ed the clergyman, "was--er--entirely on my
own responsibility. I--I conceived you would find it sympathetic--
helpful perhaps. Believe me, Miss Josselin, I have considerable
feeling for you and your--er--position."

"I thank you." She dismissed him with a gentle curtsy. "I feel almost
sure you have been doing your best."

Chapter III.

MR. HICHENS.

She turned and walked slowly back to the house. Once within the front
door and out of his sight, she was tempted to rush across the hall and
up the stairs to her own room. She was indeed gathering up her skirts
for the run, when in the hall she almost collided with the Reverend
Malachi Hichens, who stood there with his nose buried in a vase of
roses, while behind his back his hands interwove themselves and pulled
each at the other's bony knuckles.

"Ah!" He faced about with a stiff bow, and a glance up at the tall
clock. "You are late this morning, Miss Josselin. But I dare say my
good brother Silk has been detaining you in talk?"

"On the contrary," answered Ruth, "his talk has rather hastened me than
not."

They entered the library. "Miss Quiney tells me," he said, "that our
studies are to suffer a brief interruption; that you are about to take a
country holiday. You anticipate it with delight, I doubt not?"

"Have I been, then, so listless a scholar?" she asked, smiling.

"No," he answered. "I have never looked on you as eager for praise, or
I should have told you that your progress--in Greek particularly--has
been exceptional; for a young lady, I might almost say, abnormal."

"I am grateful to you at any rate for saying it now. It happens that
just now I wanted something to give me back a little self-respect."

"But I do not suppose you so abnormal as, at your age, to undervalue a
holiday," he continued. "It is only we elders who live haunted by the
words 'Work while ye have the light.' If youth extract any moral from
the brevity of life it is rather the pagan warning, _Collige rosas_."

Her eyes rested on him, still smiling, but behind her smile she was
wondering. Did he--this dry, sallow old man, with the knock-knees and
ungainly frame, the soiled bands, the black suit, threadbare, hideous in
cut, hideous in itself (Ruth had a child's horror of black)--did he
speak thus out of knowledge, or was he but using phrases of convention?
Ruth feared and distrusted all religious folk--clergymen above all; yet
instinct had told her at the f