as dry. She walked fearlessly, then, on daisy and turf, and through
thick plantations; she reached Fieldhead, and penetrated to Miss
Keeldar's dressing-room.

It was well she had come, or Shirley would have been too late. Instead
of making ready with all speed, she lay stretched on a couch, absorbed
in reading. Mrs. Pryor stood near, vainly urging her to rise and dress.
Caroline wasted no words. She immediately took the book from her, and
with her own hands commenced the business of disrobing and rerobing her.
Shirley, indolent with the heat, and gay with her youth and pleasurable
nature, wanted to talk, laugh, and linger; but Caroline, intent on being
in time, persevered in dressing her as fast as fingers could fasten
strings or insert pins. At length, as she united a final row of hooks
and eyes, she found leisure to chide her, saying she was very naughty to
be so unpunctual, that she looked even now the picture of incorrigible
carelessness; and so Shirley did, but a very lovely picture of that
tiresome quality.

She presented quite a contrast to Caroline. There was style in every
fold of her dress and every line of her figure. The rich silk suited her
better than a simpler costume; the deep embroidered scarf became her.
She wore it negligently but gracefully. The wreath on her bonnet
crowned her well. The attention to fashion, the tasteful appliance of
ornament in each portion of her dress, were quite in place with her. All
this suited her, like the frank light in her eyes, the rallying smile
about her lips, like her shaft-straight carriage and lightsome step.
Caroline took her hand when she was dressed, hurried her downstairs, out
of doors; and thus they sped through the fields, laughing as they went,
and looking very much like a snow-white dove and gem-tinted bird of
paradise joined in social flight.

Thanks to Miss Helstone's promptitude, they arrived in good time. While
yet trees hid the church, they heard the bell tolling a measured but
urgent summons for all to assemble. The trooping in of numbers, the
trampling of many steps and murmuring of many voices, were likewise
audible. From a rising ground, they presently saw, on the Whinbury road,
the Whinbury school approaching. It numbered five hundred souls. The
rector and curate, Boultby and Donne, headed it--the former looming
large in full canonicals, walking as became a beneficed priest, under
the canopy of a shovel-hat, with the dignity of an ample corporatio