ell-fed
stagnation of country life and rejoiced to be the partner of a man who
was doing something in the world. Life was more than food to her and the
body than raiment. Cicely wished that such a chance had come to her.

But the Rector had repeated his text for the last time, and was drawing
to the end of his discourse. She must slip back to her seat at the
harmonium, and defer the consideration of her own hardships until later.

The congregation aroused itself and stood up upon the stroke of the word
"now"; and, whilst the last hymn was being given out and played over,
the Squire started on a collecting tour with the wooden, baize-lined
plate which he drew from beneath his chair. The coppers clinked one by
one upon the silver already deposited by himself and his family, and he
closely scrutinised the successive offerings. His heels rang out
manfully upon the worn pavement beneath which his ancestors were
sleeping, as he strode up the chancel and handed the alms to the Rector.
He was refreshed by his light slumber, his weekly duty was coming to an
end, and he would soon be out in the open air inspecting his stables and
looking forward to his luncheon. He sang the last verses of the hymn
lustily, his glasses on his nose, a fine figure of a man, quite
satisfied with himself and the state in life to which he had been
called.

The congregation filed out of church into the bright sunshine. Dick,
with Joan on one side of him and Nancy on the other, set out at a smart
pace across the park, bound for the stables and the home farm. Cicely
walked with the old starling, who lifted her flounced skirt over her
square-toed kid boots, as one who expected to find dew where she found
grass, even in the hot August noonday. The Squire and Mrs. Clinton
brought up the rear, and the men and maids straggled along a footpath
which diverged to another quarter of the house.

Cicely left the rest of the family to the time-honoured inspection of
horses and live stock, always undertaken, summer and winter, after
church on Sunday morning, as a permissible recreation on a day otherwise
devoted to sedentary pursuits. It was one of the tiresome routine habits
of her life, and she was sick of routine. She dawdled in her bedroom, a
room at least twenty feet square, with two big windows overlooking the
garden and the park and the church tower rising from amongst its trees,
until the gong sounded, when she hurried downstairs and took her seat at
the l