The conversation going on in the room was not in the least abstract; local and individual were all the subjects under discussion, and the talk about them might have been called gossip. It certainly was of the genus if not of the species to which that unpopular name is given. In a “countryside,” and above all in a little town, metropolis of a country-side, where each family has a certain connection with all, conversation, unless galvanically kept up in the region of books, must glide into this channel; and the clerical character which this little company of ladies possessed, as strongly marked as their husbands below, increased the necessity. Having satisfactorily dismissed the children of the respective Manses, and ascertained who had had hooping cough, and which it was who had come so easily through the measles, the respective parish over which she presided was the next grand object before the mind of the clerical lady. Its successes, its adversities, its sins, its great people and its small; and each parish lady was interested in her neighbour’s dominions. Now it happened that this chapter of backslidings was a peculiarly sad and melancholy one; revealing under the healthful rural air and sweet fresh sunshine, a moral atmosphere, dense, unwholesome, and heavy. While one listened to what those lamenting people said, one’s arcadian visions of rural purity sorrowfully vanished. Follies of youth, the world said; alas! not follies, but sins, dark, far-spreading, unregarded; and public opinion had even ceased in the peasant class to brand them with the unutterable disgrace which is their fate in others. Young, fresh girls heard of those vices--heard them lightly spoken of by older lips grown callous--and saw the sinner scarcely disgraced at all; it was a great evil, shadowing the souls of many as with a low, spreading, deadly tree, between them and the sun. “Could nothing be done,” whispered Helen in Mrs Whyte’s ear, as, trembling with bitter shame and pain, she had listened to some story of the fallen, “you who have influence; who may dare interfere in such matters; could the air not be purified in some way--could nothing be done?” “My dear,” said Mrs Gray, “it is nothing but our evil nature; we cannot mend it; what can we do?” “We cannot mend it,” said Helen in her low, vehement voice; “but we can strive, endeavour, fight--do anything, anything to change such a state of things. It is our work in the world; the other things are only by the way; this is our work--what we were born for. To pull away all obstructions, to let in, everywhere, the light of heaven. If we once did that, this evil could not be--surely it could not be.” “I think so, Helen,” said the kind Mrs Whyte; “we, in our position, might do much more than we are doing; but at least, we all lament these evils bitterly--you believe that?”