n, is the fashionable complaint),
the parish to be invaded with dissent and socialism, the country to go
to destruction. This latter, as being the greatest, and at the same time
the most distant, a thing even which might happen without disturbing
one's individual comfort, was most certain; and she waited till it
should happen, with always an anxious outlook for the first symptoms.
She received Minnie and Chatty, who were her nearest neighbours, and
whom she saw almost daily, with a tone of interest and attachment beyond
the ordinary, as she had done ever since their father's death. Indeed,
they had found this everywhere, a sort of natural compensation for
their "great loss." They were surrounded by the respect and reawakened
interest of all the people who were so familiar with them. A bereaved
family have always this little advantage after a death.

"How are you, dears," Mrs. Wilberforce said, "and how is your dear
mother?" Ordinarily Mrs. Warrender was spoken of as their mother, _tout
court_, without any endearing adjective.

"Mamma is quite wonderful," said Minnie. "She thinks of everything and
looks after everything almost as if--nothing had ever happened."

"She keeps up on our account," said Chatty, "and for Theo's sake. It
is so important, you know, to keep home a little bright--oh, I mean as
little miserable as possible for him."

"Bright, poor child!" said Mrs. Wilberforce pathetically. "You have not
realised as yet what it is. When the excitement is all over, and you
have settled down in your mourning, then is the time when you will feel
it. I always tell people the first six weeks is nothing; you are so
supported by the excitement. But afterwards, when everything falls into
the old routine. I suppose, however, you are going away."

"Mamma said something about it: but we all preferred, you know----"

"You had much better go away. I told you so the moment I heard it. And
as Theo has all the summer to himself before he requires to go back
to Oxford, what is there to stop you?" Mrs. Wilberforce took great
pleasure in settling other people's plans for them, and deciding what
they were to do.

"That wasn't what we came to talk about," said the elder Miss Warrender,
who was quite able to hold her own. "Mrs. Wilberforce, we have just come
from old Mrs. Bagley's at the shop, and there we made quite a painful
discovery. We said what we could, but perhaps it would be well if you
would interfere. I think, indeed, y