"I have been thinking a great deal about sermons lately. I wish I could publish the result of my cogitation. I feel inclined to write a pamphlet and ent.i.tle it 'Hints to the Clergy.' I think it would take vastly."

It was Sunday afternoon, and they were sitting together on their favorite boulder. Phillis had christened it her "thinking-stone."

"I never think to more purpose than when I am sitting here," she would say.

Nan, who was looking out to sea rather dreamily, intent on her usual vision, d.i.c.k, roused herself at this, and began to smile in a lofty way.

"You think yourself very clever, Phillis, and so do I; but sermons are hardly in your province, my dear."

Phillis shook her head gravely. She dissented from this view of the case.

"Common sense is in every one's province," she persisted. "I am a practical woman, and some of my hints would be valuable. Sermons are failures, Nan. They go over people's heads like a flight of badly-shot arrows. Does not Goulburn say that? Now and then one touches the mark.

When they are all let fly hither and thither and anyhow, the preacher shuts up his book, and his hearers cease to yawn."

"Oh, Phillis, how absurd you are! Suppose Mr. Drummond were to hear you?"

"I should have no objection. But, Nan, seriously, do you not notice how formal and cut-and-dried most sermons are? They come round regularly, like Sunday. People have to bear being preached at, and so the unfortunate parson must hammer it out of his head somehow. He picks out his text, writes out his composition, drags in his learning by the ear, and delivers it in his best fashion; and people listen to it politely, and the best behaved do not yawn."

"Phillis, you are positively irreverent! I am shocked at you!"

"On the contrary, I am very reverent. Well, in my 'Hints to the Clergy' I would say, first, 'Never preach what you do not feel yourself, or the current of electricity or sympathy, or whatever it is that communicates between preacher and people, will be checked or impeded. Do not preach out of the book: we can read that for ourselves. Preach out of your own head and your own experience, just as much as you can.' Bless you," continued Phillis, in a wise, half-sad tone, "half the pulpits would be empty: we should get sometimes no sermons at all!"

This was too much for Nan's simplicity.

"But people would be so disappointed," she observed, plaintively. "All the middle-aged people like sermons."

"It would not hurt them to be disappointed sometimes. They would appreciate the real thing all the more when it came. It is as well to go without food altogether as to be fed on husks. After all, people forget that they come to church to say their prayers all together, and sing glorias."

"That is very nicely said, dear," was Nan's admiring comment on this.

But Phillis waved aside the praise. She was quite in earnest.

"But if I were speaking to one of these real and not make-believe preachers, I would say to him, 'Never be discouraged. Say what you have got to say: if you really feel it and mean it, some one will feel it too. You can't see into people's hearts: and a good thing, too, my friend. But "the arrow at the venture" may tell; some one may be "hit between the joints of the armor."' There, come along; you shall have more of my hints another time. I have said my say for the present."

And Phillis rose from the boulder, with her eyes bright and kindled by some moving thought, and went down to the edge of the water, and watched a sea-gull dipping towards the sh.o.r.e in the midst of the windy lights; while Nan, marvelling at her sister's unusual earnestness, followed more slowly.

The Challoners were holding up their heads in the place now. There was no denying that. By the people at the vicarage and the White House they were owned and regarded as equals. Mrs. Cheyne made no secret of her affection for Phillis; and she was full of kindness also to Nan and Dulce. It was their own fault if they declined her frequent invitations. But there was one person who refused to hold out the hand of amity to the eccentric new-comers.

Colonel Middleton still shook his white head, and delivered his protest into his daughter's ear. Elizabeth, declared, laughingly, "that the Challoner girls were to her father what a red rag is to a bull." He never met one of them without coming home and relieving his mind, as he called it. "My father is dying to know them," she would say to Mr. Drummond. "He has fallen in love with them all,--mother and daughters too; but he is denying himself an introduction for a certain reason." But, though Archie looked curious and questioned her very closely, she chose to be provoking and say no more. It was Colonel Middleton who at last enlightened the young man.

They were walking from the town together. The colonel was carrying his stick musket-wise over his shoulder, and had the vicar by the arm, when Phillis and Dulce came out of the gateway of the White House. As the girls pa.s.sed Archie, they smiled at him and nodded, and Phillis, in a pretty way she had, waved her hand; and then they went on rapidly towards the Friary. As they did so, Colonel Middleton groaned, and touched his companion's arm impressively.

"There, now, Drummond, did you ever see girls with a better carriage?--heads up--light springy step? Why, it is a pleasure even to an old fellow like myself to watch them. Fancy that taller one on horseback in the Row! Why, she would cut out half the girls. And think that one dare not notice them!" And he struck his stick into the ground almost angrily.

Archie smiled: he could not help it. The colonel was so whimsical in his wrath.

"They had plenty of notice from the folk at the White House," he returned, quietly.

"Ah, Cheyne was always a bit of a Radical, and madam is no better.

They can do as they like, without being afraid of consequences. But that is not my case." And, as Archie looked at him rather mystified, he went on: "Bless me, you do not suppose I am afraid of knowing them for my own sake? Elizabeth tells me that she is intimate with them.

But that is not my business, so long as she does not have them at Brooklyn. 'We must draw the line there, Elizabeth,' I said. 'If you choose to visit your dressmakers, it is not for me to prevent you; you are old enough to select your own friends, so you may be as eccentric as you like. But your brother is coming home. Young men are young men; and I do not choose to expose Hammond to such temptation.'"

"Oh, Hammond! That is your son, I suppose?" asked Archie, who was much amused at the colonel's earnestness.

"Yes; my boy Hammond! the finest fellow in the regiment, though I say it, who should not. Do you think that I, his father, would expose him to such danger as to throw him into the society of a set of fascinating young women who have chosen to emanc.i.p.ate themselves from all conventionality, and who call themselves--stuff and rubbish!--dressmakers?"

"Not call themselves, so: they are excellent dressmakers!" was Archie's somewhat malicious reply.

"All the more reason that my son should not know them!" thundered the old man. "What, sir! an officer in one of her Majesty's regiments--the son and grandson of officers,--is such a one to be mixed up with a family that has lost caste,--to flirt with or make love to girls who are not above making gowns for my butcher's wife? Before Hammond does such a thing as that----" And here the colonel paused from excess of emotion.

"You are perfectly right to defend your son from such danger,"

returned the young clergyman with covert sarcasm. "In your case I should probably feel the same. But, in my position, being intimate with those ladies of whom you speak, and having had good opportunity to form my opinions of them, I cannot help saying, in their defence, that even your son, excellent officer as he is,--and, I am sure, a most worthy young man,--would scarcely be dishonored by an alliance with the finest young gentlewomen I ever met!" And, as he said this, with all due gravity, Archie released his arm, and, with a farewell nod, went off, leaving the colonel, open-mouthed and gasping with astonishment, at his own gate.

Elizabeth met him on the threshold.

"Oh, father, why did you not bring Mr. Drummond in!" she said, reproachfully; "it is so long since he has paid us a visit."

"Poor Drummond!" replied the colonel, with a mournful shake of his head: "it is just as I thought. He has almost owned it, in fact. He is seriously smitten with one of those Challoner girls, and before long there will be a wedding in the place."

"Now, father, this is just one of your whimsies," replied Elizabeth, placidly. "Mr. Drummond is going to have his favorite sister, Grace, to live with him and keep his house. He told me so himself; and that does not look as though he expected to bring home a wife. So you may just put this idea out of your head." But, though Elizabeth was well aware of the truth of her words, that no new mistress was to come to the vicarage, still her fine sympathy and unerring woman's divination had read the meaning of the young vicar's clouded brow, and she knew that he, too, had to try and be grateful for "the blessings that went over his head."

Archie's grand and somewhat heroic speech failed in its effect, as far as the colonel was concerned. Elizabeth was right in saying her father was longing to know the Challoners. The old man's fancy had been mightily taken by the girls; but for Hammond, for his boy's sake, he was capable of any amount of self-denial. Once he was sorely tempted to give in. When turning the corner of the Braidwood Road, not far from his own house, he came suddenly upon his daughter, who was standing on the side-path, talking to Dulce.

Dulce, who always seemed a sort of reflection and shadow of her sisters, and who withdrew somewhat in the background, obscured a little by Nan's beauty and Phillis's sprightliness, was nevertheless in her way a most bewitching little maiden.

"There comes my father!" observed Elizabeth, tranquilly, never doubting that he would join them; and Dulce looked up a little shy and fluttered from under her broad-brimmed hat; for she had taken a fancy to the colonel, with his white moustache and kindly inquisitive eyes. He was a sort of hero in her fancy; and Dulce loved heroes,--especially when they wore a medal.

Colonel Middleton saw the little girl dimpling and blushing with pleasure, and his old heart thumped a little with excitement and the conflict of feeling: the innocent child-look appealed to his fatherly sympathies. There was a moment's wavering; then he lifted his white hat, with a muttered "Good-morning," and the next minute he was walking on with squared shoulders and tremendous energy.

Poor little Dulce's lip quivered with disappointment: she thought it hard, when other people were so kind to them. Elizabeth said nothing; but she bade the child good-bye with greater tenderness than usual, and sent all sort of messages to her mother and Nan.

The colonel, meanwhile, had retreated into the house, and was opening his papers with more than his usual fuss.

"It is for Hammond," he murmured to himself. "When one has boys, one must do one's duty by them; but it was confoundedly hard, by Jove!"

And all the remainder of the day a pair of appealing eyes seemed to reproach him with unkindness. But Elizabeth never said a word; it was not her place to find fault with her father.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

"HOW DO YOU DO, AUNT CATHERINE?"

One drizzling November morning, Mattie was standing at the hall door, looking out a little blankly through the open gateway at the prospect before her,--at the rotting leaves that lay heaped up in the road, and at the gray, humid sky,--when a very big man suddenly blocked up the entrance, and startled her dreadfully.

Mattie afterwards described the occurrence very graphically to her brother:

"He was the biggest man I ever saw in my life, Archie. He looked as strong as a navvy; and his shoulders reminded me of one of those men one sees in brewers' drays. And his face was so red, and his hair, too,--that dreadfully red color, you know, that no one admires; and his hands, and even his voice, were big."