“Ah!” said Grace, “Mr. Touchett was talking of getting the choir master from Avoncester, and giving up an afternoon to practice for Easter, but he never told me it was to be to-day.”

On inquiry, it appeared that notice had been given in the morning, but not till after Miss Williams had gone home to fetch her little niece, and while Rachel was teaching her boys in the class-room out of hearing.  It was one of the little bits of bad management that were sure to happen wherever poor Mr. Touchett was concerned; and both ladies feeling it easy to overlook for themselves, were thankful that it had not befallen Rachel.  Alison Williams, thinking it far to walk either to the Homestead or Myrtlewood before church, proposed to Grace to come home with her, an offer that was thankfully accepted, with merely the scruple whether she should disturb the invalid.

“Oh, no, it would be a great pleasure; I always wish we could get more change and variety for her on Sunday.”

“She is very self-denying to spare you to the school.”

“I have often wished to give it up, but she never will let me.  She says it is one of the few things we can do, and I see besides that it brings her fresh interests.  She knows about all my class, and works for them, and has them to see her; and I am sure it is better for her, though it leaves her more hours alone with Rose.”

“And the Sunday services are too long for her?”

“Not so much that, as that she cannot sit on those narrow benches unless two are put close together so that she can almost lie, and there is not room for her chair in the aisle on a Sunday.  It is the greatest deprivation of all.”

“It is so sad, and she is so patient and so energetic,” said Grace, using her favourite monosyllable in peace, out of Rachel’s hearing.

“You would say so, indeed, if you really knew her, or how she has found strength and courage for me through all the terrible sutfering.”

“Then does she suffer so much?”

“Oh, no, not now!  That was in the first years.”

“It was not always so.”

“No, indeed!  You thought it deformity!  Oh, no, no! she was so beautiful.”

“That she is still.  I never saw my sister so much struck with any one.  There is something so striking in her bright glance out of those clear eyes.”

“Ah! if you had only seen her bloom before—­”

“The accident?”

“I burnt her,” said Alison, almost inaudibly.

“You! you, poor dear!  How dreadful for you.”

“Yes, I burnt her,” said Alison, more steadily.  “You ought not to be kind to me without knowing about it.  It was an accident of course, but it was a fit of petulance.  I threw a match without looking where it was going.”

“It must have been when you were very young.”

“Fourteen.  I was in a naughty fit at her refusing to go to the great musical meeting with us.  We always used to go to stay at one of the canon’s houses for it, a house where one was dull and shy; and I could not bear going without her, nor understand the reason.”