table. I've
sent up the dinner-service and the ham we had cooked at our house
yesterday, and Betty is coming directly with the garnish and the plate.
We shall get our good Mrs. Crewe through her troubles famously. Dear tiny
woman! You should have seen her lift up her hands yesterday, and pray
heaven to take her before ever she should have another collation to get
ready for the Bishop. She said, "It's bad enough to have the Archdeacon,
though he doesn't want half so many jelly-glasses. I wouldn't mind,
Janet, if it was to feed all the old hungry cripples in Milby; but so
much trouble and expense for people who eat too much every day of their
lives!" We had such a cleaning and furbishing-up of the sitting-room
yesterday! Nothing will ever do away with the smell of Mr. Crewe's pipes,
you know; but we have thrown it into the background, with yellow soap and
dry lavender. And now I must run away. You will come to church, mother?'

'Yes, my dear, I wouldn't lose such a pretty sight. It does my old eyes
good to see so many fresh young faces. Is your husband going?'

'Yes, Robert will be there. I've made him as neat as a new pin this
morning, and he says the Bishop will think him too buckish by half. I
took him into Mammy Dempster's room to show himself. We hear Tryan is
making sure of the Bishop's support; but we shall see. I would give my
crooked guinea, and all the luck it will ever bring me, to have him
beaten, for I can't endure the sight of the man coming to harass dear old
Mr. and Mrs. Crewe in their last days. Preaching the Gospel indeed! That
is the best Gospel that makes everybody happy and comfortable, isn't it,
mother?'

'Ah, child, I'm afraid there's no Gospel will do that here below.'

'Well, I can do something to comfort Mrs. Crewe, at least; so give me a
kiss, and good-bye till church-time.'

The mother leaned back in her chair when Janet was gone, and sank into a
painful reverie. When our life is a continuous trial, the moments of
respite seem only to substitute the heaviness of dread for the heaviness
of actual suffering: the curtain of cloud seems parted an instant only
that we may measure all its horror as it hangs low, black, and imminent,
in contrast with the transient brightness; the water drops that visit the
parched lips in the desert bear with them only the keen imagination of
thirst. Janet looked glad and tender now--but what scene of misery was
coming next? She was too like the cistus flowers in