Yonge barely describes the Consecration ceremony since 'such thoughts and scenes are too high to be more than touched on in a story of this kind' Instead she conveys the feelings and comments on the spiritual and emotional development of a group of young people drawn together by the sacred event, whose excitements 'only those who have shared in the joys of church building can know'. Elizabeth (Lizzie) Woodbourne, still 'under seventeen', and her younger sisters, worldly Katherine and sententious Helen, are the daughters of the Vicar and his saintly, but now defunct, first wife. Four younger children, mainly represented by Dora, an extremely clear-sighted seven year old, have been born to the second Mrs. Woodbourne: the gentle, inoffensive and generally useless Mildred, Visitors to the Vicarage include family relative Lady Merton, paragon and moral arbiter of the novel, and her children Anne and Rupert Merton.