The arrival of "Laddie" made quite a diversion, and, when the good-byes were all said, Nan took the little animal in her arms and went with Phillis for the last time to gather flowers in the Longmead garden, and when the twilight came on the three girls went slowly through the village, bidding farewell to their old haunts. It was all very sad, and nobody slept much that night in the cottage. Nan's tears were shed very quietly, but they fell thick and fast. "Oh, Dick, it is hard--hard!" thought the poor girl, burying her face in the pillow; "but I have not let you know the day, so you will not be thinking of us. I would not pain you for worlds, Dick, not more than I can help." And then she dried her eyes and told herself that she must be brave for all their sakes to-morrow; but, for all her good resolutions, sleep would not come to her any more than it did to Phillis, who lay open-eyed and miserable until morning. CHAPTER XIII. "I MUST HAVE GRACE." When the Rev. Archibald Drummond was nominated to the living of Hadleigh in Sussex, it was at once understood by his family that he had achieved a decided success in life. Hadleigh until very recently had been a perpetual curacy, and the perpetual curate in charge had lived in the large, shabby house with the green door on the Braidwood Road, as it was called. There had been some talk of a new vicarage, but as yet the first brick had not been laid, the building-committee had fallen out on the question of the site, and nothing had been definitely arranged: there was a good deal of talk, too, about the church restoration, but at the present moment nothing had been done. Mr. Drummond had not been disturbed in his mind by the delay of the building-committee in the matter of the new vicarage, but on the topic of the church restoration he had been heard to say very bitter things,--far too bitter, it was thought, to proceed from the lips of such a new-comer. It is not always wise to be outspoken, and when Mr. Drummond expressed himself a little too frankly on the ugliness of the sacred edifice, which until lately had been a chapel-of-ease, he had caused a great deal of dissatisfaction in the mind of his hearers; but when the young vicar, still strongly imbued with the beauties of Oxford architecture, had looked round blankly on the great square pews and galleries, and then at the wooden pulpit, and the Ten Commandments that adorned the east end, he was not quite so sure in his mind that his position was as enviable as that of other men. Church architecture was his hobby, and, if the truth must be told, he was a little "High" in his views; without attaching himself to the Ultra-Ritualistic party, he was still strongly impregnated with many of their ideas; he preferred Gregorian to Anglican chants, and would have had no objection to incense if his diocesan could have been brought to appreciate it too.