strokes of his pen on a piece of paper; and when it had opened
sufficiently often, he loved to issue from his inner chamber with
documents in his hands, visibly important, with a preoccupied expression
on his face that might have suited a Prime Minister advancing to meet
his Cabinet. By his orders the table had been decorated beforehand with
six sheets of blotting-paper, with six pens, six ink-pots, a tumbler
and a jug of water, a bell, and, in deference to the taste of the lady
members, a vase of hardy chrysanthemums. He had already surreptitiously
straightened the sheets of blotting-paper in relation to the ink-pots,
and now stood in front of the fire engaged in conversation with Miss
Markham. But his eye was on the door, and when Mary and Mrs. Seal
entered, he gave a little laugh and observed to the assembly which was
scattered about the room:

"I fancy, ladies and gentlemen, that we are ready to commence."

So speaking, he took his seat at the head of the table, and arranging
one bundle of papers upon his right and another upon his left, called
upon Miss Datchet to read the minutes of the previous meeting. Mary
obeyed. A keen observer might have wondered why it was necessary for the
secretary to knit her brows so closely over the tolerably matter-of-fact
statement before her. Could there be any doubt in her mind that it had
been resolved to circularize the provinces with Leaflet No. 3, or to
issue a statistical diagram showing the proportion of married women
to spinsters in New Zealand; or that the net profits of Mrs. Hipsley's
Bazaar had reached a total of five pounds eight shillings and twopence
half-penny?

Could any doubt as to the perfect sense and propriety of these
statements be disturbing her? No one could have guessed, from the look
of her, that she was disturbed at all. A pleasanter and saner woman
than Mary Datchet was never seen within a committee-room. She seemed a
compound of the autumn leaves and the winter sunshine; less poetically
speaking, she showed both gentleness and strength, an indefinable
promise of soft maternity blending with her evident fitness for honest
labor. Nevertheless, she had great difficulty in reducing her mind to
obedience; and her reading lacked conviction, as if, as was indeed the
case, she had lost the power of visualizing what she read. And directly
the list was completed, her mind floated to Lincoln's Inn Fields and the
fluttering wings of innumerable sparrows. Was Ralph