is always talking like that now," Muriel confided sadly to her cousin as they went downstairs together.
"Mother thinks he simply does it because he thinks it sounds clever, but she doesn't know half the things he says. James and mother don't get on, you know, Zella; though she says that when he is a little older he will understand what a mother's love really means—and of course he will. But it is a great pity, and does spoil things so."
"I don't see why it need spoil things for you," said Zella unsympathetically. She despised Muriel, and thought her point of view very childish and imitative.
"Of course it does. Look what a happy day Sunday ought to be, all going to church together like this, and yet it won't be a bit if James is tiresome."
Walking down the drive, Zella wondered why going to church together should be imbued with any special happiness. Her Uncle Henry looked rather more depressed than usual in his top-hat and black coat, and walked ahead with a now monosyllabic James; and Muriel, whose black Sunday boots were hurting her, lagged a few steps behind them.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, bearing a muff and a large Prayer Book bound in ivory, with a gilt clasp, struggled to keep her black skirts out of the mud, and told Zella to look where she was going to and not splash the puddles.
"Let me take your book, Aunt Marianne," said Zella obligingly.
"Where is your own, dear?"
Zella's ready flush sprang to her sensitive face. She did not possess a Prayer-Book.
In a flash she saw how shocking such an admission would sound. A Christian child, fourteen years of age, without a Prayer-Book, implying a past of churchless Sundays. . . . What would not be Aunt Marianne's horror at the revelation!
"Oh," she hesitated confusedly, "I—I must have forgotten it. How stupid of me!"
"Run back and fetch it at once, then," was the obvious rejoinder. Zella, who had not foreseen it, stood rooted to the spot.
"I—I don't always use one, and I don't suppose I shall need it," she stammered, scarlet and disconcerted.
"Not need your Prayer-Book in church!" said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, in scandalized accents. "Nonsense, my dear child! Run back for it at once; and be quick, or we shall be late."
Flight seemed so much easier than anything else that the unhappy Zella turned and hurried up the drive again without further words.
"Idiot that I am !" she thought to herself furiously. "What shall I do now? How can I find a Prayer-Book?"
She ran into the house and into her own room, and stood there with an impotent feeling of anger, and a despairing sense of being at once deceitful and inadequate to deceive.
The importance of producing a Prayer-Book began to assume monstrous proportions, and every second that flew by was keeping Aunt Marianne waiting.
"Perhaps Muriel has another one, and I can take it and tell Aunt Marianne I couldn't find mine."
She dashed into her cousin's room, and looked at the very small shelf where stood the slender stock of Muriel's literary possessions.
Nothing. A large Children's Bible with illustrations was the nearest approach to a work of devotion, and even in such an extremity was not to be regarded in the light of a possible companion for church.
Zella, in despair, wondered for an insane moment whether she could pretend sudden illness and declare herself unable to leave the house at all, but even as the idea crossed her mind she rejected it.
Rushing aimlessly back into her own room, she was horrified to see from the window her Aunt Marianne hastening up the drive towards the house.
Zella flew down the stairs and out at the door.
As she reached Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who had relievedly turned back at the sight of her, Zella thrust both empty hands into her muff.
"I'm so sorry," she gasped breathlessly; "I've been ages."
"We shall be late," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, hurrying rapidly down the drive. "I particularly started early, as it is your first Sunday here, and I ani not at all anxious to walk into church in deep mourning with everybody looking on. It was very careless of you, Zella, and irreverent too, dear, though I dare say you didn't quite realize that."
"No," said Zella faintly, with a growing hope that she might yet escape any further reference to the absent Prayer-Book.
"You see," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, speaking almost in snatches as she hastened along the muddy road, " to be late for church is an irreverence, dear. I know that a great many people are very careless, and gentlemen especially don't always quite realize. Perhaps you've not been accustomed to thinking very much about these things, but one wouldn't care to arrive late at the house of a friend, would one? So how much worse—take care of that puddle, dear—to be late at the house of God, which is what one may well call the church. You see what Aunt Marianne means, don't you?"
"Yes."
"We will say no more about it, dear, only let it make you more thoughtful."
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans paused a moment, both to regain breath and to let the necessity for thoughtfulness sink in, before modulating the conversation into a lighter key.
"Couldn't you find the Prayer-Book, that you were so long fetching it? I always think that things seem to lose themselves when one is in a hurry."
Conscious of the emptiness of the hands within her muff, Zella said, with an inspiration born of despair:
"Aunt Marianne, I—I am afraid I've not got it, after all. I simply couldn't find it anywhere."
"Couldn't find your Prayer-Book?"
"No."
"When did you last use it ?" said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, suddenly suspicious.
"I can't remember," said Zella, with a sense of being trapped.. Her confusion was patent and she was on the verge of tears.
"Did you use it last Sunday?"
"No; don't you remember I didn't go to church?" said Zella, relieved at having found what she supposed to be so unanswerable a reply. But her relief was short-lived.
"I should have thought," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans in a low tone of condemnation that made Zella feel acutely shamed—" I should have thought one would want to follow the service quietly at home, when one was kept from church for such a reason as yours, Zella."
Zella struggled with herself not to burst into tears.
As they neared the church, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans said rapidly:
Aunt Marianne knows what it is, dear. You forgot to bring your Prayer-Book from Villetswood, and were ashamed to say so; so you have been all these days without it, hoping that no one would find it out. It was very naughty and artful indeed, and it must have been God who arranged that Aunt Marianne should find out all about it. Go straight into church, dear—the second pew on the left hand side at the top. Aunt Marianne is not at all pleased with you."
Zella, who had previously thought with some self-complacency of her first entry into church,
