sleep!
Is not Herbert going to get well? and aren't you jolly again and
Archie back again? Sleep!--why I want to have wings and clap them--
and more than all, is not Mr. Charnock off and away to-morrow?
Sleep indeed!--I should like to see myself so stupid."

"Mr. Charnock?" interrogatively said Archie.

"The head of the family--the original Charnock of Dunstone," said
Rosamond, who was in wild spirits, coming on a worn-out body and
mind, and therefore perfectly unguarded. "Don't shake your head at
me, Jenny, Archie is one of the family, and that makes you so, and I
must tell you of his last performance. You know he is absolutely
certain that his dear daughter is more infallible than all the
Popes, even since the Council, or than anybody but himself, and that
whatever goes wrong here is the consequence of Julius's faith in Dr.
Easterby. So, when poor Cecil, uneasy in her mind, began asking
about the illness at Wil'sbro', he enlivened her with a prose about
misjudging, through well-intentioned efforts of clerical
philanthropy to interfere with the sanitary condition of the town--
so that wells grew tainted, &c., all from ignorant interference.
Poor man he heard a little sob, and looked round, and there was
Cecil in a dead faint. He set all the bells ringing, and sent an
express for me."

"But wasn't he furious with Anne for mentioning drains at all?"

"My dear Joan, don't you know how many old women there are of both
sorts, who won't let other people look over the wall at what they
gloat on in private? However, he had his punishment, for he really
thought that the subject had been too much for her delicacy, and
simply upset her nerves."

"When was this?"

"Four or five days ago. She is better, but has said not a word more
about it. She is nothing like strong enough, even for so short a
journey as to Portishead; but they say change will be the best thing
for her, and the coming down into the family would be too sad."

"Poor thing! Yes indeed," said Jenny; and feeling universally
benevolent, she added, "give her my love," a thing which so sincere
a person could hardly have said a few weeks ago.

Reserve was part of Cecil's nature, and besides, her father was
almost always with her; but when she had been for the first time
dressed in crape up to her waist, with the tiniest of caps perched
toy-like on the top of her passive head, the sight upset him
completely, and muttering, "Good heavens!--a widow at twe