to have had
something when the last ministry was in, for Aunt Clara and Lord
Lingford are cousins; but, unfortunately, the families were on bad terms
because of a lawsuit."

The morning after was bright and fair, so that
sunlight mingled with the drowsy calm--Sunday in the country as we
remember it, looking lovingly back from lands that are not English to
the tenderer side of the Puritan Sabbath. But I missed my little
_aubade_ from the lawn, and not till breakfast-time did I behold my
small friends, who then came into the breakfast-room, one on either side
of their mother--two miniature sailors, exquisitely neat but visibly
dejected. Behind walked Tip, demurely recognising the change in the
atmosphere, but, undisturbed thereby, he at once, with his usual air of
self-satisfied dignity, assumed his place in the largest arm-chair.

"The landau could take us all to church except you, George," said Lady
Atherley, looking thoughtfully into the fire as we waited for breakfast
and the Canon. "But I suppose you would prefer to walk?"

"Why should you suppose I am going to church, either walking or
driving?"

"Well, I certainly hoped you would have gone to-day; as Uncle Augustus
is going to preach it seems only polite to do so."

"Well, I don't mind; I daresay it will do me no harm; and if it is
understood I attend only out of consideration for my wife's uncle,
then--"

He was interrupted by the entrance of the person in question.

Many times during breakfast Denis looked thoughtfully at his
great-uncle, and at last inquired--

"Do you preach very long sermons, Uncle Augustus?"

"They are not generally considered so," replied the Canon with some
dignity.

"Denis, I have often told you not to ask questions," said Lady Atherley.

"When I am grown up," remarked Harold, "I will be an atheist."

"Do you know what an atheist is?" inquired his father.

"Yes, it is people who never go to church."

"But they go to lecture-rooms, which you would find worse."

"But they don't have sermons."

"Don't they? Hours long, especially when they bury each other."

"Oh!" said Harold, evidently taken aback, and somewhat reconciled to the
church.

"When I am grown up," said Denis, "I mean to be the same church as Aunt
Cissy."

"And what may that be?" inquired the Canon.

Denis was silent and looked perplexed; but some time afterwards, when we
were talking of other things, he called out, with the joy of one who has
captured