It was quite pleasant to Gillian to have a legitimate cause of opposition when Miss Mohun made known that she intended Gillian to take a class at the afternoon Sunday-school, while the two children went to Mrs. Hablot’s drawing-room class at St. Andrew’s Vicarage, all meeting afterwards at church.

‘Did mamma wish it?’ asked Gillian.

‘There was no time to mention it, but I knew she would.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Gillian.  ’We don’t teach on Sundays, unless some regular person fails.  Mamma likes to have us all at home to do our Sunday work with her.’

‘Alas, I am not mamma!  Nor could I give you the time.’

’I have brought the books to go on with Val and Ferg.  I always do some of their work with them, and I am sure mamma would not wish them to be turned over to a stranger.’

‘The fact is, that young ladies have got beyond Sunday-schools!’

‘No, no, Jane,’ said her sister; ’Gillian is quite willing to help you; but it is very nice in her to wish to take charge of the children.’

’They would be much better with Mrs. Hablot than dawdling about here and amusing themselves in the new Sunday fashion.  Mind, I am not going to have them racketing about the house and garden, disturbing you, and worrying the maids.’

‘Aunt Jane!’ cried Gillian indignantly, ’you don’t think that is the way mamma brought us up to spend Sunday?’

‘We shall see,’ said Aunt Jane; then more kindly, ’My dear, you are right to use your best judgment, and you are welcome to do so, as long as the children are orderly and learn what they ought.’

It was more of a concession than Gillian expected, though she little knew the effort it cost, since Miss Mohun had been at much pains to set Mrs. Hablot’s class on foot, and felt it a slight and a bad example that her niece and nephew should be defaulters.  The motive might have worked on Gillian, but it was a lower one, therefore mentioned.

She had seen Mrs. Hablot at the Italian class, and thought her a mere girl, and an absolute subject of Aunt Jane’s stumbling pitifully, moreover, in a speech of Adelchi’s; therefore evidently not at all likely to teach Sunday subjects half so well as herself!

Nor was there anything amiss on that first Sunday.  The lessons were as well and quietly gone through as if with mamma, and there was a pleasant little walk on the esplanade before the children’s service at St. Andrew’s; after which there was a delightful introduction to some of the old books mamma had told them of.

They were all rather subdued by the strangeness and newness of their surroundings, as well as by anxiety.  If the younger ones were less anxious about their parents than was their sister, each had a plunge to make on the morrow into a very new world, and the Varleys’ information had not been altogether reassuring.  Valetta had learnt how many marks might be lost by whispering or bad spelling, and how ferociously cross Fraulein Adler looked at a mistake in a German verb; while Fergus had heard a dreadful account of the ordeals to which Burfield and Stebbing made new boys submit, and which would be all the worse for him, because he had a ‘rum’ Christian name, and his father was a swell.