_They_ were not here five weeks ago.

The little starved curate--the one who tore his gloves into strips--loses his place in the second lesson, and madly plunges at three different wrong verses in succession, before he regains the thread of his narrative.
We have come to the sermon.

The text is, "I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come." No sooner is it given out than Algy, Bobby, and Tou Tou, all look at me and grin; but father, who has a wily way of establishing himself in the corner of the pew, so as to have a bird's-eye view of all our demeanors, speedily frowns them down into a preternatural gravity.

Ah, why _to-day_, of all days, did they laugh?
and why _to-day_, of all days, did the servants file noisily in, numerous and out of breath, in the middle of the psalms?
I tremble when I think of the bag.
Well, who will may laugh again now: we are out in the sunshine, with the church-yard grass bowing and swaying in the wind, and the little cloud-shadows flying across the half-effaced names of the forgotten dead, who lie under their lichen-grown tombs.
"Did you see his _teeth_ ?" asks Tou Tou, joining me with a leap, almost before I am outside the church-porch.
"They are not comfortable yet," remarks Bobby, gravely, as he walks beside me carrying my prayer-book.

"I could see that: he was taking them out, and putting them in again, with his tongue all through the Litany." "When once he has secured Barbara, I expect that they will go back with the box for good and all--eh, Barbara ?" say I, laughing, as I speak; but Barbara is out of ear-shot.