to her eyes or a laugh to her lips was the food her mind lived upon. Ann
Holland was almost as general a favorite as the rector himself.

It was some months after David Chantrey had gone to Madeira that Ann
Holland was lingering late one evening over her door, watching the
little street subside into the quietness of night. The wife of one of
her best customers was passing by, and stopped to speak to her.

"Have you happened to hear any talk of Mrs. Chantrey?" she asked. Her
voice fell into a low and mysterious tone, and she glanced up and down
the street lest any one should chance to be within hearing. Ann Holland
quickly guessed there was something important to be told, and she opened
the half door to her neighbor.

"Come in, Mrs. Brown," she said; "Richard's not at home yet."

She led the way into the room behind the shop, as pleasant a place as
any in all Upton, except for the scent of the leather, which she had
grown so used to that its absence would have seemed a loss. It was a
kitchen spotlessly clean, with an old-fashioned polished dresser and
shelves above it filled with pewter plates and dishes, upon which every
gleam of firelight twinkled. A tall mahogany clock, with its head
against the ceiling, and the round, good-humored face of a full moon
beaming above its dial-plate, stood in one corner; while in the opposite
one there was a corner cupboard with glass doors, filled with antique
china cups and tea-pots, and a Chinese mandarin that never ceased to
roll its head to and fro helplessly. Bean-pots of flowers, as Ann
Holland called them, covered the broad window-sill; and a screen,
adorned with fragments of old ballads, and with newspaper announcements
of births, deaths, and marriages among Upton people, was drawn across