"Oh, mamma, what did you do that for? She's the pokiest little thing. We didn't want her at all."
"Well, Mrs. Gray introduced her, and said she was almost her niece, and I thought it seemed to be expected. Mrs. Gray is always polite to our visitors, you know, and I don't like to seem to slight any of hers. What's the matter with the girl?"
"Oh, nothing's the matter, only she's poky, and doesn't seem to fit in somehow. You would understand if you had seen her the day she came. Mrs. Gray has dressed her up, as you might be sure she would; but then she looked like the backwoods, didn't she, Ethel?"
"She seemed nice-appearing enough to-day. You'll have to make the best you can of it, I guess; for Mrs. Gray accepted for her."
"It doesn't really signify," said Berry, discontentedly; "only it throws the party all out of shape. And she's younger than any of the rest, only just seventeen, Georgie says. She'd a great deal better stay at home with Marian."
It was fortunate that Candace did not guess how unwelcome her company was to the getters-up of the party, for the idea of the sail was most delightful to her. She had never been out in a boat in her life, not even on the smallest pond; and she had just discovered the strong fascination of the sea. She longed to get nearer to it, to know it better; and in her innocent little heart she thought, "How very kind it was in Mrs. Joy to invite me."
Sunday was always a particularly pleasant day at the Grays'. Mrs. Gray was wont to declare that though she did not believe in the Jewish Sabbath, she did with all her heart believe in the Christian day of rest; and she took pains to make it a happy one for all under her roof. She gave her servants as much liberty as she could, simplified their work, and provided a plenty of good reading for such of them as stayed at home. Her own time was much more at the service of her family than it could be on ordinary days. She always took a walk with the girls in the cool of the afternoon, if the day were pleasant, and kept some book of a thoughtful kind to read aloud in the evenings. This Sunday it happened to be that wonderful little prose poem of Mrs. Oliphant's, "A Beleaguered City." Cannie found it absorbingly interesting, and even Mr. Gray laid aside his newspaper and listened to the very end.
The reading done, Candace found a chance to ask her question about George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, the donor of the organ. There was a story about him, as it turned out, and a very interesting one. Mrs. Gray told how, when Dean of Derry in Ireland, the project of establishing a college in Bermuda for the education of English boys and of Indian youths to act as missionaries to their own people, had taken possession of his mind; and he had given up his preferment, and crossed the sea with his family to engage in this chosen work. She described their landing in Newport on a Sunday morning when everybody was at church, and how the clergyman stopped in the middle of his sermon, and with all his congregation following him, hurried down to the water-side to receive the distinguished guest. She promised to take Candace out some day to see Whitehall,—the house which he built on the island, and in which he lived for some years, till the impossibility of carrying out his scheme for Bermuda drove him back again to Ireland; and also the rocky shelf still called "Bishop Berkeley's Rock," where he is said to have composed the lines which begin
"Westward the course of empire takes its way."
Then she looked up a photograph from Smibert's picture of Dean Berkeley and his family to show them, and by that time the girls had all grown interested; and when Marian said that she, too, wanted to go to see Whitehall, Georgie and Gertrude begged to be included also, and Mrs. Gray promised to take them all.