"Consolation!" cried Cicely, raising her head. "What consolation is wanted? Papa is pretty well worn out; he has done almost as much work as a man can do. People cannot keep old things when they are worn out--the new are better; but why should any one pretend to make a moan over it? I do not see what consolation the parish can want. If you cry at the farewell sermon, Mrs. Ascott, I shall laugh. Why should not your eyes be dry--as dry as the fields--as dry as people's hearts?"
"Cicely, Cicely!" cried Mrs. Ascott, shocked; "my dear, I am very sorry for it, but a misfortune like this should be borne in a better spirit. I am sure your poor dear papa would say so; and it is nobody's fault."
"It is everybody's fault," cried Cicely, forgetting herself, getting up in her passion, and walking about the room; "the parish, and the Church, and all the world! Oh, you may smile! It does not touch you; you are well off; you cannot be put out of your home; you cannot have everything taken from you, and see everybody smiling pity upon you, and no one putting out a hand to help. Pity! we don't want pity," cried Cicely; "we want justice. How dare you all stand by and see it done? The Church, the Church! that everybody preaches about as if it was God, and yet that lets an old servant be so treated--an old servant that has worked so hard, never sparing himself! If this is the Church's doing, the Church is harder than the farmers--worse, worse than worldly people. Do you think God will be pleased because he is well connected? or is it God's fault?" Here her voice broke with a sob and shudder, and suddenly dropping from her height of passion, Cicely said faintly, "Papa!"
"What is it?" said the curate, coming in. "Surely I heard something very strange. Mrs. Ascott, I beg your pardon; my ears must have deceived me. I thought Cicely must be repeating, to amuse herself, some speech, perhaps out of _Paradise Lost_. I have heard of some great man who was caught doing that, and frightened everybody who heard him," said Mr. St. John, shaking hands with the visitor with his friendly smile.
He sat down, weary and dusty from "the parish," and there was a painful pause. Cicely stole away to the corner where her little brothers were playing, her pulse bounding, her heart throbbing, her cheeks aflame, her whole being, soul and body, full of the strong pain and violent stimulus of the shock she had received. She had never expected anything else, she said to herself; she had steadily prepared for the going away, the ruin that awaited them; but, nevertheless, her heart had never believed in it, since that conversation with Mildmay at the rectory gate. Day by day she had awoke with a certainty in her mind, never put into words, that the good news would come, that all would be well. But the shock did not crush her, as it does some people; it woke her up into freshened force and life; her heart seemed to thrill and throb, not so much with pain as with activity, and energy and power.