taken a great pride in the pretty, well-ordered house.
She was a capable, a kind, and a considerate mistress. Her servants
worked well under her guidance. She was set in authority over them; they
liked her rule, and acknowledged it with cheerful and willing service.

No one could give such perfect little dinner-parties as Aunt Marjorie.
She had a knack of finding out each of her guests' particular weaknesses
with regard to the dinner-table. She was no diplomatist, and her
conversation was considered prosy; but with Mr. Merton to act the
perfect host and to lead the conversation into the newest intellectual
channels, with Hilda to look sweet and gracious and beautiful, and with
Aunt Marjorie to provide the dinner, nothing could have been a greater
success than the little party which took place on an average once a week
at the sociable Rectory.

Now all these things were at an end. The servants must go; the large
house--which had been added to from time to time by the Rector until it
had lost all similitude to the ordinary small and cozy Rectory--the
great house must remain either partly shut up or only half cleaned.
There must be no more dinner-parties, and no nice carriage for Aunt
Marjorie to return calls in. The vineries and conservatories must remain
unheated during the winter; the gardeners must depart. Weeds must grow
instead of flowers.

Alack, and alas! Aunt Marjorie felt like a shipwrecked mariner, as she
sat now in the lovely drawing room and looked out over the summer scene.

With her mind's eye she was gazing at something totally different--she
was seeing the beautiful place as it would look in six months' time; she
saw with disgust the rank and obnoxious weeds, the empty grate, the
dust-covered ornaments.

"It is worse for us than it would be for ordinary people," she said half
aloud. "If we were just ordinary people, we could leave here and go into
a tiny cottage where our surroundings would be in keeping with our
means; but of course the Rector must live in the Rectory--at least I
suppose so. Dear, dear! how sudden this visitation has been--truly may
it be said that 'all flesh is grass.'"

Aunt Marjorie had a way of quoting sentences which did not at all apply
to the occasion; these quotations always pleased her, however, and a
slow smile now played round her lips.

The drawing-room door was opened noisily, and a fat little figure rushed
across the room and sprang into her arms.

"Is that you, Ba