too, it
should therefore be less new for those who to-night hear it for the
first time? Rather shall it be more than less for us, by the memories
transmitted in our blood from all the generations who before have
listened and gone their way.

So Henry sought out Angel, and they both stood in front of the great
picture for a long while without a word. Presently Angel put the feeling
of both of them into a single phrase,--

"Henry, dear, we have found our church."

And indeed for many months henceforth this picture was to be their
altar, their place of prayer. Often hereafter when their hopes were
overcast, or life grew mean with little cares, they would slip, singly,
or together, into that gallery, and--

"let the beauty of Eternity
Smooth from their brows the little frets of time."

Thus Henry's first day of freedom had begun auspiciously with the
unexpected discovery of an inalienable possession of beauty. Yet the
little cares were not far off, waiting their time; and that night, Henry
lay long awake asking himself what he was going to do? Whence was to
come the material gold and silver by which this impetuous spirit was to
be sustained? A sum not exceeding five pounds represented his
accumulated resources, and they would not last longer than--five pounds.
He needed little, but that little he needed emphatically. Soon a new
book and other literary projects would keep him going, but--meanwhile!
How were the next two or three months to be bridged? Return to his
father's house, he neither would, nor perhaps, indeed, could.

So he lay awake a long while, fruitlessly thinking; but, just before he
slept, a thought that made him laugh himself awake suggested itself:
"Why not go and ask Aunt Tipping to take pity on you?"

So he went to sleep, resolved, if only for the fun of it, to pay a visit
to Aunt Tipping on the morrow.

CHAPTER XXXI

A PREPOSTEROUS AUNT

No doubt it has been surmised from what has gone before, that when Henry
said to himself that he would go and see Aunt Tipping, he did not
propose to himself a visit to the country seat of some quaint old lady
of quality. Baronial towers and stately avenues of ancestral elm did not
make a picturesque background for his thoughts as he recalled
Aunt Tipping.

Poor kind Aunt Tipping, it is a shame to banter her memory even in so
obvious a fashion; for if ever there was a kind heart, it was hers. In
fact she possessed, in a degree that a