ggalls, whose
large moist lips were some distance apart to match her eyelids, as she
stared at the vicar's sisters; "ought we to let that note go?"

"Oh, I could not think of interfering," said Beatrice, shaking her head.
"Besides, it would be impossible. Henry gives the new mistress great
latitude, and possibly he might approve of her corresponding with Mr
Burge."

"I--I don't like letting her go," said Rebecca, hesitating, a fact of
which her sister was well aware. "I don't think it is proper, and it
seems to me to be our duty to take some steps in such matters as these."

"I shall not interfere with Miss Thorne in any way," replied Beatrice.
"Henry is, I dare say, quite correct in his views respecting the
mistress's behaviour, and I certainly shall not expose myself to the
risk of being taken to task again by my brother for interfering, as he
called it at the schools. You had better make haste, Straggalls, and
deliver your message."

"Please, 'm, it's a letter, 'm," said Ann Straggalls in open eyed
delight at catching the speaker tripping.

"Make haste on and deliver your letter, child," said the lady with
dignity; and the girl made two more bobs and hurried away.

"It was quite impossible, Rebecca," said Beatrice reprovingly. "The
letter is no business of ours."

"Are we going down to the school to-day?" asked Rebecca.

"Not now," replied her sister; "but we might call upon Mrs Thorne. I
wonder what Mr Chute has had to do with that letter to Mr Burge."

"Yes, I was wondering too. He was certainly talking to the girl
Straggalls as we came into sight."

And then, itching with curiosity, the sisters walked on.

Ann Straggalls held her head a little higher as she went on up the
street through the market-place. She felt that she was an ambassadress
of no little importance, as she had been stopped twice on her way.

As luck had it, she came upon the Reverend Henry Lambent as he was
leaving the Vicarage gates, looking very quiet and thoughtful, and he
would have passed Straggalls unnoticed, had not that young lady been
ready to recognise him, which, nerved as she was by her pleasant feeling
of self-satisfied importance, she did by first nearly causing him to
tumble over her, as she made the customary bob by way of incense, and
then saying aloud--

"Plee, sir, I've got a letter."

"A letter, child! Let me see--oh, it is Straggalls."

"Yes, sir--Annie Straggalls, sir, plee, sir."

"Then why don't