was Copperhead, and
they lived in a great, big, beautiful house, in the street where
ambassadors and quantities of great people live. I forget the name of
it; but I know there was an ambassador lived there, and Cousin Anne
said----"

"Copperhead! I thought so," said Mr. May. "When Ursula has been set
a-going on the subject of Cousin Anne, there is nothing rational to be
got from her after that for an hour or two. You take an interest in this
young lady," he said shortly, turning to Mrs. Sam Hurst, who stood by
smiling, rather enjoying the commotion she had caused.

"Who, I? I take an interest in anybody that makes a stir, and gives us
something to talk about," said Mrs. Hurst, frankly. "You know my
weakness. Ursula despises me for it, but you know human nature. If I did
not take an interest in my neighbours what would become of me--a poor
lone elderly woman, without either chick or child?"

She rounded off this forlorn description of herself with a hearty laugh,
in which Janey, who had a secret kindness for their merry neighbour,
though she feared her "for papa," joined furtively. Mr. May, however,
did not enter into the joke with the sympathy which he usually showed to
Mrs. Hurst. He smiled, but there was something _distrait_ and
pre-occupied in his air.

"How sorry we all are for you," he said; "your position is truly
melancholy. I am glad, for your sake, that old Tozer has a pretty
granddaughter to beguile you now and then out of recollection of your
cares."

There was a sharp tone in this which caught Mrs. Hurst's ear, and she
was not disposed to accept any sharpness from Mr. May. She turned the
tables upon him promptly.

"What a disgraceful business that Meeting was! Of course, you have seen
the paper. There ought to be some way of punishing those agitators that
go about the country, taking away people's characters. Could not you
bring him up for libel, or Reginald? I never knew anything so shocking.
To come to your own town, your own neighbourhood, and to strike you
through your son! It is the nastiest, most underhanded, unprincipled
attack I ever heard of."

"What is that?" asked Reginald.

He was not easily roused by Carlingford gossip, but there was clearly
more in this than met the eye.

"An Anti-State Church Meeting," said Mr. May, "with special compliments
in it to you and me. It is not worth our while to think of it. Your
agitators, my dear Mrs. Hurst, are not worth powder and shot. Now,
pardon