t I have nothing to do with that now. It is about cousin Phillis that
I am going to write, and as yet I am far enough from even saying who
cousin Phillis was.

For some months after I was settled in Eltham, the new employment in
which I was engaged--the new independence of my life--occupied all my
thoughts. I was at my desk by eight o'clock, home to dinner at one,
back at the office by two. The afternoon work was more uncertain than
the morning's; it might be the same, or it might be that I had to
accompany Mr Holdsworth, the managing engineer, to some point on the
line between Eltham and Hornby. This I always enjoyed, because of the
variety, and because of the country we traversed (which was very wild
and pretty), and because I was thrown into companionship with Mr
Holdsworth, who held the position of hero in my boyish mind. He was a
young man of five-and-twenty or so, and was in a station above mine,
both by birth and education; and he had travelled on the Continent, and
wore mustachios and whiskers of a somewhat foreign fashion. I was proud
of being seen with him. He was really a fine fellow in a good number of
ways, and I might have fallen into much worse hands.

Every Saturday I wrote home, telling of my weekly doings--my father had
insisted upon this; but there was so little variety in my life that I
often found it hard work to fill a letter. On Sundays I went twice to
chapel, up a dark narrow entry, to hear droning hymns, and long
prayers, and a still longer sermon, preached to a small congregation,
of which I was, by nearly a score of years, the youngest member.
Occasionally, Mr Peters, the minister, would ask me home to tea after
the second service. I dreaded the honour, for I usually sate on the
edge of my chair all the evening, and answered solemn questions, put in
a deep bass voice, until household prayer-time came, at eight o'clock,
when Mrs Peters came in, smoothing down her apron, and the
maid-of-all-work followed, and first a sermon, and then a chapter was
read, and a long impromptu prayer followed, till some instinct told Mr
Peters that supper-time had come, and we rose from our knees with
hunger for our predominant feeling. Over supper the minister did unbend
a little into one or two ponderous jokes, as if to show me that
ministers were men, after all. And then at ten o'clock I went home, and
enjoyed my long-repressed yawns in the three-cornered room before going
to bed. Dinah and Hannah Dawson, so th