MABEL'S PROGRESS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "AUNT MARGARET'S TROUBLE."

BOOK I.

CHAPTER V. MABEL "JOINS."

It will have been surmised that Mr. Trescott's
cogitations, recorded in the preceding chapter,
related partly to Mabel Earnshaw. She had seen
him that morning near Jessamine Cottage, on
his way to give a lesson in the neighbourhood
—for Mr. Trescott eked out his scanty salary by
teaching the violin, whenever he could find a
pupil—and had accosted him to ask after his
little girl. Mabel had learned from Clement
Charlewood that the child was motherless, and
more than ever had she set her heart on visiting
the little creature, to whose patient sweetness
and bright intelligence Clement bore warm
testimony.

Mabel had a very strong will of her own, and
rarely set her heart on any object without
compassing its attainment. Nevertheless, for a
young lady of sixteen to walk to New Bridge-
street unattended, and without the consent of
her parents, was not to be thought of. But chance
came to her aid from an unexpected quarter.

Mr. Saxelby was a strong adherent and
devout admirer of a certain evangelical clergyman,
whose preaching (of a very hot and strong
quality) was popular with a large section of the
Hammerham public. Three times every Sunday,
wet or dry, did Mr. Saxelby, his wife and step-
daughter, trudge down to the church of
St. Philip-in-the-Fields, there to be edified by the
eloquent discourses of the Reverend Decimus
Fluke. As St. Philip's lay at least a mile and a
half from Jessamine Cottage, and in a low
squalid part of the town, the walk thither was
exceedingly disagreeable, and even laborious.
But Mr. Saxelby would have considered himself
a backslider, indeed, if anything short of serious
illness had availed to keep him or his family
away from one of the three Sunday services.
Equally, he would have thought himself
disgraced had he been induced by inclement
weather to avail himself of the shelter of a
vehicle on these occasions. "Shall I not do so
much for my Master?" he would exclaim, when
any unconverted friend suggested that cabs were
to be had in Hammerham. And Mr. Saxelby
really considered that in splashing to church,
under his dripping glistening umbrella, he was
doing a good deal for his Master; and his
manner seemed to express a hope that the sacrifice
would be duly appreciated, and entered to
his credit in the celestial registers.

Now, the Reverend Decimus Fluke, incumbent
of St. Philip-in-the-Fields, was an energetic
man. A very energetic man was the Reverend
Decimus Fluke. So energetic that irreverent
persons had been known to say that it required
a constitution of exceptional vigour to support
existence within the sphere of his activity, and
that three mild curates had successively
succumbed to nervous exhaustion, and given up
their positions in his church, owing to the
incessant harrying—the word is not mine; I
merely quote the irreverent persons aforesaid—
to which they were subjected by the reverend
gentleman's energetic surveillance in the
discharge of their parish duties. Mr. Fluke was a
widower, with seven daughters, whose ages
ranged from two-and-thirty to sixteen; all
unmarried, and all inheriting more or less their
father's unflagging vigour of constitution. These
young ladies threw themselves into the business
of doctoring the souls and bodies of their father's
parishioners, with characteristic and unwearying
activity. Miss Fluke, the eldest, was especially
indefatigable in her attention to Sunday schools,
class meetings, Bible readings, the practice of
congregational psalmody—of so severe a character,
that the most censorious worldling could
not accuse Miss Fluke of getting up her
biweekly singing class for the vain purpose of
giving pleasure to any created being—and last,
and most important of all, district visiting. This
was an occupation dear to Miss Fluke's heart;
and as the parish of St. Philip-in-the-Fields was
large, poor, and populous, she had an extended
sphere for the labour which she performed
entirely con amore. Her curiosity about the
affairs of the parishioners (dictated, no doubt,
by interest in their spiritual welfare) was
insatiable. The stoutest Hammerham housewives
—and Hammerham housewives are not remarkable,
as a class, for sensitiveness or over-refinement
—sometimes found themselves no match
for the well-directed unflinching fire of questions
with which Miss Fluke plied them, in the course
of her evangelical investigations. You could
not shame Miss Fluke out of anything; and in
this superiority to the weaknesses of her unconverted
fellow-creatures lay, perhaps, at once her
weapon and her shield.