o die, and a new rector came to North Ditton,
Dad would be expected to resign. Curates always do when there's a
change of incumbent; it's clerical etiquette. Mr. Sutton is such an
old man that, you see, this may happen any time, so Dad can't feel
really settled here."

"I wish he were rector instead of only curate!" sighed Gwen.

"Ah, so do I! But Skelwick isn't a parish by itself, it's only a part
of North Ditton. If Dad accepts the living of Rawtenbeck he'll be a
vicar then, and he says there's any amount of work to be done in the
place. The church has been fearfully slack! He hardly knows which
needs him most, Skelwick or Rawtenbeck."

"When must he make up his mind?"

"Fortunately, not immediately. The Bishop has given him six weeks to
think it over before he need decide."

"Then we've six weeks' reprieve," said Gwen.

She was extremely agitated at the news. She had often thought in a
vague way how nice it would be if her father were appointed to a
living, but she had never anticipated such a change as this. To remove
to a smoky, dirty manufacturing town, where even the trees were
blighted with chemicals! The proposition seemed intolerable. Gwen
hurried out of the garden and climbed a little way up the headland at
the back of the house. It was Saturday morning, and there were plenty
of tasks to be done at home, but at the present she felt she must be
alone with her thoughts. To leave Skelwick--to go away from all this
and perhaps never see it again! She sat down on a rock, and took a
long comprehensive look over the whole landscape.

There were the cliffs, and the headland, and the great wide stretch of
rolling, shimmering sea, and the little red sails of the fishing
smacks far out on the blue horizon; below her stretched the village,
with its irregular red roofs and gay patches of flower gardens, and
the shingly cove where some of the boats lay beached. She could just
see the chimneys of the Parsonage, and the corner of the tennis lawn
where Martin was playing with Jingles, and a scrap of the common where
Winnie's hens were pecking in the coarse grass. Above the village, a
conspicuous object against the sky, rose their little church of St.
John the Baptist, standing on the high headland at the very edge of
the bare wold, as Father often said, like a voice crying in the
wilderness. Who would come there, she wondered, if Dad went? Skelwick
was only a chapel-of-ease to North Ditton, and before Mr. Gascoyne's