l musings appropriate to the
situation. She was neither meditating upon the briefness of life in
general, nor upon the many virtues of the ladies of the Crupps family,
over whose remains she was standing. She was simply waiting for Jimmy
Griffiths, and looking at the church because she had nothing else to look
at. The church, indeed, afforded her some food for reflection, purely, I
regret to state, of a practical and mundane character. It was a large and
handsome building, with a particularly fine old tower, that was sadly out
of repair; but the chancel was a modern and barn-like structure of brick
and plaster, which ought, of course, to be entirely swept away, and a new
and more appropriate one built in its stead. The chancel belonged, as
most chancels do, to the lay rector, and the lay rector was Sir John
Kynaston.

As soon as it became bruited abroad that Sir John was coming down to the
old house for the winter, there was a general excitement throughout the
parish, but no one partook of the excitement to a greater degree than did
its worthy vicar.

It was the dream of Eustace Daintree's life to get his church restored,
and more especially to get the chancel rebuilt. There had been a
restoration fund accumulating for some years, and could he have had the
slightest assistance from the lay rector concerning the chancel, Mr.
Daintree would assuredly have sent for the architect, and the builders,
and the stone-cutters, and have begun his church at once with that
beautiful disregard of the future chances of being able to get the money
to pay for it, and with that sparrow-like trust in Providence, which is
usually displayed by those clerical gentlemen who, in the face of an
estimate which tells them that eight thousand pounds will be the sum
total required, are ready to dash into bricks and mortar upon the actual
possession of eight hundred. But there was the chancel! To leave it as it
was whilst restoring the nave would have been too heart-rending; to touch
it without Sir John Kynaston's assistance, impossible and illegal.
Several times Eustace Daintree had applied to Sir John in writing upon
the subject. The answers had been vague and unsatisfactory. He would
promise nothing at all; he would come down and see it some day possibly,
and then he would be able to say more about it; meanwhile, for the
present, things must remain as they were.

When, therefore, the news was known that Sir John was actually coming
down, Mr. D