Miranda hid her face and wept silently. I did not attempt to persuade her to moderate her grief, as the outlet of over-strung feelings, of genuine and passionate regret, it was a natural and healthful safety-valve for an overburdened heart.
"I don't think I was ever more impressed with our Church service," said Mrs. Craven. "That dear, venerable old man, and his truly wonderful congregation! How earnestly they listened, and how reverently they behaved!"
"Think of our rustics in a village church!" said Miss Vavasour, "the conceited choir, the sleeping labourers, the giggling school children, where do you ever see anything like what we have witnessed to-day? However did they manage to grow up so blameless, and to keep so good and pure minded? Can you tell me, Mr. Telfer?"
"My knowledge of my wife's people is chiefly from hearsay," I said; "I can remember the old tale of the Mutiny of the Bounty when I was a school-boy in Sydney. Captain Bligh, of the ill-fated ship, was afterwards the Governor of New South Wales. Whether his conduct provoked the mutiny, of which Miranda's great grandfather was the leader, or whether the crew were overcome by the temptations of a life in that second garden of Eden, Tahiti, has been disputed, and perhaps can never be definitely known. This much is certain, that the sole surviving mutineer, John Adams, deeply repentant, changed his rule of life. Morning and evening prayer was established, and a system of instruction for the children and young people regularly carried out. Such was the apparently accidental commencement of the religious teaching of the little community at the beginning of the century. Some of the results you have witnessed to-day."
"It certainly is the most wonderful historiette in the whole world," said Miss Vavasour, who had listened with deep interest. "I never saw so many nice people in one place before—all good—all kind—all contented, and all happy. It makes one believe in the millennium; I must try what I can do with our village when I get back to Dorsetshire."
"You'll have your work cut out for you, Miss Vavasour," said Colonel Percival. "Fancy the old poachers and the hardened tramps, the beer-drinking yokels and the rough field-hands. Work of years, and doubtful then."
"Oh! dear, why do we call ourselves civilised, I wonder?" sighed the enthusiastic damsel, just awakened to a sense of the duties of property in correlation with the "rights." "I really believe Englishmen—the lower classes, of course—are the most ill-mannered, uncivilised people in the world. Look at those dear islanders, how polite and unselfish they are in their behaviour to each other, and to us! It makes me feel ashamed of my country. Why, even at a presentation to Her Majesty people push, and crush, and look as black as thunder if you tread on their absurd trains."
"You ought to come out and join the Melanesian Mission, my dear," said Mrs. Craven. "There is no knowing, with your energy and convictions, what good you might do."
"I wish I could," said the girl eagerly. "But I'm not good enough, I wish I was. If I felt I could keep up my present feelings I'd go to-morrow. But I'm selfish and worldly-minded, like my neighbours in Christendom. It would be no use. I should only spoil my own life, and not mend theirs."
"Such has been the confession of many an earnest reformer, who had started in life with high hopes and a scorn of consequences," said Mr. Vavasour quietly; "it is by far the most common result of heroic self-sacrifice. If we did not occasionally see the accomplished fact, as in this case, we might well despair."