“I couldn’t say—­I really couldn’t say, Mrs. Morrison.”

“Have they forgotten the commandments?”

“Oh I ’ope not, Mrs. Morrison.”

“And the vicar’s teaching?  And the good habits of years?”

“Oh, Mrs. Morrison.”

“I never heard of anything more disgraceful.  Disgraceful to the giver and to those who accept.  Wicked, scandalous, and unscriptural.”

“We all ’oped you’d see no harm in it, Mrs. Morrison.  It’s a fine day, and they’ll just have tea, and perhaps—­sing a little, and they don’t get treats often this time of year.”

“Why, it’s disgraceful—­disgraceful anywhere to have a treat on a Sunday; but in a parish like this it is scandalous.  When Lady Shuttleworth hears of it I quite expect she’ll give everybody notice to quit.”

“Notice to quit?  Oh I hope not, Mrs. Morrison.  And she do know about it.  She heard it last night.  And Sir Augustus himself has promised the young lady to go and help.”

“Sir Augustus?”

“And we all think it so kind of him, and so kind of the young lady too,” said Mrs. Vickerton, gathering courage.

“Sir Augustus?” repeated Mrs. Morrison.  Then a horrid presentiment laid cold fingers on her heart.  “Is any one else going to help?” she asked quickly.

“Only the young lady’s uncle, and—­”

Mrs. Vickerton hesitated, and looked at the vicar’s wife with a slightly puzzled air.

“And who?”

“Of course Mr. Robin.”

XII

It is the practice of Providence often to ignore the claims of poetic justice.  Properly, the Symford children ought to have been choked by Priscilla’s cakes; and if they had been, the parents who had sent them merrymaking on a Sunday would have been well punished by the undeniable awfulness of possessing choked children.  But nobody was choked; and when in the early days of the following week there were in nearly every cottage pangs being assuaged, they were so naturally the consequence of the strange things that had been eaten that only Mrs. Morrison was able to see in them weapons being wielded by Providence in the cause of eternal right.  She, however, saw it so plainly that each time during the next few days that a worried mother came and asked advice, she left her work or her meals without a murmur, and went to the castor-oil cupboard with an alacrity that was almost cheerful; and seldom, I suppose, have such big doses been supplied and administered as the ones she prescribed for suffering Symford.

But on this dark side of the picture I do not care to look; the party, anyhow, had been a great success, and Priscilla became at one stroke as popular among the poor of Symford as she had been in Lothen-Kunitz.  Its success it is true was chiefly owing to the immense variety of things to eat she had provided; for the conjuror, merry-go-round, and cocoa-nuts to be shied at that she had told young Vickerton to bring with him from Minehead, had all been abandoned on Tussie’s earnest advice, who instructed her innocent German mind that these amusements, undoubtedly admirable in themselves and on week days, were looked upon askance in England on Sundays.