“I like you very much, Fan,” she returned, and stooping, kissed her on the forehead. “I can say that I love you dearly, although you have only been with us since yesterday. And if you can love me, Fan, and regard me as a mother, it will be a great comfort to me and a great help to both of us in our lessons.”
Fan caressed the hand which still retained hers, but at the same time she cast down her eyes, over which a little shade of anxiety had come. She was thinking, perhaps, that this relationship of mother and daughter might not be an altogether desirable one.
CHAPTER XVIII
On Sunday Fan accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Churton to morning service, and thought it strange that her teacher did not go with them. In the evening the party was differently composed, the master of the house having absented himself; then just as Mrs. Churton and Fan were starting, Constance joined them, prayer-book in hand. Mrs. Churton was surprised, but made no remark. Fan sat between mother and daughter, and Constance, taking her book, found the places for her; for Mary had failed after all to teach her how to use it. Mr. Northcott preached the sermon, and it was a poor performance. He was not gifted with a good delivery, and his voice was not of that moist mellifluous description, as of an organ fattened on cream, which is more than half the battle to the young cleric, certainly more than passion and eloquence, and of the pulpit pulpity. There was a restless spirit in Mr. Northcott; he took a somewhat painful interest in questions of the day, and in preaching was prone to leave his text, to cast it away as it were, and, taking up modern weapons, fight against modern sins, modern unbelief.
His piping took a troubled sound,
Of storms that rage outside our happy ground;
He could not wait their passing.
But one who was over him could, and the piping was not pleasing to him, and scarcely intelligible to the drowsy villagers; and when in obedience to his vicar's wish he went back to preach again of the Jews and Jehovah's dealings with them, his sermons were no better and no worse than those of other curates in other village pulpits. It was a sermon of this kind that Constance heard. If some old Eyethorner, dead these fifty years, had risen from his mouldy grave in the adjoining churchyard, and had come in and listened, he would not have known that a great change had come, that the bright sea of faith that once girdled the earth had withdrawn.
Down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
He took his text from the Old Testament, and spoke of the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt. It was a dreary discourse, and through it all Miss Churton sat leaning back with eyes half closed, but whether listening to the preacher or attending to her own thoughts, there was nothing in her face to show.