.'

Setting apart actual spiritual devotion, the altar vases, purchased by
a contribution of careful savings, and adorned with the Monks Horton
lilies, backed by ferns from the same quarter; the surplices made by
the ladies themselves, the chants they had practised, the hymns they
had taught, could not but be much more interesting to them than if they
had been mere lookers on. Every cross on the markers, every flower on
the altar cloth was the work of one or other of them; everything in the
church was an achievement, and choir boys, school children, Bible
classes, every member of the regular congregation, had some special
interest; nay, every irregular member or visitor might be a convert in
time--if not a present sympathiser, and at the very least might swell
the offertory that was destined to so many needs of the struggling
district.

Thus it was with some curiosity mingled with self-reproach that Nuttie,
while singing her Benedictus among the tuneful shop-girls, to whom she
was bound to set an example, became aware of yesterday's first-class
traveller lounging, as far as the rows of chairs would permit, in the
aisle, and, as she thought, staring hard at her mother. It was well
that Mrs. Egremont's invariable custom was never to lift her eyes from
her book or her harmonium, or she surely must have been disconcerted,
her daughter thought, by the eyes that must have found her out, under
her little black net bonnet and veil, as the most beautiful woman in
church,--as she certainly was,--even that fine good-for-nothing
gentleman thinking so. Nuttie would add his glances to the glories of
her lovely mother!

And she did so, with triumph in her tone of reprobation, as she trotted
off, after the early dinner, to her share of Sunday-school work as
usual under Miss Nugent's wing. It began with a children's service,
and then ensued, in rooms at the factory, lent by Mr. Dutton, the
teaching that was to supply the omissions of the Board School; the
establishment of a voluntary one being the next ambition of St.
Ambrose's.

Coming home from their labours, in the fervent discussion of their
scholars, and exchanging remarks and greetings with the other teachers
of various calibres, the friends reached their own road, and there, to
their amazement, beheld Miss Headworth.

'Yes, it really is!' cried Nuttie. 'We can't be too late? No--there's
no bell! Aunt Ursel! What has brought you out? What's the matter?
Where's moth