“I’ve always thought, Dakie, that if ever I had money,—­or if ever I came to advise or help anybody who had, and who wanted to do good with it,—­that there would be one special way I should like to take.  I should like to sit up in the branches, and shake down fruit into the laps of some people who never would know where it came from, and wouldn’t take it if they did; though they couldn’t reach a single bough to pick for themselves.  I mean nice, unlucky people; people who always have a hard time, and need to have a good one; and are obliged in many things to pretend they do.  There are a good many who are willing and anxious to help the very poor, but I think there’s a mission waiting for somebody among the pinched-and-smiling people.  I’ve been a Ruth Pinch myself, you see; and I know all about it, Mr. John Westlock!”

So I know they looked about for crafty little chances to piece out and supplement small ways and means; to put little traps of good luck in the way for people to stumble upon,—­and to act the part generally of a human limited providence, which is a better thing than fairy godmothers, or enchanted cats, or frogs under the bridge at the world’s end, in which guise the gentle charities clothed themselves in the old elf fables, that were told, I truly believe, to be lived out in real doing, as much as the New Testament Parables were.  And a great deal of the manifold responsibility that Mr. Dakie Thayne undertakes, as broker or agent in the concerns of others, is undertaken with a deliberate ulterior design of this sort.  I think Mr. Farron Saftleigh probably was made to pay about three thousand dollars of the sum he had wheedled Mrs. Argenter out of.  Dakie Thayne makes things yield of themselves as far as they will; he brings capacity and character to bear upon his ends as well as money; he knows his money would not last forever if he did not.

Mr. Sherrett and Rodney stayed at Hill-hope over the Sunday.  Mr. and Mrs. Kirkbright arrived on Saturday morning.

There was a first home-service in the Chapel-Room that looked out upon the Rock, and into which the conservatory already gave its greenness and sweetness, that first Sunday after Easter.

Christopher Kirkbright read the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the day; the Prayer, that God “who had given his only Son to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification, would grant them so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that they might always serve Him in pureness and truth”; the Assurance of “the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith in the Son of God,” who came “not by water only, but by water and blood”; and that “the spirit and the water and the blood agree in one,”—­in our redemption; the Story of that First Day of the week, when Jesus came back to his disciples, after his resurrection, and said, “Peace be unto you,” showing them his hands and his side.