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come after hours was impossible. But what a pretty room? And I declare, a row of trees in front, quite countrified!'

Lily Woodford was an orphan niece, who had been brought up at Roseberry, and after learning as much dressmaking as the village dressmaker could teach her, had been sent to improve herself at a large shop in Dulworth.

She was a very pretty girl with dark eyes, and a fresh colour, smartly dressed; but with the modest air of her careful home training, and to make a home for her, had been one great object in coming to Dulworth,

Having lived for some three months in the town, she was in every way prepared to do the honours of it, though she had lodged at the other end, and did not know the ins and outs of Laura Terrace.

'Schools?' she said. 'Oh, there's Nationals and Boards, too—and a British, which is more select. But the large one in West Street is the parish National, for I enquired on purpose. Churches? Well, at our end the music is best at St. Mary's; but there's a very moving preacher at St. Mark's, and Miss Brown and I like to go there mostly. But, dear me, over here nobody thinks of that stupid old St. Michael's. 'Tis St. Augustine's where it's the fashion to go. Such lights, and flowers, and banners! Sometimes there's not standing room. And its all free.'

Mrs. Woodford listened to this comparison with open eyes and ears, and remarked doubtfully, that she hadn't been brought to put her trust in flowers and banners-nor even,' she added, as an afterthought, in singing.'

'Well-we had flowers and a banner too, sometimes at Roseberry,' said Lily; and it's the fashion to go to St. Augustine's.'

'Well, we shall attend our parish church, as we've been brought to consider our duty,' said Woodford, conclusively.

'Oh, dear me, uncle! No one thinks of parishes here; it's just as one happens to fancy. Ah, here are the children; have they been for a walk?' and Lily ran out to meet two girls of twelve and thirteen, a boy of ten, and a girl and a boy of six and seven, who, with an elder boy of fourteen-who was beginning work in a bookseller's shop in Dulworth-completed the family. They were all nice-looking children, fair and fresh like their mother, and greeted their cousin heartily; all having their different tales to pour out to her of the strange world in which they found themselves.

As the house was still far from fully settled, the remainder of the week was pretty nearly taken up with arranging it, and with settling in Lily, Mr. Woodford being, of course, occupied in his new garden. One bill of a Temperance meeting, another of a Penny Reading in the British School, an advertisement of a travelling circus, and a notice of a set of 'united services' in the Town Hall, were left at the door in the course of the week; the last left, as Alice said, by a very kind lady indeed. Mrs. Woodford laid up all the bills together

under the photographic album on the parlour table, and observed that her brain reeled at the bare thought of them.

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A second Sunday, displaying the whole Woodford family twice in St. Michael's Church, produced a call from the very young gentleman' who there officiated, and who nearly thanked Mrs. Woodford for coming to hear him, though she was too simple to understand as much. He told her that St. Michael's district was under his charge, and had a separate Sunday-school, to which he cordially invited her children, big and little. The day-school belonged to the whole parish, and was in West Street, and offered every advantage. Mr. Anson requested Mr. Woodford to carry round the bag sometimes at the St. Michael's services, and was so cordial that, in spite of his youth, Mrs. Woodford felt more as if she knew which way to turn than before his visit.

She further received a note from Miss Alice,' announcing the arrival of the family at their new London home, and expressing such a sense of strangeness, and of longing for the dear old church and school and garden, that Mrs. Woodford had the comfort of feeling that she had a fellow-sufferer. She wrote back rather a forlorn letter, in which she endeavoured to make the best of things, the satisfactoriness of Woodford's new place, and the comfort of making a home for Lily and Robert, alternated with the damp which came through the bedroom ceiling, and the persistent smoking of the kitchen chimney. The clergyman, she concluded, though young and not what we are accustomed to-especially in his sermons-spoke extremely kind; and, dear Miss Alice, if we learned our duty in dear Roseberry, we must try and practice it elsewhere-for well do I remember the dear Rector's sermon when William Moffatt and his wife went to New Zealand, and he reminded us of the Communion of Saints, as distance made no change in.'

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CHAPTER II.

GOING TO SCHOOL.

SUNDAY morning was fine and sunny, and Mrs. Woodford put on her best bonnet to take her children to the Sunday-school for the first time. As being,' she said, 'more respectful.'

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'Dear me, aunt,' said Lily, there's no need. Hereabouts they go anyhow.'

'Oh, mother, we'd never be able to go into a strange school by ourselves,' said Alice, the eldest girl, timidly.

'My children shan't go anyhow,' said Mrs. Woodford, and a very tidy well-dressed flock they looked, all with Bibles and Prayerbooks, and with both Collect and Gospel carefully learned by the elder ones, so as not to be behindhand with the probable requirements of the new school. Alice, the eldest, who was a gentle

tender-hearted girl, could not help a choking feeling coming into her throat as her prize Bible reminded her of the old school, and of the dear Miss Alice, after whom she had been named, and who had always taught her so kindly; and thought, too, of 'Granny,' who always stood out in her pretty garden to see them go by to school; and of her chief friend Rosa Beckford, at the village shop, by whom she had sat at school ever since she could remember, and with whom she had hoped to be confirmed next year. She was very shy, too, and felt that she was going to be exposed to a dreadful ordeal. Esther was a bolder, livelier girl, and more attracted by novelty, and by the hope of making friends with her future schoolfellows. Little Susie was wondering whether she would be put into the lowest class of all. Jem, the youngest boy, was no lover of schools old or new. Alfred, the middle one, was a sharp little fellow, on the look-out for any diversion. Robert did not confide his opinion on going to Sunday-school at Dulworth to any one, as, indeed, no one thought of asking it; but he looked, as he could do, rather sulky.

St. Michael's Sunday-school was held in a building that served ir the week as an infant school to the whole parish; that is to say, the boys inhabited the infant schoolroom downstairs, and the girls a room above, where meetings and entertainments were occasionally held.

As they met Mr. Anson at the bottom of the stairs, Mrs. Woodford delivered her sons into his hands, expressing a hope that they would give satisfaction, and went herself upstairs with the three girls.

Here was a young lady taking some books from a cupboard, and about twenty or thirty little girls roaming more or less about the

room.

'If you please, ma'am,' said Mrs. Woodford, 'I've brought my three little girls that I should wish might be allowed to attend the Sunday-school, which they have always done most regular. Their father is Mr. Clavering's new gardener at Glenrosa Villa.'

'Oh, we shall be delighted to have them here,' said the young lady, smiling, and proceeding to ask a few questions as to age and acquirements, and to take down their address; after which she motioned Alice and Esther to the first-class bench, and Susan to the fourth. There were only four classes, and a class of rather unruly infants on a gallery. Mrs. Woodford retired, a bell was rung, and the young lady read prayers; after which a variety of late-comers streamed in and took their places, and Alice Woodford, feeling as if she should sink through the floor, stood up to say her well-learned Collect to the superintendent who took the first class.

St. Michael's Sunday-school was a new experiment. Mr. Anson had represented to the Rector that he should obtain far more influence in his district and attach the people much more to the Church, if he could have the children, and especially his choir boys, in a Sundayschool of his own. He said that the National Sunday-school, as it

was called, was too large for any personal influence to be obtained over the children, and, moreover, he took the view, which had never dawned on the young Woodford imagination, that it was better to dissociate the Sunday teaching as far as possible from the week dayschool and its teachers.

So as many children of the St. Michael's district as would consent to the change, and all the new-comers, were handed over to him; but as the teachers at the old school greatly disliked the new one, none of them would follow their scholars, and Mr. Anson had to collect a band from his own district who were still, like himself, in the stage of buying their experience.

Miss Walters, however, as the superintendent was called, was capable of giving a very pleasant lesson, and Alice and Esther prospered fairly well, though there was more whispering, and much less perfect repetition than they were accustomed to. Esther sat next a pleasant little girl with dark eyes, who showed her friendly attentions, and indeed the whole set, moved perhaps by the Woodfords' superior dress and appearance, were more civil to them than they themselves would have felt capable of being to strangers. They recognised also some of the younger Masons in the other classes, and when, after an amount of noise and bustle which greatly surprised them, they filed downstairs and set off to walk to church, Esther's new acquaintance sidled up to her and began to make friends.

In the meantime Robert Woodford sat at the end of a row of lads, rather smaller than himself, and contemplated Mr. Anson and the school at large. Mr. Anson was small and fair, with rather a nervous manner. Dr. Goodall, at Roseberry, was a tall powerful elderly gentleman, whose youthful feats of cricket and boating were traditionary, and who could have annihilated the faintest attempt at sauciness with one glance of his eyes. There were boys in Roseberry who gave trouble to their teachers, and it had once happened to Robert to be reported by the schoolmaster for throwing stones. But the remembrance of that interview in the Rectory kitchengarden that Robert Woodford, what does this mean?' had never faded from his memory. Decidedly he never wished to hear it again.

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But these boys were so inattentive and disobedient, they opened their Bibles with such an unpleasant bang, they rattled off the texts they were desired to find in such a rude manner, that poor Mr. Anson's lesson went out of his head, as he again and again reproved them mildly for their irreverence, till losing patience, he closed the book and rang the bell.

Whereupon the whole mass of boys, regardless of his calls to order, rushed helter-skelter out at the door, and Robert, running after his little brothers with a fierce desire to prevent them from disgracing themselves, was swept off with the current, and obliged to follow with the rest, who arrived at church, hot, disorderly, and extremely unlikely to profit by the service.

When the Woodfords reached home after the service, Polly Mason, a girl about fourteen, was standing in her garden. She nodded to Alice and Esther, and asked them how they liked St. Michael's School, Polly was so untidy, as a rule, that the two girls had not regarded her as likely to be a friend for them; but she was extremely smart now, and Alice responded—

'Pretty well. The lady was very kind.'

'Don't you go with your sister?' said Esther.

'No; there's nothing there but children, and I like my time to myself of a morning. I go to the Congregational in the afternoon.' 'But I thought you were Church people?'

Oh! so we are. I mean to be confirmed next year, and mother attends no other place of worship, and looks in sometimes at Church when she aint too busy. But she says I may go where I like; she supposes one gets good everywhere.'

'What is it like?' asked Esther.

'What, our school? Oh, we have a lovely class-room, with chairs, and a table with a red cloth on, and ever so many prizes; and the treats are splendid, two a year, and presents.'

'What do you learn?'

'Oh, the Bible!-and Mr. Clegg expounds beautifully. You see I used to go to the National Sunday; but they're very strict there, no chance of any fun, and mother thought I was used bad about a prize, so, for a change, I went to the Congregational.'

'Are there treats and prizes at St. Michael's?'

'Oh!' said Polly, 'they can't afford much down there; but I heard tell of some entertainments to get money for one in the winter.' "We had beautiful treats at Roseberry,' said Esther. Tea in the Rectory field, and such nice games afterwards.'

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'Oh! tea and games? That's nothing-we have excursions. You'd better come with me. Mr. Clegg is always telling us to bring new recruits.'

Here Alfred called his sisters into dinner, and the conversation came to an end.

'Father,' said Robert, suddenly, as the apple-pudding was helped round, 'young Peters, down at our place, says I'm too old to go to Sunday-school in a town.'

'Do he?' said Mr. Woodford, with composure.

'Yes, father; he says there's some that goes to classes at the Christian Institute, and a lady here and there gets a few together; but he don't think much of that, and for his part he likes a walk on a Sunday.'

'Most lads do.'

'He was in St. Michael's choir; but he changed to another church because the pay was better, and now his voice is broke, he wants his liberty.'

'I hope he'll make a good use of it, my son.'

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