rately afraid lest the forbidden cup should be snatched from its
longing lips. But the news did get to Mrs. Morrison's ears, and it got
to them in the porch of the church as she was passing in to prayer.
She had it from an overgrown girl who was waiting outside for her
father, and who was really much too big for children's parties but had
got an invitation by looking wistful at the right moment.

"Emma," said Mrs. Morrison in passing, "you have not returned the
book I lent you. Bring it up this afternoon."

"Please mum, I'll bring it to-morrow, mum," said the girl, curtseying
and turning red.

"No, Emma, you will do as I direct. One can never be too particular
about returning books. You have kept it an unconscionable time. You
will bring it to the vicarage at four o'clock."

"Please mum, I--I can't at four o'clock."

"And pray, Emma, what is to prevent you?"

"I--I'm going to Baker's, mum."

"Going to Baker's? Why are you going to Baker's, Emma?"

So it all came out.

The bells were just stopping, and Mrs. Morrison, who played the organ,
was forced to hurry in without having told Emma her whole opinion of
those who gave and those who attended Sunday parties, but the prelude
she played that day expressed the tumult of her mind very well, and
struck Tussie Shuttleworth, who had sensitive ears, quite cold. He was
the only person in the church acutely sensitive to sound, and it was
very afflicting to him, this plunging among the pedals, this angry
shrieking of stops no man ever yet had heard together. The very blower
seemed frightened, and blew in gasps; and the startled Tussie,
comparing the sounds to the clamourings of a fiend in pain, could not
possibly guess they were merely the musical expression of the state of
a just woman's soul.

Mrs. Morrison's anger was perfectly proper. It had been the
conscientious endeavour of twenty-five solid years of her life to make
of Symford a model parish, and working under Lady Shuttleworth, whose
power was great since all the cottages were her son's and were lived
in by his own labourers, it had been kept in a state of order so
nearly perfect as to raise it to the position of an example to the
adjoining parishes. The church was full, the Sunday-school well
attended, the Sabbath was kept holy, the women were one and all sober
and thrifty, the men were fairly satisfactory except on Saturday
nights, there was no want, little sickness, and very seldom downright
sin. The expre