What is life? Digging, ploughing, one can understand that; but unfortunately one cannot dig, and "to beg I am ashamed." These familiar words suggested themselves by the merest trick of the ear to his mind unawares. To beg, the Franciscans he had seen in old Italy had not been at all ashamed; neither were the people who now and then penetrated into college rooms with -if not the Franciscan's wallet, or the penitent's rattling money-box-lists of subscriptions with which to beguile the unwary. For what? For hospitals, schools, missions, churches; the grand deduction to be drawn from all this being that there were a great many people in the world, by their own fault or that of others, miserable, sick, ignorant, wicked; and that a great many more people, from good or indifferent motives, on true or on false pretences, were making a great fuss about helping them. This fuss was in a general way annoying, and even revolting to the dilettanti, whose object is to see and hear only things that are beautiful, to encourage in themselves and others delightful sensations; but yet when you came to think of it, it could not be denied that the whole system of public charity had a meaning. In some cases a false, foolish, wrong meaning, no doubt; but yet-—

If I were to tell you all the fancies that passed through Roger Mildmay's head on the subject, it would require volumes; and many of his thoughts were fantastic enough. The fact that he had taken orders and was the man he was, made it his proper business to teach others; but he would much rather, he thought, have reclaimed waste land, or something of that practical sort. Yes, to reclaim a bit of useless moorland and make it grow oats or even potatoes-that would be something; but then unfortunately the ludicrous side of the matter would come over him. What could he do on his bit of moorland with those white hands of his? Would it not be much more sensible to pay honest wages to some poor honest man out of work and let him do the digging? and then where was Roger Mildmay? still left,

stranded, high and dry, upon the useless ground of his present existence. Such a man in such a self-discussion is as many women are. If he works, what is the good of it? It is to occupy, to please himself, not because the work is necessary to others; indeed, it is taking bread out of the mouths of others to do badly himself that which another man, probably lounging sadly, out of work, and seeing his children starve, would do well. Let him, then, go back to his own profession; and what was he to do? A clergyman must preach, and he did not feel at all at his ease in the pulpit. A clergyman must teach, and his prevailing mood was a desire to learn. A clergyman must care for the poor, and he knew nothing about the poor. The result of all these confused and unsatisfactory reasonings with himself was that when the living of Brentburn was offered to him half in joke, he made a plunge at it, and accepted. "Let us try!" he said to himself. Anything was better than this perplexity. At the worst he could

but fail.

Now Mr. St. John, as I have said, was a member of the same college, and had served the parish of Brentburn for twenty years, and what was to Roger Mildmay an adventure, a very doubtful experiment, would have been to him life and living; and next on the list of eligible persons after Mr. Mildmay was the Rev. John Ruffhead, who was very anxious to marry and settle, and was a clergyman's son well trained to his work. Such injustices are everywhere around us; they are nobody's fault, we say they are the fault of the system; but what system would mend them it is hard to tell. And, on the other hand, perhaps neither Mr. St. John nor Mr. Ruffhead had the same high object before them as Roger had. The old man would have gone on in his gentle routine just as he had done all those years, always kind, soothing the poor folk more than he taught them; the young man would, . though sure to do his duty, have thought perhaps more of the future Mrs. Ruff

head and the settling down, than of any kind of heroic effort to realize life and serve the world. So that on the whole, ideally, my dilettante had the highest ideal; though the practical effect of him no one could venture to foretell.

He had decided to accept the living of Brentburn at once, feeling the offer to be a kind of answer of the oraclefor there was a certain heathenism mingling with his Christianity-to his long-smouldering and unexpressed desires; but before concluding formally he went, by the advice of one of his friends, to look at the place, "to see how he would like it." "Like it! do I want to like it?" he said to himself. Must this always be the first question? Was it not rather the first possibility held out to him in the world-of duty, and a real, necessary, and certain work which should not be to please himself? He did not want to like it. Now men of Mildmay's turn of mind are seldom deeply devoted to nature. They admire a fine landscape or fine sunset, no doubt, but it is chiefly for the composition, the effects of light and shade, the combination of colours. In the loveliest country they sigh for picture galleries and fine. architecture, and cannot please themselves with the mists and the clouds, the woods and the waters, the warm, sweet, boundless atmosphere itself, in which others find beauty and mystery unceasing. Yet on this occasion a different result took place; although it was contrary to his own principles, when he first came out of the prosaic little railway at Brentburn and saw at his right-hand, one rich cloud of foliage rounding upon another, and all the wealth of princely trees standing up in their battalions under the full warm August sky; and on the other the sweet wild common bursting forth in a purple blaze of heather, all belted and broken with the monastic gloom of the pine-woods and ineffable blue distances of the wilder country-there suddenly fell upon him a love at first sight for this insignificant rural place, which I cannot account for any more than he could. I should be disposed to say

that the scent of the fir-trees went to his head, as it does to mine; but then the very soul within him melted to the great, broad, delicious greenness of shadows in the forest; and the two between them held him in an ecstasy, in that sweet lapse of all sense and thought into which nature sometimes surprises us, when all at once, without any suspicion on our part of what she is about, she throws herself open to us and holds out her tender arms. Mildmay stood in this partial trance, not knowing what he was doing, fortwo full minutes; then he picked himself up, slightly ashamed of his ecstasy, and asked his way to the church, and said to himself (as I think Mr. Ruskin says somewhere) that mere nature without art to back her up is little, but that he might indeed permit himself to feel those indescribable sensations if he could look at all this as a background to a beautiful piece of ancient architecture in the shape of a church. Alas, poor Mr. Mildmay! I don't know why it had never been broken to him. Ignorant persons had said "a very nice church," perhaps out of sheer ignorance, perhaps from the commercial point of view that a new church in perfect repair is much more delightful, to a young rector's pocket at least, than the most picturesque old one in perpetual need of restorations. But anyhow, when the church of Brentburn did barst upon him in all its newness, poor Roger put out his hand to the first support he could find, and felt disposed to swoon. The support which he found to lean on was the wooden rail, round a rather nasty duck-pond which lay between two cottages, skirting the garden hedge of one of them. Perhaps it was the odour of this very undelightful feature in the scene that made him feel like fainting, rather than the sight of the church; but he did not think so in the horror of the moment. He who had hoped to see the distant landscape all enhanced and glorified, by looking at it from among the ancestral elms or solemn yew-trees about a vert able village spire, and old grey, mossy

Saxon walls—or beside the lovely tracery of some decorated window with perhaps broken pieces of old glass glimmering out like emeralds and rubies! The church, I have already said, was painfully new; it was in the most perfect good order; the stones might have been scrubbed with scrubbing-brushes that very morning; and, worse than all, it was good Gothic, quite correct and unobjectionable. The poor young don's head drooped upon his breast, his foot slipped on the edge of the duck-pond. Never was a more delicate distress; and yet but for the despairing grasp he gave to the paling, the result might have been grotesque enough.

"Be you poorly, sir?" said old Mrs. Joel, who was standing, as she generally was, at her cottage door.

No, no, I thank you," said the new rector faintly; "I suppose it is the sun."

"Come in a bit and rest, bless you," said Mrs. Joel; "you do look overcome. It is a bit strong is that water of hot days. Many a one comes to look at our cheuch. There's a power of old cheuches about, and ours is the only one I know of as is new, sir, and sweet and clean though I says it shouldn't," said the old woman, smoothing her apron and curtsying with a conscious smile.

as

"You are the sexton's wife? you have the charge of it?" said Mr. Mildmay.

"Thank my stars! I ain't no man's wife," said Mrs. Joel. "I be old John Joel's widow-and a queer one he was; and the curate he say as I was to keep the place, though there's a deal of jealousy about. I never see in all my born days a jealouser place than Brentburn."

"Who is the curate?" asked Mr. Mildmay.

"Bless your soul, sir, he'll be as pleased as Punch to see you. You go up bold to the big door and ask for Mr. St. John; he would always have the hartis-gentlemen and that sort in, to take a cup of tea with him. The Missis didn't hold with it in her time. She had a deal of

pride, though you wouldn't have thought it at first. But since she's dead and gone, Mr. St. John he do have his way; and two pretty young ladies just come from school," said Mrs. Joel with a smirk. She was herself very curious about the stranger, who was evidently not a "hartis-gentleman." "Maybe you was looking for lodgings, like?" she said, after a pause.

"No, no," said Mildmay, with unnecessary explanatoriness; "I was only struck by the church, in passing, and wished to know who was the clergy

"Between ourselves, sir," said Mrs. Joel, approaching closer than was pleasant, for her dinner had been highly seasoned, "I don't know as Mr. St. John is what you call the clergyman. He ain't but the curate, and I do hear as there is a real right clergyman acoming. But you won't name it, not as coming from me? for I can't say but he's always been a good friend."

"Oh no, I shall not name it. Good morning," cried Mildmay hurriedly. A new church, a horrible duck-pond, an old woman who smelt of onions. He hurried along, scarcely aware in his haste until he arrived in front of it that the house beyond the church was the rectory, his future home.

CHAPTER IX.

THE girls I need not say had been engaged in calculations long and weary during these intervening days. Cicely, who had at once taken possession of all the details of housekeeping, had by this time made a discovery of the most overwhelming character; which was that the curate was in arrears with all the tradespeople in the parish, and that the "books," instead of having the trim appearance she remembered, were full of long lists of things supplied, broken by no safe measure of weeks, but running on from month to month and from year to year, with here and there a melancholy payment "to account" set down against it. Cicely was young and she had no money, and knew

by her own experience how hard it was to make it; and she was overwhelmed by this discovery. She took the books in her lap and crept into the drawingroom beside Mab, who was making a study of the children in the dreary stillness of the afternoon. The two little boys were posed against the big sofa, on the carpet. The young artist had pulled off their shoes and stockings, and, indeed, left very little clothes at all upon Charley, who let her do as she pleased with him without remonstrance, sucking his thumb and gazing at her with his pale blue eyes. Harry had protested, but had to submit to the taking away of his shoes, and now sat gloomily regarding his toes, and trying to keep awake with supernatural lurches and recoveries; Charley, more placid, had dropped off. He had still his thumb in his mouth, his round cheek lying flushed against the cushion, his round white limbs huddled up in a motionless stillness of sleep. Harry sat upright, as upright as possible, and nodded. Mab had got them both outlined on her paper, and was working with great energy and absorption when Cicely came in with the books in her lap. "Oh go away, go away," cried Mab, "whoever you are! Don't disturb them! If you wake them all is lost! !"

Cicely stood at the door watching the group. Mab had improvised an easel, she had put on a linen blouse over her black and white muslin dress. She had closed the shutters of two windows, leaving the light from the middle one to fall upon the children. In the cool shade, moving now and then a step backwards to see the effect of her drawing, her light figure, full of purpose and energy, her pretty white hand a little stained with the charcoal with which she was working, she was a picture in herself. Cicely, her eyes very red and heavy-for indeed she had been crying-and the bundle of grocery books in her apron, paused and looked at her sister with a gush of admiration, a sharp pinch of something like envy. Mab could do this which looked like witchcraft, while she could only count, and count, and

cry over these hopeless books. What good would crying do? If she cried her eyes out it would not pay a sixpence. Cicely knew that she had more "sense" than Mab. It was natural. She was nineteen, Mab only eighteen, and a year is so much at that age! But Mab was clever. She could do something which Cicely could not even understand; and she would be able to make money, which Cicely could scarcely hope to do. It was envy, but of a generous kind. Cicely went across the room quite humbly behind backs, not to disturb her sister's work, and sat down by the darkened window, through which a fresh little breeze from the garden was coming in. It distracted her for a moment from her more serious cares to watch the work going on. She thought how pretty Mab looked, lighting up the poetical darkness, working away so vigorously and pleasantly with only that pucker of anxiety in her white forehead, lest her sitters should move. “Oh, quiet, quiet!" she said, almost breathless. "He must not either go to sleep or wake right up, till I have put them in. Roll the ball to him softly, Cicely, quite softly as if he were a kitten." Cicely put away the terrible books and knelt down on the carpet and rolled the big ball, which Mab had been moving with her foot towards little dozing Harry, who watched it with eyes glazing over with sleep. The light and the warmth and the stillness were too much for him. Just as the ball arrived at his soft little pink toes he tumbled over all in a heap, with his head upon Charley. Mab gave a cry of vexation. "Bat never mind, it was not your fault," she said, to make up for her impatience. And indeed Cicely felt it was rather hard to be blamed.

"After all it does not matter," said Mab. "I have done enough-but I shall never never get them to look like that again. How pretty children are even when they are ugly! What pictures such things make! how anybody can help making pictures all the day long I can't imagine. It is only that you will not try."

"I would try if I had any hope," said Cicely; "I would do anything. Oh, I wonder if there is anything I could do!"

"Why, of course you can teach," said Mab, consoling her, "a great deal better than I can. I get impatient; but you sha'n't teach; I am the brother and you are the sister, and you are to keep my house."

"That was all very well," said Cicely, so long as there was only us two; but now look," she cried pointing to the two children lying over one another in the light, asleep, "there is them—and papa

"They are delightful like that," cried Mab starting up; "oh, quick, give me that portfolio with the paper! I must try them again. Just look at all those legs and arms!—and yet they are not a bit pretty in real life," cried Mab in the fervour of her art, making a fine natural distinction.

Cicely handed her all she wanted, and looked on with wondering admiration for a moment; but then she shook her head slightly and sighed. "You live in another world," she said, "you artists. Oh, Mab, I don't want to disturb you, but if you knew how unhappy I am

"What is the matter? and why should you be more anxious than papa is?" cried Mab busy with her charcoal. "Don't make yourself unhappy, dear. Things always come right somehow. I think so as well as papa."

"You don't mind either of you so long as you have--Oh, you don't know how bad things are. Mab! we are in debt."

Mab stopped her work, appalled, and looked her sister in the face. This was a terrible word to the two girls, who never had known what it was to have any money. "In debt!" she said.

"Yes, in debt-do you wonder now that I am wretched? I don't know even if papa knows; and now he has lost even the little income he had, and we have given up our situations. Oh, Mab! Mab! think a little; what are we to do?"

Mab let her chalk fall out of her
No. 192.-VOL. XXXII.

hand. She went and knelt down by Cicely's side, and put one soft cheek against another as if that would do any good. "Oh, how can I tell?" she said with tears in her eyes. "I never was any good to think. Is it much-is it very bad? is there anything we can do?"

Cicely shed a few tears over the butcher's book which was uppermost. "If we were staying here for ever," she said, "as we were all foolish enough to think when we came-we might have paid it with a struggle. I should have sent away those two maids, and tried to do everything myself."

Everything, Cicely?" Mab was as much appalled at the thought of life without a Betsy, as a fine lady would be denuded of her establishment. The want of a maid-of-all-work represents a dreadful coming down in life, almost more than a greater apparent loss does. Her countenance fell, the corners of her mouth took a downward curve, and her pride received a crushing blow. Yet if you consider what Betsy was, the loss was not deadly. But as usual it was not the actual but the sentimental view of the case which struck the girls.

But

"Yes," said Cicely, with a solemn paleness on her face. She felt the humiliation too. "I shouldn't mind doing things," she said, her voice breaking a little; "it is what people will think. Us, a clergyman's daughters ! what is the use even of that?" she cried; "it will do no good now. Papa must leave Brentburn, and we have not a shilling, not a penny now, to pay those things with. I think and think-but I cannot tell what we are to do."

The two clung together in an agony of silence for a moment; how many wringings of the heart have been caused by a little money! and so often those who suffer are not those who are to blame. The ruin that seemed to be involved was unspeakable to the two girls; they did not know what the butcher and the baker might be able to do to them; nor did they know of any way of escape.

"If there was any hope," said Cicely after a pause, "of staying here--I

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