"Scorn not the smallness of daily endeavour,

Let the great meaning ennoble it ever,

Droop not o'er efforts expended in vain,

Work, as believing, that labour is gain."

Queen Isabel, &c. by S. M.

The sturdy recusant against Myrtlewood croquet continued to be Rachel

Curtis, and yet it was not a testimony against the game so much as real

want of time for it. She was always full of occupation, even while her

active mind craved for more definite and extended labour; and when she

came upon the field of strategy, it was always either with some business

before her, or else so late that the champions were only assisting their

several lags to bring the battle to an end.

If there had been a will there would have been a way, but, as she said,

she saw enough to perceive that proficiency could only be attained at

the cost of much time and study, and she did not choose to be inferior

and mediocre. Also, she found occupations open to her elsewhere that

had long been closed or rendered unpleasant. Mr. Touchett had become

wonderfully pacific and obliging of late, as if the lawn tactics

absorbed his propensities for offence and defence, he really seemed

obliged for one or two bits of parish work that she attended to;

finding that between him and his staff of young ladies they were getting

omitted. Somehow, too, an unaccountable blight was passing over the

activity of those curatolatresses, as Rachel had been wont to call them;

they were less frequently to be met with popping out of the schools and

cottages, and Rachel, who knew well all the real poor, though refusing

the bonds of a district, was continually detecting omissions which she

more often supplied than reported. There was even a smaller sprinkling

at the weekly services, and the odd thing was that the curate never

seemed to remark or be distressed by the change, or if any one spoke

of the thin congregation he would say, winter was the Avonmouth season,

which was true enough, but the defaulters were mostly his own peculiar

followers, the female youth of the professional and mercantile

population.

Rachel did not trouble herself about the cause of all this, indeed she

was too much occupied with the gradual gliding into somewhat of her

original activity and importance in the field thus left open to her.

None the less, however, did she feel the burden of life's problems; the

intercourse she had enjoyed with Colonel Keith had excited her for a

time, but in the reaction, the old feelings returned painfully that the

times were out of joint; the heavens above became obscure and misty as

before, the dark places of the earth looked darker than ever, and those

who lived at ease seemed to be employed either in sport upon the outside

of the dungeon where the captives groaned, or in obstructing the way of

those who would fain have plunged in to the rescue.




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