The girls did not immediately take in the full meaning of the intimation which they read with two startled faces close together over the old lady’s shoulder. “At Castellamare, on the 15th July, the Rev. Edward Chester, Rector of Brentburn, Berks.”
“But we don’t know him,” said Mab, bewildered.
Cicely, I think, had a remark of the same kind on her lips; but she stopped suddenly and clasped her hands together and gave a low cry.
“Ah, you understand, Cicely!” said Miss Maydew, wiping her forehead with her handkerchief; “now let us consult what is to be done. What is the date? I was so agitated I never thought of the date! The 15th. Oh, my dear, here is a fortnight lost!”
“But what can be done?” said Cicely, turning a pathetic glance upon the old room which had seemed so melancholy to her yesterday, and the tons of mahogany which she had just been criticising. How kind, and friendly, and familiar they had become all at once; old, dear friends, who belonged to her no more.
“Mr. Chester, the rector!” said Mab, with sudden apprehension. “Do you mean that something will happen to papa?”
“There is this to be done,” said the old lady, “your poor good father has been here for twenty years; the people ought to be fond of him—I do not know whether they are, for a parish is an incomprehensible thing, as your poor dear grandfather always used to say—but they ought to be; I am sure he has trudged about enough, and never spared himself, though I never thought him a good preacher, so far as that goes. But he ought to have a great many friends after living here for twenty years.”
“But, Aunt Jane, tell us, tell us—what good will that do?”
“It might do a great deal if they would exert themselves. They might get up a petition, for instance—at once—to the Lord Chancellor; they might employ all their influence. It is not a rich parish, nor a large parish, but there are always gentry in it. Oh, a great deal might be done if only people would exert themselves! It is dreadful to think that a fortnight has been lost.”
Cicely, who was not much consoled by this hope, sat down with a very pale countenance and a sudden constriction at her heart. She was almost too much bewildered to realize all that it meant; enough lay on the surface to fill her soul with dismay. Mab, who had less perception of the urgent character of the calamity, was more animated.