"It is not so bad as the big bookcase in the study," said Cicely; "certainly things are better now-a-days. If I had plenty of money, how I should like to furnish this room all over again, with bright young things, not too huge; little sofas that would move anywhere when you touched them, and soft chairs. They should be covered in amber----"

"No--blue!" cried Mab.

"Soft amber--amber with a bloom of white in it----"

"In this sunny room," cried Mab. "What are you thinking of? No; it must be a cool colour--a sort of moonlighty blue--pale, pale; or tender fairy green."

"What is fairy green? Amber is my colour--it would be lovely; of course I don't mean to say it wouldn't fade. But then if one were rich the pleasure would be to let it fade, and then have all the fun over again, and choose another," said Cicely, with a sigh over this impossible delight.

"Things sometimes improve by fading," said the artist. "I like the faded tints--they harmonize. Hush, Cicely!--oh, stop your tidying--there is some one at the door."

"It cannot be any one coming to call so soon?" said Cicely, startled.

"But it is--listen! I can hear Betsy saying, 'This way, ma'am; this way.'" And Mab closed her sketch-book, and sat very upright and expectant on her chair; while Cicely, throwing (I am ashamed to say) her spoils under a sofa, took up her needlework by the wrong end, and, putting on a portentous face of gravity and absorbed occupation, waited for the expected visitor.

A moment after the door was flung open, but not by Betsy; and Miss Maydew, flushed with her walk from the station, as when they had first seen her, with the same shawl on, and I almost think the same bonnet (but that was impossible), stood before them, her large white handkerchief in her hand. She was too hot to say anything, but dropped down on the first chair she came to, leaving the door open, which made a draught, and blew about her ribbons violently. "I know it is as much as my life is worth," said Miss Maydew; "but, oh, how delicious it is to be in a draught!"

"Aunt Jane!" the girls cried, and rushed at her with unfeigned relief.

They were more familiar with her now than they had been four years ago.

They took off her great shawl for her, and loosed her bonnet strings.

"Papa told us you were coming," they cried; "but we did not hope for you so soon. How kind of you to come to-day."

"Oh, my dears," said Aunt Jane, "I did not mean to come to-day; I came to see how you were taking it; and what your papa means to do. As soon as I saw it in the paper I thought, oh my poor, poor children, and that helpless old man! What are they to do?"

"Do you mean about Mrs. St. John?" said Cicely, growing grave. "Papa is very composed and kind, and indeed I can do all he wants. Aunt Jane----"

"About Mrs. St. John? Poor woman, I have nothing to say against her--but she is taken away from the evil to come," said Miss Maydew. "No, no, it was not about Mrs. St. John I was thinking, it was about something much more serious. Not that anything could be more serious than a death; but in a worldly point of view!"

"What is it?" they both said in a breath. The idea of news was exciting to them, even though, as was evident from their visitor's agitation, it was disagreeable news they were about to hear. Miss Maydew drew with much excitement from her pocket a copy of the _Times_, very tightly folded together to enable it to enter there, and opened it with trembling hands.

"There it is! Oh, my poor, poor children! imagine my feelings--it was the very first thing I saw when I took up my paper this morning," she said.

The girls did not immediately take in the full meaning of the intimation which they read with two startled faces close together over the old lady's shoulder. "At Castellamare, on the 15th July, the Rev. Edward Chester, Rector of Brentburn, Berks."

"But we don't know him," said Mab, bewildered.

Cicely, I think, had a remark of the same kind on her lips; but she stopped suddenly and clasped her hands together and gave a low cry.

"Ah, _you_ understand, Cicely!" said Miss Maydew, wiping her forehead with her handkerchief; "now let us consult what is to be done. What is the date? I was so agitated I never thought of the date! The 15th. Oh, my dear, here is a fortnight lost!"

"But what can be done?" said Cicely, turning a pathetic glance upon the old room which had seemed so melancholy to her yesterday, and the tons of mahogany which she had just been criticising. How kind, and friendly, and familiar they had become all at once; old, dear friends, who belonged to her no more.

"Mr. Chester, the rector!" said Mab, with sudden apprehension. "Do you mean that something will happen to papa?"

"There is this to be done," said the old lady, "your poor good father has been here for twenty years; the people ought to be fond of him--I do not know whether they are, for a parish is an incomprehensible thing, as your poor dear grandfather always used to say--but they ought to be; I am sure he has trudged about enough, and never spared himself, though I never thought him a good preacher, so far as that goes. But he ought to have a great many friends after living here for twenty years."

"But, Aunt Jane, tell us, tell us--what good will that do?"

"It might do a great deal if they would exert themselves. They might get up a pet.i.tion, for instance--at once--to the Lord Chancellor; they might employ all their influence. It is not a rich parish, nor a large parish, but there are always gentry in it. Oh, a great deal might be done if only people would exert themselves! It is dreadful to think that a fortnight has been lost."

Cicely, who was not much consoled by this hope, sat down with a very pale countenance and a sudden constriction at her heart. She was almost too much bewildered to realize all that it meant; enough lay on the surface to fill her soul with dismay. Mab, who had less perception of the urgent character of the calamity, was more animated.

"I thought you meant _we_ could do something," she said. "Oh, Aunt Jane, could not we go to the Chancellor, if that is the man. The parish? I don't see why they should take the trouble. It will not hurt them. They will have a young, well-off man instead of an old, poor man.

Couldn't _we_ go to the Lord Chancellor, Aunt Jane?"

Miss Maydew's eyes lighted up for a moment. She seemed to see herself approaching that unknown potentate as lovely ladies went to kings in the days of romance, with a child in each hand. She felt how eloquent she could be, how convincing. She felt herself capable of going down on her knees and asking him whether the father of those two sweet girls was to starve in his old age? All this appeared before her like a dream. But alas! common sense soon resumed its sway; she shook her head. "I don't know if that would do any good," she said.

"And _we_ could not get up a pet.i.tion from the parish," said Cicely; "whatever the people may do we cannot stir in it. Oh, Aunt Jane, how foolish, how wrong of us never to think of this! I have thought that papa was old and that we should have to maintain ourselves and the two babies if--anything happened; but I never remembered that it all hung upon some one else's life. Oh, it does seem hard!" cried the girl, clasping her hands. "Papa has done all the work since ever I was born, but yet he has only been here on sufferance, ready to be turned out at a moment's notice. Oh, it is wrong, it is wrong!"

"Not exactly at a moment's notice," said Miss Maydew; "there is six weeks or three months, or something, I forget how long."

And then there was a painful pause. Mab cried a little, having her feelings most upon the surface, but Cicely sat quite silent and pale with her eyes fixed upon the white blinds which flapped against the open windows. All at once she got up and drew one of them up with a rapid impatient hand. "I want air, I want light," she said in a stifled voice, and put herself full in the intrusive sunshine, which made Miss Maydew blink her old eyes.

"You will give yourself a headache, my dear, and that will not mend matters," she said.

Cicely's heart was very heavy. She drew down the blind again and walked up and down the room in her agitation. "Five of us to provide for now--and that is not the worst; what is papa to do? How can he live with everything taken from him? Oh, go to the Chancellor, or any one, if it will do any good! It is terrible for papa."

It was while they were still in this agitated state that Betsy threw open the door again, and Mrs. Ascott, of the Heath, one of the greatest ladies in the parish, came in. She was not heated, like poor old Miss Maydew, with walking, but fresh and well dressed from her carriage, and tranquil as prosperity and comfort could make her. The girls made that sudden effort, which women so often have to make, to receive her as if nothing had happened, as if their minds were as easy and their circ.u.mstances as agreeable as her own. She inquired about their journey, about their school, about how they found their papa looking, about the "sad trials" he had gone through, all in a sweet even tone, with smiles or serious looks, as became her words, and hoped that now they had come back she should see them often at the Heath. "You are the musical one, Cicely," she said; "I know Mab draws. It is always nice when sisters have each their distinction, that people can't mistake. My husband always says girls are so like each other. What is your voice? contralto?

oh, a good second is such a want here. We are all more or less musical, you know."

"My voice is not much one way or the other," said Cicely. "Mab sings better than I do, though she is the one who draws."

"But I fear," said Miss Maydew, clearing her throat and interfering, "unless something is done they will not be here long to be of use to any one. We have just had news----"

"Ah, about poor Mr. Chester," said Mrs. Ascott, with the slightest of glances at the stranger; "I saw it in the papers. Will that affect your papa?"

"Unless"--Miss Maydew put herself forward squarely and steadily--"something is done."

Mrs. Ascott looked at the old lady for the first time. She had thought her an old nurse at first--for the good woman was not of a patrician appearance, like the girls, who were St. Johns. "Unless--something is done? I am sure we will all do anything that is possible. What can be done?"

"Hush! my dear, hush! She does not know I belong to you," whispered Miss Maydew. "I think a great deal might be done. If Mr. St. John's friends were to get up a pet.i.tion to the Lord Chancellor at once--stating how long he had been here, and how much beloved he was, and the whole state of the case. I don't personally know his lordship,"

said the old lady; "but he can't be a bad man or he never would have risen to that position. I can't believe but what if the case were put fully before him, he would give Mr. St. John the living. It seems so much the most natural thing to do."

"Dear me, so it does!" said Mrs. Ascott. "How clever of you to have thought of it. I will speak to my husband, and see what he says."

"And if there is any one else whom you can influence--to do good it should be general--from the whole parish," said Miss Maydew--"from all cla.s.ses; and it ought to be done at once."

"To be sure," said Mrs. Ascott. "I a.s.sure you I will speak to my husband." She got up to take her leave, a little frightened by the vehemence of the stranger, and rather elated at the same time by the sense of having a mission. Miss Maydew went with her to the very door.

"At once," she said, "at once! It is a fortnight already since the rector died. If the parish means to do anything, you should not lose a day."

"No: I see, I see! I will go at once and speak to my husband," cried the visitor, escaping hastily. Miss Maydew returned to her seat breathing a sigh of satisfaction. "There, girls! I have set it agoing at least. I have started it. That was a nice woman--if she exerts herself, I don't doubt that it will be all right. What a blessing she came while I was here."

"I hope it is all right," said Cicely doubtfully; "but she is not very----not very, _very_ sensible, you know. But she is always kind. I hope she will not do anything foolish. Is that papa she is talking to?"

cried the girl alarmed, for there were sounds of commotion in the hall.

A silence fell upon even the chief conspirator, when she felt that Mr.

St. John was near--the possibility that her tactics might not be quite satisfactory alarmed her. She withdrew into a corner, instinctively getting the girls and a considerable ma.s.s of furniture between herself and any one coming in at the door.