentation as “the written record of the basis for the auditor’s
conclusions that provides the support for the auditor’s representations, whether those
representations are contained in the auditor’s report or otherwise” (para. .02). “Examples of audit
documentation include memoranda, confirmations, correspondence, schedules, audit programs,
and letters of representation. Audit documentation may be in the form of paper, electronic files,
or other media” (para. .04).
PCAOB No. 3 notes that there are three key objectives of audit documentation: “demonstrate
that the engagement complied with the standards of the PCAOB, support the basis for the auditor’s
conclusions concerning every major relevant financial statement assertion, and demonstrate that
the underlying accounting records agreed or reconciled with the financial statements” (para. .05).
This standard establishes an explicit benchmark that auditors can use to determine whether
audit documentation is “sufficient.” “Audit documentation must contain sufficient information to
enable an experienced auditor, having no previous connection with the engagement to: a)
understand the nature, timing, extent, and results of the procedures performed, evidence obtained,
and conclusions reached, and b) determine who performed the work and the date such work was
completed as well as the person who reviewed the work and the date of such review” (para. .06).
[Note: SAS No. 103 has a similar requirement—see AU 339.10.] PCAOB No. 3 generally
requires auditors to retain audit documentation for seven years from the date the auditor gave the
client permission to use the relevant audit report in connection with the issuance of a set of
financial statements.
Regardless of whether an audit client is a publicly owned company or another type of
organization, the audit workpapers are the property of the audit firm.
5. During and following the Enron debacle, wide-ranging recommendations were made by many
parties to strengthen the independent audit function. Listed next are several of these
recommendations, including certain measures that were incorporated in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act
of 2002.
•Establish an independent audit agency. Some critics have suggested that to “cure” the
paradoxical nature of the auditor-client relationship (that is, to eliminate the economic leverage
that clients have on their auditors), the independent audit function should be performed by a
government agency comparable to the Internal Revenue Service.
•Permit audit firms to provide only audit, reviews, compilations, and other “pure” attestation
services to their clients, that is, prohibit the provision of all non-audit services to audit clients. (As
mentioned in the suggested solution to Question 2, Sarbanes-Oxley prohibits audit firms from
providing eight specific consulting services to their audit clients.)
•Require that audit clients periodically rotate or change their independent audit firms.
(Sarbanes-Oxley requires that engagement and review partners be rotated every five years on audit
engagements involving public companies.)
•Establish an independent board to oversee the audits of public companies. (Sarbanes-Oxley
resulted in the creation of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board “to oversee the audit
of public companies that are subject to the securities laws . . .”)
•Require independent auditors to work more closely with their clients’ audit committees.
(Section 204 of Sarbanes-Oxley is entitled “Auditor Reports to Audit Committees” and delineates
the information that auditors should exchange with a client’s audit committee, including any
alternative accounting treatments “preferred” by the auditors.)
•Establish more explicit statutory requirements that prohibit client executives from interfering
with the work of their independent auditors. (Section 303 of Sarbanes-Oxley is entitled “Improper

Influence on Conduct of Audits.” This section of the federal law makes it unlawful for corporate
executives “to fraudulently influence, coerce, manipulate, or mislead” their company’s
independent auditors.”)
6. Many critics of our profession suggest that beginning in the latter part of the twentieth century
certain accounting firms gradually turned away from the public service ideal embraced by Arthur
E. Andersen and other early pioneers within the profession and, instead, adopted a somewhat
mercenary attitude toward the independent audit function. A key factor that certainly accelerated
this trend was the profession’s decision in the 1970s, with the goading of the Federal Trade
Commission and the courts, to drop bans on competitive bidding, client solicitation, and other
ethical rules that effectively restrained competition among audit firms. The elimination of those
rules enticed audit firms to begin competing against each other for the finite number of large
corporate audits. Practices such as “lowballing” to gain such clients allegedly resulted in audit
firms “cutting corners” on audits. Likewise, audit firms began vigorously marketing non-audit
services to supplement their suddenly low-margin audit services.
A related factor that allegedly contributed to the move away from the public service ideal was
the growing tendency for large audit firms to consider strong marketing skills, as opposed to strong
technical skills, as the key criterion in determining which individuals would be promoted to
partner. Finally, pure and simple greed is a factor that motivates most of us. The large and lucrative
market for business consulting services over the past few decades may have enticed audit firms to
focus more on becoming “strategic business advisers” to their clients rather than placing an
unrelenting emphasis on the quality of their audits of those clients’ financial statements.
7. In the spring of 2000, the SEC began requiring public companies to have their quarterly
financial reports (typically included in Form 10-Q filings) reviewed by their independent auditors.
(Note: AU Section 722, “Interim Financial Information,” provides guidance to auditors on the
“nature, timing, and extent of procedures to be applied” to a client’s interim financial information.)
Should quarterly reports be audited? In fact, many parties have advocated an even more
extreme measure, namely, that independent auditors continually monitor and report on the integrity
of their clients’ financial disclosures. In the current environment when information is distributed
so readily and widely to millions of investors and other decision makers, the validity or utility of
independent audits that focus on discrete time periods has been challenged. As recent history has
proven, by the time that auditors issue their reports on a client’s financial statements for some
discrete period, the “horse may already be out of the barn”—the “horse” in this case being the
damage to investors and other parties resulting from oversights and other misrepresentations in the
given financial statements. This problem could be cured, or, at least, mitigated to some extent, by
requiring auditors to provide real-time disclosures of potential problems in their clients’ financial
records.

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content

daughter at such a crisis. Think how she would have stage-managed
everything—even bought the ring.” The tragedy of his situation
mastered him. “Forgive my emotion—I was always one to wear my
heart on my sleeve.” He wiped his eyes on it again. “Nobody will
ever pack like Polly. Ah, thank you, ma,” he said, as Martha
reappeared with the brandy bottle. “Have you half a crown?” he
added, pouring himself out a careless quota. “You see,” he
explained, setting down his glass dolefully, and tendering Martha’s
half-crown to the astonished Jinny, “though old pals desert one at
the altar, Tony Flip doesn’t forget his obligations.”
“But what’s it for?” Jinny took the coin tentatively.
“You lent me it when that wicked Duke demanded money on the
contract.”
“Oh, thank you!” Jinny was touched—a half-crown seemed as
large as her cart-wheel nowadays. Half remorsefully she suggested
that a far better bridesmaid would be the girl at Foxearth Farm.
He shook his head. “I’ve been into that. But there are—
objections. It doesn’t do, you see, for the super to be taller than the
leading lady. Now you being shorter——”
“But if Miss Jones were to wear very low heels——”
“But that would only make Miss Purley look still taller,” he said,
puzzled.
“I mean Miss Purley to wear the low heels—she is a Miss Jones,
too.”
“What?”
“Blanche Jones is her name—she’s only old Purley’s
stepdaughter.”
He started up. “Then Mrs. Purley was formerly Mrs. Jones?”
“Yes.”
“Hurrah!” He seized the surprised Martha by the waist and began
waltzing with her, while Nip barked with excitement.
“Quiet, Nip! What’s the matter?” cried Jinny, smiling.

“A relation at last! Don’t you see that Mrs. Jones can give the
bride away?”
“But she’s not really a relation.”
“All these Joneses are one large family,” he said airily.
“But you don’t need a relation,” Martha pointed out. “A friend will
do.”
“Really? I must study the stage-directions—I mean,” he corrected
himself hastily, “yours may be different from the Church of England.”
“But I know all the same, for we weren’t allowed to marry in our
own chapels, leastways not till after Willie was born.”
“Well, anyhow, I’m sure Cleopatra would prefer a relation. Mrs.
Jones is a Churchwoman, I hope. It’s necessary, ma, you know,” he
apologized.
“Yes—her husband’s a churchwarden,” said Jinny.
“A churchwarden! Hurrah! Better and better. Then he shall give
Cleo away.” He bumped the beaming, breathless Martha round
again.
“But he isn’t even called Jones,” Jinny reminded him.
“A husband takes over his wife’s Jonesiness. Bless you, Jinny!” He
seized her hand and dragged her likewise into the circular
movement. “Now we go round the mulberry-bush, the mulberry-
bush, the mulberry-bush——”
Caleb, coming past the door at this instant, stood spellbound.
Had Mr. Flippance been really converted, and was it the joy of the
New Jerusalem? Or had Martha now “moved on,” and was this the
new dancing sect of which one heard rumours?
Martha’s caperings ceased at sight of him. “It’s the wedding,” she
said somewhat shamefacedly. “I’m just going to pickle your walnuts,
dear heart,” she added sweetly. “And Jinny must be getting to her
work, too.”
At which delicate hint, Jinny, faintly flushing, rose to take her
leave, and Nip, who had been whining his impatience, was already

gambolling hysterically without, before she remembered she had
forgotten the very purpose of her visit.
“Oh, by the way, Mr. Flippance,” she said, as she followed Nip, “I
suppose the wedding-gown is ordered.”
“Wedding-gown!” he repeated. “You don’t think Cleo has any
need of wedding-gowns! Why the Lady Agnes dress—Act One—is
the very prop. for the occasion, and brand new, for she had just got
Duke to put on The Mistletoe Bough. Otherwise I should have been
asking you for the address of that wonderful French friend of yours
—the bearded lady, you know. But if you won’t be a bridesmaid,
you’ve got to come to the show—yes, and the wedding breakfast too
—I won’t take any refusal. It’ll be at Foxearth Farm, and I’m ordering
oceans of sweet champagne. Well, thank you a million times for
finding Cleo a father. Good-bye, dear. God bless you!” He had
shuffled without and now kissed his hand to the moving cart.
“What about a new wedding-gown for you?” Jinny called back. “A
dressing-gown, I mean.”
“Yumorist!” came his chuckled answer.
VIII
Though not unconscious of a subterranean hostility in Martha,
which she put down to the new business rivalry, and though still
perturbed about the Duchess, Jinny felt distinctly better for this visit,
not to mention the half-crown, that now rare coin. She was still more
heartened two days later when Bundock brought a letter from Mr.
Flippance stating that, strange to say, Cleopatra did not find the
Lady Agnes dress suitable. It would make her feel she was only
playing at marrying, she said, and she was too respectful of holy
matrimony to desecrate it by any suggestion of unreality: indeed she
was already being fitted by the leading Chipstone artist. The dress
was, however, turning out so dubiously that she would be glad if
Jinny’s French friend would call upon her at Foxearth Farm with a
view to preparing a “double.” As for Jinny being bridesmaid, he must

reluctantly ask her to abandon the idea, as Cleopatra considered her
too short.
“That’s the Flippance fist,” said Bundock, lingering to watch her
read the letter, “scrawls all over the shop. I don’t mind your
answering by post,” he added maliciously, “now I’ve got to go there
so much. I often kill—he, he, he!—two frogs with one stone now. So
you’re to be bridesmaid, Tony tells me.”
“Nothing of the sort,” said Jinny, “and mind your own business.”
“It is my business,” he said in an aggrieved tone. “Didn’t he ask
me to be best man? As if in this age of reason I could take part in
superstitious rites!”
“I don’t see any superstition about marrying,” said Jinny.
“I’m not so sure—tying a man to a woman like a dog to a barrel.
But anyhow, why drag in heaven?”
“Because marriages are made there, I suppose,” said Jinny.
“Stuff and nonsense! And then the rice and the old shoes they
throw!”
“I saw you throw one when your sister got married.”
“Maybe. But I didn’t believe in it.”
“Then why did you throw it?”
He hesitated a moment. “They say if you don’t believe in it, it’s
even luckier than if you do.”
Jinny laughed heartily.
“I’m not joking!” Bundock declared angrily.
“If you were, I shouldn’t be laughing,” said Jinny.
“Oh well, go to church!” Bundock retorted in disgust. “And I hope
the beadle will give you an extra prod next Sunday.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t pretend. Everybody knows that church is a double torture
—first the parson sends you to sleep with his sermon, and then the
verger wakes you up with his rod.”
Jinny laughed again.

“Don’t tell me!” said Bundock. “My own father was forced to go—
all the labourers on the estate, poor chaps, dead-sleepy after the
week’s work, and that rod used to puggle ’em about. No wonder dad
chucked both squire and parson.”
“It doesn’t happen in Mr. Fallow’s church,” Jinny assured him.
“Because nobody goes!” And Bundock hurried off with this great
last word, and Jinny saw his bag heaving with the mirthful
movement of his shoulders.
Somewhat to Jinny’s surprise, Miss Gentry from being Cleopatra’s
alternative dressmaker developed into her adorer, it appearing that
the lady displayed not only proportions most pleasing to the
technical eye—“just made for clothes,” Miss Gentry put it—but a
positive appetite for tracts. She loathed Dissent, it transpired, and to
be married by a minister would seem to her little better than living in
sin. A very paragon of propriety and an elegant pillar of the faith,
Miss Cleopatra Jones, spinster, worshipped regularly with the
churchwarden and his family in the wrong parish church. Miss
Gentry, ravished by this combination of respectability and romance,
did not once compel the fair client to attend upon her, travelling to
Foxearth Farm instead in Jinny’s cart. It was impossible for Jinny’s
doubts of Cleopatra’s immaculacy to survive Miss Gentry’s
encomiums. While Miss Gentry ascended to the bedroom of her
beautiful and still golden-haired client, posed in an atmosphere of
old oak bedsteads and panelled linen presses, Jinny would sit with
the second Mrs. Purley in her dairy—a cheerful, speckless room
which enjoyed a specially spacious window, dairies being immune
from the window-tax—while that bulkier edition of Blanche made
cheeses and conversation. Mrs. Purley made conversation
irrespective of her auditor, for she needed no collaborator: indeed a
second party coming athwart this Niagara of monologue would have
been swept aside like a straw.
As a great musician can take a few simple notes, and out of this
theme evoke endless intricacies, enlargements, repetitions, echoes,
duplications, parallelisms, and permutations, and then transform the
whole into another key and give it you all over again, so out of a

simple happening, like her feeding of a sick chicken, or her discovery
that a hen had laid her clutch in the hedge, Mrs. Purley, without for
a moment interrupting the milling of curd or the draining of whey,
could improvise a fugal discourse that went ramifying and returning
upon itself ad infinitum. It reminded Jinny of Kelcott Wood, where
every day from three to five, on these September afternoons,
hundreds of starlings, perched like bits of black coal on the
mountain-ashes, kept up a ceaseless chattering, shrilling, clucking,
querying, cackling.
But she soon ceased to hear Mrs. Purley, was even lulled by the
cascade. Very familiar grew every pan, dipper, vat, tub, press,
cheese-cloth, or straw-mat, while the one readable article she knew
by heart. It was the inscription on a china mug, in which Mrs. Purley
sometimes put milk, and it recorded the virtues of a black-haired,
black-whiskered head painted thereon. “The Incorruptible
Patriot. . . . The Undaunted Supporter of the People’s Rights. . . .
The Father of the Fatherless. . . . The Pride and Glory of his Country”
. . . such were a few of the attributes ascribed, with a profuseness
resembling Mrs. Purley’s conversation, to a certain Henry Brougham,
Esq., who, as Jinny learnt from Miss Gentry, was really and truly “a
love,” having defended Queen Caroline when Miss Gentry was a
schoolgirl. Queens were as liable to ill-luck as herself, Jinny began to
suspect, recalling that Egyptian asp, and she became a little anxious
for Victoria, who now came to figure in her dreams, as defended
against French fire-eaters by this black-avised man, with the
protruding nose, retreating forehead, and weak chin. Somehow—it
was unintelligible when she woke up, but quite clear in her dream—
the defended Victoria was also herself, for was not Henry Brougham
“The Father of the Fatherless”?
Adjoining the dairy was a room, lit from it—to avoid taxation—by
a pane in the door. Jinny sometimes had an uneasy sense that
Blanche was inspecting her through that pane. Otherwise she hardly
ever encountered the vespacide, who betrayed indeed no sense of
rivalry, for the relations between Will and the little Carrier were

unknown, and Blanche would, in any case, have considered so
humble a personage negligible or at least nippable.
For if this handsome creature was—as she had struck Jinny-a
shade overripe, it was not for lack of volunteer pluckers, and the
mutability which Mr. Giles Purley had gently derided in his son had
been even more marked in his stepdaughter. Fortunately Will was
unaware of the episodes that had preceded his return to England.
And not only did he regard himself as the first male that had ever
squeezed that fair hand, but, untaught by its prowess as a wasp-
killer, he believed her a passive victim to his own compelling charm.
And the apparent perfection of Blanche’s surrender was the more
grateful to him after the granite he had kept striking in Jinny. But the
mobility which had hitherto marked Miss Blanche’s affections was
now manifesting itself in a novel shape, for like Miss Gentry, she had
come under the spell of Cleopatra, though a very different Cleopatra
from the ardent Churchwoman who revealed herself to the
dressmaker. The Cleopatra who magnetized the cheese-maker’s
daughter, and who, carelessly abetted by Mr. Flippance’s sketchy
promises, filled the ignorant girl with dramatic and palpitating
ambitions, was a queen of the footlights, an inspirer of romantic
passions, and in her unguarded moments—as when you sat on her
bed at midnight with your hair down—a teller of strange Bohemian
stories, a citer of perturbing Sapphic songs, the melodies of which
she could even whistle. What wonder if Mrs. Hemans—Blanche’s
favourite poet hitherto—began to pall! She had been proud enough
of her culture, leaving, as she felt it did, the parental perspectives
far behind her; but now boundless horizons seemed opening up
before her, and the London Journal which Cleopatra swallowed with
her meals seemed to Blanche to contain nothing so alluring as
Cleopatra’s own career.
It was by quite accidentally overhearing a remark of Blanche’s,
and not by dint of Mr. Flippance’s repeated invitation, that Jinny was
finally strung up to attend the great wedding. The probability that
Will and Blanche would be at the feast was a drawback that
prevailed over the lure of a good square meal, and even over the

glamour of that mysterious nectar—champagne. But when she heard
Blanche instruct her mother that she would certainly not have to lay
a place for “that common carrier,” in a flame that might almost have
consumed her letter-paper, Jinny wrote her acceptance to Mr.
Flippance, and expended his half-crown, which she had laid by for a
rainy day, on a wedding present which would do him good—a Bible,
to wit.
In prevision of the great day she left off wearing her best gown,
cleaned it, and by the aid of Miss Gentry and a bit of lace gave it a
new turn. After the wedding it must, alas, be pawned! Jinny, though
she had hitherto entered the pawnshop only to pledge or redeem
things for her customers, had schooled herself to the inevitable. So
had Mr. Flippance, whose idea of a best man had now sunk to
Barnaby. But he was used to handling unpromising performers, he
said, though he regretted the absence of a dress rehearsal, more
especially for Mrs. Purley, who, having been induced to mother
Cleopatra (nothing would induce Mr. Purley to father her), was
unlikely, he feared, to confine herself to a simple “I do.” That was
not, he groaned drolly, her idea of a speaking part. He deplored, too,
that there were not enough bells or bell-ringers in the Little
Bradmarsh church to ring an elaborate joy-peal, as Cleopatra was so
anxious to have every property and accessory of holy matrimony
complete. It was for this reason, doubtless, that Miss Gentry, after
reducing the rival dress to a rag, ultimately emerged as the
bridesmaid.
IX
For the convenience of Foxearth Farm, as well as of Will, who,
though a bit sulky about his mother’s waiting on the Showman, was
too entangled with Miss Purley to refuse to grace the festal board,
the ceremony had been fixed for a Saturday at ten, and on that
morning Jinny had meant to rise with the sun, so as to do the bulk
of her day’s chares in advance. What was her dismay, therefore, to

open blinking eyes on her grandfather standing over her pseudo-bed
in his best Sunday smock, whip in hand, and to hear through her
wide-flung casement Methusalem neighing outside and the cart
creaking!
“Am I late?” she gasped, sitting up. Then she became aware of a
beautiful blue moonlight filling the room with glory, and of a lambent
loveliness spreading right up to the stars sprinkled over her slit of
sky.
“ ’Tis your wedding-day, dearie,” said the ghostly figure of the
Gaffer, and she now perceived there were wedding favours on his
whip, evidently taken from Methusalem’s May Day ribbons, which he
must have hunted out of the “glory-hole” where odds and ends were
kept.
Bitterly she regretted having excited his brain by informing him of
her programme. He was evidently prepared to drive her to the
ceremony.
“But it’s too early,” she temporized.
“Ye’ve got to be there for breakfus, you said, dearie,” he
reminded her.
“No, no,” she explained. “The wedding breakfast with fashionable
folk is only a sort of bever or elevener at earliest.”
He chuckled. “Ye’re gooin’ to be rich and fashionable—won’t it
wex that jackanips! Oi suspicioned ’twas you he war arter the fust
time he come gawmin’ to the stable. Ye can’t deceive Daniel
Quarles. On your hands and knees, ye pirate thief!” He cracked his
whip fiercely. “Up ye git, Jinny, ye’ve got to titivate yerself. Oi’ve put
the water in your basin.”
“But Gran’fer,” she said, acutely distressed, “it’s not my wedding.”
“Not your wedding!”
“Of course not.”
“Then whose wedding be it?” he demanded angrily. “ ’Tain’t mine,
seein’ as Oi’m too poor to keep Annie though she’s riddy of her

rascal at last.” He seized her wrists and shook her. “Why did you lie
to me and make a fool o’ me?”
So this was why Gran’fer had embraced her so effusively last
night when she avowed her programme for the morrow; this was
why he had given her blessings in lieu of the expected reproaches
for her projected absence; this was why he had gone up to bed
humming his long-silent song: “Oi’m seventeen come Sunday.”
It was a mistake, she felt now, to have stayed at home for his
sake on the Friday, changing the immemorial day of absence. He
had been strange all day, without grasping what was the cause of
his unrest, and Nip’s parallel uneasiness had reacted upon him. It
was not, however, till she had incautiously remarked that
Methusalem too was off his feed, that he cried out in horror that she
had forgotten to go on her rounds. Smilingly she assured him she
had not forgotten: indeed the void in her whole being occasioned by
the loss of Mother Gander’s gratis meal had been a gnawing
reminder since midday. But imagining—and not indeed untruly—that
her work was gone, he had burst into imprecations on “the pirate
thief.”
As she sat up now on her mattress, helpless in her grief, her
mind raced feverishly through the episode, recalling every word of
the dialogue, unravelling his senile misapprehension; half wilful it
seemed to her now, in his eagerness to clutch at happier times.
“It’s nothing to do with the coach competition, Gran’fer. It’s only
because I’ve got to be out to-morrow for a wedding!”
“A wedding! She ain’t marrying agen?”
“Who?”
“Annie.”
“Annie? Which Annie?”
“There’s onny one Annie. ’Lijah’s mother.”
“Old Mrs. Skindle! What an idea! It’s a friend of mine, a
gentleman you’ve never seen.”

At this point she had had, she remembered, the fatal idea of
showing him her furbished-up frock to soothe him, for he was
trembling all over.
“Would you like to see what I’m going to wear?”
She understood now the new light that had shot into his eye as
he touched the lace trimming.
“Similar-same to what your Great-Aunt Susannah wore the day
she married that doddy little Dap! Ye ain’t a-gooin’ to make a fool o’
yerself similar-same. Who’s the man?” he had demanded fiercely.
“You don’t know him, I told you—it’s a Mr. Flippance!”
A beautiful peace had come over the convulsed face. “Flippance!
Ain’t that the gent what’s come to live in Frog Farm? That’s a fust-
class toff, no mistake. Uncle Lilliwhyte should be tellin’ me, when he
come with the watercress on Tuesday, as Mr. Flippance pays a pound
a week for hisself alone!”
That was the point at which her grandfather had kissed her with
effusion, crying: “Ye’ll be in clover, dearie!” while she, licking her
chaps at the thought of the morrow’s banquet, had playfully
answered that there would certainly be “a mort to eat.” The prospect
set him clucking gleefully.
“Spite o’ that rapscallion!” he had chuckled, enlarging thereupon
to her on the way the Lord protects His righteous subjects, and
enlivening his discourse with adjurations to “the pirate thief” to take
to his hands and knees. Had followed reproaches for hiding the
news from him, reproaches to Mr. Flippance for not calling on him,
not even inviting him to the wedding: soothing explanations from
her that Mr. Flippance knew he was too poorly to go that far;
assurances she would be back as early as possible.
She ought to have understood his delusion or self-delusion, she
thought, when he had clung to her in a sudden panic.
“Then ye will come back—ye ain’t leavin’ me to starve! Ye won’t
let that jackanips starve me out?”

And when she had reassured him, and caressed him, even
promised to bring him something tasty from the wedding breakfast,
he had gripped her harder than ever—she could still feel his bony
fingers on her wrist—but of course they actually were on her wrists
as she sat there now against her pillow—“ye’ll live here with me—
same as afore!”
“Why ever shouldn’t I?” she had answered in her innocence.
“We’ll always live with you—Methusalem, Nip, all of us.” What
unlucky impulse of affection or reassurance had made her stoop
down to kiss the dog in his basket—all her being burnt with shame
at the remembrance of her grandfather’s reply, though at the time it
had touched her to tears.
“God bless ye, Jinny. Oi know this ain’t a proper bedroom for
you, but Oi’ll sleep here if you like, and do you and he move up to
mine.”
She had put by the offer gently. “Nonsense, Gran’fer. You can’t
shift at your age—or Nip either.”
“Oi bain’t so old as Sidrach,” he had retorted, not without
resentment, “and Oi doubt he ain’t left off bein’ a rollin’ stone. And
Oi reckon Oi can fit into that chest of drawers better than when Oi
was bonkka.”
But the shrivelled form, with the hollow cheeks, flaming eyes,
and snowy beard, was still shaking her angrily, and her sense of his
pathos vanished in a sick fear, not so much for herself, though his
fingers seemed formidably sinister, as for his aged brain under this
disappointment. “Why did you say ’twas your wedding morn?”
The Dutch clock, providentially striking three, offered a fresh
chance of temporizing.
“There, Gran’fer! Can’t be my wedding morn yet, only three
o’clock!”
He let go her hands. “Ain’t ye ashamed to have fun with your
Gran’fer?” he asked, vastly relieved. “But it’s a middlin’ long drive to
Chipstone before breakfus.”
“It’s not at Chipstone—the wedding’s at Little Bradmarsh.”

“Oh!” he said blankly.
“So there’s lots of time, Gran’fer, and you can go back to bed.”
“Not me! Do, Oi mightn’t wake in time agen.”
“I’ll wake you—but I’ll be fit for nothing in the morning, if I don’t
go to sleep now.”
“The day Oi was married,” he chuckled, “Oi never offered to sleep
the noight afore—ne yet the noight arter! He, he!”
“Go away, Gran’fer!” she begged frantically. “Let me go to sleep.”
“Ay, ay, goo to sleep, my little mavis. Nobody shan’t touch ye.
What a pity we ate up that wedding-cake! But Oi had to cut a shiver
to stop his boggin’ and crakin’, hadn’t Oi, dearie?”
“Quite right. Better eat wedding-cake than humble-pie!” she
jested desperately.
“Ef he comes sniffin’ around arter you’re married, Oi’ll snap him
in two like this whip!”
“Don’t break my whip!” She clutched at the beribboned butt.
“That’s my whip, Jinny! Let that go!”
“Well, go to bed then!” With a happy thought, she lit the tallow
candle on her bedside chair and tendered it to him. It operated as
mechanically upon his instinctive habits as she had hoped.
“Good night, dearie,” he said, and very soon she heard him
undressing as usual, and his snore came with welcome rapidity.
Then she sprang out of bed, pulled on some clothes, and ran out to
release the angry and mystified Methusalem from the shafts and to
receive his nuzzled forgiveness in the stable. But when she got back
to bed, sleep long refused to come; the sense of her tragic situation
was overwhelming. Even the great peace of the moonlit night could
not soak into her. It was impossible to go to the wedding now, she
felt. When at last sleep came, she was again incomprehensibly
Queen Victoria hemmed in by foes, and protected only by “The
Father of the Fatherless” with his black whiskers. She awoke about
dawn, unrefreshed and hungry, but a cold sponging from the basin
her grandfather had prepared enabled her to cope with the labours

of the day. She looked forward with apprehension to the scene with
the old man when he should realize that the grand match was
indeed off, but she could think of nothing better than going about in
her dirtiest apron to keep his mind off the subject. The precaution
proved unnecessary. He slept so late and so heavily—as if a weight
was off his mind—that when he at last awoke he seemed to have
slept the delusion off, as though it were something too recent to
remain in his memory. As for the scene in the small hours, that had
apparently left no impress at all upon his brain. In fact, so jocose
and natural was he at breakfast, which she purposely made prodigal
for him, that the optimism of the morning sun, which came
streaming in, almost banished her own memory of it too: it seemed
as much a nightmare as her desperate struggle against the foes of
Victoria-Jinny. The lure of the wedding jaunt revived, and the
thought of the domestic economy she would be achieving thereby,
made her sparing of her own breakfast. She had a bad moment,
however, when her grandfather suddenly caught sight of the
horseless cart outside.
“Stop thief!” he cried, jumping up agitatedly.
Jinny was vexed with herself. To have left that reminder of the
grotesque episode!
“It’s that ’Lijah!” he shrieked. “He’s stole Methusalem.”
“Hush, Gran’fer!” she warned him. “Suppose anybody heard you!”
But he ran out towards the Common and she after him. His
tottering limbs seemed galvanized.
“My horse is all right,” she gasped, catching him up in a few rods.
“I was too tired yesterday to put my cart away, that’s all.”
He turned and glared suspiciously at her. “That’s my hoss—and
my cart, too! Can’t you read the name—‘Daniel Quarles, Carrier.’ But
ye won’t never let me put no padlock on my stable!”
“Your horse is there safe—come and see!”
He allowed himself to be led to the soothing spectacle.

“But Oi’ll put a padlock at once, same as in my barn,” he said
firmly. “Don’t, that rascal ’Lijah will grab him without tippin’ a
farden!”
X
The overlooked cart proved a blessing, not a calamity, for the
operation of padlocking the stable-door before the horse was stolen
so absorbed the Gaffer that Jinny found it possible, after all, to don
her finery and slip off to the wedding unseen even of Nip, who was
supervising the new measures for Methusalem’s safety. Curiosity to
see Miss Gentry’s creation in action had combined with the pangs of
appetite and her acceptance of the invitation to make temptation
irresistible, and she calculated that she could be back by noon, and
that, pottering over his vegetable patch or his Bible, the old man
would scarcely notice her absence.
When she reached the church, she found the coach stationed
outside, and though the liveried guard was lacking to-day, the black
horses looked handsomer than ever with their red wedding-favours,
while the pea-green polish of the vehicle reduced her to a worm-like
humility at the thought of the impossibility of her cart taking part in
to-day’s display. Evidently Will had brought the bridegroom from
Frog Farm. Out of the corner of her eye she espied Will himself,
sunning himself on his box, and her heart thumped, though all she
was conscious of was the insolent incongruity of his pipe with the
occasion, the edifice, his new frock-coat, and the posy in its
buttonhole. Fearing she was late, she hurried into the church. But
nothing was going on, though the size of the congregation—far
larger than usual—was an exciting surprise. There was no sign of
any of the wedding-party, not even Mr. Flippance, and after
imperceptibly saluting her Angel-Mother, she sank back into a rear
pew, half pleased to have missed nothing, half uneasy lest there be
a delay. Turning over a Prayer Book in search of the Wedding
Service, she came for the first time, and not without surprise, on the

Fifth of November Thanksgiving “for the happy deliverance of King
James I and the Three Estates of England from the most traitorous
and bloody-intended massacre by Gunpowder: And also for the
happy Arrival of King William on this Day, for the Deliverance of our
Church and Nation.” King William’s arrival struck her as providential
but confusing—for though he had apparently detected the Popish
barrels in the nick of time, how came there to be two kings at once?
Suddenly she was aware, by some tingling telegraphy, that the bride
and bridesmaid had arrived outside in a grand open carriage. Mr.
Fallow in his surplice came in at the clerk’s intimation and took up
his position at the altar rails, the musicians struck up “The Voice that
Breathed o’er Eden,” and then there was a sudden faltering, and a
whispering took place ’twixt parson and clerk, and Mr. Fallow was
swallowed again by his vestry, while the clerk disappeared through
the church door. It was realized that Mr. Flippance was not in the
church, and it was understood that the bride’s face was being saved
in the vestry, where, however, as time passed, the agitated
congregation divined hysterics.
Jinny—thinking of her neglected grandfather—was what he called
“on canterhooks.” Had Mr. Flippance not then come in the coach,
had he been carelessly left in bed as usual? Catching her Angel-
Mother’s eye, she received a distinct injunction to go out in search of
him, but she was too shy to move in the presence of all those
people, though she had a vision of herself frantically harnessing
Methusalem and carting the bridegroom to church in his dressing-
gown—would carpet slippers be an impediment to matrimony, she
wondered. Mr. Fallow came in again, looking so worried that she
recalled an ecclesiastical experience he had related to her: how one
of his parishioners, nowadays a notorious Hot Gospeller, had “found
religion” on the very verge of setting out to be married, and had
passed so much time on his knees, absorbed in the newly felt truth,
that it was only through his friend the bell-ringer stopping the
church clock that he was married by noon; if indeed—a doubt which
ever after weighed on Mr. Fallow—he was legally married at all.
What if at this solemn moment of his life Mr. Flippance should

similarly find religion! She devoutly hoped the discovery would be at
least delayed till he was safely married. Good heavens! perhaps the
Bible she had given him was in fault! Perhaps she was responsible
for his rapt remissness. Disregarding the congregation’s eyes, she
went boldly into the vestry.
Here, sure enough, she found the heroine of the day supported
by a trio of ladies. The outstanding absence of Mr. Flippance left
Jinny but a phantasmagoric sense of a bride, still composed indeed,
but so ghastly that despite her glamour of veil-folds and orange-
blossom she scarcely looked golden-haired; of a bridesmaid hardly
recognizable as Miss Gentry, for the opposite reason that it was she
with her swarthy splendour, opulent bosom, and glory of silk and
flowers who seemed the Cleopatra; of a Blanche so appallingly
queenly in her creamier fashion under the art of the rival
dressmaker, that her own cleaned gown seemed but to emphasize
her shabbiness and dowdiness. Acoustically the voice of Mrs. Purley
expatiating on the situation was the dominant note, but through and
beneath the cascade Jinny was aware of Miss Gentry explaining to
the bride that the horses which had brought the bridegroom were
not responsible for his disappearance. Not unpropitious, but of the
finest augury were these sable animals, omens going by contraries.
So they had brought Mr. Flippance!
They were tossing their bepranked heads, Jinny found, and
champing their bits, as if sharing in the human unrest. Will was no
longer smoking placidly on his box, but in agitated parley with
Barnaby and his father. She heard the inn suggested, and saw the
Purleys posting towards it. She herself ran round to the tower,
fantastically figuring Mr. Flippance on his knees on the belfry floor
amid the ropes and the cobwebs, but even the one bell-ringer
seemed to have sallied in search of the bridegroom, or at least of
the inn.
The churchyard was large and rambling and thickly populated—
pathetic proof there had been life in the church once—and it was in
a sequestered corner behind a tall monument that Jinny with a great
upleap of the heart at last espied the object of her quest, though he

seemed even more unreal than Miss Gentry in his narrow-brimmed
top-hat, satin stock with horseshoe pin, and swallowtail coat, while
his face was as white as his waistcoat.
“What are you doing?” came involuntarily to her lips.
“Reading the tombstones,” he said wistfully. “So peaceful!”
“But they’re waiting for you!”
“They’re waiting for everybody. That’s the joke of it all.”
“I don’t mean the gravestones.”
“Look! There’s a French inscription. And that name must be
Flemish, see!”
“I haven’t time!”
“Why, what have you got to do?”
“I mean, you haven’t got time. It’s your wedding!”
“Don’t rub it in! What long grass! So we go to grass—all of us.
Thanks for your Bible, by the way!”
So her apprehensions had been right. It was religion that was
bemusing him.
“So glad you like it. Come along!” she said in rousing accents.
“All flesh is grass,” he maundered on. “And rank grass at that!”
“It’s only thick here because they can’t mow this bit,” she
explained. “Too many tombs!” She plucked at his sleeve.
“So it’s hay we run to!” he said, disregarding her “O Lord! Mr.
Fallow’s tithes, I suppose.”
“Well, why waste good hay? He’s waiting for you.”
“Well, he’s got plenty of time by all accounts.”
“I mean, she’s waiting,” she cried, in distress.
“Is she there already? Look at that bird cracking its snail on the
gravestone.”
“It’s an early bird—you’ll be late.”
“Don’t worry. Tony Flip never missed his cue yet. Funny, isn’t it,
how it all comes right at night—especially with Polly there! Perhaps

she’ll come, if we give her a little time.”
“But have you invited her? Does she know?”
“If she don’t, it’s not for want of telegrams to every possible
address.”
“But she may be in Cork, you said. You can’t keep the bride
waiting.”
“She shouldn’t have come so early—it’s the first time I’ve known
her punctual. The early bird catches the snail, eh?”
“But it’s half-past ten! And there’s a crowd too—I don’t know
where they all come from. Come along!”
“One can’t consider the supers!”
“Well, consider me then. I’ve got to get back to Gran’fer!”
“The true artist always has stage-fright, Jinny. Give me a
moment. I’ll be on soon.”
“All right.” She was vastly relieved. “Have you got the ring?”
“Tony Flip never forgets a property. See!” And whisking it
suddenly out of his waistcoat pocket, he seized her left hand and
slipped it on her gloved wedding-finger. “That’s where it ought to be,
Jinny!”
She pulled it off, outraged, and flung it from her.
“On your wedding day, too!” she cried.
“Now it’s lost,” he said cheerfully, “and the bearded bridesmaid
will have to go home with the unblushing bride.”
“You ought to have given it to Barnaby,” she said.
Anxious and remorseful, she went on her knees, groping
feverishly in the long grass. “On your hands and knees” kept
sounding irrelevantly in her brain. Mr. Flippance watched her like a
neutral. “I’d forgotten that the woman runs away with the piece,” he
explained to her distracted ear. “I thought marriage was a show with
two principals. But if there’s got to be a leading lady, why not stick
to Polly?”
“You should have thought of that before,” she murmured.

“Correct as Polonius, Jinny. Even when I get the theatre, it’ll only
be hell over again. Why couldn’t I stick to the marionettes? I charge
thee fling away ambition, Jinny—by that sin fell the angels. But
you’ve only flung away my ring.”
“Here it is!” She pounced joyfully.
“Just my luck!” He took it ruefully.
“I thought you said she was so pure and wonderful!” she
reminded him.
He winced. “That wouldn’t prevent her bullying me,” he replied
somewhat lamely.
“What about the taming of the shrew?” she asked.
“By Jove! You’re right, Jinny! Petruchio’s the game! Whips and
scorpions, what?” His face took on a little of its old colour. “It’s
getting up so early that has upset me. After all, Jinny, a lovely
woman who loves you and puts all her money on you isn’t to be
picked up every day.”
“Of course not. Anyhow it’s too late to change now.”
“Don’t say that! As if I didn’t want to change before there was
anything to change—oh, you know what I mean.”
“It’s too late now!” she repeated firmly. She stood over him, a
stern-faced little monitor of duty. “Come along!”
“Go ahead—the rose-wreathed victim will be at the altar.”
They moved on a little. He paused as with sudden hopefulness.
“You don’t happen to know if there’s a great oak chest with a spring
lock in Foxearth Farm?”
“How should I know?” she murmured, apprehensive now for his
reason.
He sighed. “Well, never mind—it’ll all be all right at night. And
what’s it all for, anyhow? ‘Wife of the above,’ ” he read out weirdly.
“How they cling on!”
But Jinny had gone off into a reverie of her own. The tombstone
formula he had recited struck a long-buried memory, and in a flash
she saw again a quiet graveyard and a stone behind a tumbledown

tower, and Commander Dap’s black-gloved forefinger tracing out her
mother’s epitaph to a strange solemn little girl. All the wonder and
glamour of childhood was in that flash, all the strangeness of life and
time, and her eyes filled with tears. When the mist cleared away, Mr.
Flippance was gone. She ran frantically around among the tombs like
a sheep-dog till at length the sound of Mr. Fallow’s ecclesiastical
voice floated out to her, and hurrying back into the church, she felt
foolish and tranquillized to find the service well forward.
XI
Jinny had misread Mr. Fallow’s look: it was not fear of dragging
on beyond the legal hour—noon was still too remote—but
impatience at being kept away from his antiquarian lore by such
trifles as matrimony, especially matrimony which was no longer, as in
pre-Reformation days, preceded by the Holy Communion and
symbolic of the union of Christ and His Church. Had there been a
care-cloth to be thrown over the couples’ heads, such as existed in
Essex churches in 1550, even matrimony might have interested him.
But as it was, his thoughts ran on old cheeses. He had been
comparing his Latin edition of Camden’s “Britannia” (1590) with the
two-volume folio translation, a century later, by a worthy bishop, and
was half scandalized, half excited, to find that the translator had
introduced a wealth of new matter. Incidentally Mr. Fallow had
learned the Hundred was celebrated for its huge cheeses—inusitatæ
magnitudinis—of ewes’ milk, and that to make them the men milked
the ewes like women elsewhere. And these huge cheeses were
consumed not only in England, but exported—ad saturandos
agrestes et opifices—“to satisfie the coarse stomachs of
husbandmen and labourers,” as the bishop put it. When had this
manufacture of giant cheeses from ewes’ milk died out in Essex? Mr.
Fallow had already seized the opportunity of interrogating Mrs.
Purley, whose reputation as a cheesemaker had reached him. But
appalled by the voluminousness of her ignorance, he had taken

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