He went on with his story, but less briskly. "Sara, therefore, has remained at Longfields with her uncle. But every six months or so she has come down as far as Baltimore to meet her father, who has journeyed northward for the purpose, with Madam Carroll, the expense of these meetings being gladly borne by John Chase, whose days could not have been so definitely numbered, after all, as he supposed, since he has lingered on indefinitely all this time, nearly three years. During the last year and a half, too, he has been so feeble that Sara could not leave him, the mere thought of an absence, however short, seeming to prey upon him. She has not, therefore, seen her father since their last Baltimore meeting, eighteen months back, as the Major himself has not been quite well enough to undertake the long journey to Connecticut. Chase at length died, two months ago, and she has now come home to live. From what I hear," added the warden, summing up, "I am inclined to think that she will prove a very fair specimen of a Witherspoon and Meredith, if not quite a complete Carroll." "And she could sing the solo for us on Trinity Sunday?" said the rector, giving the helm a turn towards his anthem. "She _could_," said the warden, with impartial accent, retreating a little when he found himself confronted by a date. "Do you mean if she would?" "Well, yes. She is rather distant--reserved; I mean, that she seems so to strangers. You won't find _her_ offering to sing in your choir, or teach in your Sunday-school, or bring you flowers, or embroider your book-marks, or make sermon-covers for you, or dust the church, or have troubles in her mind which require your especial advice; _she_ won't be going off to distant mission stations on Sunday afternoons, walking miles over red-clay roads, and jumping brooks, while you go comfortably on your black horse. She'll be rather a contrast in St. John's just now, won't she?" And the warden's cough ended in the chuckle. It was now after ten, and the choir was still practising. Mr. Phipps, indeed, had proposed going home some time before. But Miss Corinna Rendlesham having remarked in a general way that she pitied "poor puny men" whose throats were always "giving out," he knew from that that she would not go herself nor allow Miss Lucy to go. Now Miss Lucy was the third Miss Rendlesham, and Mr. Phipps greatly admired her. Ferdinand Kenneway, wiser than Phipps, made no proposals of any sort (this was part of his correctness); his voice had been gone for some time, but he found the places for everybody in the music-books, as usual, and pretended to be singing, which did quite as well. "I am convinced that there is some mistake about this second hymn," announced Miss Corinna (after a fourth rehearsal of it); "it is the same one we had only three Sundays ago." "Four, I think," said Miss Greer, with feeling. For was not this a reflection upon the rector's memory?