“Well, who is she?” cried Mrs. Sam Hurst, too curious to think of the ordinary decorums. She had no bonnet on, but a light “cloud” of white wool over her cap, and her whole aspect was full of eagerness and excitement. “Why didn't you tell me you knew her? Who is she? I am dying to know.”

“Who is – who?” said Ursula, rather glad of the opportunity of being politely rude to Mrs. Sam Hurst before papa. “How is any one to find out from the way you speak? She? who is she?”

“That is just what I want you to tell me,” said Mrs. Sam Hurst, with imperturbable good-humour. “You, Mr. May, you are always good to me, though Ursula has her little tempers – the girl you were talking to at the door. I stood and watched from the window, and I scarcely could contain myself sufficiently not to bounce out in the middle of the talk. Now do tell, as the Americans say. Who is that Tozer girl?”

“That Tozer girl!” Ursula gave a little shriek, and grew first red and then pale with horror and dismay.

“Yes; I told you about her; so well dressed and looking so nice. That was she; with the very same dress, such a charming dress! so much style about it. Who is she, Ursula? Mr. May, tell me who is she? You can't imagine how much I want to know.”

Ursula dropped into a chair, looking like a little ghost, faint and rigid. She said afterwards to Janey that she felt in the depths of her heart that it must be true. She could have cried with pain and disappointment, but she would not give Mrs. Sam Hurst the pleasure of making her cry.

“There must be some mistake,” said Reginald, interposing. “This is a lady – my sister met her in town with the Dorsets.”

“Oh, does she know the Dorsets too?” said the inquirer. “That makes it still more interesting. Yes, that is the girl that is with the Tozers; there can be no mistake about it. She is the granddaughter. She was at the Meeting last night. I had it from the best authority – on the platform with old Tozer. And, indeed, Mr. May, how any one that had been there could dare to look you in the face! – ”

“I was there myself,” said Mr. May. “It amused me very much. Tell me now about this young person. Is she an impostor, taking people in, or what is it all about? Ursula looks as if she was in the trick herself, and had been found out.”

“I am sure she is not an impostor,” said Ursula. “An impostor! If you had seen her as I saw her, at a great, beautiful, splendid ball. I never saw anything like it. I was nobody there – nobody – and neither were Cousin Anne and Cousin Sophy – but Miss Beecham! It is a mistake, I suppose,” the girl said, raising herself up with great dignity; “when people are always trying for news, they get the wrong news sometimes, I don't doubt. You may be sure it is a mistake.”

“That's me,” said Mrs. Sam Hurst, with a laugh; “that is one of Ursula's assaults upon poor me. Yes, I confess it, I am fond of news; and I never said she was an impostor. Poor girl, I am dreadfully sorry for her. I think she is a good girl, trying to do her duty to her relations. She didn't choose her own grandfather. I dare say, if she'd had any say in it, she would have made a very different choice. But whether your papa may think her a proper friend for you – being Tozer's granddaughter, Miss Ursula, that's quite a different business, I am bound to say.”

Again Ursula felt herself kept from crying by sheer pride, and nothing else. She bit her lips tight; she would not give in. Mrs. Hurst to triumph over her, and to give her opinion as to what papa might think proper! Ursula turned her back upon Mrs. Hurst, which was not civil, fearing every moment some denunciation from papa. But nothing of the kind came. He asked quite quietly after a while, “Where did you meet this young lady?” without any perceptible inflection of anger in his tone.

“Why, papa,” cried Janey, distressed to be kept so long silent, “everybody knows where Ursula met her; no one has heard of anything else since she came home. She met her of course at the ball. You know; Reginald, you know! The ball where she went with Cousin Anne.”

“Never mind Cousin Anne; I want the name of the people at whose house it was.”

“Copperhead, papa,” said Ursula, rousing herself. “If Cousin Anne does not know a lady from a common person, who does, I wonder? It was Cousin Anne who introduced me to her (I think). Their name was Copperhead, and they lived in a great, big, beautiful house, in the street where ambassadors and quantities of great people live. I forget the name of it; but I know there was an ambassador lived there, and Cousin Anne said – ”

“Copperhead! I thought so,” said Mr. May. “When Ursula has been set a-going on the subject of Cousin Anne, there is nothing rational to be got from her after that for an hour or two. You take an interest in this young lady,” he said shortly, turning to Mrs. Sam Hurst, who stood by smiling, rather enjoying the commotion she had caused.

“Who, I? I take an interest in anybody that makes a stir, and gives us something to talk about,” said Mrs. Hurst, frankly. “You know my weakness. Ursula despises me for it, but you know human nature. If I did not take an interest in my neighbours what would become of me – a poor lone elderly woman, without either chick or child?”

She rounded off this forlorn description of herself with a hearty laugh, in which Janey, who had a secret kindness for their merry neighbour, though she feared her “for papa,” joined furtively. Mr. May, however, did not enter into the joke with the sympathy which he usually showed to Mrs. Hurst. He smiled, but there was something distrait and pre-occupied in his air.

“How sorry we all are for you,” he said; “your position is truly melancholy. I am glad, for your sake, that old Tozer has a pretty granddaughter to beguile you now and then out of recollection of your cares.”

There was a sharp tone in this which caught Mrs. Hurst's ear, and she was not disposed to accept any sharpness from Mr. May. She turned the tables upon him promptly.

“What a disgraceful business that Meeting was! Of course, you have seen the paper. There ought to be some way of punishing those agitators that go about the country, taking away people's characters. Could not you bring him up for libel, or Reginald? I never knew anything so shocking. To come to your own town, your own neighbourhood, and to strike you through your son! It is the nastiest, most underhanded, unprincipled attack I ever heard of.”

“What is that?” asked Reginald.

He was not easily roused by Carlingford gossip, but there was clearly more in this than met the eye.

“An Anti-State Church Meeting,” said Mr. May, “with special compliments in it to you and me. It is not worth our while to think of it. Your agitators, my dear Mrs. Hurst, are not worth powder and shot. Now, pardon me, but I must go to work. Will you go and see the sick people in Back Grove Street, Reginald? I don't think I can go to-day.”

“I should like to know what was in the paper,” said the young man, with an obstinacy that filled the girls with alarm. They had been in hopes that everything between father and son was to be happy and friendly, now that Reginald was about to do what his father wished.

“Oh, you shall see it,” said Mrs. Hurst, half alarmed too; “but it is not anything, as your father says; only we women are sensitive. We are always thinking of things which, perhaps, were never intended to harm us. Ursula, you take my advice, and don't go and mix yourself up with Dissenters and that kind of people. The Tozer girl may be very nice, but she is still Tozer's granddaughter, after all.”

Reginald followed the visitor out of the room, leaving his sisters very ill at ease within, and his father not without anxieties which were so powerful, indeed, that he relieved his mind by talking of them to his daughters – a most unusual proceeding.

“That woman will set Reginald off at the nail again,” he cried; “after he had begun to see things in a common-sense light. There was an attack made upon him last night on account of that blessed chaplaincy, which has been more trouble to me than it is worth. I suppose he'll throw it up now. But I wash my hands of the matter. I wonder how you girls can encourage that chattering woman to come here.”

“Papa!” cried Janey, ever on the defensive, “we hate her! It is you who encourage her to come here.”

“Oh, hush!” cried Ursula, with a warning glance; it was balm to her soul to hear her father call Mrs. Hurst that woman. “We have been to see the house,” she said; “it was very nice. I think Reginald liked it, papa.”

“Ah, well,” said Mr. May, “girls and boys are queer articles. I dare say the house, if he likes it, will weigh more with him than justice or common sense. So Copperhead was the people's name? What would be wanted, do you think, Ursula, to make Reginald's room into a comfortable room for a pupil? Comfortable, recollect; not merely what would do; and one that has been used, I suppose, to luxury. You can look over it and let me know.”

“Are we going to take a pupil, papa?” cried Janey, with widening eyes.

“I don't know what you could teach him,” he said. “Manners, perhaps? Let me know, Ursula. The room is not a bad room; it would want a new carpet, curtains, perhaps – various things. Make me out a list. The Copperheads have a son, I believe. Did you see him at that fine ball of yours?”

“Oh! papa, he danced with me twice; he was very kind,” said Ursula, with a blush; “and he danced all the night with Miss Beecham. It must be a falsehood about her being old Tozer's granddaughter. Mr. Clarence Copperhead was always by her side. I think Mrs. Hurst must have made it all up out of her own head.”

Mr. May gave a little short laugh.

“Poor Mrs. Hurst!” he said, recovering his temper; “how bitter you all are against her. So he danced with you twice? You must try to make him comfortable, Ursula, if he comes here.”

“Is Mr. Clarence Copperhead coming here?”

Ursula was struck dumb by this piece of news. The grand house in Portland Place, and all Sophy Dorset's questions and warnings, came suddenly back to her mind. She blushed fiery red; she could not tell why. Coming here! How strange it would be, how extraordinary, to have to order dinner for him, and get his room in order, and have him in the drawing-room in the evenings! How should she know what to say to him? or would papa keep him always at work, reading Greek or something downstairs? All this flashed through her mind with the rapidity of lightning. Mr. May made no reply. He was walking up and down the room with his hands behind him, as was his habit when he was “busy.” Being busy was separated from being angry by the merest visionary line in Mr. May's case; his children never ventured on addressing him at such moments, and it is impossible to describe how glad they were when he withdrew to his own room before Reginald's return; but not a minute too soon. The young man came back, looking black as night. He threw himself into a chair, and then he got up again, and began also to walk about the room like his father. At first he would make no reply to the questions of the girls.

“It is exactly what I expected,” he said; “just what I looked for. I knew it from the first moment.”

It was Janey, naturally, who had least patience with this unsatisfactory utterance.

“If it was just what you expected, and you looked for it all the time, why should you make such a fuss now?” she cried. “I declare, for all you are young, and we are fond of you, you are almost as bad as papa.”

Reginald did not take any notice of this address; he went on repeating the same words at intervals.

“A child might have known it. Of course, from the beginning one knew how it must be.” Then he suddenly faced round upon Ursula, who was nearly crying in excitement and surprise. “But if they think I am to be driven out of a resolution I have made by what they say – if they think that I will be bullied into giving up because of their claptrap,” he cried, looking sternly at her, “then you will find you are mistaken. You will find I am not such a weak idiot as you suppose. Give up! because some demagogue from a Dissenting Committee takes upon him to criticise my conduct. If you think I have so little self-respect, so little stamina,” he said, fiercely, “you will find you have made a very great mistake.”

“Oh, Reginald, me?” cried Ursula, with tears in her eyes; “did I ever think anything unkind of you? did I ever ask you to do anything that was disagreeable? You should not look as if it was me.”

Then he threw himself down again on the old sofa, which creaked and tottered under the shock.

“Poor little Ursula!” he cried, with a short laugh. “Did you think I meant you? But if they thought they would master me by these means,” said Reginald with pale fury, “they never made a greater mistake, I can tell you. A parcel of trumpery agitators, speechifiers, little petty demagogues, whom nobody ever heard of before. A fine thing, indeed, to have all the shopkeepers of Carlingford sitting in committee on one's conduct, isn't it – telling one what one ought to do? By Jupiter! It's enough to make a man swear!”

“I declare!” cried Janey loudly, “how like Reginald is to papa! I never saw it before. When he looks wicked like that, and sets his teeth – but I am not going to be pushed, not by my brother or any one!” said the girl, growing red, and making a step out of his reach. “I won't stand it. I am not a child any more than you.”

Janey's wrath was appeased, however, when Reginald produced the paper and read Northcote's speech aloud. In her interest she drew nearer and nearer, and read the obnoxious column over his shoulder, joining in Ursula's cries of indignation. By the time the three had thus got through it, Reginald's own agitation subsided into that fierce amusement which is the frequent refuge of the assaulted.

“Old Green in the chair! and old Tozer and the rest have all been sitting upon me,” he said, with that laugh which is proverbially described as from the wrong side of the mouth, whatever that may be. Ursula said nothing in reply, but in her heart she felt yet another stab. Tozer! This was another complication. She had taken so great a romantic interest in the heroine of that ball, which was the most entrancing moment of Ursula's life, that it seemed a kind of disloyalty to her dreams to give up thus completely, and dethrone the young lady in black; but what could the poor girl do? In the excitement of this question the personality of Reginald's special assailant was lost altogether: the girls did not even remember his name.

CHAPTER XXI
A NEW FRIEND

After this there followed an exciting interval for the family at the Parsonage. Reginald, with the impatience of anger, insisted upon transporting himself to the College at once, and entering upon “his duties,” such as they were, in defiance of all public comment. And Mr. May, delighted with the head-strong resentment which served his purpose so well, promoted it by all the means in his power, goading his son on, if he showed any signs of relaxing, by references to public opinion, and what the Liberation Society would say. Before those curtains were ready, which the girls had ordered with so much pride, or the carpet laid down, he had taken possession, and his room in the Parsonage was already turned upside down preparing for a new inmate. Many and strange were the thoughts in Ursula's mind about this new inmate. She remembered Clarence Copperhead as a full-grown man, beyond, it seemed to her, the age at which pupilage was possible. What was he coming to Carlingford for? What was he coming to the Parsonage for? What could papa do with a pupil quite as old as Reginald, who, in his own person, had often taken pupils? Ursula had read as many novels as were natural at her age, and can it be supposed that she did not ask herself whether there was any other meaning in it? Could he be coming to Carlingford on account of Miss Beecham; or, on account of – any one else? Ursula never whispered, even to her own imagination, on account of me. But it is not to be supposed that the unbidden inarticulate thought did not steal in, fluttering her girlish soul. Everybody knows that in fiction, at least, such things occur continually, and are the most natural things in the world; and to Ursula, beyond her own little commonplace world, which she somewhat despised, and the strange world undeciphered and wonderful to which the Dorsets had introduced her for those ten brief days in London, the world of fiction was the only sphere she knew; and in that sphere there could be no such natural method of accounting for a young man's actions as that of supposing him to be “in love.” The question remained, was it with Miss Beecham, or was it with – anybody else? Such an inquiry could not but flutter her youthful bosom. She made his room ready for him, and settled how he was to be disposed of, with the strangest sense of something beneath, which her father would never suspect, but which, perhaps, she alone might know.

Clarence Copperhead was a more imposing figure to Ursula than he was in reality. She had seen him only twice, and he was a big and full-grown “gentleman,” while Ursula only realised herself as a little girl. She was not even aware that she had any intelligence to speak of, or that she would be a fit person to judge of “a gentleman.” To be sure she had to do many things which wanted thought and sense; but she was too unthoughtful of herself to have decided this as yet, or to have created any private tribunal at which to judge a new-comer of Clarence Copperhead's dimensions. A much greater personage than she was, an individual whose comings and goings could not be without observation, whose notice would be something exciting and strange, was what she took him to be. And Ursula was excited. Did Mrs. Copperhead, that kind little woman, know why he was coming – was she in his confidence? And how was Ursula to entertain him, to talk to him – a gentleman accustomed to so much better society? She did not say anything to Janey on this subject, though Janey was not without her curiosities too, and openly indulged in conjectures as to the new pupil.

“I wonder if he will be fine. I wonder if he will be very good,” said Janey. “I wonder if he will fall in love with Ursula. Pupils, in books, always do; and then there is a dreadful fuss and bother, and the girl is sent away. It is hard for the girl; it is always supposed to be her fault. I would not allow papa to take any pupils if it was me.”

“And much your papa would care for your permission,” said Mrs. Sam Hurst. “But so far I agree with you, Janey, that before he has pupils, or anything of that sort, there ought to be a lady in the house. He should marry – ”

“Marry! we don't want a lady in the house,” cried Janey, “we are ladies ourselves, I hope. Marry! if he does, I, for one, will do all I can to make his life miserable,” said the girl with energy. “What should he want to marry for when he has daughters grown up? There are enough of us already, I should think.”

“Too many,” said Mrs. Sam Hurst with a sigh. It gave her the greatest secret delight to play upon the girl's fears.

Besides this, however, Ursula had another pre-occupation. In that cordial meeting with the young lady who had turned out to be a person in such an embarrassing position, there had been a great deal said about future meetings, walks, and expeditions together, and Ursula had been very desirous that Phœbe should fix some time for their first encounter. She thought of this now with blushes that seemed to burn her cheeks. She was afraid to go out, lest she should meet the girl she had been so anxious to make a friend of. Not that, on her own account, after the first shock, Ursula would have been hard-hearted enough to deny her acquaintance to Tozer's granddaughter. In the seclusion of her chamber, she had cried over the downfall of her ideal friend very bitterly, and felt the humiliation for Phœbe more cruelly than that young lady felt it for herself; but Ursula, however much it might have cost her, would have stood fast to her friendship had she been free to do as she pleased.

“I did not like her for her grandfather,” she said to Janey, of whom, in this case, she was less unwilling to make a confidant. “I never thought of the grandfather. What does it matter to me if he were a sweep instead of old Tozer?”

“Old Tozer is just as bad as if he were a sweep,” said Janey; “if you had ever thought of her grandfather, and known he was old Tozer, you would have felt it would not do.”

“What is there about a grandfather? I don't know if we ever had any,” said Ursula. “Mamma had, for the Dorsets are her relations – but papa. Mr. Griffiths's grandfather was a candle-maker; I have heard papa say so – and they go everywhere.”

“But he is dead,” said Janey, with great shrewdness, “and he was rich.”

“You little nasty calculating thing! Oh, how I hate rich people; how I hate this horrid world, that loves money and loves fine names, and does not care for people's selves whether they are bad or good! I shall never dare to walk up Grange Lane again,” said Ursula, with tears. “Fancy changing to her, after being so glad to see her! fancy never saying another word about the skating, or the walk to the old mill! How she will despise me for being such a miserable creature! and she will think it is all my own fault.”

At this moment Mr. May, from the door of his study, called “Ursula!” repeating the call with some impatience when she paused to dry her eyes. She ran down to him quickly, throwing down her work in her haste. He was standing at the door, and somehow for the first time the worn look about his eyes struck Ursula with a touch of pity. She had never noticed it before: a look of suppressed pain and anxiety, which remained about his eyes though the mouth smiled. It had never occurred to her to be sorry for her father before, and the idea struck her as very strange now.

“Come in,” he said, “I want to speak to you. I have been thinking about the young woman – this friend of yours. We are all among the Dissenters now-a-days, whatever Mrs. Sam Hurst may say. You seem to have taken a fancy to this Tozer girl?”

“Don't call her so, papa, please. She is a lady in herself, as good a lady as any one.”

“Well! I don't say anything against her, do I? So you hold by your fancy? You are not afraid of Grange Lane and Mrs. Sam Hurst.”

“I have not seen her again,” said Ursula, cast down. “I have not been out at all. I could not bear to be so friendly one day, and then to pass as if one did not know her the next. I cannot do it,” cried the girl, in tears; “if I see her, I must just be the same as usual to her, whatever you say.”

“Very well, be the same as usual,” said Mr. May; “that is why I called you. I have my reasons. Notwithstanding Tozer, be civil to the girl. I have my reasons for what I say.”

“Do you mean it, papa!” said Ursula, delighted. “Oh, how good of you! You don't mind – you really don't mind? Oh! I can't tell you how thankful I am; for to pretend to want to be friends, and then to break off all in a moment because of a girl's grandfather – ”

“Don't make a principle of it, Ursula. It is quite necessary, in an ordinary way, to think of a girl's grandfather – and a boy's too, for that matter. No shopkeeping friends for me; but in this individual case I am willing to make an exception. For the moment, you see, Dissenters are in the ascendant. Young Copperhead is coming next week. Now, go.”

Ursula marched delighted upstairs. “Janey, run and get your hat,” she said; “I am going out. I am not afraid of any one now. Papa is a great deal nicer than he ever was before. He says I may see Miss Beecham as much as I like. He says we need not mind Mrs. Sam Hurst. I am so glad! I shall never be afraid of that woman any more.”

Janey was taken altogether by surprise. “I hope he is not going to fall in love with Miss Beecham,” she said suspiciously. “I have heard Betsy say that old gentlemen often do.”

“He is not so foolish as to fall in love with anybody,” said Ursula, with dignity. “Indeed, Janey, you ought to have much more respect for papa. I wish you could be sent to school and learn more sense. You give your opinion as if you were – twenty – more than that. I am sure I never should have ventured to say such things when I was a child like you.”

“Child yourself!” said Janey indignant; which was her last resource when she had nothing more to say; but Ursula was too busy putting aside her work and preparing for her walk to pay any attention. In proportion as she had been subdued and downcast heretofore, she was gay now. She forgot all about old Tozer; about the Dissenters' meeting, and the man who had made an attack upon poor Reginald. She flew to her room for her hat and jacket, and ran downstairs, singing to herself. Janey only overtook her, out of breath, as she emerged into the road from the Parsonage door.

“What a dreadful hurry you are in,” said Janey. “I always get ready so much quicker than you do. Is it all about this girl, because she is new? I never knew you were so fond of new people before.”

But that day they went up and down Grange Lane fruitlessly, without seeing anything of Phœbe, and Ursula returned home disconsolate. In the evening Reginald intimated carelessly that he had met Miss Beecham. “She is much better worth talking to than most of the girls one meets with, whoever her grandfather may be,” he said, evidently with an instant readiness to stand on the defensive.

“Oh, did you talk to her,” said Ursula, “without knowing? Reginald, papa has no objections. He says we may even have her here, if we please.”

“Well, of course I suppose he must guide you in that respect,” said Reginald, “but it does not matter particularly to me. Of course I talked to her. Even my father could not expect that his permission was needed for me.”

At which piece of self-assertion the girls looked at him with admiring eyes. Already they felt there was a difference. Reginald at home, nominal curate, without pay or position, was a different thing from Reginald with an appointment, a house of his own, and two hundred and fifty pounds a year. The girls looked at him admiringly, but felt that this was never likely to be their fate. In everything the boys had so much the best of it; and yet it was almost a comfort to think that they had seen Reginald himself trembling before papa. Reginald had a great deal to tell them about the college, about the old men who made a hundred daily claims on his attention, and the charities which he had to administer, doles of this and that, and several charity schools of a humble class.

“As for my time, it is not likely to hang on my hands as I thought. I can't be a parish Quixote, as we planned, Ursula, knocking down windmills for other people,” he said, adjusting his round edge of collar. He was changed; he was important, a personage in his own sight, no longer to be spoken of as Mr. May's son. Janey ventured on a little laugh when he went away, but Ursula did not like the change.

“Never mind,” cried Janey; “I hope Copperhead will be nice. We shall have him to talk to, when he comes.”

“Oh!” cried Ursula, in a kind of despair, “who taught you to call gentlemen like that by their name? There is nothing so vulgar. Why, Cousin Anne says – ”

“Oh, Cousin Anne!” cried Janey, shaking her head, and dancing away. After that she was aware there was nothing for it but flight.

Next day, however, they were more successful. Phœbe, though very little older than Ursula, was kind to the country girls, and talked to them both, and drew them out. She smiled when she heard of Clarence Copperhead, and told them that he was not very clever, but she did not think there was any harm in him.

“It is his father who is disagreeable,” said Phœbe; “didn't you think so? You know, papa is a minister, Miss May,” (she did not say clergyman when she spoke to a churchwoman, for what was the use of exciting any one's prejudices?) “and Mr. Copperhead comes to our church. You may be very thankful, in that respect, that you are not a dissenter. But it will be very strange to see Clarence Copperhead in Carlingford. I have known him since I was no bigger than your little sister. To tell the truth,” said Phœbe, frankly, “I think I am rather sorry he is coming here.”

“Why?” cried bold Janey, who was always inquisitive.

Miss Phœbe only smiled and shook her head; she made no distinct reply.

“Poor fellow, I suppose he has been 'plucked,' as the gentlemen call it, or 'ploughed,' does your brother say? University slang is very droll. He has not taken his degree, I suppose, and they want him to work before going up again. I am sorry for your father, too, for I don't think it will be very easy to get anything into Clarence Copperhead's mind. But there is no harm at all in him, and he used to be very nice to his mother. Mamma and I liked him for that; he was always very nice to his mother.”

“Will you come in and have some tea?” said Ursula. “Do, please. I hope, now that I have met you again, you will not refuse me. I was afraid you had gone away, or something – ”

Ursula, however, could not help looking guilty as she spoke, and Phœbe perceived at once that there had been some reason for the two or three days disappearance of the girls from Grange Lane.

“You must tell me first,” she said, with a smile, “whether you know who I am. If you ask me after that, I shall come. I am old Mr. Tozer's granddaughter, who had a shop in the High Street. My uncle has a shop there now. I do not like it myself,” said Phœbe, with the masterly candour that distinguished her, “and no one else can be expected to like it. If you did not know – ”

“Oh, we heard directly,” cried Janey; “Mrs. Sam Hurst told us. She came shrieking, 'Who is she?' before your back was turned that day; for she wondered to see you with old Tozer – ”

“Janey!” cried Ursula, with horror. “Of course we know; and please will you come? Every new person in Carlingford gets talked over, and if an angel were to walk about, Mrs. Sam Hurst would never rest till she had found out where he came from.”