Lucilla objected to the impracticability of white silk, the inconvenience of unpacking the apparatus, the nuisance of dressing, the lack of time; but Rashe was delighted with the idea, and made light of all, and the gentlemen pressed her strongly, till with rather more of a consent than a refusal, she rose from her nearly untasted breakfast, and began to move away. 'Cilla,' said Mr. Prendergast, at the window, 'can I have a word with you?' 'At your service,' she answered, as she came out to him, and saw that Robert had left him. 'Only be quick; they want to photograph me in my ball-dress.' 'You won't let them do it, though,' said the curate. 'White comes out hideous,' said Lucilla; 'I suppose you would not have a copy, if I took one off for you?' 'No; I don't like those visitors of yours well enough to see you turned into a merry-andrew to please them.' 'So that's what Robert Fulmort told you I did last night,' said Lucilla, blushing at last, and thoroughly. 'No, indeed; you didn't?' he said, regarding her with an astonished glance. 'I _did_ wear a dress trimmed with salmon-flies, because of a bet with Lord William,' said Lucilla, the suffusion deepening on brow, cheek, and throat, as the confiding esteem of her fatherly friend effected what nothing else could accomplish. She would have given the world to have justified his opinion of his late rector's little daughter, and her spirits seemed gone, though the worst he did was to shake his head at her. 'If you did not know it, why did you call me _that_?' she asked. 'A merry-andrew?' he answered; 'I never meant that you had been one. No; only an old friend like me doesn't like the notion of your going and dressing up in the morning to amuse a lot of scamps.' 'I won't,' said Lucilla, very low. 'Well, then,' began Mr. Prendergast, as in haste to proceed to his own subject; but she cut him short. 'It is not about Ireland?' 'No; I know nothing about young ladies; and if Mr. Charteris and your excellent friend there have nothing to say against it, I can't.' 'My excellent friend had so much to say against it, that I was pestered into vowing I would go! Tell me not, Mr. Prendergast,--I should not mind giving up to you;' and she looked full of hope. 'That would be beginning at the wrong end, Cilla; you are not my charge.' 'You are my clergyman,' she said, pettishly. 'You are not my parishioner,' he answered. 'Pish!' she said; 'when you know I want you to tell me.' 'Why, you say you have made the engagement.' 'So what I said when she fretted me past endurance must bind me!' Be it observed that, like all who only knew Hiltonbury through Lucilla, Mr. Prendergast attributed any blemishes which he might detect in her to the injudicious training of an old maid; so he sympathized. 'Ah! ladies of a certain age never get on with young ones! But I thought it was all settled before with Miss Charteris.'