Cicely, who was not much consoled by this hope, sat down with a very pale countenance and a sudden constriction at her heart. She was almost too much bewildered to realize all that it meant; enough lay on the surface to fill her soul with dismay. Mab, who had less perception of the urgent character of the calamity, was more animated. "I thought you meant _we_ could do something," she said. "Oh, Aunt Jane, could not we go to the Chancellor, if that is the man. The parish? I don't see why they should take the trouble. It will not hurt them. They will have a young, well-off man instead of an old, poor man. Couldn't _we_ go to the Lord Chancellor, Aunt Jane?" Miss Maydew's eyes lighted up for a moment. She seemed to see herself approaching that unknown potentate as lovely ladies went to kings in the days of romance, with a child in each hand. She felt how eloquent she could be, how convincing. She felt herself capable of going down on her knees and asking him whether the father of those two sweet girls was to starve in his old age? All this appeared before her like a dream. But alas! common sense soon resumed its sway; she shook her head. "I don't know if that would do any good," she said. "And _we_ could not get up a petition from the parish," said Cicely; "whatever the people may do we cannot stir in it. Oh, Aunt Jane, how foolish, how wrong of us never to think of this! I have thought that papa was old and that we should have to maintain ourselves and the two babies if--anything happened; but I never remembered that it all hung upon some one else's life. Oh, it does seem hard!" cried the girl, clasping her hands. "Papa has done all the work since ever I was born, but yet he has only been here on sufferance, ready to be turned out at a moment's notice. Oh, it is wrong, it is wrong!" "Not exactly at a moment's notice," said Miss Maydew; "there is six weeks or three months, or something, I forget how long." And then there was a painful pause. Mab cried a little, having her feelings most upon the surface, but Cicely sat quite silent and pale with her eyes fixed upon the white blinds which flapped against the open windows. All at once she got up and drew one of them up with a rapid impatient hand. "I want air, I want light," she said in a stifled voice, and put herself full in the intrusive sunshine, which made Miss Maydew blink her old eyes. "You will give yourself a headache, my dear, and that will not mend matters," she said. Cicely's heart was very heavy. She drew down the blind again and walked up and down the room in her agitation. "Five of us to provide for now--and that is not the worst; what is papa to do? How can he live with everything taken from him? Oh, go to the Chancellor, or any one, if it will do any good! It is terrible for papa."