hat they
were, and disposed to grow more little of mind as the years went on.
Their lives were too smooth and regular, too uneventful. A school
examination, a blanket club, and a harvest festival, were the great
points of their existence, and though they visited in the parish, and
were supposed to make themselves acquainted with the cares and sorrows
of the poor, their calls were made in a perfunctory spirit, and they did
not possess that simple power of appealing to the heart which wins the
confidence of rich and poor. Unfortunately, then, they grew narrower as
their years became more, and, at the same time, from the want of some
good, genuine, honest troubles to take them out of themselves, acidity
began to cark and corrode their natures, and work a considerable change.
If Rebecca Lambent had met with a man who possessed good firm qualities
and been married, she would doubtless have turned out a quiet matronly
body, ready to smile at trifles, and make the best of things; but
unfortunately the right _he_ had never presented himself, and Rebecca
had become a thorough district-visiting old maid, as narrow as could be,
and ready to look upon a child who had not read "The Pilgrim's Progress"
as on the high road to destruction.

Beatrice Lambent's heart was still tender. Rebecca said that she quite
hated men. Beatrice thought the declaration quite suitable, as far as
her sister was concerned, but her own hatreds were directed at the other
sex, and Hazel Thorne was made the scapegoat in her eyes to bear the
sins of others. For as the days glided by, she felt a growing dislike
to the young schoolmistress, who was always committing some grievous
error, her last being that of accepting the glass of water offered to
her by George Canninge.

It would be going far to say that Beatrice Lambent would gladly have put
poison in that water had she dared, but certainly she would gladly have
dashed it in the recipient's face.

It was terrible to her that George Canninge--the hope to which her
somewhat ardent imagination was now clinging as probably the last likely
to come in her way--should take so much notice of this stranger girl,
finding in her an attraction that asked from him the attentions he would
in an ordinary way have paid to the vicar's sister; and more than once
she had shed tears on Mrs Canninge's breast, when that lady bade her be
of good cheer, and not to take any notice of these acts.

"It is a mere nothing, my d