’And I wonder what is to come of that.  It seems to me like what John Smith calls singing psalms to a dead horse.’

’John Smith!  I am glad you mentioned him; I shall desire Dusautoy to bring him here on Monday.’

’What! as poor Albinia would say, you can’t exist a week without John Smith.’

’Even so.  I want him to lay out a plan for draining the garden.  That pond is intolerable.  I suspect that all, yourself included, will become far more good-tempered in consequence.’

’A capital measure, but do you mean that Edmund Kendal is going to let you and John Smith drain his pond under his very nose, and never find it out?  I did not imagine him quite come to that.’

‘Not quite,’ said Maurice; ’it is with his free consent, and I believe he will be very glad to have it done without any trouble to himself.  He said that Albinia thought it damp, and when I put a few sanatory facts before him, thanked me heartily, and seemed quite relieved.  If they had only been in Sanscrit, they would have made the greater impression.’

’One comfort is, Maurice, that however provoking you are at first, you generally prove yourself reasonable at last, I am glad you are not Mr. Kendal.’

’Ah! it will have a fine effect on you to spend your Christmas-day tete-a-tete with him.’

Mrs. Ferrars’s views underwent various modifications, like all hasty yet candid judgments.  She took Mr. Kendal into favour when she found him placidly submitting to Miss Meadows’s showers of words, in order to prevent her gaining access to his wife.

‘Maria Meadows is a very well-meaning person,’ he said afterwards; ‘but I know of no worse infliction in a sick-room.’

‘I wonder,’ thought Winifred, ’whether he married to get rid of her.  I should have thought it justifiable had it been any one but Albinia!’

The call on Mrs. Dusautoy was consoling.  It was delightful to find how Albinia was loved and valued at the vicarage.  Mrs. Dusautoy began by sending her as a message, John’s first exclamation on hearing of the event.  ‘Then she will never be of any more use.’  In fact, she said, it was much to him like having a curate disabled, and she believed he could only be consoled by the hopes of a pattern christening, and of a nursery for his school-girls; but there Winifred shook her head, Fairmead had a prior claim, and Albinia had long had her eye upon a scholar of her own.

‘I told John that she would! and he must bear it as he can,’ laughed Mrs. Dusautoy; and she went on more seriously to say that her gratitude was beyond expression, not merely for the actual help, though that was much, but for the sympathy, the first encouragement they had met among their richer parishioners, and she spoke of the refreshment of the mirthfulness and playful manner, so as to convince Winifred that they had neither died away nor been everywhere wasted.