while she laughed at it. There were no boarders to
patronise and play with, and her education at the High School was over.
If she saw a half-clothed child, it was not half so interesting to buy
an ulster in the next shop, as it was to turn over the family rag-bag,
knit, sew, and contrive! Somehow things had a weariness in them, and
the little excitements did not seem to be the exquisite delights they
used to be. After having seen Patience at the Princess's it was not
easy to avoid criticising a provincial Lady Jane, and it was the like
with other things of more importance. Even the ritual of St. Ambrose's
Church no longer struck her as the ne plus ultra of beauty, and only
incited her to describe London churches.

She resumed her Sunday-school classes, and though she talked at first
of their raciness and freedom, she soon longed after the cleanliness,
respectfulness, and docility of the despised little Bridgefordites, and
uttered bitter things of Micklethwayte turbulence, declaring--perhaps
not without truth--that the children had grown much worse in her
absence.

And as Mr. Godfrey had been superintendent during the latter half of
the time, this was a cruel stroke. He wanted to make her reverse her
opinions. And they never met without 'Now, Ursula, don't you remember
Jem Burton putting on Miss Pope's spectacles, and grinning at all the
class.'

'Yes; and how Mr. Dutton brought him up to beg her pardon. Now, was
any notice taken when that horrid boy--I don't know his name--turned
the hymn they were saying to her into "Tommy, make room for your
uncle"?'

'Oh, Albert Cox! It is no use doing anything to him, he would go off
at once to the Primitives.'

'Let him!'

'I cannot make him a schismatic.'

'I wonder what he is now!'

'Besides, Miss Pope perfectly provokes impertinence.'

'Then I wouldn't give her work she can't do.'

Such an argument as this might be very well at the moment of
provocation, but it became tedious when recurred to at every meeting.
Nuttie began to wonder when Monks Horton would be inhabited again, and
how much notice Lady Kirkaldy would take of her, and she was a good
deal disappointed when Mark told her that Lord Kirkaldy had been begged
to undertake a diplomatic mission which would keep them abroad all the
winter.

There was a certain weariness and want of interest. It was not exactly
that there was nothing intellectual going on. There were the lectures,
but they were on