“She will not take it,” said Geraldine. “She insists that she prefers Uncle Clem to all the fine folk she might meet; and after all, poor Marilda’s acquaintance are not exactly the upper ten thousand.” “Poor Marilda! You know that she is greatly vexed that Emilia is bent on being a hospital nurse, or something like it, and only half yields to go out with her this summer in very unwilling obedience.” “Yes, I know. She wants to come here, and I mean to have her before the long vacation for a little while. We heard various outpourings, and I cannot quite think Miss Emilia a grateful person, though I can believe that she does not find it lively at home.” “She seems to be allowed plenty of slum work, as it is the fashion to call it, and no one can be more good and useful than Fernan and Marilda, so that I call it sheer discontent and ingratitude not to put up with them!” “Only modernishness, my dear Wilmet. It is the spirit of the times, and the young things can’t help it.” “You don’t seem to suffer in that way--at least with Anna.” “No; Anna is a dear good girl, and Uncle Clem is her hero, but I am very glad she has nice young companions in the Merrifields, and an excitement in prospect in this bazaar.” “I thought a bazaar quite out of your line.” “There seems to be no other chance of saving this place from board schools. Two thousand pounds have to be raised, and though Lord Rotherwood and Mr. White, the chief owners of property, have done, and will do, much, there still remains greater need than a fleeting population like this can be expected to supply, and Clement thinks that a bazaar is quite justifiable in such a case.” “If there is nothing undesirable,” said Mrs. Harewood, in her original “what it may lead to” voice. “Trust Lady Merrifield and Jane Mohun for that! I am going to take you to call upon Lilias Merrifield.” “Yea; I shall wish to see the mother of Bernard’s wife.” Clement, who went with them, explained to his somewhat wondering elder sister that he thought safeguards to Christian education so needful, that he was quite willing that, even in this brief stay, all the aid in their power should be given to the cause at Rockquay. Nay, as he afterwards added to Wilmet, he was very glad to see how much it interested Geraldine, and that the work for the Church and the congenial friends were rousing her from her listless state of dejection. Lady Merrifield and Mrs. Harewood were mutually charmed, perhaps all the more because the former was not impassioned about the bazaar. She said she had been importuned on such subjects wherever she had gone, and had learnt to be passive; but her sister Jane was all eagerness, and her younger young people, as she called the present half of her family, were in the greatest excitement over their first experience of the kind. “Well is it for all undertakings that there should always be somebody to whom all is new, and who can be zealous and full of delight.”