8 About three weeks after my visit to Amy Ayres, I had rather a trying meeting with that young clergyman, Mr. Juke, another of the children's rather queer Oxford friends.

and, turning round, Mr. Juke stood close to us.

I was surprised, for I knew him very little, but I said, 'How do you do, Mr. Juke.

When we were seated in two chairs near it, Mr. Juke leant forward, his elbows on his knees, and said in a low voice, 'I came here to-day hoping to meet you, Lady Pinkerton.

'And,' I said, 'if the irresponsible gossip, as you call it, happens to be true, Mr. Juke?

What then?' 'Then,' he said abruptly, and looked me in the face, 'then, Lady Pinkerton, Gideon should be called on to answer to the charge in a court of law, not libelled behind his back.' 'That,' I said, 'will, I hope, Mr. Juke, happen at the proper time.

I considered that Mr. Juke had been quite in his rights to speak to me as he had done, and I was not offended.

'What did Mr. Juke want to speak to you about, mother?' 'Nothing of any importance, dear,' I told her.

I took her home, and that evening I told Percy about my interview with Mr. Juke.

Though I don't study human nature with the absorption of Laurence Juke (after all, it's his trade), I find it interesting, like other curious branches of study.

Juke guessed.' 'Yes.

PART V: TOLD BY JUKE (IN HIS PRIVATE JOURNAL) GIVING ADVICE 1 It is always rather amusing dining at Aylesbury House, with my stimulating family.

It was represented on that particular evening by my father and Chloe, my young sister Diana, my brothers Wycombe and Tony, Tony's wife, myself, my uncle Monsignor Juke, my aunt the Marchesa Centurione and a daughter, and my Aunt Cynthia, who had recently, on her own fiftieth birthday, come out of a convent in which she had spent twenty-five years and was preparing to see Life.

He really did, Mr. Juke.

I suppose you'll despise me, Mr. Juke, but I just couldn't help going on loving him.

What is one to do about it? PART VI: TOLD BY R.M. CHAPTER I THE END OF A POTTER MELODRAMA 1 While Clare talked to Juke in the vestry, Jane talked to her parents at Potter's Bar.

You had the same feeling with Katherine that you had sometimes with Juke, of being analysed and understood all through.

And there was Juke, with his white, amused face and heavy-lidded eyes that seemed always to see a long way, and Katherine Varick talking to a naval officer about periscopes (Jane kept in with some of the Admiralty), and Peacock, with whom Gideon had quarrelled two hours ago at the Fact office, and who was now in the middle of a group of writing young men, as usual.

There were also many memoirs of great persons by themselves, many histories of the recent war, several thousand books of verse, a monograph by K.D. Varick on Catalysers and Catalysis and the Generation of Hydrogen, and New Wine by the Reverend Laurence Juke.

3 Juke's book on modern thought in the Church was a success.

Juke, to his own detriment, became popular.

It was a fine warm day, and she, walking across Green Park, met Juke, who had been lunching with a bishop to meet an elderly princess who had read his book.

'She said, "I'm afraid you're sadly satirical, Mr. Juke,'" he told Jane.

Juke refused St. Anne's, with its chances, its congregations, and its scope.

It sounds more like Juke) "call this castle an old 'stone-heap.'