“No, Johnny Ludlow, I shall not stay at home, and have the deeds sent up and down by post. I know what lawyers are; so will you, some time: this letter to be read and answered to-day; that paper to be digested and despatched back to-morrow—anything to enchance their bill of costs. I intend to be in London, on the spot; and so will you be, Mr. Johnny.”

So said Mr. Brandon to me, as we sat in the bay-window at Crabb Cot, at which place we were staying. I was willing enough to go to London; liked the prospect beyond everything; but he was not well, and I thought of the trouble to him.

“Of course, sir, if you consider it necessary we should be there. But——”

“Now, Johnny Ludlow, I have told you my decision,” he interrupted, cutting me short in all the determination of his squeaky little voice. “You go with me to London, sir, and we start on Monday morning next; and I dare say we shall be kept there a week. I know what lawyers are.”

This happened when I came of age, twenty-one; but I should not be of age as to my property for four more years: until then, Mr. Brandon remained my arbitrary guardian and trustee, just as strictly as he had been. Arbitrary so far as doing the right thing as trustee went, not suffering me, or any one else, to squander a shilling. One small bit of property fell to me now; a farm; and old Brandon was making as much legal commotion over the transfer of it from his custody to mine, as though it had been veined with gold. For this purpose, to execute the deeds of transfer, he meant to take up his quarters in London, to be on the spot with the lawyers who had it in hand, and to carry me up with him.

And what great events trivial chances bring about! Chances, as they are called. These “chances” are all in the hands of one Divine Ruler, who is ever shaping them to further His own wise ends. But for my going to London that time and staying there—however, I’ll not let the cat out of the bag.

He stayed with us at Crabb Cot until the Monday, when we started for London; the Squire and Tod coming to the station to see us off. Mr. Brandon wore a nankeen suit, and had a green veil in readiness. A green veil, if you’ll believe me! The sun was under a cloud just then; had been for the best part of the morning; but if it came out fiercely—Tod threw up his arms behind old Brandon’s back, and gave me a grin and a whisper.

“I wouldn’t be you for something, Johnny; he’ll be taken for a lunatic.”

“And mind you take care of yourself, sir,” put in the Squire, to me. “London is a dreadful place; full of temptations; and you are but an inexperienced boy, Johnny. Be cautious and watchful, lad; don’t pick up any strange acquaintances in the streets; sharpers are on the watch to get you into conversation, and then swindle you out of all the money in your pockets. Be sure don’t forget the little hamper for Miss Deveen; and——”

The puffing of the engine, as we started, drowned the rest. We reached Paddington, smoothly and safely—and old Brandon did not once put on the veil. He took a cab to the Tavistock Hotel, and I another cab to Miss Deveen’s.

For she had asked me to stay with her. Hearing of my probable visit to town through a letter of Helen Whitney’s, she, ever kind, wrote at once, saying, if I did go, I must make her house my home for the time, and that it would be a most delightful relief to the stagnation she and Miss Cattledon had been lately enjoying. Of course that was just her pleasant way of putting it.

The house looked just as it used to look; the clustering trees of the north-western suburb were as green and grateful to the tired eye as of yore; and Miss Deveen, in grey satin, received me with the same glad smile. I knew I was a favourite of hers; she once said there were few people in the world she liked as well as she liked me—which made me feel proud and grateful. “I should leave you a fortune, Johnny,” she said to me that same day, “but that I know you have plenty of your own.” And I begged her not to do anything of the kind; not to think of it: she must know a great many people to whom her money would be a Godsend. She laughed at my earnestness, and told me I should be unselfish to the end.

We spent a quiet evening. The grey-haired curate, Mr. Lake, who had come in the first evening I ever spent at Miss Deveen’s, years ago, came in again by invitation. “He is so modest,” she had said to me, in those long-past years, “he never comes without being invited:” and he was modest still. His hair had been chestnut-coloured once; it was half grey and half chestnut now; and his face and voice were gentle, and his manners kindly. Cattledon was displaying her most gracious behaviour, and thinnest waist; one of the roses I had brought up with the strawberries was sticking out of the body of her green silk gown. For at least half-a-dozen years she had been setting her cap at the curate—and I think she must have been endowed with supreme patience.

“If you do not particularly want me this morning, Miss Deveen, I think I will go over to service.”

It was the next morning, and after breakfast. Cattledon had been downstairs, giving the orders for dinner—and said this on her return. Every morning she went through the ceremony of asking whether she was wanted, before attiring herself for church.

“Not I,” cried Miss Deveen, with a half-smile. “Go, and welcome, Jemima!”

I stood at the window listening to the ting-tang: the bell of St. Matthew’s Church could be called nothing else: and watched her pick her way across the road, just deluged by the water-cart. She wore a striped fawn-coloured gown, cut straight up and down, which made her look all the thinner, and a straw bonnet and white veil. The church was on the other side of the wide road, lower down, but within view. Some stragglers went into it with Cattledon; not many.

“Does it pay to hold the daily morning service?”

“Pay?” repeated Miss Deveen, looking at me with an arch smile. And I felt ashamed of my inadvertent, hasty word.

“I mean, is the congregation sufficient to repay the trouble?”

“The congregation, Johnny, usually consists of some twenty people, a few more, or a few less, as may chance; and they are all young ladies,” she added, the smile deepening to a laugh. “At least, unmarried ones; some are as old as Miss Cattledon. Two of them are widows of thirty-five: they are especially constant in attendance.”

“They go after the curate,” I said, laughing with Miss Deveen. “One year when Mr. Holland was ill, down with us, he had to take on a curate, and the young ladies ran after him.”

“Yes, Johnny, the young ladies go after the curates; we have two of them. Mr. Lake is the permanent curate; he has been here, oh, twelve or thirteen years. He does the chief work, in the church and out of it; we have a great many poor, as I think you know. The other curate is changed at least every year, and is generally a young deacon, fresh from college. Our Rector is fond of giving young men their title to orders. The young fellow we have now is a nobleman’s grandson, with more money in his pocket to waste on light gloves and hair-wash than poor Mr. Lake dare spend on all his living.”

“Mr. Lake seems to be a very good man.”

“A better man never lived,” returned Miss Deveen warmly, as she got up from the note she was writing, and came to my side. “Self-denying, anxious, painstaking; a true follower of his Master, a Christian to the very depths of his heart. He is one of those unobtrusive men whose merits are kept hidden from the world in general, who are content to work on patiently and silently in their path of duty, looking for no promotion, no reward here, because it seems to lie so very far away from their track.”

“Is Mr. Lake poor?”

“Mr. Lake has just one hundred pounds a-year, Johnny. It was what Mr. Selwyn offered him when he first came, and it has never been increased. William Lake told me one day,” added Miss Deveen, “that he thought the hundred a-year riches then. He was not a very young man; turned thirty; but his stipend in the country had been only fifty pounds a-year. To have it doubled all at once, no doubt did seem like riches.”

“Why does not the Rector raise it?”

“The Rector says he can’t afford to do it. I believe Mr. Lake once plucked up courage to ask him for a small increase: but it was of no use. The living is worth six hundred a-year, out of which the senior curate’s stipend has to be paid; and Mr. Selwyn’s family is expensive. His two sons are just leaving college. So, poor Mr. Lake has just plodded on with his hundred a-year, and made it do. The Rector wishes he could raise it; he knows his worth. During this prolonged illness of Mr. Selwyn’s he has been most indefatigable.”

“Is Mr. Selwyn ill?”

“Not very ill, but ailing. He has been so for two years. He generally preaches on a Sunday morning, but that is about all the duty he has been able to take. Mr. Lake is virtually the incumbent; he does everything, in the church and out of it.”

“Without the pay,” I remarked.

“Without the pay, Johnny. His hundred a-year, however, seems to suffice him. He never grumbles at it, never complains, is always contented and cheerful: and no doubt will be contented with it to the end.”

“But—if he has no more than that, and no expectation of more, how is it that the ladies run after him? They can’t expect him to marry upon a hundred a-year.”

“My dear Johnny, let a clergyman possess nothing but the white surplice on his back, the ladies would trot at his heels all the same. It comes naturally to them. They trust to future luck, you see; promotion is always possible, and they reckon upon it. I’m sure the way Mr. Lake gets run after is as good as a play. This young lady sends him a pair of slippers, her own work; that one embroiders a cushion for him: Cattledon painted a velvet fire-screen for him last year—‘Oriental tinting.’ You never saw a screen so gorgeous.”

“Do you think he has—has—any idea of Miss Cattledon?”

“Just as much as he has of me,” cried Miss Deveen. “He is kind and polite to her; as he is, naturally, to every one; but you may rely upon it he never gave her a word or a look that would be construed into anything warmer.”

“How silly she must be!”

“Not more silly than the rest are. It is a mania, Johnny, and they all go in for it. Jemima Cattledon—stupid old thing!—cherishes hopes of Mr. Lake: a dozen others cherish the same. Most of them are worse than she is, for they course about the parish after him all day long. Cattledon never does that: with all her zeal, she does not forget that she is a gentlewoman; she meets him here, at my house, and she goes to church to see and hear him, but she does not race after him.”

“Do you think he is aware of all this pursuit?”

“Well, he must be, in a degree; William Lake is not a simpleton. But the very hopelessness of his being able to marry must in his mind act as a counterbalance, and cause him to look upon it as a harmless pastime. How could he think any one of them in earnest, remembering his poor hundred pounds a-year?”

Thus talking, the time slipped on, until we saw the congregation coming out of church. The service had taken just three-quarters-of-an-hour.

“Young Chisholm has been reading the prayers to-day; I am sure of that,” remarked Miss Deveen. “He gabbles them over as fast as a parrot.”

The ladies congregated within the porch, and without: ostensibly to exchange compliments with one another; in reality to wait for the curates. The two appeared together: Mr. Lake quiet and thoughtful; Mr. Chisholm, a very tall, slim, empty-headed young fellow, smiling here, and shaking hands there, and ready to chatter with the lot.

For full five minutes they remained stationary. Some important subject of conversation had evidently been started, for they stood around Mr. Lake, listening to something he was saying. The pew-opener, a woman in a muslin cap, and the bell-ringer, an old man in a battered hat, halted on the outskirts of the throng.

“One or other of those damsels is sure to invent some grave question to discuss with him,” laughed Miss Deveen. “Perhaps Betty Smith has been breaking out again. She gives more trouble, with her alternate repentings and her lapsings to the tap-room, than all the rest of the old women put together.”

Presently the group dispersed; some going one way, some another. Young Chisholm walked off at a smart pace, as if he meant to make a round of morning calls; the elder curate and Miss Cattledon crossed the road together.

“His way home lies past our house,” remarked Miss Deveen, “so that he often does cross the road with her. He lives at Mrs. Topcroft’s.”

“Mrs. Topcroft’s! What a curious name.”

“So it is, Johnny. But she is a curiously good woman—in my opinion; worth her weight in gold. Those young ladies yonder turn up their noses at her, calling her a ‘lodging-letter.’ They are jealous; that’s the truth; jealous of her daughter, Emma Topcroft. Cattledon, I know, thinks the young girl the one chief rival to be feared.”

Mr. Lake passed the garden with a bow, raising his hat to Miss Deveen; and Cattledon came in.

I went off, as quick as an omnibus could take me, to the Tavistock, being rather behind time, and preparing for a blowing-up from Mr. Brandon in consequence.

“Are you Mr. Ludlow, sir?” asked the waiter.

“Yes.”

“Then Mr. Brandon left word that he was going down to Lincoln’s Inn, sir; and if he is not back here at one o’clock precisely, I was to say that you needn’t come down again till to-morrow morning at ten.”

I went into the Strand, and amused myself with looking at the shops, getting back to the hotel a few minutes after one. No; Mr. Brandon had not come in. All I could do was to leave Miss Deveen’s note of invitation to dine with her—that day, or any other day that might be more convenient, or every day—and tell the man to be sure to give it him.

Then I went into the National Gallery, after getting some Bath buns at a pastrycook’s. It was between five and six when I returned to Miss Deveen’s. Her carriage had just driven up; she and Cattledon were alighting from it.

“I have a little commission to do yet at one of the shops in the neighbourhood, and I may as well go about it now,” remarked Miss Deveen. “Will you go with me, Johnny?”

Of course I said I would go; and Miss Cattledon was sent indoors to fetch a small paper parcel that lay on the table in the blue room.

“It contains the patterns of some sewing silks that I want to get,” she added to me, as we stood waiting on the door-steps. “If——”

At that moment, out burst the ting-tang. Miss Deveen suddenly broke off what she was saying, and turned to look at the church.

“Do they have service at this hour?” I asked.

“Hush, Johnny! That bell is not going for service. Some one must be dead.”

In truth, I heard that, even as she spoke. Three times three it struck out, followed by the sharp, quick strokes.

“That’s the passing-bell!” exclaimed Cattledon, coming quickly from the hall with the little packet in her hand. “Who can be dead? It hardly rings out once in a year.”

For, it appeared, the bell at St. Matthew’s did not in general toll for the dead: was not expected to do so. Our bell at Church Dykely rang for any one who could pay for it.

Waiting there on the steps, we saw Mr. Lake coming from the direction of the church. Miss Deveen walked down the broad path of her small front-garden, and stood at the gate to wait for him.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Oh, it is a grievous thing!” he cried, in answer, his gentle face pale, his blue eyes suppressing their tears. “It is no other than my dear Rector; my many years’ friend!”

“The Rector!” gasped Miss Deveen.

“Indeed it is. The complaint he suffered from has increased its symptoms lately, but no one thought of attaching to them the slightest danger. At two o’clock to-day he sent for me, saying he felt very ill. I found him so when I got there; ill, and troubled. He had taken a turn for the worse; and death—death,” added Mr. Lake, pausing to command his voice, “was coming on rapidly.”

Miss Deveen had turned as white as her point-lace collar.

“He was troubled, you say?” she asked.

“In such a case as this—meeting death face to face unexpectedly—it is hardly possible not to be troubled, however truly we may have lived in preparation for it,” answered the sad, soft voice of the curate. “Mr. Selwyn’s chief perplexity lay in the fact that he had not settled his worldly affairs.”

“Do you mean, not made his will?”

“Just so,” nodded Mr. Lake; “he had meant to do so, he said to me, but had put it off from time to time. We got a lawyer in, and it was soon done; and—and—I stayed on with him afterwards to the end.”

“Oh dear, it is a piteous tale,” sighed Miss Deveen. “And his wife and daughters are away!”

“They went to Oxford last Saturday for a week; and the two sons are there, as you know. No one thought seriously of his illness. Even this morning, when I called upon him after breakfast, though he said he was not feeling well, and did not look well, such a thing as danger never occurred to me. And now he is dead!”

Never did a parson’s death cause such a stir in a parish as poor Mr. Selwyn’s did in this. A lively commotion set in. People flew about to one another’s houses like chips in a gale of wind. Not only was the sorrow to himself to be discussed, but the uncertainty as to what would happen now. Some six months previously a church not far off, St. Peter’s, which had rejoiced in three energetic curates, and as many daily services, suddenly changed its incumbent; the new one proved to be an elderly man with wife and children, who did all the duty himself, and cut off the curates and the week-day prayers. What if the like calamity should happen to St. Matthew’s!

I was away most of the following day with Mr. Brandon, so was not in the thick of it, but the loss was made up for in the evening.

“Of course it is impossible to say who will get the living,” cried Mrs. Jonas, one of the two widows already mentioned, who had been dining with Miss Deveen. “I know who ought to—and that is our dear Mr. Lake.”

“‘Oughts’ don’t go for much in this world,” growled Dr. Galliard, a sterling man, in spite of his gruffness. He had recently brought Cattledon out of a bilious attack, and ran in this evening to see whether the cure lasted. “They go for nothing in the matter of Church patronage,” continued he. “If Lake had his deserts, he’d be made incumbent of this living to-morrow: but he is as likely to get it as I am to get the Lord Chancellor’s seals.”

“Who would have done as Mr. Lake has done—given himself up solely and wholly to the duties of the church and the poor, for more years than I can count?” contended Mrs. Jonas, who was rich and positive, and wore this evening a black gauze dress, set off with purple grapes, and a spray of purple grapes in her black hair. “I say the living is due to him, and the Lord Chancellor ought to present him with it.”

Dr. Galliard gave a short laugh. He was a widower, and immensely popular, nearly as much so as Mr. Lake. “Did you ever know a curate succeed to a living under the circumstances?” he demanded. “The Lord Chancellor has enough friends of his own, waiting to snap up anything that falls; be sure of that, Mrs. Jonas.”

“Some dean will get it, I shouldn’t wonder,” cried Cattledon. For at this time we were in the prime old days when a Church dignitary might hold half-a-dozen snug things, if he could drop into them.

“Just so; a dean or some other luminary,” nodded the doctor. “It is the province of great divines to shine like lights in the world, and of curates to toil on in obscurity. Well—God sees all things: and what is wrong in this world may be set right in the next.”

“You speak of the Lord Chancellor,” quietly put in Miss Deveen: “the living is not in his gift.”

“Never said it was—was speaking generally,” returned the doctor. “The patron of the living is some other great man, nobleman, or what not, living down in the country.”

“In Staffordshire, I think,” said Miss Deveen, with hesitation, not being sure of her memory. “He is a baronet, I believe; but I forget his name.”

“All the same, ma’am: there’s no more chance for poor Lake with him than with the Lord Chancellor,” returned Dr. Galliard. “Private patrons are worse beset, when a piece of preferment falls in, than even public ones.”

“Suppose the parish were to get up a petition, setting forth Mr. Lake’s merits and claims, and present it to the patron?” suggested Mrs. Jonas. “Not, I dare say, that it would be of much use.”

“Not the slightest use; you may rely upon that,” spoke the doctor, in his decisive way. “Lake’s best chance is to get taken on by the new man, and stand out for a higher salary.”

Certainly it seemed to be his best and only chance of getting any good out of the matter. But it was just as likely he would be turned adrift.

The next day we met Mrs. Jonas in the King’s Road. She had rather a down look as she accosted Miss Deveen.

“No one seems willing to bestir themselves about a petition; they say it is so very hopeless. And there’s a rumour abroad that the living is already given away.”

“To whom is it given?” asked Miss Deveen.

“Well, not to a Very Reverend Dean, as Miss Cattledon suggested last night, but to some one as bad—or good: one of the Canons of St. Paul’s. I dare say it’s true. How hard it is on Mr. Lake! How hard it must seem to him!”

“He may stay here as curate, then.”

“Never you expect that,” contended Mrs. Jonas, her face reddening with her zeal. “These cathedral luminaries have invariably lots of their own circle to provide for.”

“Do you not think it will seem hard on Mr. Lake?” I said to Miss Deveen, as we left the little widow, and walked on.

“I do, Johnny Ludlow. I do think he ought to have it; that in right and justice no one has so great a claim to it as he,” she impressively answered. “But, as Dr. Galliard says, ‘oughts’ go for nothing in Church patronage. William Lake is a good, earnest, intellectual man; he has grown grey in the service of the parish, and yet, now that the living is vacant, he has no more chance of it than that silly young Chisholm has—not half as much, I dare say, if the young fellow were only in priest’s orders. It is but a common case: scores of curates who have to work on, neglected, to their lives’ end could testify to it. Here we are, Johnny. This is Mrs. Topcroft’s.”

Knocking at the house-door—a small house standing ever so far back from the road—we were shown by a young servant into a pleasant parlour. Emma Topcroft, a merry, bright, laughing girl, of eighteen or nineteen, sat there at work with silks and black velvet. If I had the choice given me between her and Miss Cattledon, thought I, as Mr. Lake seems to have, I know which of the two I should choose.

“Mamma is making a rice-pudding in the kitchen,” she said, spreading her work out on the table for Miss Deveen to see.

“You are doing it very nicely, Emma. And I have brought you the fresh silks. I could not get them before: they had to send the patterns into town. Is the other screen begun?”

“Oh yes; and half done,” answered Emma, briskly, as she opened the drawer of a-work-table, and began unfolding another square of velvet from its tissue paper. “I do the sober colours in both screens first, and leave the bright ones till last. Here’s the mother.”

Mrs. Topcroft came in, turning down her sleeves at the wrist; a little woman, quite elderly. I liked her the moment I saw her. She was homely and motherly, with the voice and manners of a lady.

“I came to bring Emma the silks, and to see how the work was getting on,” said Miss Deveen as she shook hands. “And what a grievous thing this is about Mr. Selwyn!”

Mrs. Topcroft lifted her hands pityingly. “It has made Mr. Lake quite ill,” she answered; “I can see it. And”—dropping her voice—“they say there will be little, or nothing, for Mrs. Selwyn and the children.”

“Yes, there will; though perhaps not much,” corrected Miss Deveen. “Mrs. Selwyn has two hundred a-year of her own. I happen to know it.”

“I am very thankful to hear that: we were fearing the worst. I wonder,” added Mrs. Topcroft, “if this will take Mr. Lake from us?”

“Probably. We cannot tell yet. People are saying he ought to have the living if it went by merit: but there’s not any hope of that.”

“Not any,” acquiesced Mrs. Topcroft, shaking her head. “It does seem unjust: that a clergyman should wear out all his best days toiling for a church, and be passed over at last as not worth a consideration.”

“It is the way of the world.”

“No one knows his worth,” went on Mrs. Topcroft, “So patient, so good, so self-denying; and so anxious for the poor and sick, and for all the ill-doers who seem to be going wrong. I don’t believe there are many men in this world so good as he. All he can scrape and save out of his narrow income he gives away, denying himself necessaries to be able to do it: Mr. Selwyn, you know, has given nothing. It has been said he grudged even the communion money.”

That was Mrs. Topcroft’s report of Mr. Lake; and she ought to know. He had boarded with her long enough. He had the bedroom over the best parlour; and the little den of a back-parlour was given over to his own use, in which he saw his parishioners and wrote his sermons.

“They come from the same village in the West of England,” said Miss Deveen to me as we walked homewards. “Mr. Lake’s father was curate of the place, and Mrs. Topcroft’s people are the doctors: her brothers are in practice there now. When she was left a widow upon a very slender income, and settled down in this little house, Mr. Lake came to board with her. He pays a guinea a-week only; but Mrs. Topcroft has told me that it pays her amply, and she could not have got along without it. The housekeeping is, of necessity, economical: and that suits the pocket on both sides.”

“I like Mrs. Topcroft. And she seems quite a lady, though she is poor.”

“She is quite a lady, Johnny. Her husband was a civil engineer, very clever: but for his early death he might have become as renowned as his master, Sir John Rennie. The son; he is several years older than Emma; is in the same profession, steady and diligent, and he gains a fair salary now, which of course helps his mother. He is at home night and morning.”

“Do you suppose that Mr. Lake thinks of Emma?”

Miss Deveen laughed—as if the matter were a standing joke in her mind. “I do not suppose it, Johnny. I never saw the smallest cause to lead me to suppose it: she is too much of a child. Such a thing never would have been thought of but for the jealous suspicions of the parish—I mean of course our young ladies in it. Because Emma Topcroft is a nice-looking and attractive girl, and because Mr. Lake lives in her companionship, these young women must needs get up the notion. And they despise the Topcrofts accordingly, and turn the cold shoulder on them.”

It had struck me that Emma Topcroft must be doing those screens for Miss Deveen. I asked her.

“She is doing them for me in one sense, Johnny,” was the answer. “Being an individual of note, you see”—and Miss Deveen laughed again—“that is, my income being known to be a good one, and being magnified by the public into something fabulous, I have to pay the penalty of greatness. Hardly a week passes but I am solicited to become the patroness of some bazaar, not to speak of other charities, or at least to contribute articles for sale. So I buy materials and get Emma Topcroft to convert them into nicknacks. Working flowers upon velvet for banner-screens, as she is doing now; or painting flowers upon cardboard for baskets or boxes, which she does nicely, and various other things. Two ends are thus served: Emma makes a pretty little income, nearly enough for her clothes, and the bazaars get the work when it is finished, and sell it for their own benefit.”

“It is very good of you, Miss Deveen.”

“Good! Nay, don’t say that, Johnny,” she continued, in a reproving tone. “Those whom Heaven has blessed with ample means must remember that they will have to render an account of their stewardship. Trifles, such as these, are but odds and ends, not to be thought of, beside what I ought to do—and try to do.”

That same evening Mr. Lake came in, unexpectedly. He called to say that the funeral was fixed for Saturday, and that a portion of the burial-service would be read in the church here, before starting for the cemetery: Mrs. Selwyn wished it so.

“I hear that the parish began to indulge a hope that you would be allowed to succeed Mr. Selwyn,” Miss Deveen observed to him as he was leaving; “but——”

“I!” he exclaimed, interrupting her in genuine surprise, a transient flush rising to his face. “What, succeed to the living! How could any one think of such a thing for a moment? Why, Miss Deveen, I do not possess any interest: not the slightest in the world. I do not even know Sir Robert Tenby. It is not likely that he has ever heard my name.”

“Sir Robert Tenby!” I cried, pricking up my ears. “Is Sir Robert Tenby the patron?”

“Yes. His seat is in Worcestershire?”

“Do you know him, Johnny?” asked Miss Deveen.

“A little; not much. Bellwood is near Crabb Cot. I used often to see his wife when she was Anne Lewis: we were great friends. She was a very nice girl.”

“A girl, Johnny! Is she younger than he is?”

“Young enough to be his daughter.”

“But I was about to say,” added Miss Deveen to the curate, “that I fear there can be no chance for you, if this report, that the living is already given away, be correct. I wish it had been otherwise.”

“There could be no chance for me in any case, dear Miss Deveen; there’s no chance for any one so unknown and obscure as I am,” he returned, suppressing a sigh as he shook her hand. “Thank you all the same for your kind wishes.”

How long I lay awake that night I don’t care to recall. An extraordinary idea had taken possession of me. If some one would only tell Sir Robert Tenby of the merits of this good man, he might be so impressed as to give him the living. We were not sure about the Canon of St. Paul’s: he might be a myth, as far as our church went.

Yes, these ideas were all very well; but who would presume to do it? The mice, you know, wanted to bell the cat, but none of them could be got to undertake the task.

Down I went in the morning to Mr. Brandon as soon as breakfast was over. I found him in his sitting-room at his breakfast: dry toast, and tea without milk; a yellow silk handkerchief thrown cornerwise over his head, and his face looking green. He had a bilious attack coming on, he said, and thought he had taken a slight cold.

Now I don’t want to disparage Mr. Brandon’s merits. In some things he was as good as gold. But when he fell into these fanciful attacks he was not practically worth a rush. It was hardly a propitious moment for the scheme I had in my head; but, unfortunately, there was no time to lose: I must speak then, or not at all. Down I sat, and told my tale. Old Brandon, sipping his tea by spoonfuls, listened, and stared at me with his little eyes.

“And you have been getting up in your brain the Utopian scheme that Sir Robert Tenby would put this curate into the living! and want me to propose it to him! Is that what you mean, young man?”

“Yes, sir. Sir Robert would listen to you. You are friendly with him, and he is in town. Won’t you, please, do it?”

“Not if I know it, Johnny Ludlow. Solicit Robert Tenby to give the living to a man I never heard of: a man I know nothing about! What notions you pick up!”

“Mr. Lake is so good and so painstaking,” I urged. “He has been working all these years——”

“You have said all that before,” interrupted old Brandon, shifting the silk handkerchief on his head more to one side. “I can’t answer for it, you know. And, if I could, I should not consider myself justified in troubling Sir Robert.”

“What I thought was this, sir: that, if he got to know all Mr. Lake is, he might be glad to give him the living: glad of an opportunity to do a good and kind act. I did not think of your asking him to give the living; only to tell him of Mr. Lake, and what he has done, and been. He lives only in Upper Brook Street. It would not be far for you to go, sir.”

“I should not go if he lived here at the next door, Johnny Ludlow: should not be justified in going on such an errand. Go yourself.”

“I don’t like to, sir.”

“He wouldn’t eat you; he’d only laugh at you. Robert Tenby would excuse in a silly lad what he might deem impertinence from me. There, Johnny; let it end.”

And there it had to end. When old Brandon took up an idea he was hard as adamant.

I stood at the hotel door, wishing I could screw up courage to call at Sir Robert’s, but shrinking from it terribly. Then I thought of poor Mr. Lake, and that there was no one else to tell about him; and at last I started, for Upper Brook Street.

“Is Lady Tenby at home?” I asked, when I got to the door.

“Yes, sir.” And the man showed me into a room where Lady Tenby sat, teaching her little boy to walk.

She was just the same kind and simple-mannered woman that she had been as Anne Lewis. Putting both her hands into mine, she said how glad she was to see me in London, and held out the child to be kissed. I explained my errand, and my unwillingness to come; saying I could venture to tell her all about it better than I could tell Sir Robert.

She laughed merrily. “He is not any more formidable than I am, Johnny; he is not the least bit so in the world. You shall see whether he is”—opening the door of the next room. “Robert,” she called out in glee, “Johnny Ludlow is here, and is saying you are an ogre. He wants to tell you something, and can’t pluck up courage to do it.”

Sir Robert Tenby came in, the Times in his hand, and a smile on his face: the same kind, rugged, homely face that I knew well. He shook hands with me, asking if I wanted his interest to be made prime-minister.

And somehow, what with their kindness and their thorough, cordial homeliness, I lost my fears. In two minutes I had plunged into the tale, Sir Robert sitting near me with his elbow on the table, and Anne beside him, her quiet baby on her knee.

“I thought it so great a pity, sir, that you should not hear about Mr. Lake: how hard he has worked for years, and what a good and self-denying man he is,” I concluded at last, after telling what Miss Deveen thought of him, and what Mrs. Topcroft said. “Not, of course, that I could presume to suggest such a thing, sir, as that you should bestow upon him the living—only to let you know there was a man so deserving, if—if it was not given already. It is said in the parish that the living is given.”

“Is this Mr. Lake a good preacher?” asked Sir Robert, when I paused.

“They say he is one of the best and most earnest of preachers, sir. I have not heard him; Mr. Selwyn generally preached.”

“Does he know of your application to me?”

“Why, no, Sir Robert, of course not! I could not have had the face to tell any one I as much as wished to make it. Except Mr. Brandon. I spoke to him because I wanted him to come instead of me.”

Sir Robert smiled. “And he would not come, I suppose?”

“Oh dear, no: he asked me whether I thought we lived in Utopia. He said I might come if I chose—that what would be only laughed at in a silly boy like me, might be deemed impertinence in him.”

The interview came to an end. Anne said she hoped I should dine with them while I was in town—and Mr. Brandon also, Sir Robert added; and with that I came out. Came out just as wise as I had gone in; for never a word of hope did Sir Robert give. For all he intimated to the contrary, the living might be already in the hands of the Canon of St. Paul’s.

Two events happened the next day, Saturday. The funeral of the Rector, and the departure of Miss Cattledon for Chelmsford, in Essex. An aunt of hers who lived there was taken dangerously ill, and sent for her by telegram. Mr. Brandon came up to dine with us in the evening—— But that’s neither here nor there.

I sat in Miss Deveen’s pew at church with herself on the Sunday morning; she wore black silk out of respect to the late Rector. Mr. Lake and the young deacon, who had a luxuriant crop of yellow hair, had put on black gloves. The church was full; all the world and his wife seemed to have come to it; and the parsons’ surplices stood on end with starch.

Mr. Lake was in the reading-desk; it caused, I think, some surprise—could that yellow-haired nonentity of a young dandy be going to preach? He stood at the communion-table, looking interesting, and evidently suffering from a frightful cold: which cold, as we found later, was the reason that Mr. Lake took nearly all the service himself.

What a contrast they were! The simpering, empty-faced young deacon, who was tall and slender as a lamp-post, and had really not much more brains than one; and the thoughtful, earnest, middle-aged priest, with the sad look on his gentle face. Nothing could be more impressive than his reading of the prayers; they were prayed, not read: and his voice was one of those persuasive, musical voices you don’t often hear. If Sir Robert Tenby could but hear this reading! I sighed, as Mr. Lake went through the Litany.

Hardly had the thought crossed my mind, when some commotion in the church caused most of us to turn round: a lady was fainting. But for that, I might never have seen what I did see. In the next pew, right behind ours, sat Sir Robert and Lady Tenby. So surprised was I that I could not for the moment believe my eyes, and simply stared at them. Anne caught the look, and smiled at me.

Was it a good omen? I took it to be one. If Sir Robert had no thought of Mr. Lake, or if the living was already given to that canon, why should he have come all this way to hear him? I recalled the Sunday, years ago now, when Sir Robert had sat in his own pew at Timberdale, listening attentively to Herbert Tanerton’s reading and preaching, deliberating within his mind—I know I thought so then—whether he should bestow upon him the living of Timberdale, or not; whether Herbert was worthy of it. Sir Robert did give it to him: and I somehow took it for an earnest that he might give this one to Mr. Lake.

Meanwhile Mr. Lake ascended the pulpit-stairs in his black gown, and began his sermon: supremely unconscious that the patron of the church was just in front of him, looking and listening. No one present knew Sir Robert and Lady Tenby.

You should have heard that sermon: all its earnest eloquence, its sound piety, its practical application, and its quiet, impressive delivery. It was not exactly a funeral sermon; but when he spoke of the late Rector, who had been so unexpectedly taken away, and whose place in this world could know him no more, hardly a dry eye was in the church: and if he himself had not once or twice paused to call up his equanimity, his own eyes would not have been dry, either. I was glad Sir Robert heard it. It was a sermon to be remembered for all time.

Miss Deveen waited in her pew until the people had mostly gone; she did not like being in a crowd. The Tenbys waited also. In the porch Anne put her hand upon my arm, speaking in a whisper.

“That is Miss Deveen, I suppose, Johnny? What a nice face she has! What a fine, handsome woman she is! How good she looks!”

“She is good; very. I wish I might introduce her to you.”

“That’s just what I was going to ask you to do, Johnny. My husband would like to speak with her.”

I did it outside in the churchyard. After speaking together for a minute or two, Miss Deveen invited them to step into her house, pointing to it that they might see it was close by. Sir Robert walked on by her side, I behind with Anne. An open carriage was pacing in the road, the servants wearing the Tenby livery: people turned to look at it, wondering whose grand carriage it was. As we went slowly onwards Mr. Lake overtook us. He did not stop, only lifted his hat to Miss Deveen in passing: but she arrested him to ask after Mrs. Selwyn.

“Oh, she is very ill, very sad,” he answered, in a tone as if the sorrow were his own. “And at present I fear there’s nothing for her but to bear; to bear as she best may: not yet can she open her heart to consolation.”

Miss Deveen said no more, and he walked on. It struck me she had only stopped him that Sir Robert might see him face to face. Being a shrewd woman, it could not be but that she argued good from this unexpected visit. And she knew I had been to them.

They would not stay to take lunch; which was on the table when we went in. Anne said she must get home to her baby: not the young shaver I saw; a little girl a month or two old. Sir Robert spared a few minutes to shut himself up in the drawing-room with Miss Deveen; and then the carriage whirled them off.

“I hope he was asking you about Mr. Lake?” I said impulsively.

“That is just what he was asking, Johnny,” replied Miss Deveen. “He came here this morning, intending to question me. He is very favourably impressed with William Lake; I can see that: and he said he had never heard a better sermon, rarely one as good.”

“I dare say that canon of St. Paul’s is all an invention! Perhaps Mrs. Jonas went to sleep and dreamt it.”

“It is certainly not fact,” laughed Miss Deveen. “Sir Robert tells me he does not as much as know any one of the canons by sight.”

“He did not tell you he should give it to Mr. Lake?”

“No, Johnny: neither did he give me any grounds for supposing that he would. He is a very cautious man; I can see that; conscientiously wishing to do right, and act for the best. We must say nothing of this abroad, remember.”

The Reverend William Lake sat down to his breakfast on Monday morning, as the clock was striking half-past nine. He had been called out to baptize a sick baby and pray by its dying mother. Pouring himself out a cup of tea, buttering his first slice of dry toast, and cracking his egg, for that’s what his breakfast consisted of, he took up a letter lying on the table, which had come by the morning post. Opening it presently, he found it to contain a request from Sir Robert Tenby that he would call upon him that morning at eleven o’clock, in Upper Brook Street.

“Sir Robert Tenby cannot know of our daily service,” thought the clergyman, after reading the note twice over, and wondering what he was wanted for; he having no knowledge of the tide of affairs: no more notion that Sir Robert had been at the church the previous day than that the man in the moon was there. “I must ask Chisholm to take the service this morning.”

Accordingly, his breakfast over, and a sprucer coat put on, he went to the deacon’s lodgings—handsome rooms in a good house. That young divine was just beginning breakfast, the table being laid with toasted ham and poached eggs, and potted meats, and hot, buttered muffins, and all kinds of nice things, presenting a contrast to the frugal one Mr. Lake had just got up from.

“Took an extra snooze in bed to nurse myself,” cried the young man, in half-apology for the lateness of the meal, as he poured out a frothing cup of chocolate. “My cold?—oh, it’s better.”

“I am glad of that,” said Sir. Lake. “I want you to take the service this morning.”

“What, do it all!”

“If you will be so good. I have a note here from Sir Robert Tenby, asking me to call upon him at eleven o’clock. I can’t think what he wants.”

“Sir Robert Tenby? That’s the patron! Oh, I dare say it’s only to talk about the Selwyns; or to tell you to take the duty until some one’s appointed to the living.”

“Ay,” replied Mr. Lake. And he had no other thought, no idea of self-benefit, when he started off to walk to Upper Brook Street.

An hour later, seated in Sir Robert’s library, enlightenment came to him. After talking with him for some time, questioning him of his Church views and principles, hearing somewhat of his past career and of what he had formerly done at Cambridge, to all of which he gave answers that were especially pleasing to the patron’s ear, Sir Robert imparted to him the astounding fact that he—he!—was to be the new Rector.

William Lake sat, the picture of astonishment, wondering whether his ears were playing him false.

“I!” he exclaimed, scarcely above his breath. “I never thought of myself. I can hardly believe—believe—pardon me, Sir Robert—is there no mistake?”

“No mistake so far as I am concerned,” replied Sir Robert, suppressing a smile. “I have heard of your many years’ services at St. Matthew’s, and of your worth. I do not think I could bestow it upon one who deserves it better than you—if as well. The living is yours, if you will accept it.”

“You are very kind, sir,” gasped the curate, not in the least recovering his senses. “May I presume to ask who it is that has been so kind as to speak of me?”

“The person from whom I first heard of you was young Johnny Ludlow,” smiled Sir Robert. “Mr. Johnny presented himself to me here last Friday, in a state of mental commotion, not having been able to get any one else to come, evidently thinking, though not saying, that I should commit an act of singular injustice if the living did not find its way to one who, by dint of his hard and earnest work, so richly deserved it.”

The tears stood in William Lake’s eyes. “I can only thank you, sir, truly and fervently. I have no other means of testifying my gratitude—save by striving ever to do my duty untiringly, under my Lord and Master.”

“I am sure you will do it,” spoke Sir Robert, impulsively—and he was not a man of impulse in general. “You are not a married man, I believe?”

A faint red light came into the curate’s cheeks. “I have not had the means to marry, Sir Robert. It has seemed to me, until this morning, that I never should have them.”

“Well, you can marry now,” was the laughing rejoinder; “I dare say you will.” And the faint light deepened to scarlet, as the curate heard it.

“Shall you give him the living, Robert?” asked Anne, when Mr. Lake had departed.

“Yes, love.”

II.

When lawyers get a case into their hands, no living conjurer can divine when their clients will get it out again. The hardest problem in Euclid was never more difficult to solve than that. Mr. Brandon came up to town on the Monday morning, bringing me with him; he thought we might be detained a few days, a week at the utmost; yet the second week was now passing, and nothing had been done; our business seemed to be no forwarder than it was at the beginning. The men of law in Lincoln’s Inn laid the blame on the conveyancers; the conveyancers laid it on the lawyers. Any way, the upshot was the same—we were kept in London. The fact to myself was uncommonly pleasant, though it might be less so to Mr. Brandon.

The astounding news—that the Reverend William Lake was to have St. Matthew’s—and the return of Miss Cattledon from her visit to the sick lady at Chelmsford, rejoiced the ears and eyes of the parish on one and the same day. It was a Wednesday. Miss Cattledon got home in time for dinner, bringing word that her relative was better.

“Has anything been heard about the living?” she inquired, sitting, bonnet in hand, before going up to dress.

Miss Deveen shook her head. In point of fact, we had heard nothing at all of Sir Robert Tenby or his intentions since Mr. Lake’s interview with him, and she was not going to tell Cattledon of that, or of Sir Robert’s visit on the Sunday.

But, as it appeared, the decision had been made public that afternoon, putting the whole parish into a ferment. Dinner was barely over when Dr. Galliard rushed in with the news.

“Only think of it!” he cried. “Such a piece of justice was never heard of before. Poor Lake has not the smallest interest in the world; and how Sir Robert Tenby came to pick him out is just a marvel. Such a stir it is causing! It’s said—I don’t know with what truth—that he came up here on Sunday morning to hear Lake preach. Mrs. Herriker saw a fine barouche draw up, high-stepping horses and powdered servants; a lady and gentleman got out of it and entered the church. It is thought now they might have been Sir Robert and Lady Tenby.”

“I shouldn’t wonder but they were,” remarked Miss Deveen.

“Has Mr. Lake really had the living given to him?” questioned Cattledon, her eyes open with surprise, her thin throat and waist all in a tremor, and unable to touch another strawberry.

“Really and truly,” replied the doctor. “Chisholm tells me he has just seen the letter appointing him to it.”

“Dear me!” cried Cattledon, quite faintly. “Dear me! How very thankful we all ought to be—for Mr. Lake’s sake.”

“I dare say he is thankful,” returned the doctor, swallowing down the rest of his glass of wine, and preparing to leave. “Thank you, no, Miss Deveen; I can’t stay longer: I have one or two sick patients on my hands to-night, and must go to them—and I promised Mrs. Selwyn to look in upon her. Poor thing! this terrible loss has made her really ill. By-the-by,” he added, turning round on his way from the room, “have you heard that she has decided upon her plans, and thinks of leaving shortly?”

“No—has she?” returned Miss Deveen.

“Best thing for her, too—to be up and doing. She has the chance of taking to a little boys’ preparatory school at Brighton; small and select, as the advertisements have it. Some relative of hers has kept it hitherto, has made money by it, and is retiring——”

“Will Mrs. Selwyn like that—to be a schoolmistress?” interrupted Cattledon, craning her neck.

“Rather than vegetate upon her small pittance,” returned the doctor briskly. “She is an active, capable woman; has all her senses about her. Better teach little boys, and live and dress well, than enjoy a solitary joint of meat once a-week and a turned gown once a-year—eh, Johnny Ludlow?”

He caught up his hat, and went out in a bustle. I laughed. Miss Deveen nodded approvingly; not at my laugh, but at Mrs. Selwyn’s resolution.

The stir abroad might have been pretty brisk that evening; we had Dr. Galliard’s word for it: it could have been nothing to what set in the next day. The poor, meek curate—who, however good he might have been to run after, could hardly have been looked upon as an eligible, bonÂ-fide prospect—suddenly converted into a rich Rector: six hundred a-year and a parsonage to flourish in! All the ladies, elder and younger, went into a delightful waking-sleep and dreamed dreams.

“Such a mercy!” was the cry; “such a mercy! We might have had some dreadful old drony man here, who does not believe in daily services, and wears a wig on his bald head. Now Mr. Lake, though his hair is getting a little grey, has a most luxuriant and curly crop of it. Beautiful whiskers too.”

It was little Daisy Dutton said that, meeting us in the Park road; she was too young and frivolous to know better. Miss Deveen shook her head at her, and Daisy ran on with a laugh. We were on our way to Mrs. Topcroft’s, some hitch having arisen about the frames for Emma’s screens.

Emma was out, however; and Mrs. Topcroft came forward with tears in her eyes.

“I can hardly help crying since I heard it,” she said, taking her handkerchief out of the pocket of her black silk apron. “It must be such a reward to him after his years of work—and to have come so unsought—so unexpectedly! I am sure Sir Robert Tenby must be a good man.”

“I think he is one,” said Miss Deveen.

“Mr. Lake deserves his recompense,” went on Mrs. Topcroft. “No one can know it as I do. Poor Mr. Selwyn knew—but he is gone. I think God’s hand must have been in this,” she reverently added. “These good and earnest ministers deserve to be placed in power for the sake of those over whom they have charge. I have nothing to say against Mr. Selwyn, but I am sure the parish will find a blessing in Mr. Lake.”

“You will lose him,” remarked Miss Deveen.

“Yes, and I am sorry for it; but I should be selfish indeed to think of that. About the screens,” continued Mrs. Topcroft; “perhaps you would like to see them—I am sorry Emma is out. One, I know, is finished.”

Not being especially interested in the screens, I stepped into the garden, and so strolled round to the back of the house. In the little den of a room, close to the open window, sat Mr. Lake writing. He stood up when he saw me and held out his hand.

“It is, I believe, to you that I am indebted for the gift bestowed upon me,” he said in a low tone of emotion, as he clasped my hand, and a wave of feeling swept over his face. “How came you to think of me—to be so kind? I cannot thank you as I ought.”

“Oh, it’s nothing; indeed, I did nothing—so to say,” I stammered, quite taken aback. “I heard people say what a pity it was you stood no chance of the living, after working so hard in it all these years; so, as I knew Sir Robert, and knew very well Lady Tenby, I thought it would do no harm if I just told them of it.”

“And it has borne fruit. And very grateful I am: to you, and to Sir Robert—and to One who holds all things, great and small, in His hands. Do you know,” he added, smiling at me and changing his tone to a lighter one, “it seems to me nothing less than a romance.”

This was Thursday. The next day Mr. Lake paid a visit to the bishop—perhaps to go through some formality connected with his appointment, but I don’t know—and on the following Sunday morning he “read himself in.” No mistake about his being the Rector, after that. It was a lovely day, and Mr. Brandon came up in time for service. After he knew all about it—that I had actually gone to Sir Robert, and that Mr. Lake had the living—he asked me five or six hundred questions, as though he were interested, and now he had come up to hear him preach.

You should have seen how crowded the church was. The ladies were in full force and flutter. Cattledon got herself up in a new bonnet; some of them had new rigging altogether. Each individual damsel looked upon the Rector as her especial prize, sure to be her own. Mr. Lake did every scrap of the duty himself, including the reading of the articles; that delightful young deacon’s cold had taken a turn for the worse, through going to a water-party, and he simply couldn’t hear himself speak. Poor Mrs. Selwyn and her daughter sat in their pew to-day, sad as the crape robes they wore.

Did you ever feel nervous when some one belonging to you is going to preach—lest he should not come up to expectation, or break down, or anything of that sort? Mr. Lake did not belong to me, but a nervous feeling came over me as he went into the pulpit. For Mr. Brandon was there with his critical ears. I had boasted to him of Mr. Lake’s preaching; and felt sensitively anxious that it should not fall short.

I need not have feared. It was a very short sermon, the services had been so long, but wonderfully beautiful. You might have heard a pin drop in the church, and old Brandon himself never stirred hand or foot. At the end of the pew sat he, I next to him; his eyes fixed on the preacher, his attitude that of one who is absorbed in what he hears. Just a few words Mr. Lake spoke of himself, of the new relation between himself and his hearers; very quiet, modest words hearing the ring of truth and good-fellowship.

“That man would do his duty in whatever position of life he might be placed,” pronounced old Brandon, as we got out. “Robert Tenby’s choice has been a good and wise one.”

“Thanks to Johnny Ludlow, here,” said Miss Deveen, laughing.

“I don’t say but what Johnny Ludlow has his head on his shoulders the right way. He means to do well always, I believe; and does do it sometimes.”

Which I am sure was wonderful praise, conceded by old Brandon, calling to my face no end of a colour. And, if you’ll believe me, he put his arm within mine; a thing he had never done before; and walked so across the churchyard.

The next week was a busy one. What with Mrs. Selwyn’s preparations for going away, and what with the commotion caused by the new state of things, the parish had plenty on its hands. Mr. Lake had begged Mrs. Selwyn not to quit the Rectory until it should be quite and entirely convenient to her; if he got into it six or twelve months hence, he kindly urged, it would be time enough for him. But Mrs. Selwyn, while thanking him for his consideration, knowing how earnestly he meant it, showed him that she was obliged to go. She had taken to the school at Brighton, and had to enter upon it as speedily as might be. A few days afterwards she had vacated the Rectory, and her furniture was packed into vans to be carried away. Some women went into the empty house to clean it down; that it might be made ready for its new tenant. Poor Mr. Selwyn had repaired and decorated the house only the previous year, little thinking his tenure of it would be so short.

Then began the fun. The polite attentions to Mr. Lake, as curate, had been remarkable; to Mr. Lake, as Rector, they were unique. Mrs. Topcroft’s door was besieged with notes and parcels. The notes contained invitations to teas and dinners, the parcels small offerings to himself. A person about to set up housekeeping naturally wants all kinds of articles; and the ladies of St. Matthew’s were eager to supply contributions. Slippers fell to a discount, purses and silk watch-guards ditto. More useful things replaced them. Ornamental baskets for the mantelpiece, little match-boxes done in various devices, card-racks hastily painted, serviette rings composed of coloured beads, pincushions and scent-mats for the dressing-table, with lots more things that I can’t remember. These were all got up on the spur of the moment; more elaborate presents, that might take weeks to complete, were put in hand. In vain Mr. Lake entreated them not to do these things; not to send anything; not to trouble themselves about him, assuring them it made him most uncomfortable; that he preferred not to receive presents of any kind: and he said it so emphatically, they might see he was in earnest. All the same. He might as well have talked to the moon. The ladies laughed, and worked on.

“Mrs. Topcroft, I think you had better refuse to take the parcels in,” he said to her one day, when a huge packet had arrived, which proved to be a market-basket, sent conjointly by three old maiden sisters. “I don’t wish to be rude, or do anything that would hurt kind people’s feelings: but, upon my word, I should like to send all the things back again with thanks.”

“They would put them into the empty Rectory if I did not take them in,” returned Mrs. Topcroft. “The only way to stop it is to talk to the ladies yourself. Senseless girls!”

Mr. Lake did talk—as well, and as impressively as he knew how. It made not the slightest impression; and the small presents flocked in as before. Mrs. Jonas did not brew a “blessed great jug of camomile-tea,” as did one of the admirers of Mr. Weller, the elder; but she did brew some “ginger-cordial,” from a valued receipt of her late husband, the colonel, and sent it, corked up in two ornamental bottles, with her best regards. The other widow, Mrs. Herriker, was embroidering a magnificent table-cover, working against time.

We had the felicity of tasting the ginger-cordial. Mrs. Jonas gave a small “at home,” and brought out a bottle of it as we were leaving. Cattledon sniffed at her liqueur-glass surreptitiously before drinking it.

“The chief ingredient in that stuff is rum,” she avowed to me as we walked home, stretching up her neck in displeasure. “Pine-apple rum! My nose could not be mistaken.”

“The cordial was very good,” I answered. “Rum’s not a bad thing, Miss Cattledon.”

“Not at all bad, Johnny,” laughed Miss Deveen. “An old sailor-uncle of mine, who had been round the world and back again more times than he could count, looked upon it as the panacea for all earthly ills.”

“Any way, before I would lay myself out to catch Mr. Lake, as that widow woman does, and as some others are doing, I would hide my head for ever,” retorted Cattledon. And, to give her her due, though she did look upon the parson as safe to fall to her own lot, she did not fish for him. No presents, large or small, went out from her hands.

That week we dined in Upper Brook Street. Miss Deveen, Mr. Brandon, the new Rector, and I; and two strange ladies whom we did not previously know. Mr. Brandon took Anne in to dinner; she put me on her left hand at table, and told me she and Sir Robert hoped I should often go to see them at Bellwood.

“My husband has taken such a fancy to you, Johnny,” she whispered. “He does rather take likes and dislikes to people—just as I know you do. He says he took a great liking to me the first time he ever spoke to me. Do you remember it, Johnny?—you were present. We were kneeling in the parlour at Maythorn Bank. You were deep in that child’s book of mine, ‘Les contes de ma bonne,’ and I had those cuttings of plants, which I had brought from France, spread out on newspapers on the carpet, when Sir Robert came in at the glass-doors. That was the first time he spoke to me; but he had seen me at Timberdale Church the previous day. Papa and I and you walked over there: and a very hot day it was, I remember.”

“That Sir Robert should take a liking to you, Anne, was only a matter of course; other people have done the same,” I said, calling her “Anne” unconsciously, my thoughts back in the past. “But I don’t understand why he should take a liking to me.”

“Don’t you?” she returned. “I can tell you that he has taken it—a wonderful liking. Why, Johnny, if my little baby-girl were twenty years older, you would only need to ask and have her. I’m not sure but he’d offer her to you without asking.”

We both laughed so, she and I, that Sir Robert looked down the table, inquiring what our mirth was. Anne answered that she would not forget to tell him later.

“So mind, Johnny, that you come to Bellwood as often as you please whenever you are staying at Crabb Cot. Robert and I would both like it.”

And perhaps I may as well mention here that, although the business which had brought Mr. Brandon to London was concluded, he did not go home. When that event would take place, or how long it would be, appeared to be hidden in the archives of the future. For a certain matter had arisen to detain him.

Mr. Brandon had a nephew in town, a young medical student, of whom you once heard him say that he was “going to the bad.” By what we learnt now, the young fellow appeared to have gone to it; and Mr. Brandon’s prolonged stay was connected with this.

“I shall see you into a train at Paddington, Johnny,” he said to me, “and you must make your way home alone. For all I know, I may be kept here for weeks.”

But Miss Deveen would not hear of this. “Mr. Brandon remains on for his own business, Johnny, and you shall remain for my pleasure,” she said to me in her warm manner. “I had meant to ask Mr. Brandon to leave you behind him.”

And that is how I was enabled to see the play played out between the ladies and the new Rector. I did wonder which of them would win the prize; I would not have betted upon Cattledon. It also caused me to see something of another play that was being played in London just then; not a comedy but a tragedy. A fatal tragedy, which I may tell of sometime.

All unexpectedly a most distressing rumour set in; and though none knew whence it arose, a conviction of its truth took the parish by storm. Mr. Lake was about to be married! Distressing it was, and no mistake: for each individual lady had good cause to know that she was not the chosen bride, being unpleasantly conscious that Mr. Lake had not asked her to be.

Green-eyed jealousy seized upon the community. They were ready to rend one another’s veils. The young ladies vowed it must be one or other of those two designing widows; Mrs. Jonas and Mrs. Herriker, on their parts, decided it was one of those minxes of girls. What with lady-like innuendos pitched at each other personally, and sharp hints levelled apparently at the air, all of which provoked retort, the true state of the case disclosed itself pretty clearly to the public—that neither widows nor maidens were being thought of by Mr. Lake.

And yet—that the parson had marriage in view seemed to be certain; the way in which he was furnishing his house proved it. No end of things were going into it—at least, if vigilant eyes might be believed—that could be of no use to a bachelor-parson. There must be a lady in the case—and Mr. Lake had not a sister.

With this apparent proof of what was in the wind, and with the conviction that not one of themselves had been solicited to share his hearth and home—as the widow Herriker poetically put it—the world was at a nonplus; though polite hostilities were not much less freely exchanged. Suddenly the general ill-feeling ceased. One and all metaphorically shook hands and made common cause together. A frightful conviction had set in—it must be Emma Topcroft.

Miss Cattledon was the first to scent the fox. Cattledon herself. She—but I had better tell it in order.

It was Monday morning, and we were at breakfast: Cattledon pouring out the coffee, and taking anxious glances upwards through the open window between whiles. What could be seen of the sky was blue enough, but clouds, some dark, some light, were passing rapidly over it.

“Are you fearing it will rain, Miss Cattledon?”

“I am, Johnny Ludlow. I thought,” she added, turning to Miss Deveen, “of going after that chair this morning, if you have no objection, and do not want me.”

“Go by all means,” returned Miss Deveen. “It is time the chair went, Jemima, if it is to go at all. Take Johnny with you: he would like the expedition. As for myself, I have letters to write that will occupy me the whole morning.”

Miss Cattledon wished to buy an easy-chair that would be comfortable for an aged invalid: her sick aunt at Chelmsford. But, as Miss Cattledon’s purse was not as large as her merits, she meant to get a second-hand chair: which are often just as good as new. Dr. Galliard, who knew all about invalid-chairs and everything else, advised her to go to a certain shop in Oxford Street, where they sold most kinds of furniture, old and new. So we agreed to go this same morning. Cattledon, however, would not miss the morning service; trust her for that.

“It might do you no harm to attend for once, Johnny Ludlow.”

Thus admonished, I went over with her, and reaped the benefit of the young deacon’s ministry. Mr. Lake did not make his appearance at all: quite an unusual omission. I don’t think it pleased Cattledon.

“We had better start at once, Johnny Ludlow,” she said to me as we came out; and her tone might have turned the very sweetest of cream to curds and whey. “Look at those clouds! I believe it is going to rain.”

So we made our way to an omnibus, then on the point of starting, got in, and were set down at the shop in Oxford Street. Cattledon described what she wanted; and the young man invited us to walk upstairs.

Dodging our way dexterously through the things that crowded the shop, and up the narrow staircase, we reached a room that seemed, at first sight, big enough to hold half the furniture in London.

“This way, ma’am,” said the young man who had marshalled us up. “Invalid-chairs,” he called out, turning us over to another young man, who came forward—and shot downstairs again himself.

Cattledon picked her way in and out amidst the things, I following. Half-way down the room she stopped to admire a tall, inlaid cabinet, that looked very beautiful.

“I never come to these places without longing to be rich,” she whispered to me with a sigh, as she walked on. “One of the pleasantest interludes in life, Johnny Ludlow, must be to have a good house to furnish and plenty of money to—— Dear me!”

The extreme surprise of the exclamation following the break off, caused me to look round. We were passing a side opening, or wing of the room; a wing that seemed to be filled with bedsteads and bedding. Critically examining one of the largest of these identical bedsteads stood the Reverend William Lake and Emma Topcroft.

So entranced was Cattledon that she never moved hand or foot, simply stood still and gazed. They, absorbed in their business, did not see us. The parson seemed to be trying the strength of the iron, shaking it with his hand; Emma was poking and patting at the mattress.

“Good Heavens!” faintly ejaculated Cattledon; and she looked as if about to faint.

“The washhand-stands are round this way, and the chests of drawers also,” was called out at this juncture from some unknown region, and I knew the voice to be Mrs. Topcroft’s. “You had better come if you have fixed upon the beds. The double stands look extremely convenient.”

Cattledon turned back the way she had come, and stalked along, her head in the air. Straight down the stairs went she, without vouchsafing a word to the wondering attendant.

“But, madam, is there not anything I can show you?” he inquired, arresting her.

“No, young man, not anything. I made a mistake in coming here.”

The young man looked at the other young man down in the shop, and tapped his finger on his forehead suggestively. They thought her crazy.

“Barefaced effrontery!” I heard her ejaculate to herself: and I knew she did not allude to the young men. But never a word to me spoke she.

Peering about, on this side the street and on that, she espied another furniture shop, and went into it. Here she found the chair she wanted; paid for it, and gave directions for it to be sent to Chelmsford.

That what we had witnessed could have but one meaning—the speedy marriage of Mr. Lake with Emma Topcroft—Cattledon looked upon as a dead certainty. Had an astrologer who foretells the future come forth to read the story differently, Cattledon would have turned a deaf ear. Mrs. Jonas happened to be sitting with Miss Deveen when we arrived home; and Cattledon, in the fulness of her outraged heart, let out what she had seen. She had felt so sure of Mr. Lake!

Naturally, as Mrs. Jonas agreed, it could have but one meaning. She took it up accordingly, and hastened forth to tell it. Ere the sun went down, it was known from one end of the parish to the other that Emma Topcroft was to be Mrs. Lake.

“A crafty, wicked hussy!” cried a chorus of tongues. “She, with that other woman, her mother, to teach her, has cast her spells over the poor weak man, and he has been unable to escape!”

Of course it did seem like it. It continued to seem like it as the week went on. Never a day dawned but the parson and Emma went to town by an omnibus, looking at things in this mart, buying in that. It became known that they had chosen the carpets: Brussels for the sitting-rooms, colour green; drugget for the bed-chambers, Turkey pattern: Mrs. Jonas fished it out. How that impudent girl could have the face to go with him upon such errands, the parish could not understand. It’s true Mrs. Topcroft always made one of the party, but what of that?

Could anything be done? Any means devised to arrest the heresy and save him from his dreadful fate? Sitting nose and knees together at one another’s houses, their cherished work all thrown aside, the ladies congregated daily to debate the question. They did not quite see their way clear to warning the parson that Emma was neither more nor less than a Mephistopheles in petticoats. They would have assured herself of the fact with the greatest pleasure had that been of any use. How sly he was, too—quite unworthy of his cloth! While making believe to be a poor man, he must have been putting by a nice nest-egg; else how could he buy all that furniture?

Soon another phase of the affair set in: one that puzzled them exceedingly. It came about through an ebullition of temper.

Mrs. Jonas had occasion to call upon the Rector one afternoon, concerning some trouble that turned up in the parish: she being a district visitor and presiding at the mothers’ meetings. Mr. Lake was not at home. Emma sat in the parlour alone stitching away at new table-cloths and sheets.

“He and mamma went out together after dinner,” said Emma, leaving her work to hand a chair to Mrs. Jonas. “I should not wonder if they are gone to the house. The carpets were to be laid down to-day.”

She looked full at Mrs. Jonas as she said it, never blushing, never faltering. What with the bold avowal, what with the sight of the sheets and the table-linen, and what with the wretched condition of affairs, the disappointment at heart, the discomfort altogether, Mrs. Jonas lost her temper.

“How dare you stand there with a bold face and acknowledge such a thing to me, you unmaidenly girl?” cried the widow, her anger bubbling over as she dashed away the offered chair. “The mischief you are doing poor Mr. Lake is enough, without boasting of it.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Emma, opening her eyes wide, and feeling more inclined to laugh than to cry, for her mood was ever sunny, “what am I doing to him?”

How Mrs. Jonas spoke out all that was in her mind, she could never afterwards recall. Emma Topcroft, gazing and listening, could not remain ignorant of her supposed fault now; and she burst into a fit of laughter. Mrs. Jonas longed to box her ears. She regarded it as the very incarnation of impudence.

“Marry me! Me! Mr. Lake! My goodness!—what can have put such a thing into all your heads?” cried Emma, in a rapture of mirth. “Why, he is forty-five if he’s a day! He wouldn’t think of me: he couldn’t. He came here when I was a little child: he does not look upon me as much else yet. Well, I never!”

And the words came out in so impromptu a fashion, the surprise was so honestly genuine, that Mrs. Jonas saw there must be a mistake somewhere. She took the rejected chair then, her fears relieved, her tones softened, and began casting matters about in her mind; still not seeing any way out of them.

“Is it your mother he is going to marry?” cried she, the lame solution presenting itself to her thoughts, and speaking it out on the spur of the moment. It was Emma’s turn to be vexed now.

“Oh, Mrs. Jonas, how can you!” she cried with spirit. “My poor old mother!” And somehow Mrs. Jonas felt humiliated, and bit her lips in vexation at having spoken at all.

“He evidently is going to be married,” she urged presently, returning to the charge.

“He is not going to marry me,” said Emma, threading her needle. “Or to marry my mother either. I can say no more than that.”

“You have been going to London with him to choose some furniture: bedsteads, and carpets and things,” contended Mrs. Jonas.

“Mamma has gone with him to choose it all: Mr. Lake would have been finely taken in, with his inexperience. As to me, I wanted to go too, and they let me. They said it would be as well that young eyes should see as well as theirs, especially the colours of the carpets and the patterns of the crockery-ware.”

“What a misapprehension it has been!” gasped Mrs. Jonas.

“Quite so—if you mean about me,” agreed Emma. “I like Mr. Lake very much; I respect him above every one in the world; but for anything else—such a notion never entered my head: and I am sure it would not enter his.”

Mrs. Jonas, bewildered, but intensely relieved, wished Emma good-afternoon civilly, and went away to enlighten the world. A reaction set in: hopes rose again to fever heat. If it was neither Emma Topcroft nor her mother, why, it must be somebody else, argued the ladies, old and young, and perhaps she was not chosen yet: and the next day they were running about the parish more than ever.

Seated in her drawing-room, in her own particular elbow-chair, in the twilight of the summer’s evening, was Miss Deveen. Near to her, telling a history, his voice low, his conscious face slightly flushed, sat the Rector of St. Matthew’s. The scent from the garden flowers came pleasantly in at the open window; the moon, high in the heavens, was tinting the trees with her silvery light. One might have taken them for two lovers, sitting there to exchange vows, and going in for romance.

Miss Deveen was at home alone. I was escorting that other estimable lady to a “penny-reading” in the adjoining district, St. Jude’s, at which the clergy of the neighbourhood were expected to gather in full force, including the Rector of St. Matthew’s. It was a special reading, sixpence admission, got up for the benefit of St. Jude’s vestry fire-stove, which wanted replacing with a new one. Our parish, including Cattledon, took up the cause with zeal, and would not have missed the reading for the world. We flocked to it in numbers.

Disappointment was in store for some of us, however, for the Rector of St. Matthew’s did not appear. He called, instead, on Miss Deveen, confessing that he had hoped to find her alone, and to get half-an-hour’s conversation with her: he had been wishing for it for some time, as he had a tale to tell.

It was a tale of love. Miss Deveen, listening to it in the soft twilight, could but admire the man’s constancy of heart and his marvellous patience.

In the West of England, where he had been curate before coming to London, he had been very intimate with the Gibson family—the medical people of the place. The two brothers were in partnership, James and Edward Gibson. Their father had retired upon a bare competence, for village doctors don’t often make fortunes, leaving the practice to these two sons. The rest of his sons and daughters were out in the world—Mrs. Topcroft was one of them. William Lake’s father had been the incumbent of this parish, and the Lakes and the Gibsons were ever close friends. The incumbent died; another parson was appointed to the living; and subsequently William Lake became the new parson’s curate, upon the enjoyable stipend of fifty pounds a-year. How ridiculously improvident it was of the curate and Emily Gibson to fall in love with one another, wisdom could testify. They did; and there was an end of it, and went in for all kinds of rose-coloured visions after the fashion of such-like poor mortals in this lower world. And when he was appointed to the curacy of St. Matthew’s in London, upon a whole one hundred pounds a-year, these two people thought Dame Fortune was opening her favours upon them. They plighted their troth solemnly, and exchanged broken sixpences.

Mr. Lake was thirty-one years of age then, and Emily was nineteen. He counted forty-five now, and she thirty-three. Thirty-three! Daisy Dutton would have tossed her little impertinent head, and classed Miss Gibson with the old ladies at the Alms Houses, who were verging on ninety.

Fourteen summers had drifted by since that troth-plighting; and the lovers had been living—well, not exactly upon hope, for hope seemed to have died out completely; and certainly not upon love, for they did not meet: better say, upon disappointment. Emily, the eldest daughter of the younger of the two brothers, was but one of several children, and her father had no fortune to give her. She kept the house, her mother being dead, and saw to the younger children, patiently training and teaching them. And any chance of brighter prospects appeared to be so very hopeless, that she had long ago ceased to look for it.

As to William Lake, coming up to London full of hope with his rise in life, he soon found realization not answer to expectation. He found that a hundred a-year in the metropolis, did not go so very much further than his fifty pounds went in the cheap and remote village. Whether he and Emily had indulged a hope of setting up housekeeping on the hundred a-year, they best knew; it might be good in theory, it was not to be accomplished in practice. It’s true that money went further in those days than it goes in these; still, without taking into calculation future incidental expenses that marriage might bring in its train, they were not silly enough to risk it.

When William Lake had been five years at St. Matthew’s, and found he remained just as he was, making both ends meet upon the pay, and saw no prospect of being anywhere else to the end, or of gaining more, he wrote to release Emily from her engagement. The heartache at this was great on both sides, not to be got over lightly. Emily did not rebel; did not remonstrate. A sensible, good, self-enduring girl, she would not for the world have crossed him, or added to his care; if he thought it right that they should no longer be bound to one another, it was not for her to think differently. So the plighted troth was recalled and the broken sixpences were despatched back again. Speaking in theory, that is, you understand: practically, I don’t in the least know whether the sixpences were returned or kept. It must have been a farce altogether, taken at the best: for they had just gone on silently caring for each other; patiently bearing—perhaps in a corner of their hearts even slightly hoping—all through these later years.

Miss Deveen drew a deep breath as the Rector’s voice died away in the stillness of the room. What a number of these long-enduring, silently-borne cases the world could tell of, and how deeply she pitied them, was very present to her then.

“You are not affronted at my disclosing all this so fully, Miss Deveen?” he asked, misled by her silence. “I wished to——”

“Affronted!” she interposed. “Nay, how could I be? I am lost in the deep sympathy I feel—with you and with Emily Gibson. What a trial it has been!—how hopeless it must have appeared. You will marry now.”

“Yes. I could not bring myself to disclose this abroad prematurely,” he added; “though perhaps I ought to have done it before beginning to furnish the house. I find that some of my friends, suspecting something from that fact, have been wondering whether I was thinking of Emma Topcroft. Though indeed I feel quite ashamed to repeat to you any idea that is so obviously absurd, poor child!”

Miss Deveen laughed. “How did you hear that?” she asked.

“From Emma herself. She heard of it from—from—Mrs. Jonas, I think—and repeated it to me, and to her mother, in the highest state of glee. To Emma, it seemed only fun: she is young and thoughtless.”

“I conclude Emma has known of your engagement?”

“Only lately. Mrs. Topcroft knew of it from the beginning: Emily is her niece. She knew also that I released Emily from the engagement years ago, and she thought I did rightly, my future being so hopeless. But how very silly people must be to suppose I could think of that child Emma! I must set them right.”

“Never mind the people,” cried Miss Deveen. “Don’t set them right until you feel quite inclined to do so. As to that, I believe Emma has done it already. How long is it that you and Emily have waited for one another?”

“Fourteen years.”

“Fourteen years! It seems half a lifetime. Do not let another day go on, Mr. Lake; marry at once.”

“That was one of the points on which I wished to ask your opinion,” he rejoined, his tones hesitating, his face shrinking from the moonlight. “Do you think it would be wrong of me to marry—almost directly? Would it be at all unseemly?”

“Wrong? Unseemly?” cried Miss Deveen. “In what way?”

“I hardly know. It may appear to the parish so very hurried. And it is so short a time since my kind Rector died.”

“Never mind the parish,” reiterated Miss Deveen. “The parish would fight at your marriage, though it were put off for a twelvemonth; be sure of that. As to Mr. Selwyn, he was no relative of yours. Surely you have waited long enough! Were I your promised wife, sir, I wouldn’t have you at all unless you married me to-morrow morning.”

They both laughed a little. “Why should the parish fight at my marriage, Miss Deveen?” he suddenly asked.

“Why?” she repeated; thinking how utterly void of conceit he was, how unconscious he had been all along in his modesty. “Oh, people always grumble at everything, you know. If you were to remain single, they would say you ought to marry; and if you marry, they will think you might as well have remained single. Don’t trouble your head about the parish, and don’t tell any one a syllable beforehand if you’d rather not. I shouldn’t.”

“You have been so very kind to me always, Miss Deveen, and I have felt more grateful than I can say. I hope—I hope you will like my wife. I hope you will allow me to bring her here, and introduce her to you.”

“I like her already,” said Miss Deveen. “As to your bringing her here, if she lived near enough you should both come here to your wedding-breakfast. What a probation it has been!”

The tears stood in his grey eyes. “Yes, it has been that; a trial hardly to be imagined. I don’t think we quite lost heart, either she or I. Not that we have ever looked to so bright an ending as this; but we knew that God saw all things, and we were content to leave ourselves in His hands.”

“I am sure that she is good and estimable! One to be loved.”

“Indeed she is. Few are like her.”

“Have you never met—all these fourteen years?”

“Yes; three or four times. When I have been able to take a holiday I have gone down there to my old Rector; he was always glad to see me. It has not been often, as you know,” he added. “Mr. Selwyn could not spare me.”

“I know,” said Miss Deveen. “He took all the holidays, and you all the work.”

“He and his family seemed to need them,” spoke the clergyman from his unselfish heart. “Latterly, when Emily and I have met, we have only allowed it to be as strangers.”

“Not quite as strangers, surely!”

“No, no; I used the word thoughtlessly. I ought to have said as friends.”

“Will you pardon me for the question I am about to ask you, and not attribute it to impertinent curiosity?” resumed Miss Deveen. “How have you found the money to furnish your house? Or are you doing it on credit?”

His whole face lighted up with smiles. “The money is Emily’s, dear Miss Deveen. Her father, Edward Gibson, sent me his cheque for three hundred pounds, saying it was all he should be able to do for her, but he hoped it might be enough for the furniture.”

Miss Deveen took his hands in hers as he rose to leave. “I wish you both all the happiness that the world can give,” she said, in her earnest tones. “And I think—I feel sure—Heaven’s blessing will rest upon you.”

We turned out from the penny-reading like bees from a hive, openly wondering what could have become of Mr. Lake. Mrs. Jonas hoped his head was not splitting—she had seen him talking to Miss Cattledon long enough in the afternoon in that hot King’s Road to bring on a sunstroke. Upon which Cattledon retorted that the ginger-cordial might have disagreed with him. With the clearing up as to Emma Topcroft, these slight amenities had recommenced.

Miss Deveen sat reading by lamp-light when we arrived home. Taking off her spectacles, she began asking us about the penny-reading; but never a hint gave she that she had had a visitor.

Close upon this Mr. Lake took a week’s holiday, leaving that interesting young deacon as his substitute, and a brother Rector to preach on the Sunday morning. No one could divine what on earth he had gone out for, as Mrs. Herriker put it, or what part of the world he had betaken himself to. Miss Deveen kept counsel; Mrs. Topcroft and Emma never opened their lips.

The frightful truth came out one morning, striking the parish all of a heap. They read it in the Times, amongst the marriages. “The Reverend William Lake, Rector of St. Matthew’s, to Emily Mary, eldest daughter of Edward Gibson, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons.” Indignation set in.

“I have heard of gay deceivers,” gasped Miss Barlow, who was at the least as old as Cattledon, and sat in the churchwarden’s pew at church, “but I never did hear of deceit such as this. And for a clergyman to be guilty of it!”

“I’m glad I sent him a doll,” giggled Daisy Dutton. “I dare say it is a doll he has gone and married.”

This was said in the porch, after morning prayers. Whilst they were all at it, talking as fast as they could talk, Emma Topcroft chanced to pass. They pounced upon her forthwith.

“Married! Oh yes, of course he is married; and they are coming home on Saturday,” said Emma, in response.

“Is she a doll?” cried Daisy.

“She is the nicest girl you ever saw,” returned Emma; “though of course not much of a girl now; and they have waited for one another fourteen years.”

Fourteen years! Thoughts went back, in mortification, to slippers and cushions. Mrs. Jonas cast regrets to her ginger-cordial.

“Of course he has a right to be engaged—and to have slyly kept it to himself, making believe he was a free man: but to go off surreptitiously to his wedding without a word to any one!—I don’t know what he may call it,” panted Mrs. Herriker, in virtuous indignation, “I call it conduct unbefitting a gentleman. He could have done no less had he been going to his hanging.”

“He would have liked to speak, I think, but could not get up courage for it; he is the shyest man possible,” cried Emma. “But he did not go off surreptitiously: some people knew of it. Miss Deveen knew—and Dr. Galliard knew—and we knew—and I feel nearly sure Mr. Chisholm knew, he simpered so the other day when he called for the books. I dare say Johnny Ludlow knew.”

All which was so much martyrdom to Jemima Cattledon, listening with a face of vinegar. Miss Deveen!—and Johnny Ludlow!—and those Topcrofts!—while she had been kept in the dark! She jerked up her skirts to cross the wet road, inwardly vowing never to put faith in surpliced man again.

We went to church on Sunday morning to the sound of the ting-tang. Mr. Lake, looking calm and cool as usual, was stepping into the reading-desk: in the Rector’s pew sat a quiet-looking and quietly dressed young lady with what Miss Deveen called, then and afterwards, a sweet face. Daisy Dutton took a violent fancy to her at first-sight: truth to say, so did I.

Our parish—the small knot of week-day church-goers in it—could not get over it at all. Moreover, just at this time they lost Mr. Chisholm, whose year was up. Some of them “went over” to St. Jude’s in a body; that church having recently set up daily services, and a most desirable new curate who could “intone.” “As if we would attend that slow old St. Matthew’s now, to hear that slow old parson Lake!” cried Mrs. Herriker, craning her neck disparagingly.

The disparagement did not affect William Lake. He proved as indefatigable as Rector as he had been as curate, earning the golden opinions he deserved. And he and his wife were happy.

But he would persist in declaring that all the good which had come to him was owing to me; that but for my visit to London at that critical time, Sir Robert Tenby would never have heard there was such a man as himself in the world.

“It is true, Johnny,” said Miss Deveen. “But you were only the humble instrument in the hand of God.”