day morning, all went to church except the two old ladies, who
could honestly plead infirmity.

When they came out, Lettice, who was burning to speak her mind,
exclaimed,--"Saw you ever a parson so use himself, Aubrey? Truly I know
not how to specify it--turning, and twisting, and bowing, and casting up
of his hands and eyes--it well-nigh made me for to laugh!"

"Like a merry Andrew or a cheap Jack," laughed Aubrey.

"I thought his sermon stranger yet," said Hans, "nor could I see what it
had to do with his text."

"What was his text?" inquired heedless Aubrey.

"`Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,'" repeated Hans.

"Ay, and all he did, the hour through," cried Lettice, "was to bid us
obey the Church, and hear the Church, and not run astray after no
novelties in religion. And the Church is not the Lord our God, neither
is religion, so far as I see."

"I mind Sir Aubrey once saying," added Hans, "that when a bride talked
ever of herself, and nothing of her bridegroom, it was a very ill augury
of the state of her heart."

"But saw you those two great candlesticks on the holy table?--what for
be they?" said Lettice.

"Oh, they be but ornaments of the church," answered Aubrey, carelessly.

"But we have none such in Keswick Church: and what is the good of
candlesticks without candles?"

"The candles will come," quietly replied Hans.

"Ah! you're thinking of what the old gentlewoman said last night--
confess, Master Sobersides!" said Aubrey.

"I have thought much on it," answered Hans, who walked along, carrying
the ladies' prayer-books; for the road being dirty, they had enough to
do in holding up their gowns. "And I think she hath the right."

"Hans, I marvel how old thou wert when thou wert born!" said Aubrey.

"I think, very like, about as old as you were," said Hans.

"Well, Mr Louvaine, you are a complete young gentleman!" cried his Aunt
Temperance, looking back at him. "To suffer three elder gentlewomen to
trudge in the mire, and never so much as offer to hand one of them!
Those were not good manners, my master, when I was a young maid--but
seeing how things be changed now o' days, maybe that has gone along with
them. Come hither at once, thou vagrant, and give thine hand to thy
mother, like a dutiful son as thou shouldest be, and art not."

"Oh, never mind me!" sighed Faith. "I have given over expecting such a
thing. I am only a poor widow."

"Madam," apologised Hans, very red in the face, "