Bluepost
Bridge, had anything to do with it.'

Annaple had an opportunity of judging. Mr. Dutton would not have
brought about a meeting which might be painful and unsettling to both;
but one afternoon, when Nuttie was 'off duty' with her father, and had
come in to share Annaple's five o'clock tea, Gerard Godfrey, looking
the curate from head to foot, made his appearance, having come up from
the far east, about some call on Mr. Dutton's purse.

The two shook hands with pleased surprise, and a little heightening of
colour, but that was all. Nuttie had been out to luncheon, and was
dressed 'like a mere fashionable young lady' in his eyes; and when,
after the classes and clubs and schools of his district had been
discussed, he asked, 'And I suppose you are taking part in everything
here?'

'No, that I can't!'

'Indeed! I know Porlock, the second curate here very well, and he
tells me that his vicar has a wonderful faculty of finding appropriate
work for every one. Of course you know him?'

'No, I don't;' said Nuttie.

'Miss Egremont has her appropriate work,' said Mr. Dutton, and the
deacon felt himself pushed into his old position at Micklethwayte. He
knew the clergy of the district very well, and how persistently either
Mr. Egremont, or perhaps Gregorio, prevented their gaining admittance
at his house; and he guessed, but did not know, that Nuttie could not
have got into personal intercourse with them without flat disobedience.

Annaple threw herself into the breach, and talked of St. Wulstan's; and
the encounter ended, leaving the sense of having drifted entirely away
from one another, and being perfectly heart whole, though on the one
hand Ursula's feeling was of respect and honour; and Gerard's had a
considerable element of pity and disapprobation.

'No!' said Annaple when they were gone, 'he will not cry like the
kloarek in the Breton ballad who wetted three great missals through
with his tears at his first mass. He is very good, I am sure, but he
is a bit of a prig!'

'It is very hard to youth to be good without priggishness,' said Mr.
Dutton. 'Self-assertion is necessary, and it may easily be carried too
far.'

'Buttresses are useful, but they are not beauties,' rejoined Annaple.

The warehouse arrangement was finally adopted, and after the three
weeks necessary for the cleaning and fitting of their floor, and the
bringing in of their furniture, Mark and Annaple began what she termed
'Life amon