known the Quinns
and listened to the Canon's wandering sermons, he looked at it with
different eyes. He felt that the words might actually express a fact,
and that a family might live together as if they believed them to be
true.

'Yes,' said the Canon, who had come in with him, and saw him gaze at it,
'these motto-cards are very nice. I bought several of them last time I
was in Dublin, and I think I have a spare one left which I can give
you if you like. It has silver letters like that one, but printed on a
crimson ground.'

Evidently the design and the colouring were what struck him as
noticeable. The motto itself was a commonplace of Christian living, the
expression of a basal fact, quite naturally hung where it would catch
the eye of chance visitors.

In the drawing-room Mrs. Beecher and her two daughters, still in their
hats and gloves, stood round a turf fire. They made a place at once for
Hyacinth, and one of the girls drew forward a rickety basket-work chair,
covered with faded cretonne. He was formally introduced to them. Miss
Beecher and Miss Elsie Beecher had both, the latter very recently,
reached the dignity of young womanhood, and wore long dresses. The three
boys, who were younger, were made known afterwards.

When they went into the dining-room the Canon selected the soundest of
a miscellaneous collection of chairs for Hyacinth, and seated him beside
Mrs. Beecher. Then the elder girl--Miss Beecher's name, he learnt, was
Marion--entered in a long apron carrying a boiled leg of mutton followed
by her sister with dishes of potatoes and mashed parsnips.

'You see,' said Mrs. Beecher, and there was no note of apology in her
voice as she made the explanation, 'my girls are accustomed to do a good
deal of the house-work. We have only one servant, and she is not very
presentable when she has just cooked the dinner.'

Hyacinth glanced at Marion Beecher, who smiled at him with frank
friendliness, as she took her seat beside her father. He saw suddenly
that the girl was beautiful. He had not noticed this in church. There he
had no opportunity of observing the subtle grace with which she
moved, and the half-light left unrevealed the lustrous purity of her
complexion, the radiant red and white which only the warm damp of the
western seaboard can give or preserve. Her eyes he had seen even in the
church, but now first he realized what unfathomable gentleness and what
a wonder of frank innocence were in them. T