th Jenny just yet," said
Rosamond. "Don't leave me alone with her, either of you; if you do,
it is at your peril. It is all very well to talk of honour and
secrets, but to see the look in her eyes, and know he is alive,
seems to me rank cruelty and heartlessness. It is all to let Miles
have the pleasure of telling when he comes home."

"Miles is not a woman, nor an Irishwoman," said Julius.

"But he's a sailor, and he's got a feeling heart," said Rosamond;
"and if he stands one look of Jenny, why, I'll disown him for the
brother-in-law I take him for. By the bye, is not Raymond to know?"

"No," said Anne; "here is a postscript forbidding my telling him or
Mrs. Poynsett."

"Indeed! And I suppose Herbert knows nothing?"

"Nothing. He was a boy at school at the time. Say nothing to him,
Rose."

"Oh, no; besides, his brain is all run to cricket."

It was but too true. When the sun shone bright in April, and the
wickets were set up, Herbert had demonstrated that his influence was
a necessity on the village green; and it was true that his goodly
and animated presence was as useful morally to the eleven as it was
conducive to their triumphs; so his Rector suppressed a few sighs at
the frequency of the practices and the endless matches. Compton had
played Wil'sbro' and Strawyers, Duddingstone and Woodbury; the choir
had played the school, the single the married; and when hay and
harvest absorbed the rustic eleven, challenges began among their
betters. The officers played the county--Oxonians, Cantabs--
Etonians, Harrovians--and wherever a match was proclaimed, that
prime bowler, the Reverend Herbert Bowater, was claimed as the
indispensable champion of his cause and country.

If his sister had any power to moderate his zeal, she had had little
chance of exercising it; for Mrs. Bowater had had a rheumatic fever
in March, and continued so much of an invalid all the summer that
Jenny seldom went far from home, only saw her brother on his weekly
visits to the sick-room, and was, as Rosamond said, unlikely to
become a temptation to the warm heart and eager tongue.

* * * * *

The week-day congregation were surprised one August morning at eight
o'clock by the entrance of three ladies in the most recent style of
fashionable simplicity, and making the most demonstrative tokens of
reverence. As the Rector came out he was seized upon at once by the
elder lady.

"Mr. Charnock! I must introduce myself; I knew you