The Rector had been simple enough in his
tastes and habits. He was a member of the Church of England Temperance
Society, and so had no valuable cellar of wine to dispose of. He did not
possess more silver plate than was wanted for the Rectory table. His
library contained no rare and costly books. The very carriage in
question was no more than one of those pony-phaetons with regard to
which Bishop Pattison appealed, in one of his letters from Melanesia to
his brethren in peaceful, pleasant country rectories and vicarages at
home, asking the astonished clergymen, with their clergywomen in the
background, if they really considered the clerical equipage, with its
modest expense, equivalent to a divine institution? The Rector proved
his freedom from the superstition by doing away with the phaeton and its
pair, and falling back, as he was a spare man, on an old pony which the
children had ridden by turns. Though he was not a book fancier, he had
entertained a fondness for art, and since he could not indulge in much
picture buying, had dabbled in old prints, of which he had rather a fine
collection. This all at once vanished along with the phaeton.

Bell Hewett, the second daughter, who was several years younger than her
sister Lucy, but had left Miss Burridge's some time before, and was as
far removed from a school-girl as Annie Millar herself, unexpectedly
appeared again on the familiar benches. She was not there as a junior
governess, she was not sufficiently clever or educated, since Miss
Burridge sought to work up to the new standards. Poor Bell was in her
old place, in her old classes, as a pupil once more, only she sat
looking deeply affronted, and nervously trying to make up for lost time,
among a set of young girls like May Millar.

There was not much difference made in Colonel Russell's establishment.
But this was caused by one of two things. There was the probability of
the establishment's soon being broken up, if its master succeeded in
getting a post which should enable him to return to India. On the other
hand, the second Mrs. Russell was too foolish and self-willed to
comprehend without a prolonged struggle how she and her babies could get
along unless they were fortified by every imaginable aid in the shape of
an expensive table, fine clothes, a couple of under nurses, and a boy in
buttons. Fanny Russell, the Colonel's grown-up daughter by his first
wife, looked sad enough over the prospect of her father's depa