CHAPTER V.

ANY MUSHROOMS?

THE December sun shone out feebly, only, as it seemed, to show the frosty nakedness of the land.

But a bright idea had struck Mrs. Rashleigh, and she was walking briskly through the fields with a basket in her hand. She was looking for mushrooms. Of course she had not told any one what the basket was for- indeed, who was there to tell? or she might have been laughed at for her pains. She never stopped to consider times and seasons. It had suddenly occurred to her that mushrooms grew in the fields; so into the fields she went to look for them.

And she had walked a long way, and was tired when she stopped appalled before a gate which was padlocked.

What could she do now? She had taken this way, thinking it would be shorter, and to go all round those fields back again would be terrible. While she deliberated a voice startled her, and turning round she saw Mr. Frankton in the act of raising his hat to her.

"I am sorry it is locked, Mrs. Rashleigh. But it is a gate we very seldom use, and the village boys had a bad habit of leaving it open. I will go home for the key if you don't mind waiting or "_______

Mr. Frankton looked at the slight figure of the lady speculatively. It is possible that he was thinking how easy a solution of the difficulty it would be to lift her, basket and all, over the gate, but of course he did not dare to suggest it. As for Gertrude, the possibility of climbing a gate was not likely to occur to her.

"Not on any account, thank you," she said, to his offer of fetching the key. "I can go round. I thought this way was nearer. I have been looking for mushrooms," she added glancing at her basket; "but I have not found any."

Mr. Frankton did not smile.

It was a very winning face that was turned towards him; nervously sensitive-somewhat childish. He began to think vaguely of all the stories of Mrs. Rashleigh's designing nature, her pride, arrogance, and conceit. He had paid but little attention to them himself, but they occurred to him now, incidentally

with this childish acknowledgment of looking for mushrooms on a frosty day in December.

"Perhaps they don't grow on your land, Mr. Frankton?"

"Not at this time of the year," replied Mr. Frankton, with perfect gravity and courtesy. "It is not the season for them. I can show you a shorter way home than the one you came by, Mrs. Rashleigh. Will you allow me to carry your basket?"

And then she found herself walking towards home side by side with Mr. Frankton, and confessing to herself that he was far more agreeable and polite than the ladies of the parish had been, with the exception, perhaps, of his wife, who could not be uncourteous, though her distance was freezing.

"This is your way," said Mr. Frankton, relinquishing the basket. "Through the gate by that large holly-bush. It is scarcely more than a field's breadth from there."

It was not to be expected that Mr. Frankton could resist telling the episode of the mushrooms; but when he found that it was snapped up and twisted into affectation of pretty ignorance, superciliousness, conceit, he stopped, and said, laughing: "When Mrs. Frankton first came home she called the guinea fowls jackdaws. Don't be hard upon Rashleigh's pretty little wife.”

The walk, however, which Gertrude had to take in consequence of her expedition was of far more importance than Mr. Frankton had imagined it would be when he pointed out to her that shorter route.

The gate by the holly-bush! When she reached that bush she stopped in impulsive admiration for the brilliant berries with which it was covered; and as she stopped the thought which it suggested was so enormous, so beautiful, so full of capabilities and possible delight, that she forgot all about her fatigue, and started off with a fresh impetus towards home that she might think it out.

This casual suggestion had fired a long train of ideas-lighted up a hundred designs and devices, all bearing upon it or growing out of it, but before lying torpid amongst the records of things seen once but now forgotten.

Here was work for idle hands; beautiful work, too good for her. Too good almost in the first flush of anticipation to be possible. What if some one else, finding out the notion, should take it from her! As yet the very idea of it was hidden in her own mind, and so it should be kept. No one must hear of it. By a subtle process of analogy, she thought she comprehended now a speech her husband had once made to the curate in her hearing about the necessity which impels men, having conceived the hope or prospect of a new invention, to keep

it to themselves.

And then she knew so well how to do this work, the idea of which had occurred to her. Symbolical devices sprang up ready made before her eyes to dazzle them; beautiful wreaths and chaplets. Was there time for her, single-handed, to do all that she would wish to do? She counted up. It wanted nearly three weeks to Christmas. In that time surely she might do all; but she must have a room set apart to work in, and Joseph must be pressed into the service to get evergreens; and that dreadful housemaid must, if possible, be won over to keep the secret.

Before all, however, she must have the vicar's permission, and this was to be quietly obtained, so that not even Noel should know what was going on. It should be a surprise to him and to every one, even the vicar himself, who was not to know beforehand the extent of the proposed decorations.

That evening her head was too busy to listen for the opening door; too busy to care that Noel remained in his seclusion later than usual; too busy to be miserable. She had found work enough.

there was a great calm, like the calm before a thunderstorm.

And the curate found his sister one day out on the lawn in a white frost, and caught her putting her hands behind her when she saw him, like a naughty child, looking, at the same time, so wickedly happy and silently busy that even to his slow apprehension the idea of danger presented itself.

"Now, Gerty," said George, "don't you do too much, just at first."

"Too much!" repeated Mrs. Rashleigh, indignantly. "George, how is that possible?"

Mr. Chester hesitated. He had an indistinct consciousness that his sister was not in favor; and he thought that perhaps he really was disposed to let that consideration bias him, and to be over cautious. He fancied uneasily that it would have been better not to keep the thing so secret, for all that, but he scarcely liked to say so.

"Well," he said, "I only know if I hadn't gone about things too hotly at first I might have done more. People have prejudices, you know, and even if things are right and fit in themselves ""Right should give way to prejudice. wonder at you, George.'

I

George would perhaps have argued further, but his sister took his arm and led him into her workroom, where the housemaid, won over, was busy over some tiny wreaths. "You

"Look there," said Gertrude. ought to be flattered, for even Noel doesn't so much as know what I am about. This scroll is for over the altar, and the font is to be managed with real flowers and moss. How gloomy you look, George. Indeed I don't think you deserve to see these things."

66

'People never like to be taken by storm," responded George.

It was true that he looked gloomy. He did not know what to say. That Gertrude had the vicar's permission was a very strong point; but George was far from understanding how very little the vicar knew what his permission meant; the latter having thought, in his simplicity, that the rather odd little lady, Mrs. Rashleigh, had a fancy for taking the clerk's work from him, and sticking the holly branches into the gimlet holes prepared for them.

"Nevertheless," muttered the curate as he went away, "I am afraid, I am very much afraid there'll be a row."

But the dreadful thundery calm continued, and on Christmas Eve the old vicar, seeing ladders in the churchyard, and having a dim vision of workmen in the porch, and a dainty figure passing in and out amongst them, wondered what was the matter, and thought he would go and see by-and-by.

As it happened, however, he had his sermon to finish, and by-and by did not come until Christmas morning was beginning to dawn, and, as was his custom, he went across the churchyard to the vestry door, and thence into the church.

At the door the vicar halted in amazement. A long while he stood there, with his hand on the back of a pew, and then there stole a strange expression over his face, and he moved on, but very slowly and silently, towards the altar.

From under the dreamy torpor of many years something came struggling up into the old man's heart which touched him strangely; his drooping shoulders seemed to lose their droop, and his lips were moving softly. He was reading the golden "Gloria in Excelsis Deo, et in terra Pax!

And suddenly there was a mist before his eyes, and a star shone down over the distant birthplace earth once offered to her Lord, and the Light of the world

was come.

And the church was, as it were, full of the waving of angels' wings, and of the music of the song which fell upon the shepherds' ears. And still the old man stood there motionless. There was something so inexpressibly solemn and tender in the thoughts this unexpected sight had roused within him; something so strangely beautiful and touching about these silent witnesses that bade earth's children bear in mind the light and life which broke upon their darkness as to-day, that when the vicar left the church his lips were muttering, half unconsciously, "Put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."

He went back into his study and took up the sermon prepared for the morning's service; dry with arguments from dusty volumes; sleepy with the wisdom |

of many commentators; a soulless disquisition which seemed to crumble before the spirit that overshadowed the silent church in the fresh dawn of that Christmas morning.

Three hours were before him yet; and as he wrote, the solemn exaltation and tenderness were like a halo round. his pen, and words flowed from it swiftly, as though they had come from something within himself which even he could scarcely comprehend.

A brief sermon, lasting in its delivery but a few minutes; but so new, so different from the dreary dissertations which usually came from the vicar, that Gertrude Rashleigh, listening from her corner, forgot for a moment the sudden blow that had fallen upon her, in the wonderful power of this eloquence coming straight from one man's heart to go straight to the hearts of others.

How good of him; how very good, and strange too, it was to preach as though he had known all about the decorations beforehand!

For Gertrude was suffering from a disappointment whose keenness she scarcely realized yet.

Early in her place that morning, the uneasy movement that ran round the church as the congregation came in fell upon her heart as though a sheet of ice were being slowly drawn across it. She had gone full of the hopeful excitement of this surprise which was to please everybody.

Noel himself had looked round from the decorations to his wife with an uneasy suspicion, and with that look came her first misgiving.

Then followed those movements in the congregation; those glances of sullen disapproval and open indignation which she could not mistake. Poor Gertrude shrank back further than usual into her corner; but the worst was to come. Mrs. Haye had not yet arrived.

Never, so long as she lives, will Gertrude Rashleigh forget the first tap of those high heeled boots in the aisle, nor the painful beating of her own heart as they came nearer. Now that the thing was unalterable, she began to perceive faintly something of her own rashness and imprudence. What a time those boots were coming up with the strongminded, determined tap, tap on the pave