Though it was very sunshiny outside, it was rather cold indoors. Miss Cherry, who stood by with her bonnet on, and her prayer-book in her hand, had just ordered the fire to be lighted, and Cara, with her cold, had crept close to it. Miss Cherry was going to the afternoon service. ‘I shall not be long, my darling. You will not miss me,’ she was saying, ‘though I don’t like to leave you on my last day.’ ‘Don’t say it is the last day--and look, here is Roger to keep me company,’ said Cara. ‘He will sit with me while you are away.’ How glad he was, and how eager to promise! Miss Cherry thought no more of poor Roger than if he had been a cabbage. She thought it might be an amusement to her niece to hear his little gossip about home; and though she saw through his eagerness, and suspected his object, yet she was not alarmed for Cara. Poor blind moth, coming to scorch his wings, she said to herself, with a half-amused pity. She did not pay very much attention to what he might have to suffer. Indeed, unless one has a special interest in the sufferer, such pangs always awake more or less amusement in the mature bosom; and, tender-hearted as Miss Cherry was, her mind was too full of other things to have much leisure for Roger, who was, she thought, anyhow too shy and awkward to commit himself. She had her mind full of a great many things. She was going away, now that her brother was not going. But though she was anxious about her old aunt, and her home, which she had left for so long a period, she was anxious about Cara too, and did not know which of these opposing sentiments dragged her most strongly to one side or the other. And then she was angry with her brother--angry with him for staying, and angry that there had been an occasion for his going away. She went to afternoon church at that drowsiest hour, when, if the mind has any temptation to be dejected, or to be cross, it is crosser and more downcast than at any other moment, and attended a sleepy service in an old dingy chapel, one of the few which are still to be found remaining, in which a scattered congregation drowse in big pews, and something like a clerk still conducts the responses. Miss Cherry had been used to this kind of service all her life, and in her gentle obstinacy of conservatism clung to it, though it possessed very few attractions. She said her own prayers very devoutly, and did her best to join in the irregular chorus of the clerk; and she sat very erect in the high corner of the pew, and gave an undivided attention to the sermon, sternly commanding every stray thought out of the way. But the effort was not so successful as the valour of the endeavour merited. Miss Cherry did not like, as she said, to have the good effect all dissipated by worldly talk after a good sermon (and was not every sermon good in intention at least--calculated, if we would only receive its directions, to do good to the very best of us?), and for this reason she was in the