L'homme propose_, as the French proverb has it and things do not always
turn out as he wishes. Mr Geringer, after the preparation Hazel
received from Mrs Thorne, proposed and was refused. Hazel said it was
impossible, and such was her obstinacy, as Mrs Thorne called it, she
refused to become a rich man's wife, and insisted upon going to the
Whitelands training institution, condemning her unfortunate mother to a
life of poverty and degradation, her brother to toil, and blasting her
young sisters' prospects, when she might have married, had her carriage,
and all would have gone as merry as a marriage bell.

That was Mrs Thorne's view of the case, and she kept up her protests
with tears and repining, winning Percy to her side till he was always
ready to reproach his sister. Hazel bore all, worked with all the
energy in her nature for the year of training, was fortunate in getting
a school after a few months' waiting, and was, as we found her, duly
installed in the little schoolhouse, her brother being boarded with some
humble friends in town.

CHAPTER FIVE.

DISTURBING INFLUENCES.

Hazel Thorne felt giddy as she took her seat in the front of the
gallery, the seat with a little square patchy cushion close to the red
curtains in front of the organist's pew. Beside and behind her the
school children sat in rows, with ample room for three times the number;
but the seats were never filled save upon the two Sundays before the
annual school feast when somehow the Wesleyan and Congregational
Sunday-schools were almost empty, and the church school thronged.

It was precisely the same on Mr Chute's side of the organ, with his
boys beside and behind, and so situated that he could lean a little
forward and get a glimpse of Hazel's profile, and also so that he could
leave his seat, go round by the back of the organ, and give the new
mistress the hymn-book, and the music used, with all the hymns, chants,
and tunes carefully turned down.

It was a pleasant little attention to a stranger, and Hazel turned and
thanked him with a smile that was not at all necessary, as Miss Rebecca
who played the organ, and saw this through an opening in the red
curtains, afterwards said to her brother the Reverend Henry Lambent,
while at the time she said:--

"Sh! sh!" For Ann Straggalls was fighting down a desire to laugh,
consequent upon Feelier Potts whining sharply:--

"Oh, Goody, me!"

"Like her impudence," Mr Chute said to himself