e had grown in a frame at the Hall especially for
Barbara. Indeed, she had already received many of those violets through
the agency of her numerous younger sisters.

The Rectory dinner was at one o'clock, and the feast could not be
called sumptuous. It consisted of a piece of beef, that known as the
"aitch-bone," which is perhaps the cheapest that the butcher supplies
when the amount of eating is taken into consideration; one roast duck,
a large Pekin, the Near Year offering of the farmer Stevens; and a plum
pudding somewhat pallid in appearance. These dainties with late apples
and plenty of cold water made up the best dinner that the Walrond family
had eaten for many a day.

The Rectory dining-room was a long, narrow chamber of dilapidated
appearance, since between meals it served as a schoolroom also. A deal
bookcase in the corner held some tattered educational works and the
walls that once had been painted blue, but now were faded in patches
to a sickly green, were adorned only with four texts illuminated by
Barbara. These texts had evidently served as targets for moistened paper
pellets, some of which still stuck upon their surface.

Anthony arrived a little late, since the picking of the violets had
taken longer than he anticipated, and as there was no one to open the
front door, walked straight into the dining-room. In the doorway
he collided with the little maid-of-all-work, a red-elbowed girl of
singularly plain appearance, who having deposited the beef upon the
table, was rushing back for the duck, accompanied by two of the young
Walronds who were assisting with the vegetables. The maid, recoiling,
sat down with a bump on one of the wooden chairs, and the Walrond girls,
a merry, good-looking, unkempt crew (no boy had put in an appearance
in all that family), burst into screams of laughter. Anthony apologised
profusely; the maid, ejaculating that she didn't mind, not she, jumped
up and ran for the duck; and the Reverend Septimus, a very different
Septimus to him whom we met a month or so before, seizing his hand,
shook it warmly, calling out:

"Julia, my dear, never mind that beef. I haven't said grace yet. Here's
Anthony."

"Glad to see him, I am sure," said Mrs. Walrond, her eyes still fixed
upon the beef, which was obviously burnt at one corner. Then with a
shrug, for she was accustomed to such accidents, she rose to greet him.

Mrs. Walrond was a tall and extremely good-looking lady of about
fifty-fi