The things of the rectory were much in their old state.  Little Fina, madame’s child, was there under Mrs. Birkett’s motherly care; but as the child was nearly six years old now, the good creature’s instinctive love for infants was wearing out, and she was often heard to say how much she wished she could have kept Fina always a baby, and, sighing, how difficult she was to manage!  She was an exceedingly pretty little girl, with fair skin, fair hair and dark eyes—­willful of course, and spoilt of course; the only one in the house who took her in hand to correct being Adelaide.  And as she took her in hand too smartly, Mrs. Birkett generally interfered, and the servants combined to screen her; the result being that the little one was mistress of the situation, after the manner of willful children, and made every one more or less anxious and uncomfortable as her return for their care.

Alick Corfield was the rector’s curate.  On the whole, this was the most important of all the North Aston events which had taken place during the last four years.  Soon after madame’s death and Leam’s transfer from home to school Alick had a strange and sudden illness.  No one knew what to make of it, nor how it came, nor what it was, but the doctor called it cerebral fever, and when the families got hold of the word they were content.  Cerebral fever does as well as anything else for an illness of which no one knows and no one seeks to know the cause, and to the origin of which the patient himself gives no clew.  It was a peg, and a peg was all that was wanted.

On his recovery he announced his intention of going to Oxford to read for holy orders.  His mother was piteously distressed, as might be expected.  She feared all sorts of evil for her boy, from damp sheets and unmended linen to over-study, wine-parties and bold-faced minxes weaving subtle webs of fascination.  But for the first time in his life Alick stood out against her insistance, and his will conquered hers.  The sequel of the struggle was, that he went to Oxford, took his degree, read for orders, passed, and that Mr. Birkett gave him his title as his curate.

It could hardly be said that the relations were entirely harmonious between the military-minded rector, who held to the righteousness of helotry and the value of ignorance in the class beneath him, and the young curate burning with zeal and oppressed with the desire to put all the crooked things of life straight.  The one pooh-poohed the enthusiasm of the other, derided his belief in humanity and assured him of failure:  the other felt as if he had been taken behind the scenes and shown the blue fire of which the awful lightning of his youth was made.  Mr. Birkett could not quite forbid the greater faith, the more loving endeavor which the young man threw into his ministrations, but he was the Sadducee who scoffed and made the work heavy and uphill throughout.  He gave a grudging assent to the Bible-classes, the Wednesday evening