e as his scornful superior. He stretched
out his hand, and laid it on his friend's shoulder.

* * * * *

Rose spent the afternoon in helping Catherine with various parochial
occupations. In the course of them Catherine asked many questions about
Long Whindale. Her thoughts clung to the hills, to the gray farmhouses,
the rough men and women inside them. But Rose gave her small
satisfaction.

'Poor old Jim Backhouse!' said Catherine, sighing. 'Agnes tells me he is
quite bedridden now.'

'Well, and a good thing for John, don't you think,' said Rose briskly,
covering a parish library book the while in a way which made Catherine's
fingers itch to take it from her, 'and for us? It's some use having a
carrier now.'

Catherine made no reply. She thought of the 'noodle' fading out of life
in the room where Mary Backhouse died; she actually saw the white hair,
the blurred eyes, the palsied hands, the poor emaciated limbs stretched
along the settle. Her heart rose, but she said nothing.

'And has Mrs. Thornburgh been enjoying her summer?'

'Oh! I suppose so,' said Rose, her tone indicating a quite measureless
indifference. 'She had another young Oxford man staying with her in
June--a missionary--and it annoyed her very much that neither Agnes nor
I would intervene to prevent his resuming his profession. She seemed to
think it was a question of saving him from being eaten, and apparently
he would have proposed to either of us.'

Catherine could not help laughing. 'I suppose she still thinks she
married Robert and me.'

'Of course. So she did.'

Catherine coloured a little, but Rose's hard lightness of tone was
unconquerable.

'Or if she didn't,' Rose resumed, 'nobody could have the heart to rob
her of the illusion. Oh, by the way, Sarah has been under warning since
June! Mrs. Thornburgh told her desperately that she must either throw
over her young man, who was picked up drunk at the vicarage gate one
night, or vacate the vicarage kitchen. Sarah cheerfully accepted her
month's notice, and is still making the vicarage jams and walking out
with the young man every Sunday. Mrs. Thornburgh sees that it will
require a convulsion of nature to get rid either of Sarah or the young
man, and has succumbed.'

'And the Tysons? And that poor Walker girl?'

'Oh, dear me, Catherine!' said Rose, a strange disproportionate flash of
impatience breaking through. 'Every one in Long Whindale is always jus