followed the squire through the little porch and up to the
big family-pew in which they all sat. Here the squire took his place
in one special corner which he had occupied ever since his father's
death, and from which he read the responses loudly and plainly,--so
loudly and plainly, that the parish clerk could by no means equal
him, though with tremulous voice he still made the attempt. "T'
squire'd like to be squire, and parson, and clerk, and everything; so
a would," the poor clerk would say, when complaining of the ill-usage
which he suffered.

If Lily's prayers were interrupted by her new sorrow, I think that
her fault in that respect would be forgiven. Of course she had known
that Crosbie was not going to remain at Allington much longer. She
knew quite as well as he did the exact day on which his leave of
absence came to its end, and the hour at which it behoved him to
walk into his room at the General Committee Office. She had taught
herself to think that he would remain with them up to the end of his
vacation, and now she felt as a schoolboy would feel who was told
suddenly, a day or two before the time, that the last week of his
holidays was to be taken from him. The grievance would have been
slight had she known it from the first; but what schoolboy could
stand such a shock, when the loss amounted to two-thirds of his
remaining wealth? Lily did not blame her lover. She did not even
think that he ought to stay. She would not allow herself to suppose
that he could propose anything that was unkind. But she felt her
loss, and more than once, as she knelt at her prayers, she wiped a
hidden tear from her eyes.

Crosbie also was thinking of his departure more than he should have
done during Mr Boyce's sermon. "It's easy listening to him," Mrs
Hearn used to say of her husband's successor. "It don't give one much
trouble following him into his arguments." Mr Crosbie perhaps found
the difficulty greater than did Mrs Hearn, and would have devoted his
mind more perfectly to the discourse had the argument been deeper. It
is very hard, that necessity of listening to a man who says nothing.
On this occasion Crosbie ignored the necessity altogether, and gave
up his mind to the consideration of what it might be expedient that
he should say to Lily before he went. He remembered well those few
words which he had spoken in the first ardour of his love, pleading
that an early day might be fixed for their marriage. And he
remembe