he Church came
home to us."

"Yes--" said Ethel, "if we could do it without holding forth!"

"Come, Ethel, it is much better than the bazaar--it is no field for
vanity."

"Certainly not," said Ethel. "What a mess every one will make! Oh, if I
could but stay away, like Harry! There will be Dr. Hoxton being sonorous
and prosy, and Mr. Lake will stammer, and that will be nothing to the
misery of our own people's work. George will flounder, and look at
Flora, and she will sit with her eyes on the ground, and Dr. Spencer
will come out of his proper self, and be complimentary to people who
deserve it no more!--And Norman! I wish I could run away!"

"Richard says we do not guess how well Norman speaks."

"Richard thinks Norman can do anything he can't do himself! It is all
chance--he may do very well, if he gets into his 'funny state', but he
always suffers for that, and he will certainly put one into an agony at
the outset. I wish Dr. Spencer would have let him alone! And then there
will be that Sir Henry, whom I can't abide! Oh, I wish I were more
charitable, like Miss Bracy and Mary, who will think all so beautiful!"

"So will you, when you come home," said Margaret.

"If I could only be talking to Cherry, and Dame Hall! I think the school
children enter into it very nicely, Margaret. Did I tell you how nicely
Ellen Reid answered about the hymn, 'From Greenland's icy mountains'?
She did not seem to have made it a mere geographical lesson, like Fanny
Grigg--"

Ethel's misanthropy was happily conducted off via the Cocksmoor
children, and any lingering remains were dissipated by her amusement at
Dr. Spencer's ecstasy on seeing Dr. May assume his red robe of office,
to go to the minster in state, with the Town Council. He walked round
and round his friend, called him Nicholas Randall redivivus, quoted
Dogberry, and affronted Gertrude, who had a dim idea that he was making
game of papa.

Ethel was one of those to whom representation was such a penance, that
a festival, necessitating hospitality to guests of her own rank, was
burden enough seriously to disturb the repose of thankfulness for the
attainment of her object, and to render difficult the recueillement
which she needed for the praise and prayer that she felt due from her,
and which seemed to oppress her heart, by a sense of inadequacy of her
partial expression. It was well for her that the day began with the calm
service in the minster, where it was her own fa