sole assertion of liberty the working out of a tough double equation
in Colenso, which actually came right, and put her in such good
humour that she was no longer afraid of drumming the poor piano to
death and Aunt Ada upstairs to distraction, but ventured on learning
one of the Lieder ohne Worte; and when her Aunt Ada came down and
complimented her on the sounds that had ascended, she was complacent
enough to write a very cheerful letter, whilst her aunt was busied
with her own. She described the Sunday-school question that had
arisen, and felt sure that her father would pronounce his Gill to be
a sensible young woman. Afterwards Miss Adeline betook herself to a
beautiful lily of church embroidery, observing, as Gillian sat down
to read to her Alphonse Karr's Voyage autour de mon Jardin, that it
was a real pleasure to listen to such prettily-pronounced French.
Kunz lay at her feet, the Sofy nestled in Gillian's lap, and there
was a general sense of being rubbed down the right way.

By and by there loomed through the rain two dripping shiny forms
under umbrellas strongly inclined to fly away from them---Miss Mohun
and Mr. Grant, the junior curate, whom she had brought home to
luncheon. Both were full of the irregularities of the two churches
of Bellevue and St. Kenelm's on the recent harvest-thanksgiving
Sunday. It was hard to tell which was most reprobated, what St.
Kenelm's did or what Bellevue did not do. If the one blew trumpets
in procession, the other collected the offertory in a warming-pan.
Gillian had already begun to find that these misdoings supplied much
conversation at Beechcroft Cottage, and began to get half weary, half
curious to judge for herself of all these enormities; nor did she
feel more interested in the discussion of who had missed church or
school, and who needed tickets for meat, or to be stirred up to pay
for their coal club.