rupulously courteous should be regarded as
duties and customs belonging to their station. To have received true and
delicate consideration from a printer's boy is therefore more
remarkable, and to speak of it with grateful recollection is only just.
My own want of courtesy, however, led me to forget that we seldom feel
much enthusiasm about the attentions that are bestowed on other people."

We were all silent for a moment, for there was a rebuke even in the
gentle tone in which the words were uttered; but presently Annie Bowers
said:

"Did you ever know an actor, Miss Grantley?"

"Well, I cannot say I never met an actor," replied our governess; "and
yet it was not in London, but at the village near which I lived when I
was at home with my dear father, whose house and grounds were not far
off, and whose pew in the church had belonged to his family from time
immemorial."

"Oh! do let us hear something about that, then," we said.

"Well," replied our governess, "that shall be the story for to-morrow
evening--the story of a stranger from London who visited our village."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV.

A STRANGER FROM LONDON.

HOW it was that we began seriously to consider the expediency of
organizing "Penny Readings" in the school-room attached to the quaint
old square-towered church at Chewton Cudley I haven't the remotest idea.
I fancy it must have been Mr. Petifer, the curate, who suggested it
after he had been to preach for a friend of his in London. I know that
he was much impressed by what the congregation of St. Boanerges--his
friend's church--were doing, and that there was a noticeable difference
in his delivery when he read the lessons after his visit. We all
observed it, and some of the old-fashioned people thought that he was
going to _intone_--to which there was a strong objection--but his
efforts not carrying him beyond a peculiar rising inflection towards the
middle of a verse, and a remarkable lingering fall into deep bass at the
end, we soon regarded it as a praiseworthy attempt to give variety to
his previous vapid utterances, and came rather to like it, as it gave
the church somewhat of a cathedral flavour. The old pew-opener and
sextoness said that to hear him publish the banns was almost as good as
listening to the marriage service itself.

The truth is that we had few changes of any kind at Chewton. It had
ceased to be a market town when the new line of railway took