If Wells is quiet outside the Vicar's Close, it is quiet indeed within it. Since the summer day when Joyce went into the little garden before a house half-way up on the right side, the hand of the modern Wells builder and plasterer may have marred the complete effect, with stucco and sash-windows; but for the most part the houses in the second decade of the century were guiltless of plate glass and white-wash, and their antique frontage was, even more than now, one of the most picturesque features of the city of Wells. Joyce had scarcely touched the bright brass handle of the bell when the door opened, and a girl of two or three and twenty sprang out. "Oh, Joyce, how glad I am to see you! Come in Aunt Letitia, here is Joyce." Miss Falconer was in the parlour on the right-hand side of the little, low-roofed lobby, and rose somewhat feebly from her chair by the wide grate, which was gay with pots of flowers and evergreens. "Well, my child, welcome. Have you come to Wells with your father?" "Yes, auntie; and I am come here for dinner, and after dinner may Charlotte come and do some shopping with me? I have a long list of commissions at the china shop and at Wilmott's." "Charlotte will be pleased to accompany you, dear child; and when you have taken off your bonnet, come and tell me home news." There were not many stairs to ascend to Charlotte's bedroom, which looked into the gardens at the back of two other houses of some pretension, between the Vicar's Close and the Deanery. Charlotte curled herself up in the deep window-seat, and watched her cousin as she laid aside her large bonnet, smoothed her hair, and arranged her white pelerine over her pelisse. Charlotte had a genuine, if rather romantic, admiration for her cousin Joyce. Though a good girl, she was somewhat given to sentiment and languishing, complained of being fatigued, of headaches, and low spirits. She fed upon romance and poetry--the poetry of albums and keepsakes, which was then fashionable. Of course she had a hero who figured in her day-dreams; and she would spend hours at the little window of the sitting-room to catch a sight of him as he passed along the Close. Charlotte would have been much better for some active employment; but Miss Falconer was getting old and feeble in health, and if Charlotte was obedient and gentle, she was well satisfied. So she worked covers in cross-stitch for the chairs, knitted her own stockings, read all the light literature which came in her way, and played on the cabinet piano which stood against the wall in the sitting-room, with its crimson silk front gathered into the centre by a large rosette, and displaying, when open, a very narrow keyboard with very yellow keys. [Illustration: The Vicar's Close, Wells.]