Fanny absolutely stared. "You go, don't you, Rachel? How we used to wish

for it!"

"You have wished and we have tried," said Rachel, with a sigh.

"Yes, Rachel," said Grace; "but with all drawbacks, all disappointments

in ourselves, it is a great blessing. We would not be without it."

"I could not be satisfied in relinquishing it voluntarily," said Rachel,

"but I am necessarily one of the idle. Were I one of the occupied,

laborare est orare would satisfy me, and that poor governess ought to

feel the same. Think of the physical reaction of body on mind, and tell

me if you could have the barbarity of depriving that poor jaded thing

of an hour's sleep, giving her an additional walk, fasting, in all

weathers, and preparing her to be savage with the children."

"Perhaps it refreshes her, and hinders her from being cross."

"Maybe she thinks so; but if she have either sense or ear, nothing

would so predispose her to be cross as the squeaking of Mr. Touchett's

penny-whistle choir."

"Poor Mr. Touchett," sighed Mrs. Curtis; "I wish he would not make such

ambitious attempts."

"But you like the choral service," said Fanny, feeling as if everything

had turned round. "When all the men of a regiment chant together you

cannot think how grand it is, almost finer than the cathedral."

"Yes, where you can do it," said Rachel, "but not where you can't."

"I wish you would not talk about it," said Grace.

"I must, or Fanny will not understand the state of parties at

Avonmouth."

"Parties! Oh, I hope not."

"My dear child, party spirit is another word for vitality. So you

thought the church we sighed for had made the place all we sighed to see

it, and ourselves too. Oh! Fanny is this what you have been across the

world for?"

"What is wrong?" asked Fanny, alarmed.

"Do you remember our axiom? Build your church, and the rest will take

care of itself. You remember our scraping and begging, and how that good

Mr. Davison helped us out and brought the endowment up to the needful

point for consecration, on condition the incumbency was given to him.

He held it just a year, and was rich, and could help out his bad health

with a curate. But first he went to Madeira, and then he died, and

there we are, a perpetual curacy of £70 a year, no resident gentry but

ourselves, a fluctuating population mostly sick, our poor demoralized

by them, and either crazed by dissent, or heathenized by their former

distance from church. Who would take us? No more Mr. Davisons! There was

no more novelty, and too much smartness to invite self-devotion. So

we were driven from pillar to post till we settled down into this Mr.

Touchett, as good a being as ever lived, working as hard as any two, and

sparing neither himself nor any one else."




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