year,
as he has been so ill," remarked the young lady.

"He will never give that up, Alice, as long as he can hold anything; and
he is almost well again, you know. Oh, yes; we shall have the dinner and
the chimes also."

"I have never heard the chimes," she said. "They have not played since I
came to Church Leet."

"They are to play this year," said Harry Carradyne. "But I don't think
my mother knows it."

"Is it true that Mrs. Carradyne does not like to hear the chimes? I seem
to have gathered the idea, somehow," added Alice. But she received no
answer.

Kate Dancox was changeable as the ever-shifting sea. Delighted with the
frock that was in process, she extended her approbation to its maker;
and when Mrs. Ram, a homely workwoman, departed with her small bundle in
her arms, it pleased the young lady to say she would attend her to her
home. This involved the attendance of Miss West, who now found herself
summoned to the charge.

Having escorted Mrs. Ram to her lowly door, and had innumerable
intricate questions answered touching trimmings and fringes, Miss Kate
Dancox, disregarding her governess altogether, flew back along the road
with all the speed of her active limbs, and disappeared within the
churchyard. At first Alice, who was growing tired and followed slowly,
could not see her; presently, a desperate shriek guided her to an
unfrequented corner where the graves were crowded. Miss Kate had come to
grief in jumping over a tombstone, and bruised both her knees.

"There!" exclaimed Alice, sitting down on the stump of an old tree,
close to the low wall. "You've hurt yourself now."

"Oh, it's nothing," returned Kate, who did not make much of smarts. And
she went limping away to Mr. Grame, then doing some light work in his
garden.

Alice sat on where she was, reading the inscription on the tombstones;
some of them so faint with time as to be hardly discernible. While
standing up to make out one that seemed of a rather better class than
the rest, she observed Nancy Cale, the clerk's wife, sitting in the
church-porch and watching her attentively. The poor old woman had been
ill for a long time, and Alice was surprised to see her out. Leaving the
inscriptions, she went across the churchyard.

"Ay, my dear young lady, I be up again, and thankful enough to say it;
and I thought as the day's so fine, I'd step out a bit," she said, in
answer to the salutation. An intelligent woman, and quite sufficiently
cultiv