d he, staring up.

'Well, I write papa's sermons for him very often, and he preaches them
better than he does his own; and then afterwards he talks to people and
to me about what he said in his sermon to-day, and forgets that I wrote
it for him. Isn't it absurd?'

'How clever you must be!' said Stephen. 'I couldn't write a sermon for
the world.'

'Oh, it's easy enough,' she said, descending from the pulpit and coming
close to him to explain more vividly. 'You do it like this. Did you ever
play a game of forfeits called "When is it? where is it? what is it?"'

'No, never.'

'Ah, that's a pity, because writing a sermon is very much like playing
that game. You take the text. You think, why is it? what is it? and so
on. You put that down under "Generally." Then you proceed to the First,
Secondly, and Thirdly. Papa won't have Fourthlys--says they are all my
eye. Then you have a final Collectively, several pages of this being
put in great black brackets, writing opposite, "LEAVE THIS OUT IF THE
FARMERS ARE FALLING ASLEEP." Then comes your In Conclusion, then A Few
Words And I Have Done. Well, all this time you have put on the back
of each page, "KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN"--I mean,' she added, correcting
herself, 'that's how I do in papa's sermon-book, because otherwise he
gets louder and louder, till at last he shouts like a farmer up a-field.
Oh, papa is so funny in some things!'

Then, after this childish burst of confidence, she was frightened, as if
warned by womanly instinct, which for the moment her ardour had outrun,
that she had been too forward to a comparative stranger.

Elfride saw her father then, and went away into the wind, being caught
by a gust as she ascended the churchyard slope, in which gust she had
the motions, without the motives, of a hoiden; the grace, without the
self-consciousness, of a pirouetter. She conversed for a minute or two
with her father, and proceeded homeward, Mr. Swancourt coming on to
the church to Stephen. The wind had freshened his warm complexion as it
freshens the glow of a brand. He was in a mood of jollity, and watched
Elfride down the hill with a smile.

'You little flyaway! you look wild enough now,' he said, and turned to
Stephen. 'But she's not a wild child at all, Mr. Smith. As steady as
you; and that you are steady I see from your diligence here.'

'I think Miss Swancourt very clever,' Stephen observed.

'Yes, she is; certainly, she is,' said papa, turning his voice as