- tion tempered by quiet dignity. They had done nothing
to deserve the unmerited Cross of Fortune—the Reverend Canon Fearon came in person to inform them of that. Their lives were virtuous; their aspirations blameless; their good works manifest. But the ways of Providence were inscrutable—cream, please, but no sugar, thank you—why the blow should have fallen upon them of all people—a little brown bread and butter—was one more familiar instance of the things that passed all understanding.
Consolation for the spirit, you see, was at the service of Mother. Father received that form of sustenance also—at the Helicon, that temple of light.
"My dear Shelmerdine," said Ch: Bungay, the friend of his youth, "it is good to know that the blow is sustained with the accustomed resignation of a true Christian."
It was by no means clear, however, that in Mount Street the Christian Ticket was sweeping the polls at this period. The resignation of Pa, in the opinion of rumor, was a little less pronounced than that of his neighbors. The butler gave notice the same afternoon. On the following morning her ladyship's maid declined to stay to have her head bitten off, and went to the length of saying so. Even the Reverend Canon Fearon was constrained to think that an Irish peerage was hardly the same as the home-made article.
