"She keeps up on our account," said Chatty, "and for Theo's sake. It is so important, you know, to keep home a little bright--oh, I mean as little miserable as possible for him." "Bright, poor child!" said Mrs. Wilberforce pathetically. "You have not realised as yet what it is. When the excitement is all over, and you have settled down in your mourning, then is the time when you will feel it. I always tell people the first six weeks is nothing; you are so supported by the excitement. But afterwards, when everything falls into the old routine. I suppose, however, you are going away." "Mamma said something about it: but we all preferred, you know----" "You had much better go away. I told you so the moment I heard it. And as Theo has all the summer to himself before he requires to go back to Oxford, what is there to stop you?" Mrs. Wilberforce took great pleasure in settling other people's plans for them, and deciding what they were to do. "That wasn't what we came to talk about," said the elder Miss Warrender, who was quite able to hold her own. "Mrs. Wilberforce, we have just come from old Mrs. Bagley's at the shop, and there we made quite a painful discovery. We said what we could, but perhaps it would be well if you would interfere. I think, indeed, you ought to interfere with authority, or even, perhaps, the rector." "What is it? I always thought that old body had a turn for Dissent. She will have got one of those people from Highcombe to come out and hold a meeting: that is how they always begin." "Oh no,--a great deal worse than that." "Minnie means worse in our way of thinking," the younger sister explained. "I don't know anything worse," said the clergyman's wife, "than the bringing in of Dissent to a united parish such as ours has been. But I know it will come. I am always expecting to hear of it every day; things go so fast nowadays. What with radicalism, and the poor people all having votes, and what you call progress, one never knows what to expect, except the worst. I always look for the worst. Well, what is it then, if it isn't Dissent?" Then Miss Warrender gave an account of the real state of affairs. "The letter was there on the table, dated the Elms, Underwood, Highcombe, as if--as if it was a county family; just as we put it ourselves on our paper." "But far finer than ours,--gilt, and paper so polished and shining, and a quarter of an inch thick. Oh, much finer than ours!" "Ours, of course, will be black-edged for a long, long time to come; there could not be any comparison," said Minnie, with a sigh. "But think of the assurance of such people! I am so glad to have found you alone, for we couldn't have talked about it before the rector. And I believe if we hadn't gone there just at the right moment she would have accepted. I told her mamma would never employ her again."