A conscientious performer was pounding at the “Harmonious Blacksmith” upon a wiry piano near at hand, having left the door wide open, with the indecent disregard of other people peculiar to juvenile performers upon all kinds of instruments. From the other side of the hall came the twanging of an equally wiry guitar, upon which girlish fingers began, and for ever recommenced a Spanish melody, which the performer was striving to attain by that agonizing process known among young ladies as “picking up” an air. Mark, gentle reader, what the learned and reverend Haweis has to say upon this art of playing by ear! From a remoter room came young voices and young laughter; and amidst all these sounds it was hardly surprising that Mr. Dalbrook had to ring three times, and to wait in front of the open hall door for at least ten minutes, before an elderly housemaid responded to his summons and ushered him into the Vicar’s study, the one room in the Vicarage which was ever fit to receive a visitor. The Vicar was reading a newspaper in front of a comfortable fire. He was an elderly man, of genial and even jovial aspect, and he received Mr. Dalbrook’s apologetic account of himself and his business with perfect good humour. “You want to see Miss Newton, my dear sir. I am sorry to tell you she left us nearly two years ago—heartily sorry, for Sarah Newton is a very worthy woman, and a jewel of price in a motherless family like mine,” said the Vicar. “I regret that you should have come such a long way to find her when, had you written to me, I could have told you where to look for her in London.” “Yes, it was a mistake to come so far without making preliminary inquiries—only, as she had not applied to her usual agent for a new situation, I concluded that she was still under your roof.” “She has not gone into a new situation, Mr. Dalbrook. She was too much valued in this house to wish to change to another employment, although she might have lived more luxuriously and done less work elsewhere. She was a mother to my girls—ay, and to my boys as well—while she was with us; and she only left us when she made up her mind to live an independent life.” “She has left off teaching, then, I conclude?” “Yes. She had a little bit of money left her by a bachelor uncle, safely invested in railway stock, and yielding about two hundred a year. This, with her own savings, made her an independent woman, and she made up her mind to realize her own ideal of a useful life—an ideal which had been developing in her mind for a good many years—a life which was to be serviceable to others, and yet pleasant to herself.” “Do you mean that she joined some sisterhood?”