me!  Oh! the good I mean to do you, dear, before we part!” After another word or two of earnest prefatory warning, I gave her her choice of three precious friends, all plying the work of mercy from morning to night in her own neighbourhood; all equally inexhaustible in exhortation; all affectionately ready to exercise their gifts at a word from me.  Alas! the result was far from encouraging.  Poor Lady Verinder looked puzzled and frightened, and met everything I could say to her with the purely worldly objection that she was not strong enough to face strangers.  I yielded—­for the moment only, of course.  My large experience (as Reader and Visitor, under not less, first and last, than fourteen beloved clerical friends) informed me that this was another case for preparation by books.  I possessed a little library of works, all suitable to the present emergency, all calculated to arouse, convince, prepare, enlighten, and fortify my aunt.  “You will read, dear, won’t you?” I said, in my most winning way.  “You will read, if I bring you my own precious books?  Turned down at all the right places, aunt.  And marked in pencil where you are to stop and ask yourself, ’Does this apply to me?’” Even that simple appeal—­so absolutely heathenising is the influence of the world—­appeared to startle my aunt.  She said, “I will do what I can, Drusilla, to please you,” with a look of surprise, which was at once instructive and terrible to see.  Not a moment was to be lost.  The clock on the mantel-piece informed me that I had just time to hurry home; to provide myself with a first series of selected readings (say a dozen only); and to return in time to meet the lawyer, and witness Lady Verinder’s Will.  Promising faithfully to be back by five o’clock, I left the house on my errand of mercy.

When no interests but my own are involved, I am humbly content to get from place to place by the omnibus.  Permit me to give an idea of my devotion to my aunt’s interests by recording that, on this occasion, I committed the prodigality of taking a cab.

I drove home, selected and marked my first series of readings, and drove back to Montagu Square, with a dozen works in a carpet-bag, the like of which, I firmly believe, are not to be found in the literature of any other country in Europe.  I paid the cabman exactly his fare.  He received it with an oath; upon which I instantly gave him a tract.  If I had presented a pistol at his head, this abandoned wretch could hardly have exhibited greater consternation.  He jumped up on his box, and, with profane exclamations of dismay, drove off furiously.  Quite useless, I am happy to say!  I sowed the good seed, in spite of him, by throwing a second tract in at the window of the cab.

The servant who answered the door—­not the person with the cap-ribbons, to my great relief, but the foot-man—­informed me that the doctor had called, and was still shut up with Lady Verinder.  Mr. Bruff, the lawyer, had arrived a minute since and was waiting in the library.  I was shown into the library to wait too.