have an old
acquaintance like Miss Keith to help them through their introductions,
an office which she managed with all her usual bright tact. The
discovery that Stephana Temple and Lucy Mitchell had been born within
two days of one another, was the first link of a warm friendship between
the two mammas; and Mr. Mitchell fell at once into friendly intercourse
with Ermine Williams, to whom Bessie herself conducted him for his first
visit, when they at once discovered all manner of mutual acquaintance
among his college friends; and his next step was to make the very
arrangement for Ermine's church-going, for which she had long been
wishing in secret, but which never having occurred to poor Mr.
Touchett, she had not dared to propose, lest there should be some great
inconvenience in the way.

Colonel Keith was the person, however, with whom the new comers chiefly
fraternized, and he was amused with their sense of the space for
breathing compared with the lanes and alleys of their own district. The
schools and cottages seemed to them so wonderfully large, the children
so clean, even their fishiness a form of poetical purity, the people
ridiculously well off, and even Mrs. Kelland's lace-school a palace of
the free maids that weave their thread with bones. Mr. Mitchell seemed
almost to grudge the elbow room, as he talked of the number of cubic
feet that held a dozen of his own parishioners; and needful as the
change had been for the health of both husband and wife, they almost
reproached themselves for having fled and left so many pining for want
of pure air, dwelling upon impossible castles for the importation of
favourite patients to enjoy the balmy breezes of Avonmouth.

Rachel talked to them about the F. U. E. E., and was delighted by the
flush of eager interest on Mrs. Mitchell's thin face. "Objects" swarmed
in their parish, but where were the seven shillings per week to come
from? At any rate Mr. Mitchell would, the first leisure day, come over
to St. Herbert's with her, and inspect. He did not fly off at the first
hint of Mr. Mauleverer's "opinions," but said he would talk to him, and
thereby rose steps untold in Rachel's estimation. The fact of change is
dangerously pleasant to the human mind; Mr. Mitchell walked at once into
popularity, and Lady Temple had almost conferred a public benefit by
what she so little liked to remember. At any rate she had secured an
unexceptionable companion, and many a time resorted to h