46 THE TWO APPRENTICES.

verse and sullen, and not wishing to excite an
antagonist spirit, which they fancied they saw in
him, they sat silent, and mourned to themselves.

He, on his part, sat between them, dispirited and
out of humour. This was the end, then, of all his
good resolutions: nobody would give him credit for
meaning to do right—that was always the way.
His aunts, after all, were as unjust as anybody else.
All his good resolutions seemed folly and nonsense ;
he despised himself for them, and said, in. his own
heart, that it was no use trying to be good. The
dark phantoms which he had called up from the
. past, and made to pass before him, seemed to have
possession of him, and he remembered mournfully
the chapter which, the evening before, he had read
in his new Bible to his Aunt Dorothy, of him who
took seven other spirits unto him worse than him-
self, and the last state of that man was worse than
the first. :

So ended their Love Feast. But it was a real
Love Feast for all that. It was only as if the love-
cake had been a little burned in the baking—human
endeavours are so seldom perfect.

But now, for six months after this time. Mr.
Isaacs went to church every Sunday evening; and,
as the Osbornes’ pew adjoined that of the Miss
Kendricks, and they regularly attended church
twice in the day, which Mrs. Osborne did not,
because her husband only went in the morning, he
mostly walked home with them; and when there
was no moon, and the streets.therefore as good as
dark—for the scanty oil lamps were not worth
speaking of—he offered an arm to each sister, which
had given rise, in the minds of the two most noto-