He was very severe indeed upon rustic wits and rustic governors during dinner, calling them sheep and donkeys and other things. Then he grew merry and made jokes about them, and I laughed; and, finding in me an appreciative listener, his spirits rose still higher, and I thought before dinner was over that I had never heard any one talk more amusingly. I think Mrs. Rayner made only one remark, and that was when I was furtively wiping some tears of laughter from my eyes; she asked me--“Do you care to go to church this afternoon, Miss Christie?”

I suppose I looked rather snubbed, for Mr. Rayner broke in--“Poor girl, how frightened you look at the thought! Know then, Miss Christie, that it is not one of the conditions of residence under this moist but hospitable roof that you should trudge backwards and forwards to church all Sunday, with intervals of pious meditation. We never go ourselves more than once. Our last governess did, because she liked it, not because she was ‘druv to it,’ I assure you; and I don’t suppose, I don’t even hope, that the excellent Miss Parker’s mantle has fallen on your quarter-of-a-century younger shoulders.”

But I had quickly made up my mind that I had better go. Indeed I liked going to church; and, even if I had not acquired the taste already, the dullness of the Sunday before--which I had spent in the drawing-room with Mrs. Rayner and Haidee, hearing my pupil repeat one of the Thirty-nine Articles, which I was sure she did not understand, and which I myself did not understand well enough to explain to her, and stifling my yawns for the rest of the time behind Goulburn’s Personal Religion--would have made me love it. So I said I should like to go, and they said that there was no afternoon service at Geldham; but Mr. Rayner told me the way to the church at Gullingborough, the next parish, which was not far off.

It was a sultry summer afternoon, with a heavy clouded sky; but it was pleasant to be out of doors, and it was pleasant to be alone; for I found the society of little Haidee, whose shyness and reserve with me had not worn off yet, rather depressing sometimes--I had even cried a little at night over the difficulty I had in making the child fond of me. So that to be quite alone and out of the sombre atmosphere of the Alders was a relief. I passed the gates of a park, among the trees of which I saw a big square white house surrounded by a flower-garden; and a little farther on I saw an American chair on the grass under the park trees, and a young man in a light suit, with his cravat hanging loose and his hat off, lying at full length in it. He had a cigar in his mouth and a 

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