the half-penny and not herself had fallen from
its pedestal. "I see now; but when he said, Hi! Presto! and it flew
away, I thought I saw it flying. Mary said she did. And I suppose the
gate was only a game, too."

Hester felt that the subject would be quite beyond her powers of
explanation if once the gate were introduced into it.

She laid Regie down and covered him.

"And you will go to sleep now. And I will ask Uncle Dick when next he
comes to show us how he did the game with the half-penny."

"Yes," said Regie, dejectedly. "I'd rather know what there is to be
known. Only I _thought_ it was a flying one. Good-night, Auntie Hester."

She stayed beside him a few minutes until his even breathing showed her
he was asleep, and then slipped back to her own room. The front-door
bell was ringing as she came out of the nursery. The temperance
deputation from Liverpool had arrived. Mr. Gresley's voice of welcome
could be heard saying that it was only ten minutes to seven.

Accordingly, a few minutes before that hour, Mr. Gresley and his party
entered the Parish Room. It was crammed. The back benches were filled
with a large contingent of young men, whose half-sheepish, half-sullen
expression showed that their presence was due to pressure. Why the
parishioners had come in such numbers it would be hard to say. Perhaps
even a temperance meeting was a change in the dreary monotony of rural
life at Warpington. Many of the faces bore the imprint of this monotony,
Rachel thought, as she refused the conspicuous front seat pointed out to
her by Mrs. Gresley, and sat down near the door with Hester.

Dick, who had been finishing his cigarette outside, entered a moment
later, and stood in the gangway, entirely filling it up, his eye
travelling over the assembly, and, as Rachel well knew, looking for her.
Presently he caught sight of her, wedged in four or five deep by the
last arrivals. There was a vacant space between her and the wall, but it
was apparently inaccessible. Entirely disregarding the anxious
church-wardens who were waving him forward, Dick disappeared among the
young men at the back, and Rachel thought no more of him until a large
Oxford shoe descended quietly out of space upon the empty seat near her,
and Dick, who had persuaded the young men to give him foot-room on their
seats, and had stepped over the high backs of several "school forms,"
sat down beside her.

It was neatly done, and Rachel could not help smiling