She also began to take interest in the poor people. By Mrs. Weston’s request, Mr. Devereux had pointed out the families which were most in need of assistance, and Alethea made it her business to find out the best way of helping them. She visited the village school with Lilias, and when requested by her and by the Rector to give her aid in teaching, she did not like to refuse what might be a duty, though she felt very diffident of her powers of instruction. Marianne, like Phyllis and Adeline, became a Sunday scholar, and was catechised with the others in church. Both Mr. Mohun and his nephew thought very highly of the family, and the latter was particularly glad that Lily should have some older person to assist her in those parish matters which he left partly in her charge. Mr. Devereux had been Rector of Beechcroft about a year and a half, and had hitherto been much liked. His parishioners had known him from a boy, and were interested about him, and though very young, there was something about him that gained their respect. Almost all his plans were going on well, and things were, on the whole, in a satisfactory state, though no one but Lilias expected even Cousin Robert to make a Dreamland of Beechcroft, and there were days when he looked worn and anxious, and the girls suspected that some one was behaving ill. ‘Have you a headache, Robert?’ asked Emily, a few evenings before Whit-Sunday, ‘you have not spoken three words this evening.’ ‘Not at all, thank you,’ said Mr. Devereux, smiling, ‘you need not think to make me your victim, now you have no Claude to nurse.’ ‘Then if it is not bodily, it is mental,’ said Lily. ‘I am in a difficulty about the christening of Mrs. Naylor’s child.’ ‘Naylor the blacksmith?’ said Jane. ‘I thought it was high time for it to be christened. It must be six weeks old.’ ‘Is it not to be on Whit-Sunday?’ said Lily, disconsolately. ‘Oh no! Mrs. Naylor will not hear of bringing the child on a Sunday, and I could hardly make her think it possible to bring it on Whit-Tuesday.’ ‘Why did you not insist?’ said Lily. ‘Perhaps I might, if there was no other holy day at hand, or if there was not another difficulty, a point on which I cannot give way.’ ‘Oh! the godfathers and godmothers,’ said Lily, ‘does she want that charming brother of hers, Edward Gage?’ ‘Yes, and what is worse, Edward Gage’s dissenting wife, and Dick Rodd, who shows less sense of religion than any one in the parish, and has never been confirmed.’ ‘Could you make them hear reason?’ ‘They were inclined to be rather impertinent,’ said Mr. Devereux. ‘Old Mrs. Gage—’ ‘Oh!’ interrupted Jane, ‘there is no hope for you if the sour Gage is in the pie.’ ‘The sour Gage told me people were not so particular in her younger days, and perhaps they should not have the child christened at all, since I was such a _contrary_ gentleman. Tom Naylor was not at home, I am to see him to-morrow.’