Stephen Lawler’s contempt for the appearance of the rest of the candidates was not shared by his cousin, Harry Braithwaite, who turned to watch one of the girls admiringly, and whispered: “I say, Lilian, how awfully fetching little ‘Miss Prim’ looks in that get-up!” “Little Miss Prim” was Annie Lane, the governess. “Yes, she is a pretty girl,” answered his sister, who was handsome enough to be able to afford to acknowledge beauty in others. Meanwhile the crowd was surging toward the door, and Harry Braithwaite kept his mother and sister as near the Vicarage party as he could. At the church door they discovered that a heavy shower of rain was coming down, and Mrs. Mainwaring was lamenting piteously that her husband, who had come on the box of the brougham beside the coachman, would lose his voice entirely if he were to return in the same way through the rain. Harry Braithwaite whispered a few words into his mother’s ear, and, raising his hat, stepped forward and placed a seat in their own carriage at the disposal of the vicar’s wife, in his mother’s name. “If Miss Lane will come with us, there will be lots of room in the brougham for you and your two daughters and the vicar too,” said he. And before Mrs. Mainwaring could say more than “Oh, thank you, but,” he had severed Miss Lane from her pupils and was escorting her under an umbrella to the big Braithwaite barouche. Mrs. Mainwaring looked uneasy; her two daughters, Joan and Betty, looked displeased. “I am sure papa will not approve of that arrangement, mamma,” said Joan, the eldest of the family, who had come to see her sister confirmed. “Well, what could I do, Joan? He meant to be good-natured; and it would not do for the wife of the vicar of the parish to show any prejudice. Of course I should not have allowed you or Betty to go, but with Miss Lane it is different; she can take care of herself.” “I should think so!” said Joan, sharply. And then the vicar came up, and his wife hurried him into the brougham, saying there was plenty of room; and it was not until they were on the point of stating that she confessed, in answer to his inquiries, that Miss Lane was going home in the Braithwaites’ carriage. “That was Master Harry’s doing, I suppose?” said the vicar, with a very grave face. “It was all done so quickly, it was impossible for me to stop him,” said his wife, deprecatingly. “You know you would not have minded if it had been anybody else’s carriage; and, if they are rather a wild set, we cannot reform them by holding aloof from them. And it is not as if I had let one of the girls go,” said she, hurriedly, lowering her voice. “But you have let ‘one of the girls’ go. Miss Lane is only a few months older than Joan,” he answered, more gravely than ever. And she, being a wise woman, dropped the conversation, to take it up again when they two should be alone together.