The confinement to the dingy house and courtyard was trying to all three, who had been used to run about in the green park and breezy fields; but Aurelia did her best to keep her little companions happy and busy, and the sense of the insecurity of her tenure of their company aided her the more to meet with good temper and sweetness the various rubs incidental to their captivity in this close warm house in the hottest of summer weather.  The pang she had felt at her own fretfulness, when she thought she had lost them, made her guard the more against giving way to impatience if they were troublesome or hard to please.  Indeed, she was much more gentle and equable now, in the strength of her resolution, than she had been when uplifted by her position, yet doubtful of its mysteries.

Sundays were the most trying time.  The lack of occupation in the small space was wearisome, and Aurelia’s heart often echoed the old strains of Tate and Brady,

I sigh whene’er my musing thoughts
Those happy days present,
When I with troops of pious friends
Thy temple did frequent.

She and her charges climbed up to the window above, which happily had a broken pane, tried to identify the chimes of the church bells by the notable nursery rhyme,

Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clements, &c.,

watched the church-goers as far as they could see them, and then came down to such reading of the service and other Sunday occupations as Aurelia could devise.  On the Sunday of her durance it was such a broiling day that, unable to bear the heat of her parlour, she established herself and her charges in a nook of the court, close under the window, but shaded by the wall, which was covered with an immense bush of overhanging ivy, and by the elm tree in the court.  Here she made Fay and Letty say their catechism, and the Psalm she had been teaching them in the week, and then rewarded them with a Bible story, that of Daniel in the den of lions.  Once or twice the terrier (whose name she had learnt was Bob) had pricked his ears, and the children had thought there was a noise, but the sparrows in the ivy might be accountable for a great deal, and the little ones were to much wrapped in her tale to be attentive to anything else.

“Then it came true!” said Letty.  “His God Whom he trusted did deliver him out of the den of lions?”

“God always does deliver people when they trust Him,” said Fay, with gleaming eyes.

“Yes, one way or the other,” said Aurelia.

“How do you think He will deliver us?” asked Letty; “for I am sure this is a den, though there are no lions.”

“I do not know how,” said Aurelia, “but I know He will bear us through it as long as we trust Him and do nothing wrong,” and she looked up at the bright sky with hope and strength in her face.

“Hark! what’s that?” cried Letty, and Bob leapt up and barked as a great sob became plainly audible, and within the room appeared Mrs. Loveday, her face all over tears, which she was fast wiping away as she rose up from crouching with her head against the window-sill.