id a
pig-tailed hoyden giggle at the Grammar School boys from her pew in the
minster, the impropriety was reported by the churchwarden to her mother.

On such occasions he was scrupulous in assuming a frock-coat and a silk
hat. Both were well-worn, and designed in the fashion of another day;
but they were in his eyes insignia of office, and as he felt the tails
of the coat about his knees they seemed to him as it were the skirts of
Aaron's garment. Miss Joliffe was not slow to notice that he was thus
equipped this morning; she knew that he had come to pay her a visit of
circumstance, and swept her papers hurriedly into a drawer. She felt as
if they were guilty things these bills, as if she had been engaged in a
guilty action in even "going through" them, as if she had been detected
in doing that which she should not do, and guiltiest of all seemed the
very hurry of concealment with which she hid such compromising papers.

She tried to perform that feat of mental gymnastics called retaining
one's composure, the desperate and forced composure which the coiner
assumes when opening the door to the police, the composure which a woman
assumes in returning to her husband with the kisses of a lover tingling
on her lips. It _is_ a feat to change the current of the mind, to let
the burning thought that is dearest or bitterest to us go by the board,
to answer coherently to the banalities of conversation, to check the
throbbing pulse. The feat was beyond Miss Joliffe's powers; she was but
a poor actress, and the churchwarden saw that she was ill at ease as she
opened the door.

"Good-morning, cousin," he said with one of those interrogative glances
which are often more irritating and more difficult to parry than a
direct question; "you are not looking at all the thing this morning. I
hope you are not feeling unwell; I hope I do not intrude."

"Oh no," she said, making as good an attempt at continuous speech as the
quick beating of her heart allowed; "it is only that your visit is a
little surprise. I am a little flurried; I am not quite so young as I
was."

"Ay," he said, as she showed him into Mr Sharnall's room, "we are all
of us growing older; it behoves us to walk circumspectly, for we never
know when we may be taken." He looked at her so closely and
compassionately that she felt very old indeed; it really seemed as if
she ought to be "taken" at once, as if she was neglecting her duty in
not dying away incontinentl