Mrs. Meldreth was not an interesting person in the eyes of the world at large. She was a sad, silent, dull-faced individual, with blank looking eyes and a dreary mouth. There were anxious lines on her forehead and hollows in her pale cheeks, such as her easy circumstances did not account for. That she "enjoyed very poor health," according to the dictum of her neighbors, was considered by them to be a sufficient reason for Mrs. Meldreth's evident lack of peace of mind. Mr. Evandale set off for his visit to the sick woman early in the afternoon. He was hindered on his way to her house by meeting with various of his friends of the humbler sort, whom he did not like to pass without a word, and it was after three o'clock before he reached Mrs. Meldreth's cottage. He entered the shop, which looked duller and more uninviting than ever, and found that it was tenanted only by a girl of thirteen--a girl whom he knew to be the stupidest in the whole of the village school. "Well, Polly Moss," he said good-naturedly, "are you taking care of the shop?" Polly Moss, a girl whose mouth looked as if it would never close, beamed at him with radiant satisfaction, and replied-- "Yes, sir--I'm minding the shop, sir. Did you want any groceries to-day, please, sir?" "No, thank you," said the Rector, smiling. "I have come to see Mrs. Meldreth, who, I hear, is ill." "Yes, sir," said Polly, in a tone of resigned affliction. "I thought p'r'aps you was going to buy something, sir. I hain't sold anythink the 'ole afternoon." "Polly," said Mr. Evandale, "how often am I to tell you to say the 'whole' afternoon, not the ''ole'?" The unlucky man had even made war on the natives' practice of leaving out their "h's"! "'Whole,' with an 'h,' remember! Well, I will buy something--what shall it be?--a pound of tea perhaps. Ah, yes! Two shillings a pound, isn't it? Pack it up and send it to the Rectory to-night, Polly; and here are the two shillings to put into the till. Now will you ask if I can see Mrs. Meldreth?" Polly's shining face suddenly fell. "I daren't leave the shop, sir," she said. "I left it this morning just for a minute or two, and Miss Meldreth said she'd skin me alive if ever I did so again. Would you mind, sir"--insinuatingly--"just a-going up the stairs and knocking at the door atop o' them? They'll be glad to see you, I'm sure, sir; and I daren't leave the shop for a single minute." "All right," said the Rector. He was used to entering sick-rooms, and did not find Polly Moss' request very much out of the way. "I'll go up." He passed through the shop and ascended the stairs, with every step of which he was familiar, as he had already visited Mrs. Meldreth during one or two previous attacks of illness, and was heard to knock at the sick woman's bed-room door.