that sort of thing in the middle of the sermon during evening service without exciting remark. The congregation came out of its trance with a jerk, and climbed on the pews to get a better view. Old Heppenstall stopped in the middle of a sentence and spun round. And a couple of vergers with great presence of mind bounded up the aisle like leopards, collected Harold, still squealing, and marched him out. They disappeared into the vestry, and I grabbed my hat and legged it round to the stage-door, full of apprehension and whatnot. I couldn’t think what the deuce could have happened, but somewhere dimly behind the proceedings there seemed to me to lurk the hand of the blighter Steggles.
By the time I got there and managed to get someone to open the door, which was locked, the service seemed to be over.
Old Heppenstall was standing in the middle of a crowd of choirboys and vergers and sextons and whatnot, putting the wretched Harold through it with no little vim. I had come in at the tail-end of what must have been a fairly fruity oration.
“Wretched boy! How dare you—”
“I got a sensitive skin!”
“This is no time to talk about your skin—”
“Somebody put a beetle down my back!”
“Absurd!”
“I felt it wriggling—”
“Nonsense!”
“Sounds pretty thin, doesn’t it?” said someone at my side.
It was Steggles, dash him. Clad in a