"Was it the kind that keeps all on a-breaking out?" asked Mrs. Symes hastily, "because my youngest brother had a leg that nothing couldn't stop. Break out it would do what they might. I'm sure the bandages I've took off him in a morning--" Betty clapped her hands. It was the signal that the reading was going to begin, and the matrons looked at her resentfully. What call had people to start reading when the talk was flowing so free and pleasant? Betty, rather pale, began: "This is a story about a little boy called Wee Willie Winkie." "I call that a silly sort of name," whispered Mrs. Smith. "Did he make a good end, Miss?" asked Mrs. James plaintively. "You'll see," said Betty. "I like it best when they dies forgiving of everybody and singing hymns to the last." "And when they says, 'Mother, I shall meet you 'ereafter in the better land'--that's what makes you cry so pleasant." "Do you want me to read or not?" asked Betty in desperation. "Yes, Miss, yes," hummed the voices heavy and shrill. "It's her hobby, poor young thing," whispered Mrs. Smith, "we all 'as 'em. My own is a light cake to my tea, and always was. Ush." Betty read. When the mothers had wordily gone, she threw open the windows, propped the door wide with a chair, and went to tea. She had it alone. "Your Pa's out a-parishing," said Letitia, bumping down the tray in front of her. "That's a let-off anyhow," said Betty to herself, and she propped up a Stevenson against the tea-pot. After tea parishioners strolled up by ones and twos and threes to change their books at the Vicarage lending library. The books were covered with black calico, and smelt of rooms whose windows were never opened. When she had washed the smell of the books off, she did her hair very carefully in a new way that seemed becoming, and went down to supper. Her step-father only spoke once during the meal; he was luxuriating in the thought of the _Summa Theologiae_ of Aquinas in leather still brown and beautiful, which he had providentially discovered in the wash-house of an ailing Parishioner. When he did speak he said: "How extremely untidy your hair is, Lizzie. I wish you would take more pains with your appearance." When he had withdrawn to his books she covered three new volumes for the library: the black came off on her hands, but anyway it was clean dirt. She went to bed early. "And that's my life," she said as she blew out the candle. Said Mrs. James to Mrs. Symes over the last and strongest cup of tea: "Miss Betty's ailing a bit, I fancy. Looked a bit peaky, it seemed to me. I shouldn't wonder if she was to go off in a decline like her father did." "It wasn't no decline," said Mrs. Symes, dropping her thick voice, "'e was cut off in the midst of his wicked courses. A judgment if ever there was one." Betty's blameless father had been killed in the hunting field.