CHAPTER IX. SERMONS AND SURMISES. MOLLY was changed when she returned to Blatchington; there was a listlessness about her, very often a dash of crossness in her tone, and a self-absorption foreign to her nature, that became plain to the keen-sighted little sister who watched her with such loving eyes. Anne attributed both the crossness and melancholy to the fact of her missing the grand life to which it is probable she had grown accustomed at the Lodge, and imagined it would be all right by and by, when the fine ideas had had time to settle into the simple home groove again. She was not possessed of Miss Thorold's knowledge, and consequently did not note how Molly pricked up her ears at the sound of carriage-wheels, and coloured at sight of distant tall figures on the beach or cliff-tops, growing pale again when the sudden hope waned. The deep hidden longing of the wounded young heart was not spoken of, and so passed unread. That love-secret, sacred to all womanhood, had the unromantic effect of making the child fretful, and at times plunged her into dreaminess that called forth the fond old father's mirth and roused Anne's rare laugh at the expense of her "absent Molly." The very sweetest and best of women, if thrown continually together, will have their slight bickerings and obstinate contradictions, albeit the roughness polishes down with some almost as quickly as it is evinced; and it can scarcely be supposed that Mr Bloomfield's girls were exempt from all the littlenesses that trouble the even tenor of unoccupied women's lives. The sisters Perkins disputed on the head of gooseberrywine, or disagreed as to the shading of a wool-work, or the correct mode of holding a teaspoon, or some equally insignificant trifle, which yet had force sufficient to put them out for the day; so Molly and Nanny squabbled, as they termed it, as a thousand girls squabble who love each other with a depth of affection that would be proof against all the buffeting and slander and misery of the world. They got into knotty discussions about their bows and hair-pins, and trifles of a similar sort which do not bear recording through their very littleness, just the littleness however that puts the earth-mark on characters otherwise too pure and good and unselfish for the lower world. Sunday morning had dawned and broken into smiles, the smiles that come so brightly at the close of summer weather-a fair September morning, fresh and sweet and sunny; overhead, a perfect English sky, such as one loves above the intense blue monotony of the South, a field of azure melting gradually towards the horizon into grey, wreathed with cumulous clouds, here pinky white as the feet of Aurora, there hoarily dense as snow on the Rigi peak, or light as the down on the white-swan's breast. Anne and Molly stood equipped for church; the tinkling of bells struck the ear with silvery tones through the open window. People were beginning to mount the hilly corn-field on their road to Blatchington church, and to pass by ones and twos, and groups of several, the shade of its clematis-hung porch into the quiet aisle. The girls, kissing their hand to their father in farewell, went out into the air-into the beautiful soft air of early autumn, into the warmth of sunlight, followed by the hum of laden bee and the music of a waste of waves mixing with the shadows of trees, red and gold and brown,-a day fragrant and soft, a Sabbath such as one can picture it to have been when the Great Nazarene, walking with His disciples amid the waving corn, lifted His unfathomable eyes upon their faces in rebuke of the narrowmindedness which would limit by narrow bound the world's grand holiday. By their garden gate the girls met the Perkins spinsters, exact reflections of each other, save that Miss Sally's bonnet bore the additional ornament of a butterfly sporting itself on the petals of a pink rag rose, which gave it a semblance of youthfulness. 66 This is hail-fellow well-met," said Sally, delightedly, having uppermost in her thoughts the wish to ask Molly questions relative to her Ladyship's doings and establishment, and uncomfortably conscious by an after-thought of the censure she was dragging down upon her head through the fact of having used an inelegant expression. But for once Miss Maria was too absorbed to give the expected reproof. "Well, my dears, you are surprised, I may say, to see us up in your part of the world of a Sunday. You look very well, Molly. How is Mr Bloomfield ?" "He doesn't seem to get his strength up as quickly as he ought," replied Anne, as they walked on together. "As soon as he can walk so far, Miss Maria, he will call to thank you for all your good things." "I shall be downright glad to see him, my dear. I've set on some jelly to simmer a bit for him, thinking you might be coming round by and by. We've been quite counting on hearing your sister's news." “I'm afraid I haven't any," hesitated Molly. 66 Well, you've eyes and ears to take things in with," grimly spoke Miss Perkins, holding her parasol very straight; "and a young woman doesn't go amongst grand folk for the first time in her life without learning a pretty good deal of one sort and other. Not that I'm for poking and prying into other people's affairs." "Oh, no!" laughed Molly. "If you could poke into their affairs, and give them a few lessons at |