on is almost disconcertingly direct and lively. Damaris
suffered the change of conditions not without a measure or doubt and
wonder. For they made demands to which she had become unaccustomed, and
to which she found it difficult to submit quite naturally and simply. A
whole social and domestic order, bristling with petty obligations, closed
down upon her, within the bounds of which she felt to move awkwardly, at
first, conscious of constraint.

Sympathetic Mrs. Cooper, comely and comfortable Mary, and the Napoleonic
Patch, still reigned in house and stable. Laura had returned to her
former allegiance on the announcement of "the family's" arrival, and
other underlings had been engaged by the upper servants in conclave. To
these latter entered that Ulysses, Mr. Hordle, so rendering the
establishment once again complete.

The neighbours duly called--Dr. and Mrs. Horniblow, conscious of notable
preferment, since high ecclesiastical powers had seen fit to present the
former to a vacant canonry at Harchester. For three months yearly he
would in future be resident in the cathedral city. This would necessitate
the employment of a curate at Deadham, for the spiritual life of its
inhabitants must by no means suffer through its vicar's promotion. At the
moment of Sir Charles and Damaris' return the curate excitement was at
its height. It swept through the spinster-ranks of the congregation like
an epidemic. They thrilled with unacknowledgeable hopes. The Miss
Minetts, though mature, grew pink and quivered, confessing themselves not
averse to offering board and lodging to a suitable, a well-connected,
well-conducted paying guest. To outpourings on the enthralling subject of
the curate, Damaris found herself condemned to listen from every feminine
visitor in turn. It held the floor, to the exclusion of all other topics.
Her own long absence, long journeys, let alone the affairs of the world
at large, were of no moment to these very local souls. So our young lady
retired within herself, deploring the existence of curates in general,
and the projected, individual, Deadham curate in particular, with a
heartiness she was destined later to remember. Had it been
prophetic?--Not impossibly so, granted the somewhat strange prescience by
which she was, at times, possessed.

For the psychic quality that, from a child, now and again had manifested
itself in her--though happily unattended by morbid or hysteric
tendencies, thanks to her radian