refusing to leave poor Arthur, till at last the squire gave up the pursuit
and went to foreign parts, where he waited thirty years, until he heard
Arthur was dead. And then he came back with a light heart to his first and
only love, who had never ceased to think of him, and lived with her happily
for ever afterwards. The grotesque mixture of prose and poetry, both
equally false, used to enchant Kate, and she always fancied that had she
been the heroine of the book she would have acted in the same way.

Kate's taste for novel-reading distressed Mrs. Howell; she thought it 'a
sinful waste of time, not to speak of the way it turned people's heads from
God'; and when one day she found Kate's scrap-book, made up of poems cut
from the _Family Herald_, she began to despair of her daughter's
salvation. The answer Kate made to her mother's reproaches was: 'Mother,
I've been sewing all day; I can't see what harm it can be to read a little
before I go to bed. Nobody is required to be always saying their prayers.'

The next two years passed away unperceived by either mother or daughter,
and then an event occurred of some importance. Their neighbours at the
corner of the street got into difficulties, and were eventually sold out
and their places taken by strangers, who changed the oil-shop into a
drapery business. The new arrivals aroused the keenest interest, and Mrs.
Howell and her daughter called to see what they were like, as did everybody
else. The acquaintance thus formed was renewed at church, and much to their
surprise and pleasure, they discovered that they were of the same religious
persuasion.

Henceforth the Howells and Edes saw a great deal of each other, and every
Sunday after church the mothers walked home together and the young people
followed behind. Ralph spoke of his ill-health, and Kate pitied him, and
when he complimented her on her beautiful hair she blushed with pleasure.