rford stopped on his way home to ask what was the matter.

"Oh no," he said, when he heard. "Captain and Mrs Carbonel are coming
home in the spring, only they wished to travel slowly, so as to see
something of foreign parts. You need not be afraid. We shall have them
back again, and I hope nobody will be as foolish as before. I am sure
they have quite forgiven."

And, on a fine spring day, the bells were ringing at the church, and
everybody stood out at the cottage doors, curtseying and bowing with
delight and welcome; and Mrs Carbonel and Miss Sophia and Miss Mary,
looking rosy, healthy, and substantial, and even little Master Edmund
was laughing and nodding, and looking full of joy. While the captain
walked up with Mr Harford, and greeted every one with kindly, hearty
words. No one could doubt that they were glad to be at home again, and
after all that had come and gone, that they felt that these were their
own people whom they loved.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

CONCLUSION.

"The work be Thine, the fruit Thy children's part."--_Keble_.

Look at Uphill Priors in the year 1880. Here are the mothers coming out
of the mothers' meeting. They look, in their neat hats and jackets,
better on this week-day than any one would have done on Sunday sixty
years ago. They are, many of them, the granddaughters, or grandsons'
wives, of the inhabitants in those old times; but they have not the
worn, haggard faces that their parents had when far younger, except one
or two poor things who have drunken husbands. Miss Carbonel (young Miss
Carbonel) and the vicar's wife have been working with them, and reading
to them things that the Bettys and Nannys of those days would not have
understood or cared for.

The white-haired lady, who stops her donkey-chaise to exchange some
affectionate, kindly words, and give out a parcel or two--she is Miss
Sophia; and those elderly women who cluster round for a greeting, they
are her old scholars. Those black eyes are Hoglah's; that neat woman is
Judy! Yes, she has lived among them, and worked among them all her
life, never forgetting that "no good work can be done without drudgery."
She has her Girls' Friendly Society class still in her own little
house, though she has dropped most of her regular out-of-door work of
late years. For the vicar--there is a vicar now--and his daughters
teach constantly in the schools. The children are swarming out now,
orderly and nice, even superior i