olly; and here are the two shillings to put
into the till. Now will you ask if I can see Mrs. Meldreth?"

Polly's shining face suddenly fell.

"I daren't leave the shop, sir," she said. "I left it this morning just
for a minute or two, and Miss Meldreth said she'd skin me alive if ever
I did so again. Would you mind, sir"--insinuatingly--"just a-going up
the stairs and knocking at the door atop o' them? They'll be glad to see
you, I'm sure, sir; and I daren't leave the shop for a single minute."

"All right," said the Rector. He was used to entering sick-rooms, and
did not find Polly Moss' request very much out of the way. "I'll go up."

He passed through the shop and ascended the stairs, with every step of
which he was familiar, as he had already visited Mrs. Meldreth during
one or two previous attacks of illness, and was heard to knock at the
sick woman's bed-room door.

"Oh, my," exclaimed Polly, as soon as he was out of reach, "and if I
didn't go for to forget to tell him as 'ow Miss Enid was up there! Oh,
my! But I don't suppose he'll mind! He's only the parson, after all."

CHAPTER XVI.

When Mr. Evandale knocked at Mrs. Meldreth's door, he was aware of a
slight bustle within, followed by the sound of voices in low-toned
conference; then came a rather sharply-toned "Come in!". As, however,
the Rector still hesitated, the door was flung open by a young woman,
whose very gestures seemed to show that she acted under protest, and
would not have admitted him at all if she had had her own way. She was a
fair-complexioned woman of perhaps thirty years of age, tall, well made,
robust, and generally considered handsome; she had prominent light-blue
eyes, and features which, without being badly cut, were indefinably
common and even coarse-looking. In her cheeks a patch of exceptionally
vivid red had so artificial an appearance, that the Rector could not
believe it to be genuine; but later he gained an impression that it
proceeded from excitement, and not from any adventitious source. The
eyes of this woman were sparkling with anger; there was defiance in her
every movement, even in the way in which her fingers were clenched at
her sides or clutched the iron rail of the bed on which her mother lay.
The Rector wondered at her evident disturbance; it must have proceeded
from something, that had occurred before his entrance, he concluded, and
he looked towards the bed as if to discover whether the cause of Sabina