For awhile all went smoothly. I daresay the parishioners gossipped about
the absence of their vicar's wife from the Sacrament, and indeed I
remember the pain and trembling wherewith, on the first "Sacrament
Sunday" after my return, I rose from my seat and walked quietly from the
church, leaving the white-spread altar. That the vicar's wife should
"communicate" was as much a matter of course as that the vicar should
"administer"; I had never in my life taken public part in anything that
made me noticeable in any way among strangers, and still I can recall the
feeling of deadly sickness that well nigh overcame me, as rising to go
out I felt that every eye in the church was on me, and that my exit would
be the cause of unending comment. As a matter of fact, everyone thought
that I was taken suddenly ill, and many were the calls and enquiries on
the following day. To any direct question, I answered quietly that I was
unable to take part in the profession of faith required from an honest
communicant, but the statement was rarely necessary, for the idea of
heresy in a vicar's wife did not readily suggest itself to the ordinary
bucolic mind, and I did not proffer information when it was unasked for.

It happened that, shortly after that (to me) memorable Christmas of 1872,
a sharp epidemic of typhoid fever broke out in the village of Sibsey. The
drainage there was of the most primitive type, and the contagion spread
rapidly. Naturally fond of nursing, I found in this epidemic work just
fitted to my hand, and I was fortunate enough to be able to lend personal
help that made me welcome in the homes of the stricken poor. The mothers
who slept exhausted while I watched beside their darlings' bedsides will
never, I like to fancy, think over harshly of the heretic whose hand was
as tender and often more skilful than their own. I think Mother Nature
meant me for a nurse, for I take a sheer delight in nursing anyone,
provided only that there is peril in the sickness, so that there is the
strange and solemn feeling of the struggle between the human skill one