ank with stiff raised tails,
with an artificial noose sustained with difficulty just above the tuft.

"How like James and the Pratts!" Hester said to herself, watching the
grotesque gambols and nudgings of the dwindling humorists. "It must be
very fatiguing to be so comic."

Hester had been up since five o'clock, utilizing the quiet hours before
the house was astir. She was tired out. A bumblebee was droning sleepily
near at hand. The stream talked and talked and talked about what he was
going to do when he was a river. "How tired the banks must be of
listening to him!" thought Hester, with closed eyes.

And the world melted slowly away in a delicious sense of well-being,
from which the next moment, as it seemed to her, she was suddenly
awakened by Mr. Gresley's voice near at hand.

"Hester! _Hester_! HESTER!"

"Here! here!" gasped Hester, with a start, upsetting her lapful of
letters as she scrambled hastily to her feet.

The young vicar drew near, and looked over the church-yard wall. A large
crumb upon his upper lip did not lessen the awful severity of his
countenance.

"We have nearly finished luncheon," he observed. "The servants could not
find you anywhere. I don't want to be always finding fault, Hester, but
I wish, for your own sake as well as ours, you would be more punctual at
meals."

Hester had never been late before, but she felt that this was not the
moment to remind her brother of that fact.

"I beg pardon," she said, humbly. "I fell asleep."

"You fell asleep!" said Mr. Gresley, who had been wrestling all the
morning with platitudes on "Thy will be done." "All I can say, Hester,
is that it is unfortunate you have no occupation. I cannot believe it is
for the good of any of us to lead so absolutely idle a life that we fall
asleep in the morning."

Hester made no reply.

CHAPTER XI

It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance
as to whip the fog.--GEORGE ELIOT.

The children, who had reached the pear stage, looked with round, awed
eyes at "Auntie Hester" as she sat down at the luncheon-table beside the
black bottle which marked her place. The Gresleys were ardent total
abstainers, and were of opinion that Hester's health would be greatly
benefited by following their example. But Hester's doctor differed from
them--he was extremely obstinate--with the result that the Gresleys were
obliged to tolerate the obnoxious bottle on their very table. It was