THE house in which Mr. Culverhouse lodged was on the outskirts of Little Yafford, a comfortable square cottage, with a long slip of garden between the dusty high road and the shady green porch, a garden, where in summer tall white lilies, bush roses, double stocks, and clove carnations grew abundantly in long narrow borders, edged with a thick fence of irreproachable box. Miss Coyle’s model cottage, with its green venetians and verandah, shining window-panes, and general appearance of having come out of a toy-shop, stood on the opposite side of the way, and even the perfection of Miss Coyle’s miniature garden did not put to shame the neatness of Mrs. Pomfret’s larger domain. Mrs. Pomfret was pew opener, and had occupied that post of honour ever since her marriage with Mr. Pomfret, the sexton. Mr. Pomfret was in his grave, and the excellent management whereby Mrs. Pomfret contrived to make so good a figure and wear such spotless caps, upon the profits of opening pews and letting lodgings, was a wonder to the housekeepers of Little Yafford. If Mrs. Pomfret had been disposed to impart the recipe by which she had done these things, she could have told it in two words, and those two words would have been, temperance and industry. The first of the snowdrops had not yet pierced the dark mould, but the shining leaves of bay and berberis, and holly and laurel brightened the long slip of garden. Bella opened the little gate hesitatingly, as if there were something awful in the act. She felt that she was making a desperate plunge in calling upon Cyril Culverhouse; but Mrs. Piper’s sad condition was her justification. She had seen him very seldom since that evening at the Vicarage, when Mrs. Dulcimer forced him to a revealment of his feelings. It was a memory that had lost none of its bitterness with the passage of time; and yet Bella yearned to see him, and was glad of an excuse for approaching him. Mrs. Pomfret opened the door, and saluted Miss Scratchell with a surprised curtsey. She was a thin little woman, dressed in perpetual black, and the stiffest of widow’s caps, which framed her small hard face with a broad band of starched muslin that would have been trying to the countenance of a Hebe, and which made Mrs. Pomfret’s complexion look like unpolished mahogany. But Mrs. Pomfret did not wear a widow’s cap because it was becoming, or comfortable. She wore it as a badge of respectability. Mr. Culverhouse was at home. He opened the parlour door at the sound of Bella’s voice, and looked out. ‘Is it you, Miss Scratchell? How do you do?’ he said, with calm friendliness. ‘Pray come in. Is Mary Smithers worse? Have you come to fetch me to her? I am afraid she has not many days to live.’