lberforce says; and if the worst comes to the worst, Dick, I suppose
you can exist without the society of ladies for a few days."

"So long as I have Mrs. Wilberforce to fall back upon, and Flo. Flo is
growing very pretty, perhaps you don't know? Parents are so dull to that
sort of thing. But there is somebody else in the parish I have got to
look after. What is their name? I can't recollect, but I know the name
of the house. It is the Elms."

"The Elms, my dear fellow!" cried the rector, with consternation. He
turned pale with fright and horror, and, rising, went softly and closed
the window, which his wife had left open. "For Heaven's sake," he said,
"don't speak so loud; my wife might hear."

"Why shouldn't she hear?" said Dick undaunted. "There's nothing wrong,
is there? I don't remember the people's name----"

"No, most likely not; one name will do as well as another," said the
rector solemnly. "Dick, I know that a young fellow like you looks at
things in another light from a man of my cloth; but there are things
that can be done, and things that can't, and it is simply impossible,
you know, that you should visit at a place like that from my house."

"What do you mean by a place like that? I know nothing about the place.
It belongs to my uncle Cornwall, and there is something to be done to
it, or they won't stay."

The rector drew a long breath. "You relieve me very much," he said. "Is
the Mr. Cornwall that bought the Elms your uncle Cornwall--without a
joke? Then you must tell him, Dick, there's a good fellow, to do nothing
to it, but for the love of Heaven help us to get those people away."

"Who are the people?" said the astonished Dick. It is uncertain whether
Mr. Wilberforce managed to make any articulate reply, but he sputtered
forth some broken words, which, with the look that accompanied them,
gave to his visitor an idea of the fact which had been for a month or
two whispered, with bated breath, by the villagers and people about.
Dick, who was still nominally of the faction of the reprobates, fell
a-laughing when the news penetrated his mind. It was not that his
sympathies were with vice as against virtue, as the rector was disposed
to believe; but the thought of the righteous and strait-laced uncle, who
had sent him into what would have been to Mr. Cornwall the very jaws of
hell, and of all that might have happened had he himself, Dick, announced
in Mrs. Wilberforce's presence his commission to the E