'I shall not move, Bernard, I am here to protect this good man from insult.'

'I tell you 'tis the very way to make me insult the impudent scoundrel to see you standing there among the rabble, making a spectacle of yourself.'

'Neither you nor any one else will touch him while I am here,' said Angela, heroically moving nearer the preacher, and further from her brother. 'He is giving us the message that is too much obscured, and I will not have him silenced. I only wish you would listen! Go on, if you please.'

But the unwonted style of this interruption had disconcerted the ardent missionary more than unlimited rotten eggs could have done. The young lady's presence, though embarrassing, had been stimulating; but when three gentlemen, including a clergyman, were added to the audience, all his confidence in his mission could not bring back his eloquence, and, addressing himself to Angela, his only attentive hearer, he said, 'The tenor of our discourse has been interrupted; thank you, Miss, we will resume on a more favourable occasion.'

'When I'll bring down the garden engine,' muttered Bernard, clutching in vain at his sister as she stepped forward to shake hands with the preacher and say, 'We are greatly obliged to you, and I am sorry you should have been so interfered with.'

William, premising that he was not the parish priest, turned to walk with the amateur in his own profession, as much because he was curious about this phase of life as to see him courteously off the ground—while Bernard was scolding and deriding Angela on what he deemed her most monstrous aberration of all, and Angela marching on, impervious alike to displeasure and ridicule. Mrs. Lamb was trying to condole with Robina, and Robina was coolly stating that Angela was quite justified in using her influence to prevent the man from being assaulted.

The fame of Mr. Froggatt's state-dinner party and of another on behalf of Mr. Bruce had reached Mrs. Lamb, and, on the strength of it, she had freshly trimmed her wedding dress, and was greatly aggrieved to find her labour lost; disregarding her husband's representations of the recent bereavements and Mr. Underwood's state of health, and insisting on attributing the slight by turns to Geraldine's spite, and to the meanness that hindered the family from enjoying their fortune when they had got it.

Though Geraldine had withheld this indulgence, aware that a long late dinner would be a great fatigue to Felix, she believed in dilution, and had arranged to gratify her guest so far as to take this opportunity of inviting one or two Ewmouth families who hardly ever had a day in the country except what they spent at Vale Leston, and whom it would have been almost unkind to deprive of their summer treat.

So on Monday afternoon there was a gathering on the lawn large enough to be a formidable spectacle to at least one pair of eyes in the Kittiwake's gig as she came up the river, and to evoke a strong expletive from a mouth whose fringes were grizzled enough for it to have learnt to be less impulsive.

'Can't be helped, skipper. Come on,' laughed the joyous youth at the prow in the ease of summer attire. 'What, hasn't your domestication proceeded further? One would think you were the one newly caught from the bush.'