But don't you mind. Old Barracombe isn't much account. He always asks
the same questions--a lot he has got off by heart, I believe. I always
call him the expector, because he expects answers to questions he
couldn't answer for himself."

"I hope the children will acquit themselves well," said Hazel. "Oh, I
don't think I shall bother myself much about it. I shall take precious
good care that they have clean hands and faces, that's about all."

Just then Mr Chute popped back outside the door, as if he were part of
a pantomime trick, and Hazel breathed more freely, thinking he had gone;
but he popped in again, smiling and imitating his visitee more and more
by assuming to take her into his confidence, and treating her as if she
were combining with him in his petty little bits of deception.

"There's nobody coming. I looked right up the street, and I could have
seen that stalking post Lambent if he had been a mile off."

If Hazel had asked him if he could see the Misses Lambent he would have
been happy; but she did not, though Mr Chute waited with a smile upon
his face but a goodly store of bitterness in his heart, for he kept on
thinking of George Canninge, and that gentleman who came down upon the
first Sunday and caused him such a pang.

Hazel, however, did not speak. She stood there, not caring to be rude,
but longing to ask him to go, and with that peculiar itching attacking
her fingers which made her wish to lift the Testament she had in her
hand to well box his too prominent ears.

Just then Mr Chute popped out again, and once more Hazel's heart gave a
throb of relief, for it was troubled now by the idea that Mr Chute was
growing attached to her, and there was something so horrible as well as
ludicrous in this, that she shrank from him whenever he appeared. But
Mr Chute was not gone; he came back directly with a great bunch of
flowers grasped in his two hands and held up to his breast and over
which he smiled blandly.

"They're not much of flowers for you to receive. Miss Hazel, but I
thought you'd like a few to put in water--_and you might like to accept
them for my sake_."

Mr Samuel Chute did not say those last words, though it formed part of
the speech he had written out when he planned making that offering of
flowers, and promised the boys who had gardens at home a penny apiece
for a bunch, which bunches had been rearranged by him into a whole, and
carefully tied up with string.

The bunch wa