The house looked just as it used to look; the clustering trees of the north-western suburb were as green and grateful to the tired eye as of yore; and Miss Deveen, in grey satin, received me with the same glad smile. I knew I was a favourite of hers; she once said there were few people in the world she liked as well as she liked me--which made me feel proud and grateful. "I should leave you a fortune, Johnny," she said to me that same day, "but that I know you have plenty of your own." And I begged her not to do anything of the kind; not to think of it: she must know a great many people to whom her money would be a Godsend. She laughed at my earnestness, and told me I should be unselfish to the end. We spent a quiet evening. The grey-haired curate, Mr. Lake, who had come in the first evening I ever spent at Miss Deveen's, years ago, came in again by invitation. "He is so modest," she had said to me, in those long-past years, "he never comes without being invited:" and he was modest still. His hair had been chestnut-coloured once; it was half grey and half chestnut now; and his face and voice were gentle, and his manners kindly. Cattledon was displaying her most gracious behaviour, and thinnest waist; one of the roses I had brought up with the strawberries was sticking out of the body of her green silk gown. For at least half-a-dozen years she had been setting her cap at the curate--and I think she must have been endowed with supreme patience. "If you do not particularly want me this morning, Miss Deveen, I think I will go over to service." It was the next morning, and after breakfast. Cattledon had been downstairs, giving the orders for dinner--and said this on her return. Every morning she went through the ceremony of asking whether she was wanted, before attiring herself for church. "Not I," cried Miss Deveen, with a half-smile. "Go, and welcome, Jemima!" I stood at the window listening to the ting-tang: the bell of St. Matthew's Church could be called nothing else: and watched her pick her way across the road, just deluged by the water-cart. She wore a striped fawn-coloured gown, cut straight up and down, which made her look all the thinner, and a straw bonnet and white veil. The church was on the other side of the wide road, lower down, but within view. Some stragglers went into it with Cattledon; not many. "Does it pay to hold the daily morning service?" "Pay?" repeated Miss Deveen, looking at me with an arch smile. And I felt ashamed of my inadvertent, hasty word. "I mean, is the congregation sufficient to repay the trouble?" "The congregation, Johnny, usually consists of some twenty people, a few more, or a few less, as may chance; and they are all young ladies," she added, the smile deepening to a laugh. "At least, unmarried ones; some are as old as Miss Cattledon. Two of them are widows of thirty-five: they are especially constant in attendance."