tice, and her face was the
face of somebody who is angry.

"How wearing for the vicar," thought Priscilla, "to have a wife who
is angry at ten o'clock in the morning."

"I've come in the interests--" began Mrs. Morrison, whose voice was
quite as angry as her face.

"I'm just going out," said Priscilla.

"--Of religion and morality."

"Are they distinct?" asked Priscilla, drawing on her gloves.

"You can imagine that nothing would make me pay you a visit but the
strongest sense of the duty I owe to my position in the parish."

"Why should I imagine it?"

"Of course I expect impertinence."

"I'm afraid you've come here to be rude."

"I shall not be daunted by anything you may say from doing my duty."

"Will you please do it, then, and get it over?"

"The duties of a clergyman's wife are often very disagreeable."

"Probably you've got hold of a perfectly wrong idea of what yours
really are."

"It is a new experience for me to be told so by a girl of your age."

"I am not telling you. I only suggest."

"I was prepared for rudeness."

"Then why did you come?"

"How long are you going to stay in this parish?"

"You don't expect me to answer that?"

"You've not been in it a fortnight, and you have done more harm than
most people in a lifetime."

"I'm afraid you exaggerate."

"You have taught it to drink."

"I gave a dying old woman what she most longed for."

"You've taught it to break the Sabbath."

"I made a great many little children very happy."

"You have ruined the habits of thrift we have been at such pains to
teach and encourage for twenty-five years."

"I helped the poor when they asked me to."

"And now what I want to know is, what has become of the Hancock girl?"

"Pray who, exactly, is the Hancock girl?"

"That unfortunate creature who worked here for you on Wednesday."

Priscilla's face changed. "Emma?" she asked.

"Emma. At this hour the day before yesterday she was as good a girl as
any in the village. She was good, and dutiful, and honest. Now what is
she and where is she?"

"Has she--isn't she in her home?"

"She never went home."

"Then she did lose the money?"

"Lose it? She has stolen it. Do you not see you have deliberately made
a thief out of an honest girl?"

Priscilla gazed in dismay at the avenging vicar's wife. It was true
then, and she had the fatal gift of spoiling all she touched.

"And worse than that--you have brought a good girl to ruin. He'll
n