choir! Who will play the
harmonium? and who will lead the girls? and whatever will Mr. Spyers
do? and who will take my class? Mother, couldn't we stay a little
longer to set things going here?'

'It is nice of you to have thought of it, my dear,' said Mrs. Egremont,
'but your father would not like to stay on here.'

'But mightn't I stay, just a few days, mother, to wish everybody
good-bye? Mr. Dutton, and Miss Mary, and Gerard, and all the girls?'

There was some consolation in this plan, and the three women rested on
it that night, Mrs. Egremont recovering composure enough to write three
or four needful notes, explaining her sudden departure. The aunt could
not talk of a future she so much dreaded for her nieces, losing in it
the thought of her own loneliness; Alice kept back her own loving,
tender, undoubting joy with a curious sense that it was hard and
ungrateful towards the aunt; but it was impossible to think of that,
and Nuttie was in many moods.

Eager anticipation of the new unseen world beyond, exultation in
finding herself somebody, sympathy with her mother's happiness, all had
their share, but they made her all the wilder, because they were far
from unmixed. The instinctive dislike of Mr. Egremont's countenance,
and doubt of his plausible story, which had vanished before his
presence, and her mother's faith, returned upon her from time to time,
caught perhaps from her aunt's tone and looks. Then her aunt had been
like a mother to her--her own mother much more like a sister, and the
quitting her was a wrench not compensated for as in Mrs. Egremont's
case by a more absorbing affection. Moreover, Nuttie felt sure that
poor Gerard Godfrey would break his heart. As the mother and daughter
for the last time lay down together in the room that had been theirs
through the seventeen years of the girl's life, Alice fell asleep with
a look of exquisite peace and content on her face, feeling her long
term of trial crowned by unlooked-for joy, while Ursula, though
respecting her slumbers too much to move, lay with wide-open eyes, now
speculating on the strange future, now grieving over those she
left--Aunt Ursel, Gerard, Mary, and all such; the schemes from which
she was snatched, and then again consoling herself with the hope that,
since she was going to be rich, she could at once give all that was
wanted--the white altar cloth, the brass pitcher--nay, perhaps finish
the church and build the school! For had