lculated upon
as her own property, because it was much too nice for Miss Leonora. In
this impossible attire she went to see Mrs Hadwin, and was very gracious
to that unsuspecting woman, and learned a few things of which she had
not the least conception previously. Then she went to the Miss
Wodehouses, and made the elder sister there mighty uncomfortable by her
keen looks and questions; and what Miss Leonora did after that was not
distinctly known to any one. She got into Prickett's Lane somehow, and
stumbled upon No. 10, much to the surprise of the inhabitants; and
before she returned home she had given Mrs Morgan her advice about the
Virginian creeper which was intended to conceal the continual passage of
the railway trains. "But I would not trust to trellis-work. I would
build up the wall a few feet higher, and then you will have some
satisfaction in your work," said Miss Leonora, and left the Rector's
wife to consider the matter in rather an agreeable state of mind, for
that had been Mrs Morgan's opinion all along. After this last visit the
active aunt returned home, going leisurely along George Street, and down
Grange Lane, with meditative steps. Miss Leonora, of course, would not
for kingdoms have confessed that any new light had come into her mind,
or that some very ordinary people in Carlingford, no one of whom she
could have confidently affirmed to be a converted person, had left a
certain vivid and novel impression upon her thoughts. She went along
much more slowly than usual in this new mood of reflectiveness. She was
not thinking of the licensing magistrates of St Michael's nor the
beautiful faith of the colporteur. Other ideas filled her mind at the
moment. Whether perhaps, after all, a man who did his duty by rich and
poor, and could encounter all things for love and duty's sake, was not
about the best man for a parish priest, even though he did have
choristers in white surplices, and lilies on the Easter altar? Whether
it might not be a comfort to know that in the pretty parsonage at
Skelmersdale there was some one ready to start at a moment's notice for
the help of a friend or the succour of a soul--brother to Charley who
won the Cross for valour, and not unworthy of the race? Some strange
moisture came into the corners of Miss Leonora's eyes. There was Gerald
too, whom the Perpetual Curate had declared to be the best man he ever
knew; and the Evangelical woman, with all her prejudices, could not in
her he