It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog.

— GEORGE ELIOT.

THE children, who had reached the pear stage, looked with round awed eyes at “Auntie Hester” as she sat down at the luncheon table, beside the black bottle which marked her place. The Gresleys were ardent total abstainers, and were of opinion that Hester’s health would be greatly benefited by following their example. But Hester’s doctor differed from them — he was extremely obstinate — with the result that the Gresleys were obliged to tolerate the obnoxious bottle on their very table. It was what Mrs. Gresley called a “cross,” and Mr. Gresley was always afraid that the fact of its presence might become known and hopelessly misconstrued in Warpington and the world at large.

The children knew that Hester was in disgrace, as she vainly tried to eat the congealed slice of roast mutton with blue slides in it, which had been put before her chair half an hour ago, when the joint was sent out for the servants’ dinner. The children liked “Auntie Hester,” but without enthusiasm, except Regie, the eldest, who loved her as himself. She could tell them stories, and make butterflies and horses and dogs out of paper, but she could never join in their games, not even in the delightful new ones she invented for them. She was always tired directly. And she would never give them rides on her back, as the large good-natured Pratt girls did. And she was dreadfully shocked if they did not play fair, so much so, that on one occasion Mr. Gresley had to interfere, and to remind her that a game was a game, and that it would be better to let the children play as they liked than to be perpetually finding fault with them.

Perhaps nothing in her life at the Vicarage was a greater trial to Hester than to see the rules of fair play broken by the children with the connivance of their parents. Mr. Gresley had never been to a public school, and had thus missed the A B C of what in its later stages is called “honour.” He was an admirable hockey player, but he was not in request at the frequent Slumberleigh matches, for he never hit off fair, or minded being told so.

“Auntie Hester is leaving all her fat,” said Mary suddenly in a shrill voice, her portion of pear held in her left cheek as she spoke. She had no idea that she ought not to draw attention to the weakness of others. She was only anxious to be the first to offer interesting information.

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Gresley, admiring her own moderation. “Finish your pear.”

If there was one thing more than another in Hester’s behaviour that annoyed Mrs. Gresley — and there were several others — it was Hester’s manner of turning her food over on her plate, and leaving half of it.

Hester did it again now, and Mrs. Gresley, already irritated by her unpunctuality, tried to look away so as not to see her and prayed for patience. The hundred a year which Hester contributed to the little establishment had eased the struggling household in many ways; but Mrs. Gresley sometimes wondered if the money, greatly needed as it was, counterbalanced the perpetual friction of her sister-in-law’s presence.

“Father!”

“Yes, my son.”

“Isn’t it wrong to drink wine?”

“Yes, my son.”

“Then why does Auntie Hester drink it?”

Hester fixed her eyes intently on her brother. Would he uphold her before the children?

“Because she thinks it does her good,” said Mr. Gresley.

She withdrew her eyes. Her hand, holding a spoonful of cold rice pudding, shook. A delicate colour flooded her face, and finally settled in the tip of her nose. In her own way she loved the children.

“Ach, mein Herr,” almost screamed Fraülein, who adored Hester, and saw the gravity of the occasion, “aber Sie vergessen that the Herr Doctor Br-r-r-r-r-own has so strong — so very strong command —”

“I cannot allow a discussion as to the merits or demerits of alcohol at my table,” said Mr. Gresley. “I hold one opinion, Dr. Brown holds another. I must beg to be allowed to differ from him. Children, say grace,”

It was Wednesday and a half-holiday, and Mrs. Gresley had arranged to take the children in the pony-carriage to be measured for new boots. These expeditions to Westhope were a great event. At two o’clock exactly the three children rushed downstairs, Regie bearing in his hand his tin money-box, in which a single coin could be heard to leap. Hester produced a bright threepenny piece for each child, one of which was irretrievably buried in Regie’s money-box, and the other two immediately lost in the mat in the pony-carriage. However, Hester found them, and slipped them inside their white gloves, and the expedition started, accompanied by Boulou, a diminutive yellow and white dog of French extraction. Boulou was a well-meaning, kind little soul. There was a certain hurried arrogance about his hind legs, but it was only manner. He was not in reality more conceited than most small dogs who wear their tails high.

Hester saw them drive off, and a few minutes later Mr. Gresley started on his bicycle for a ruri-dicanal Chapter meeting in the opposite direction. She heard the Vicarage gate “clink” behind him as she crossed the little hall, and then she suddenly stopped short and wrung her hands. She had forgotten to tell either of them that the Bishop of Southminster was going to call that afternoon. She knew he was coming on purpose to see her, but this would have been incredible to the Gresleys. She had not read Rachel’s letter announcing his coming till she had taken refuge in the field where she had fallen asleep, and her mental equilibrium had been so shaken by the annoyance she felt she had caused the Gresleys at luncheon that she had entirely forgotten the subject till this moment.

She darted out of the house and flew down the little drive. But Fortune frowned on Hester to-day. She reached the turn of the road only to see the bent figure of Mr. Gresley whisk swiftly out of sight, his clerical coat-tails flowing gracefully out behind like a divided skirt on each side of the back wheel.

Hester toiled back to the house breathless and dusty, and ready to cry with vexation. “They will never believe I forgot to tell them,” she said to herself. “Everything I do is wrong in their eyes and stupid in my own.” And she sat down on the lowest step of the stairs, and leaned her head against the banisters.

To her presently came a ministering angel in the shape of Fraülein, who had begged an egg from the cook, had boiled it over her spirit lamp, and now presented it with effusion to her friend on a little tray, with two thin slices of bread and butter.

“You are all goodness, Fraülein,” said Hester, raising her small haggard face out of her hands. “It is wrong of me to give so much trouble.” She did not want the egg, but she knew its oval was the only shape in which Fraülein could express her silent sympathy. So she accepted it gratefully, and ate it on the stairs, with the tenderly severe Fraülein watching every mouthful.

Life did not seem quite such a hopeless affair when the little meal was finished. There were breaks in the clouds after all. Rachel was coming to see her that afternoon. Hester was, as Fraülein often said, "easy cast down, and easy cast up.” The mild stimulant of the egg “cast her up” once more. She kissed Fraülein and ran up to her room, where she divested her small person of every speck of dust contracted on the road, smoothed out an invisible crease in her holland gown, put back the little ring of hair behind her ear which had become loosened in............