as "such a
cosy little thing", her father used to say. She was my mother's favorite
sister, her "child", she would name her, because "Co" was so much her
junior, and when she was a young girl the little child had been her
charge. "Always take care of little Co", was one of my mother's dying
charges to me, and fortunately "little Co" has--though the only one of my
relatives who has done so--clung to me through change of faith, and
through social ostracism. Her love for me, and her full belief that,
however she differed from me, I meant right, have never varied, have
never been shaken. She is intensely religious--as will be seen in the
later story, wherein her life was much woven with mine--but however much
"darling Annie's" views or actions might shock her, it is "darling Annie"
through it all; "You are so good" she said to me the last time I saw her,
looking up at me with all her heart in her eyes; "anyone so good as you
must come to our dear Lord at last!" As though any, save a brute, could
be aught but good to "little Co".

On the Christmas following my eighteenth birthday, a little Mission
Church in which Minnie was much interested, was opened near Albert
Square. My High Church enthusiasm was in full bloom, and the services in
this little Mission Church were "high", whereas those in all the
neighboring churches were "low". A Mr. Hoare, an intensely earnest man,
was working there in most devoted fashion, and was glad to welcome any
aid; we decorated his church, worked ornaments for it, and thought we
were serving God when we were really amusing ourselves in a small place
where our help was over-estimated, and where the clergy, very likely
unconsciously, flattered us for our devotion. Among those who helped to
carry on the services there, was a young undermaster of Stockwell Grammar
School, the rev. Frank Besant, a Cambridge man, who had passed as 28th
wrangler in his year, and who had just taken orders. At Easter we were
again at Albert Square, and devoted much time to the little church,
decking it on Easter Eve with soft yellow tufts of primrose blossom, and
taking much delight in the unbounded admiration bestowed on the dainty
spring blossoms by the poor who crowded in. I made a lovely white cross
for the super-altar with camelias and azaleas and white geraniums, but
after all it was not really as spring-like, as suitable for a
"Resurrection", as the simple sweet wild flowers, still dewy from their
nests in field an