e did was to shake his head at
her.

'If you did not know it, why did you call me _that_?' she asked.

'A merry-andrew?' he answered; 'I never meant that you had been one. No;
only an old friend like me doesn't like the notion of your going and
dressing up in the morning to amuse a lot of scamps.'

'I won't,' said Lucilla, very low.

'Well, then,' began Mr. Prendergast, as in haste to proceed to his own
subject; but she cut him short.

'It is not about Ireland?'

'No; I know nothing about young ladies; and if Mr. Charteris and your
excellent friend there have nothing to say against it, I can't.'

'My excellent friend had so much to say against it, that I was pestered
into vowing I would go! Tell me not, Mr. Prendergast,--I should not mind
giving up to you;' and she looked full of hope.

'That would be beginning at the wrong end, Cilla; you are not my charge.'

'You are my clergyman,' she said, pettishly.

'You are not my parishioner,' he answered.

'Pish!' she said; 'when you know I want you to tell me.'

'Why, you say you have made the engagement.'

'So what I said when she fretted me past endurance must bind me!'

Be it observed that, like all who only knew Hiltonbury through Lucilla,
Mr. Prendergast attributed any blemishes which he might detect in her to
the injudicious training of an old maid; so he sympathized. 'Ah! ladies
of a certain age never get on with young ones! But I thought it was all
settled before with Miss Charteris.'

'I never quite said I would go, only we got ready for the sake of the fun
of talking of it, and now Rashe has grown horridly eager about it. She
did not care at first--only to please me.'

'Then wouldn't it be using her ill to disappoint her now? You couldn't
do it, Cilla. Why, you have given your word, and she is quite old enough
for anything. Wouldn't Miss Charlecote see it so?'

To regard Ratia as a mature personage robbed the project of romance, and
to find herself bound in honour by her inconsiderate rattle was one of
the rude shocks which often occur to the indiscriminate of tongue; but
the curate had too much on his mind to dwell on what concerned him more
remotely, and proceeded, 'I came to see whether you could help me about
poor Miss Murrell. You made no arrangement for her getting home last
night?'

'No!'

'Ah, you young people! But it is my fault; I should have recollected
young heads. Then I am afraid it must have been--'

'What?'

'She