she's very much attached to her mother,
and will feel the loss very much.
Wonderful girl that, sir!"

"Miss Ashurst? She is, indeed!" said
Mr. Creswell, abstractedly.

"Such a clever head, such individuality,
such dominant will! Let her make up her
mind to a thing and you may consider it
done! Charming girl, too; simple,
unaffected, affectionate—dear me! I think I
can see her now, in frilled trousers, bowling
a hoop round the schoolhouse garden, and
poor Ashurst pointing her out to me
through the window! Poor Ashurst! dear
me!"

Dr. Osborne pulled out a green silk
pocket- handkerchief ornamented with
orange spots, buried his face in it, and
blew a loud and long note of defiance to
the feelings which were very nearly making
themselves manifest. When he reappeared
to public gaze, Maud and Gertrude had
entered the room, and the conversation
took a different turn. The young ladies
thought it a lovely morning, so fresh and
nice, and they hoped they would have no
more of that horrid winter, which they
detested. Yes, they had seen dear Mrs.
Ashurst, and she seemed much the same,
if anything a little brighter than last night,
but then she always was brighter in the
mornings. Miss Ashurst had gone for a
turn round the garden, her mother had
said. And did uncle remember that they
must go to Helmingham church that morning?
Oh, Dr. Osborne didn't know that
Hooton church was going to be repaired,
and that there would not be service there
for three or four Sundays. The snow had
come through on to the organ, and when
they went to repair the place they found
that the roof was all rotten, and so they
would have to have a new roof. And it
was a pity, one of the young ladies
thought, that while they were about it they
didn't have a new clergyman instead of
that deaf old Mr. Coulson, who mumbled
so you couldn't hear him. And then Dr.
Osborne told them they would be pleased
at Helmingham church, for they had a
new organist, Mr. Hall, and he had
organised a new choir, in which Miss Gill's
soprano and Mr. Drake's bass were heard
to the greatest effect. Time to start was
it not? Uncle must not forget the distance
they had to walk. Yes, Maud would drive
with Dr. Osborne with pleasure. She liked
that dear old pony so much. She would
be ready in an instant.

Marian went with the rest of the party
to church, and sat with them immediately
opposite the head-master's seat, where she
had sat for so many years, and which was
directly in front of the big school pew.
What memories came over her as she
looked across the aisle! Her eyes rested
on the manly figure and the M.B. waistcoat
of Mr. Benthall, who sat in the place
of honour, but after an instant he seemed
to disappear as in a dissolving view, and
there came in his place a bowed and
shrunken elderly man, with small white
hands nestling under his ample cuffs, all
his clothes seemingly too large for him, big
lustrous eyes, pale complexion, and iron-
grey hair. No other change in the whole
church, save in that pew. The lame man
who acted as a kind of verger still stumped
up the pulpit-stairs and arranged the
cushion, greatly to the horror of the
preacher of the day, Mr. Trollope, who,
being a little man, could hardly be seen in
the deep pulpit, and whose soft, little voice
could scarcely be heard out of the mass of
wood and cotton velvet in which he was
steeped to the ears. The butcher, who
was also churchwarden and a leading
member of the congregation, still applied
to himself all the self- accusatory
passages in the responses in the Psalms,
and gave them out looking round at his
fellow- parishioners in a tone of voice
which seemed to say, " See what an
infernal scoundrel I am, and how I
delight in letting you know it!" The boys
in the school were in the same places,
many of them were the same boys, and the
bigger ones, who had been in love with
Marian when she lived among them, nudged
each other as she came in, and then became
scarlet from their clean collars to the roots
of their freshly-pomatumed hair. Fresh
faces nowhere but there. Change in no
life but hers. Yes, as her eye rested on
Mr. Creswell's solemn suit of black she
remembered that life had changed also for
him. And somehow, she could scarcely
tell how, she felt comforted by the thought.

They left the church when the service
was ended, but it was some time before
they were able to start on their way home.
Mr. Creswell came so seldom in Helmingham,
that many of his old acquaintances
saw him there for the first time since his
wife's death, and came to offer their long-
deferred condolence, and to chat over matters
of local gossip. Marian, too, was
always a welcome sight to the Helmingham
people, and the women gathered round her
and asked her about her mother's health,