“It’s lucky I’m not likely to fall in with Jenny just yet,” said Rosamond.  “Don’t leave me alone with her, either of you; if you do, it is at your peril.  It is all very well to talk of honour and secrets, but to see the look in her eyes, and know he is alive, seems to me rank cruelty and heartlessness.  It is all to let Miles have the pleasure of telling when he comes home.”

“Miles is not a woman, nor an Irishwoman,” said Julius.

“But he’s a sailor, and he’s got a feeling heart,” said Rosamond; “and if he stands one look of Jenny, why, I’ll disown him for the brother-in-law I take him for.  By the bye, is not Raymond to know?”

“No,” said Anne; “here is a postscript forbidding my telling him or Mrs. Poynsett.”

“Indeed!  And I suppose Herbert knows nothing?”

“Nothing.  He was a boy at school at the time.  Say nothing to him, Rose.”

“Oh, no; besides, his brain is all run to cricket.”

It was but too true.  When the sun shone bright in April, and the wickets were set up, Herbert had demonstrated that his influence was a necessity on the village green; and it was true that his goodly and animated presence was as useful morally to the eleven as it was conducive to their triumphs; so his Rector suppressed a few sighs at the frequency of the practices and the endless matches.  Compton had played Wil’sbro’ and Strawyers, Duddingstone and Woodbury; the choir had played the school, the single the married; and when hay and harvest absorbed the rustic eleven, challenges began among their betters.  The officers played the county—­Oxonians, Cantabs—­ Etonians, Harrovians—­and wherever a match was proclaimed, that prime bowler, the Reverend Herbert Bowater, was claimed as the indispensable champion of his cause and country.

If his sister had any power to moderate his zeal, she had had little chance of exercising it; for Mrs. Bowater had had a rheumatic fever in March, and continued so much of an invalid all the summer that Jenny seldom went far from home, only saw her brother on his weekly visits to the sick-room, and was, as Rosamond said, unlikely to become a temptation to the warm heart and eager tongue.

* * * * *

The week-day congregation were surprised one August morning at eight o’clock by the entrance of three ladies in the most recent style of fashionable simplicity, and making the most demonstrative tokens of reverence.  As the Rector came out he was seized upon at once by the elder lady.

“Mr. Charnock!  I must introduce myself; I knew your dear mother so well when we were both girls.  I am so delighted to find such a church—­quite an oasis; and I want to ascertain the best hour for calling on her.  Quite an invalid—­I was so shocked to hear it.  Will the afternoon suit her?  I am only here for three days to deposit these two girls, while I take the other on a round of visits.  Three daughters are too great an affliction for one’s friends, and Bee and Conny are so delighted to be near their brother and with dear Lena Vivian, that I am very glad above all, since I find there are real church privileges—­so different from the Vicar of Wil’sbro’.  Poor man; he is a great trial.”