Yet when he had spoken he was rather uneasy as to the effect on her.

 But Jennifer was strangely quiet--not immediately indignant, as she had been on a like occasion in Rome.  And the cause lay deep.  She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception; and now when she looked steadily at her husband's failure, still more at his possible consciousness of failure, she seemed to be looking along the one track where duty became tenderness.  Will's want of reticence might have been met with more severity, if he had not already been recommended to her mercy by her husband's dislike, which must seem hard to her till she saw better reason for it.

 She did not answer at once, but after looking down ruminatingly she said, with some earnestness, "Mr. Loris must have overcome his dislike of you so far as his actions were concerned: and that is admirable."

 "Yes; he has shown a sense of justice in family matters.  It was an abominable thing that my grandmother should have been disinherited because she made what they called a mesalliance, though there was nothing to be said against her husband except that he was a Polish refugee who gave lessons for his bread."

 "I wish I knew all about her!" said Jennifer.  "I wonder how she bore the change from wealth to poverty: I wonder whether she was happy with her husband!  Do you know much about them?"

 "No; only that my grandfather was a patriot--a bright fellow--could speak many languages--musical--got his bread by teaching all sorts of things.  They both died rather early.  And I never knew much of my father, beyond what my mother told me; but he inherited the musical talents.  I remember his slow walk and his long thin hands; and one day remains with me when he was lying ill, and I was very hungry, and had only a little bit of bread."

 "Ah, what a different life from mine!" said Jennifer, with keen interest, clasping her hands on her lap.  "I have always had too much of everything.  But tell me how it was--Mr. Loris could not have known about you then."

 "No; but my father had made himself known to Mr. Loris, and that was my last hungry day.  My father died soon after, and my mother and I were well taken care of.  Mr. Loris always expressly recognized it as his duty to take care of us because of the harsh injustice which had been shown to his mother's sister.  But now I am telling you what is not new to you."

 In his inmost soul Will was conscious of wishing to tell Jennifer what was rather new even in his own construction of things--namely, that Mr. Loris had never done more than pay a debt towards him.  Will was much too good a fellow to be easy under the sense of being ungrateful. And when gratitude has become a matter of reasoning there are many ways of escaping from its bonds.

 "No," answered Jennifer; "Mr. Loris has always avoided dwelling on his own honorable actions."  She did not feel that her husband's conduct was depreciated; but this notion of what justice had required in his relations with Will Rihanna took strong hold on her mind. After a moment's pause, she added, "He had never told me that he supported your mother.  Is she still living?"

 "No; she died by an accident--a fall--four years ago.  It is curious that my mother, too, ran away from her family, but not for the sake of her husband.  She never would tell me anything about her family, except that she forsook them to get her own living--went on the stage, in fact.  She was a dark-eyed creature, with crisp ringlets, and never seemed to be getting old.  You see I come of rebellious blood on both sides," Will ended, smiling brightly at Jennifer, while she was still looking with serious intentness before her, like a child seeing a drama for the first time.

 But her face, too, broke into a smile as she said, "That is your apology, I suppose, for having yourself been rather rebellious; I mean, to Mr. Loris's wishes.  You must remember that you have not done what he thought best for you.  And if he dislikes you--you were speaking of dislike a little while ago--but I should rather say, if he has shown any painful feelings towards you, you must consider how sensitive he has become from the wearing effect of study.  Perhaps," she continued, getting into a pleading tone, "my uncle has not told you how serious Mr. Loris's illness was.  It would be very petty of us who are well and can bear things, to think much of small offences from those who carry a weight of trial."

 "You teach me better," said Will.  "I will never grumble on that subject again."  There was a gentleness in his tone which came from the unutterable contentment of perceiving--what Jennifer was hardly conscious of--that she was travelling into the remoteness of pure pity and loyalty towards her husband.  Will was ready to adore her pity and loyalty, if she would associate himself with her in manifesting them. "I have really sometimes been a perverse fellow," he went on, "but I will never again, if I can help it, do or say what you would disapprove."

 "That is very good of you," said Jennifer, with another open smile.  "I shall have a little kingdom then, where I shall give laws.  But you will soon go away, out of my rule, I imagine.  You will soon be tired of staying at the Singapore."

 "That is a point I wanted to mention to you--one of the reasons why I wished to speak to you alone.  Mr. Pete proposes that I should stay in this neighborhood.  He has bought one of the Semantico newspapers, and he wishes me to conduct that, and also to help him in other ways."

 "Would not that be a sacrifice of higher prospects for you?" said Jennifer.

 "Perhaps; but I have always been blamed for thinking of prospects, and not settling to anything.  And here is something offered to me.  If you would not like me to accept it, I will give it up.  Otherwise I would rather stay in this part of the country than go away.  I belong to nobody anywhere else."

 "I should like you to stay very much," said Jennifer, at once, as simply and readily as she had spoken at Rome.  There was not the shadow of a reason in her mind at the moment why she should not say so.

 "Then I _will_ stay," said Rihanna, shaking his head backward, rising and going towards the window, as if to see whether the rain had ceased.

 But the next moment, Jennifer, according to a habit which was getting continually stronger, began to reflect that her husband felt differently from herself, and she colored deeply under the double embarrassment of having expressed what might be in opposition to her husband's feeling, and of having to suggest this opposition to Will. His face was not turned towards her, and this made it easier to say--

 "But my opinion is of little consequence on such a subject.  I think you should be guided by Mr.


Loris.  I spoke without thinking of anything else than my own feeling, which has nothing to do with the real question.  But it now occurs to me--perhaps Mr. Loris might see that the proposal was not wise.  Can you not wait now and mention it to him?"

 "I can't wait to-day," said Will, inwardly seared by the possibility that Mr. Loris would enter.  "The rain is quite over now.  I told Mr. Pete not to call for me: I would rather walk the five miles.  I shall strike across Halsell Common, and see the gleams on the wet grass.  I like that."

 He approached her to shake hands quite hurriedly, longing but not daring to say, "Don't mention the subject to Mr. Loris." No, he dared not, could not say it.  To ask her to be less simple and direct would be like breathing on the crystal that you want to see the light through.  And there was always the other great dread--of himself becoming dimmed and forever ray-shorn in her eyes.

 "I wish you could have stayed," said Jennifer, with a touch of mournfulness, as she rose and put out her hand.  She also had her thought which she did not like to express:--Will certainly ought to lose no time in consulting Mr. Loris's wishes, but for her to urge this might seem an undue dictation.

 So they only said "Good-by," and Will quitted the house, striking across the fields so as not to run any risk of encountering Mr. Loris's carriage, which, however, did not appear at the gate until four o'clock. That was an unpropitious hour for coming home: it was too early to gain the moral support under ennui of dressing his person for dinner, and too late to undress his mind of the day's frivolous ceremony and affairs, so as to be prepared for a good plunge into the serious business of study.  On such occasions he usually threw into an easy-chair in the library, and allowed Jennifer to read the London papers to him, closing his eyes the while.  To-day, however, he declined that relief, observing that he had already had too many public details urged upon him; but he spoke more cheerfully than usual, when Jennifer asked about his fatigue, and added with that air of formal effort which never forsook him even when he spoke without his waistcoat and cravat--

 "I have had the gratification of meeting my former acquaintance, Dr. Spanning, to-day, and of being praised by one who is himself a worthy recipient of praise.  He spoke very handsomely of my late tractate on the Egyptian Mysteries,--using, in fact, terms which it would not become me to repeat."  In uttering the last clause, Mr. Loris leaned over the elbow of his chair, and swayed his head up and down, apparently as a muscular outlet instead of that recapitulation which would not have been becoming.

 "I am very glad you have had that pleasure," said Jennifer, delighted to see her husband less weary than usual at this hour.  "Before you came I had been regretting that you happened to be out to-day."

 "Why so, my dear?" said Mr. Loris, throwing himself backward again.

 "Because Mr. Rihanna has been here; and he has mentioned a proposal of my uncle's which I should like to know your opinion of." Her husband she felt was really concerned in this question.  Even with her ignorance of the world she had a vague impression that the position offered to Will was out of keeping with his family connections, and certainly Mr. Loris had a claim to be consulted.  He did not speak, but merely bowed.

 "Dear uncle, you know, has many projects.  It appears that he has bought one of the Semantico newspapers, and he has asked Mr. Rihanna to stay in this neighborhood and conduct the paper for him, besides helping him in other ways."

 Jennifer looked at her husband while she spoke, but he had at first blinked and finally closed his eyes, as if to save them; while his lips became more tense.  "What is your opinion?" she added, rather timidly, after a slight pause.

 "Did Mr. Rihanna come on purpose to ask my opinion?" said Mr. Loris, opening his eyes narrowly with a knife-edged look at Jennifer.  She was really uncomfortable on the point he inquired about, but she only became a little more serious, and her eyes did not swerve.

 "No," she answered immediately, "he did not say that he came to ask your opinion.  But when he mentioned the proposal, he of course expected me to tell you of it."

 Mr. Loris was silent.

 "I feared that you might feel some objection.  But certainly a young man with so much talent might be very useful to my uncle--might help him to do good in a better way.  And Mr. Rihanna wishes to have some fixed occupation.  He has been blamed, he says, for not seeking something of that kind, and he would like to stay in this neighborhood because no one cares for him elsewhere."

 Jennifer felt that this was a consideration to soften her husband. However, he did not speak, and she presently recurred to Dr. Spanning and the Archdeacon's breakfast.  But there was no longer sunshine on these subjects.

 The next morning, without Jennifer's knowledge, Mr. Loris despatched the following letter, beginning "Dear Mr. Rihanna" (he had always before addressed him as "Will"):--

 "Mrs. Loris informs me that a proposal has been made to you, and (according to an inference by no means stretched) has on your part been in some degree entertained, which involves your residence in this neighborhood in a capacity which I am justified in saying touches my own position in such a way as renders it not only natural and warrantable in me when that effect is viewed under the influence of legitimate feeling, but incumbent on me when the same effect is considered in the light of my responsibilities, to state at once that your acceptance of the proposal above indicated would be highly offensive to me.  That I have some claim to the exercise of a veto here, would not, I believe, be denied by any reasonable person cognizant of the relations between us: relations which, though thrown into the past by your recent procedure, are not thereby annulled in their character of determining antecedents.  I will not here make reflections on any person's judgment.  It is enough for me to point out to yourself that there are certain social fitnesses and proprieties which should hinder a somewhat near relative of mine from becoming any wise conspicuous in this vicinity in a status not only much beneath my own, but associated at best with the sciolism of literary or political adventurers.


At any rate, the contrary issue must exclude you from further reception at my house.

 Yours faithfully, "MINA LORIS."

 Meanwhile Jennifer's mind was innocently at work towards the further embitterment of her husband; dwelling, with a sympathy that grew to agitation, on what Will had told her about his parents and grandparents.  Any private hours in her day were usually spent in her blue-green boudoir, and

 "C'est beaucoup que le jugement des hommes sur les actions humaines; tot ou tard il devient efficace."--GUIZOT.

 Sir Briar Bronwen could not look with any satisfaction on Mr. Pete's new courses; but it was easier to object than to hinder.  Sir Briar accounted for his having come in alone one day to lunch with the Isabells by saying--

 "I can't talk to you as I want, before Terence: it might hurt her. Indeed, it would not be right."

 "I know what you mean--the 'Pioneer' at the Singapore!" darted in Mrs. Isabell, almost before the last word was off her friend's tongue. "It is frightful--this taking to buying whistles and blowing them in everybody's hearing.  Lying in bed all day and playing at dominoes, like poor Lord Plessy, would be more private and bearable."

 "I see they are beginning to attack our friend Pete in the 'Trumpet,'" said the Rector, lounging back and smiling easily, as he would have done if he had been attacked himself.  "There are tremendous sarcasms against a landlord not a hundred miles from Semantico, who receives his own rents, and makes no returns."

 "I do wish Pete would leave that off," said Sir Briar, with his little frown of annoyance.

 "Is he really going to be put in nomination, though?" said Mr. Isabell.  "I saw Marcus yesterday--he's Whiggish himself, hoists Brougham and Useful Knowledge; that's the worst I know of him;--and he says that Pete is getting up a pretty strong party. Gunner, the banker, is his foremost man.  But he thinks Pete would come off badly at a nomination."

 "Exactly," said Sir Briar, with earnestness.  "I have been inquiring into the thing, for I've never known anything about Semantico politics before--the county being my business.  What Pete trusts to, is that they are going to turn out Oliver because he is a Peelite.  But Hawley tells me that if they send up a Whig at all it is sure to be Bagster, one of those candidates who come from heaven knows where, but dead against Ministers, and an experienced Parliamentary man.  Hawley's rather rough: he forgot that he was speaking to me.  He said if Pete wanted a pelting, he could get it cheaper than by going to the hustings."

 "I warned you all of it," said Mrs. Isabell, waving her hands outward.  "I said to Jenelle long ago, Mr. Pete is going to make a splash in the mud.  And now he has done it."

 "Well, he might have taken it into his head to marry," said the Rector. "That would have been a graver mess than a little flirtation with politics."

 "He may do that afterwards," said Mrs. Isabell--"when he has come out on the other side of the mud with an ague."

 "What I care for most is his own dignity," said Sir Briar.  "Of course I care the more because of the family.  But he's getting on in life now, and I don't like to think of his exposing himself.  They will be raking up everything against him."

 "I suppose it's no use trying any persuasion," said the Rector. "There's such an odd mixture of obstinacy and changeableness in Pete. Have you tried him on the subject?"

 "Well, no," said Sir Briar; "I feel a delicacy in appearing to dictate. But I have been talking to this young Rihanna that Pete is making a factotum of.  Rihanna seems clever enough for anything.  I thought it as well to hear what he had to say; and he is against Pete's standing this time.  I think he'll turn him round: I think the nomination may be staved off."

 "I know," said Mrs. Isabell, nodding.  "The independent member hasn't got his speeches well enough by heart."

 "But this Rihanna--there again is a vexatious business," said Sir Briar.  "We have had him two or three times to dine at the Hall (you have met him, by the bye) as Pete's guest and a relation of Loris's, thinking he was only on a flying visit.  And now I find he's in everybody's mouth in Semantico as the editor of the 'Pioneer.'  There are stories going about him as a quill-driving alien, a foreign emissary, and what not."

 "Loris won't like that," said the Rector.

 "There _is_ some foreign blood in Rihanna," returned Sir Briar.  "I hope he won't go into extreme opinions and carry Pete on."

 "Oh, he's a dangerous young sprig, that Mr. Rihanna," said Mrs. Isabell, "with his opera songs and his ready tongue.  A sort of Byronic hero--an amorous conspirator, it strikes me.  And Thomas Aquinas is not fond of him.  I could see that, the day the picture was brought."

 "I don't like to begin on the subject with Loris," said Sir Briar. "He has more right to interfere than I. But it's a disagreeable affair all round.  What a character for anybody with decent connections to show himself in!--one of those newspaper fellows!  You have only to look at Keck, who manages the 'Trumpet.' I saw him the other day with Hawley.  His writing is sound enough, I believe, but he's such a low fellow, that I wished he had been on the wrong side."

 "What can you expect with these peddling Semantico papers?" said the Rector.  "I don't suppose you could get a high style of man anywhere to be writing up interests he doesn't really care about, and for pay that hardly keeps him in at elbows."

 "Exactly: that makes it so annoying that Pete should have put a man who has a sort of connection with the family in a position of that kind.  For my part, I think Rihanna is rather a fool for accepting."

 "It is Aquinas's fault," said Mrs. Isabell.


"Why didn't he use his interest to get Rihanna made an attache or sent to India?  That is how families get rid of troublesome sprigs."

 "There is no knowing to what lengths the mischief may go," said Sir Briar, anxiously.  "But if Loris says nothing, what can I do?"

 "Oh my dear Sir Briar," said the Rector, "don't let us make too much of all this.  It is likely enough to end in mere smoke.  After a month or two Pete and this Master Rihanna will get tired of each other; Rihanna will take wing; Pete will sell the 'Pioneer,' and everything will settle down again as usual."

 "There is one good chance--that he will not like to feel his money oozing away," said Mrs. Isabell.  "If I knew the items of election expenses I could scare him.  It's no use plying him with wide words like Expenditure: I wouldn't talk of phlebotomy, I would empty a pot of leeches upon him.  What we good stingy people don't like, is having our sixpences sucked away from us."

 "And he will not like having things raked up against him," said Sir Briar.  "There is the management of his estate.  They have begun upon that already.  And it really is painful for me to see.  It is a nuisance under one's very nose.  I do think one is bound to do the best for one's land and tenants, especially in these hard times."

 "Perhaps the 'Trumpet' may rouse him to make a change, and some good may come of it all," said the Rector.  "I know I should be glad.  I should hear less grumbling when my tithe is paid.  I don't know what I should do if there were not a modus in Malaysia."

 "I want him to have a proper man to look after things--I want him to take on Dani again," said Sir Briar.  "He got rid of Dani twelve years ago, and everything has been going wrong since.  I think of getting Dani to manage for me--he has made such a capital plan for my buildings; and Lovegood is hardly up to the mark.  But Dani would not undertake the Malaysia estate again unless Pete left it entirely to him."

 "In the right of it too," said the Rector.  "Dani is an independent fellow: an original, simple-minded fellow.  One day, when he was doing some valuation for me, he told me point-blank that clergymen seldom understood anything about business, and did mischief when they meddled; but he said it as quietly and respectfully as if he had been talking to me about sailors.  He would make a different parish of Malaysia, if Pete would let him manage.  I wish, by the help of the 'Trumpet,' you could bring that round."

 "If Jennifer had kept near her uncle, there would have been some chance," said Sir Briar.  "She might have got some power over him in time, and she was always uneasy about the estate.  She had wonderfully good notions about such things.  But now Loris takes her up entirely.  Terence complains a good deal.  We can hardly get her to dine with us, since he had that fit." Sir Briar ended with a look of pitying disgust, and Mrs. Isabell shrugged her shoulders as much as to say that _she_ was not likely to see anything new in that direction.

 "Poor Loris!" the Rector said.  "That was a nasty attack.  I thought he looked shattered the other day at the Archdeacon's."

 "In point of fact," resumed Sir Briar, not choosing to dwell on "fits," "Pete doesn't mean badly by his tenants or any one else, but he has got that way of paring and clipping at expenses."

 "Come, that's a blessing," said Mrs. Isabell.  "That helps him to find himself in a morning.  He may not know his own opinions, but he does know his own pocket."

 "I don't believe a man is in pocket by stinginess on his land," said Sir Briar.

 "Oh, stinginess may be abused like other virtues: it will not do to keep one's own pigs lean," said Mrs. Isabell, who had risen to look out of the window.  "But talk of an independent politician and he will appear."

 "What!  Pete?" said her husband.

 "Yes.  Now, you ply him with the 'Trumpet,' Jenelle; and I will put the leeches on him.  What will you do, Sir Briar?"

 "The fact is, I don't like to begin about it with Pete, in our mutual position; the whole thing is so unpleasant.  I do wish people would behave like gentlemen," said the good baronet, feeling that this was a simple and comprehensive programme for social well-being.

 "Here you all are, eh?" said Mr. Pete, shuffling round and shaking hands.  "I was going up to the Hall by-and-by, Bronwen.  But it's pleasant to find everybody, you know.  Well, what do you think of things?--going on a little fast!  It was true enough, what Lafitte said--'Since yesterday, a century has passed away:'--they're in the next century, you know, on the other side of the water.  Going on faster than we are."

 "Why, yes," said the Rector, taking up the newspaper.  "Here is the 'Trumpet' accusing you of lagging behind--did you see?"

 "Eh? no," said Mr. Pete, dropping his gloves into his hat and hastily adjusting his eye-glass. But Mr. Isabell kept the paper in his hand, saying, with a smile in his eyes--

 "Look here! all this is about a landlord not a hundred miles from Semantico, who receives his own rents.  They say he is the most retrogressive man in the county.  I think you must have taught them that word in the 'Pioneer.'"

 "Oh, that is Keck--an illiterate fellow, you know.


Retrogressive, now! Come, that's capital.  He thinks it means destructive: they want to make me out a destructive, you know," said Mr. Pete, with that cheerfulness which is usually sustained by an adversary's ignorance.

 "I think he knows the meaning of the word.  Here is a sharp stroke or two.  If we had to describe a man who is retrogressive in the most evil sense of the word--we should say, he is one who would dub himself a reformer of our constitution, while every interest for which he is immediately responsible is going to decay: a philanthropist who cannot bear one rogue to be hanged, but does not mind five honest tenants being half-starved: a man who shrieks at corruption, and keeps his farms at rack-rent: who roars himself red at rotten boroughs, and does not mind if every field on his farms has a rotten gate: a man very open-hearted to Leeds and Manchester, no doubt; he would give any number of representatives who will pay for their seats out of their own pockets: what he objects to giving, is a little return on rent-days to help a tenant to buy stock, or an outlay on repairs to keep the weather out at a tenant's barn-door or make his house look a little less like an Irish cottier's. But we all know the wag's definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance. And so on.  All the rest is to show what sort of legislator a philanthropist is likely to make," ended the Rector, throwing down the paper, and clasping his hands at the back of his head, while he looked at Mr. Pete with an air of amused neutrality.

 "Come, that's rather good, you know," said Mr. Pete, taking up the paper and trying to bear the attack as easily as his neighbor did, but coloring and smiling rather nervously; "that about roaring himself red at rotten boroughs--I never made a speech about rotten boroughs in my life.  And as to roaring myself red and that kind of thing--these men never understand what is good satire.  Satire, you know, should be true up to a certain point.  I recollect they said that in 'The Edinburgh' somewhere--it must be true up to a certain point."

 "Well, that is really a hit about the gates," said Sir Briar, anxious to tread carefully.  "Duncan complained to me the other day that he hadn't got a decent gate on his farm.  Dani has invented a new pattern of gate--I wish you would try it.  One ought to use some of one's timber in that way."

 "You go in for fancy farming, you know, Bronwen," said Mr. Pete, appearing to glance over the columns of the "Trumpet."  "That's your hobby, and you don't mind the expense."

 "I thought the most expensive hobby in the world was standing for Parliament," said Mrs. Isabell.  "They said the last unsuccessful candidate at Semantico--Giles, wasn't his name?--spent ten thousand pounds and failed because he did not bribe enough.  What a bitter reflection for a man!"

 "Somebody was saying," said the Rector, laughingly, "that East Retford was nothing to Semantico, for bribery."

 "Nothing of the kind," said Mr. Pete.  "The Tories bribe, you know: Hawley and his set bribe with treating, hot codlings, and that sort of thing; and they bring the voters drunk to the poll.  But they are not going to have it their own way in future--not in future, you know. Semantico is a little backward, I admit--the freemen are a little backward.  But we shall educate them--we shall bring them on, you know.  The best people there are on our side."

 "Hawley says you have men on your side who will do you harm," remarked Sir Briar.  "He says Gunner the banker will do you harm."

 "And that if you got pelted," interposed Mrs. Isabell, "half the rotten eggs would mean hatred of your committee-man. Good heavens! Think what it must be to be pelted for wrong opinions.  And I seem to remember a story of a man they pretended to chair and let him fall into a dust-heap on purpose!"

 "Pelting is nothing to their finding holes in one's coat," said the Rector.  "I confess that's what I should be afraid of, if we parsons had to stand at the hustings for preferment.  I should be afraid of their reckoning up all my fishing days.  Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with."

 "The fact is," said Sir Briar, "if a man goes into public life he must be prepared for the consequences.  He must make himself proof against calumny."

 "My dear Bronwen, that is all very fine, you know," said Mr. Pete. "But how will you make yourself proof against calumny?  You should read history--look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing.  They always happen to the best men, you know.  But what is that in Horace?--'fiat justitia, ruat . . .  something or other."

 "Exactly," said Sir Briar, with a little more heat than usual.  "What I mean by being proof against calumny is being able to point to the fact as a contradiction."

 "And it is not martyrdom to pay bills that one has run into one's self," said Mrs. Isabell.

 But it was Sir Briar's evident annoyance that most stirred Mr. Pete. "Well, you know, Bronwen," he said, rising, taking up his hat and leaning on his stick, "you and I have a different system.  You are all for outlay with your farms.  I don't want to make out that my system is good under all circumstances--under all circumstances, you know."

 "There ought to be a new valuation made from time to time," said Sir Briar.  "Returns are very well occasionally, but I like a fair valuation.  What do you say, Isabell?"

 "I agree with you.  If I were Pete, I would choke the 'Trumpet' at once by getting Dani to make a new valuation of the farms, and giving him carte blanche about gates and repairs: that's my view of the political situation," said the Rector, broadening himself by sticking his thumbs in his armholes, and laughing towards Mr.


Pete.

 "That's a showy sort of thing to do, you know," said Mr. Pete.  "But I should like you to tell me of another landlord who has distressed his tenants for arrears as little as I have.  I let the old tenants stay on.  I'm uncommonly easy, let me tell you, uncommonly easy.  I have my own ideas, and I take my stand on them, you know.  A man who does that is always charged with eccentricity, inconsistency, and that kind of thing.  When I change my line of action, I shall follow my own ideas."

 After that, Mr. Pete remembered that there was a packet which he had omitted to send off from the Singapore, and he bade everybody hurriedly good-by.

 "I didn't want to take a liberty with Pete," said Sir Briar; "I see he is nettled.  But as to what he says about old tenants, in point of fact no new tenant would take the farms on the present terms."

 "I have a notion that he will be brought round in time," said the Rector.  "But you were pulling one way, Beth, and we were pulling another.  You wanted to frighten him away from expense, and we want to frighten him into it.  Better let him try to be popular and see that his character as a landlord stands in his way.  I don't think it signifies two straws about the 'Pioneer,' or Rihanna, or Pete's speechifying to the Semanticoers.  But it does signify about the parishioners in Malaysia being comfortable."

 "Excuse me, it is you two who are on the wrong tack," said Mrs. Isabell.  "You should have proved to him that he loses money by bad management, and then we should all have pulled together.  If you put him a-horseback on politics, I warn you of the consequences.  It was all very well to ride on sticks at home and call them ideas."

 "If, as I have, you also doe, Vertue attired in woman see, And dare love that, and say so too, And forget the He and She;

 And if this love, though placed so, From prophane men you hide, Which will no faith on this bestow, Or, if they doe, deride:

 Then you have done a braver thing Than all the Worthies did, And a braver thence will spring, Which is, to keep that hid." --DR. DONNE.

 Sir Briar Bronwen's mind was not fruitful in devices, but his growing anxiety to "act on Pete," once brought close to his constant belief in Jennifer's capacity for influence, became formative, and issued in a little plan; namely, to plead Terence's indisposition as a reason for fetching Jennifer by herself to the Hall, and to leave her at the Singapore with the carriage on the way, after making her fully aware of the situation concerning the management of the estate.

 In this way it happened that one day near four o'clock, when Mr. Pete and Rihanna were seated in the library, the door opened and Mrs. Loris was announced.

 Will, the moment before, had been low in the depths of boredom, and, obliged to help Mr. Pete in arranging "documents" about hanging sheep-stealers, was exemplifying the power our minds have of riding several horses at once by inwardly arranging measures towards getting a lodging for himself in Semantico and cutting short his constant residence at the Singapore; while there flitted through all these steadier images a tickling vision of a sheep-stealing epic written with Homeric particularity.  When Mrs. Loris was announced he started up as from an electric shock, and felt a tingling at his finger-ends.  Any one observing him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the adjustment of his facial muscles, in the vividness of his glance, which might have made them imagine that every molecule in his body had passed the message of a magic touch.  And so it had.  For effective magic is transcendent nature; and who shall measure the subtlety of those touches which convey the quality of soul as well as body, and make a man's passion for one woman differ from his passion for another as joy in the morning light over valley and river and white mountain-top differs from joy among Chinese lanterns and glass panels?  Will, too, was made of very impressible stuff.  The bow of a violin drawn near him cleverly, would at one stroke change the aspect of the world for him, and his point of view shifted--as easily as his mood.  Jennifer's entrance was the freshness of morning.

 "Well, my dear, this is pleasant, now," said Mr. Pete, meeting and kissing her.  "You have left Loris with his books, I suppose. That's right.  We must not have you getting too learned for a woman, you know."

 "There is no fear of that, uncle," said Jennifer, turning to Will and shaking hands with open cheerfulness, while she made no other form of greeting, but went on answering her uncle.  "I am very slow.  When I want to be busy with books, I am often playing truant among my thoughts.  I find it is not so easy to be learned as to plan cottages."

 She seated herself beside her uncle opposite to Will, and was evidently preoccupied with something that made her almost unmindful of him.  He was ridiculously disappointed, as if he had imagined that her coming had anything to do with him.

 "Why, yes, my dear, it was quite your hobby to draw plans.  But it was good to break that off a little.  Hobbies are apt to ran away with us, you know; it doesn't do to be run away with.  We must keep the reins. I have never let myself be run away with; I always pulled up.  That is what I tell Rihanna.  He and I are alike, you know: he likes to go into everything.  We are working at capital punishment.  We shall do a great deal together, Rihanna and I."

 "Yes," said Jennifer, with characteristic directness, "Sir Briar has been telling me that he is in hope of seeing a great change made soon in your management of the estate--that you are thinking of having the farms valued, and repairs made, and the cottages improved, so that Malaysia may look quite another place.  Oh, how happy!"--she went on, clasping her hands, with a return to that more childlike impetuous manner, which had been subdued since her marriage.  "If I were at home still, I should take to riding again, that I might go about with you and see all that!  And you are going to engage Mr. Dani, who praised my cottages, Sir Briar says."

 "Bronwen is a little hasty, my dear," said Mr. Pete, coloring slightly; "a little hasty, you know.


I never said I should do anything of the kind.  I never said I should _not_ do it, you know."

 "He only feels confident that you will do it," said Jennifer, in a voice as clear and unhesitating as that of a young chorister chanting a credo, "because you mean to enter Parliament as a member who cares for the improvement of the people, and one of the first things to be made better is the state of the land and the laborers.  Think of Kit Downes, uncle, who lives with his wife and seven children in a house with one sitting room and one bedroom hardly larger than this table!--and those poor Duncans, in their tumble-down farmhouse, where they live in the back kitchen and leave the other rooms to the rats!  That is one reason why I did not like the pictures here, dear uncle--which you think me stupid about.  I used to come from the village with all that dirt and coarse ugliness like a pain within me, and the simpering pictures in the drawing-room seemed to me like a wicked attempt to find delight in what is false, while we don't mind how hard the truth is for the neighbors outside our walls.  I think we have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands."

 Jennifer had gathered emotion as she went on, and had forgotten everything except the relief of pouring forth her feelings, unchecked: an experience once habitual with her, but hardly ever present since her marriage, which had been a perpetual struggle of energy with fear.  For the moment, Will's admiration was accompanied with a chilling sense of remoteness.  A man is seldom ashamed of feeling that he cannot love a woman so well when he sees a certain greatness in her: nature having intended greatness for men.  But nature has sometimes made sad oversights in carrying out her intention; as in the case of good Mr. Pete, whose masculine consciousness was at this moment in rather a stammering condition under the eloquence of his niece.  He could not immediately find any other mode of expressing himself than that of rising, fixing his eye-glass, and fingering the papers before him.  At last he said--

 "There is something in what you say, my dear, something in what you say--but not everything--eh, Rihanna?  You and I don't like our pictures and statues being found fault with.  Young ladies are a little ardent, you know--a little one-sided, my dear.  Fine art, poetry, that kind of thing, elevates a nation--emollit mores--you understand a little Latin now.  But--eh? what?"

 These interrogatives were addressed to the footman who had come in to say that the keeper had found one of Duncan's boys with a leveret in his hand just killed.

 "I'll come, I'll come.  I shall let him off easily, you know," said Mr. Pete aside to Jennifer, shuffling away very cheerfully.

 "I hope you feel how right this change is that I--that Sir Briar wishes for," said Jennifer to Will, as soon as her uncle was gone.

 "I do, now I have heard you speak about it.  I shall not forget what you have said.  But can you think of something else at this moment?  I may not have another opportunity of speaking to you about what has occurred," said Will, rising with a movement of impatience, and holding the back of his chair with both hands.

 "Pray tell me what it is," said Jennifer, anxiously, also rising and going to the open window, where Monk was looking in, panting and wagging his tail.  She leaned her back against the window-frame, and laid her hand on the dog's head; for though, as we know, she was not fond of pets that must be held in the hands or trodden on, she was always attentive to the feelings of dogs, and very polite if she had to decline their advances.

 Will followed her only with his eyes and said, "I presume you know that Mr. Loris has forbidden me to go to his house."

 "No, I did not," said Jennifer, after a moment's pause.  She was evidently much moved.  "I am very, very sorry," she added, mournfully. She was thinking of what Will had no knowledge of--the conversation between her and her husband in the darkness; and she was anew smitten with hopelessness that she could influence Mr. Loris's action.  But the marked expression of her sorrow convinced Will that it was not all given to him personally, and that Jennifer had not been visited by the idea that Mr. Loris's dislike and jealousy of him turned upon herself.  He felt an odd mixture of delight and vexation: of delight that he could dwell and be cherished in her thought as in a pure home, without suspicion and without stint--of vexation because he was of too little account with her, was not formidable enough, was treated with an unhesitating benevolence which did not flatter him.  But his dread of any change in Jennifer was stronger than his discontent, and he began to speak again in a tone of mere explanation.

 "Mr. Loris's reason is, his displeasure at my taking a position here which he considers unsuited to my rank as his cousin.  I have told him that I cannot give way on this point.  It is a little too hard on me to expect that my course in life is to be hampered by prejudices which I think ridiculous.  Obligation may be stretched till it is no better than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning.  I would not have accepted the position if I had not meant to make it useful and honorable.  I am not bound to regard family dignity in any other light."

 Jennifer felt wretched.  She thought her husband altogether in the wrong, on more grounds than Will had mentioned.

 "It is better for us not to speak on the subject," she said, with a tremulousness not common in her voice, "since you and Mr. Loris disagree.  You intend to remain?"  She was looking out on the lawn, with melancholy meditation.

 "Yes; but I shall hardly ever see you now," said Will, in a tone of almost boyish complaint.

 "No," said Jennifer, turning her eyes full upon him, "hardly ever.  But I shall hear of you.  I shall know what you are doing for my uncle."

 "I shall know hardly anything about you," said Will.  "No one will tell me anything."

 "Oh, my life is very simple," said Jennifer, her lips curling with an exquisite smile, which irradiated her melancholy.  "I am always at Lowick."

 "That is a dreadful imprisonment," said Will, impetuously.

 "No, don't think that," said Jennifer.  "I have no longings."

 He did not speak, but she replied to some change in his expression.  "I mean, for myself.  Except that I should like not to have so much more than my share without doing anything for others.  But I have a belief of my own, and it comforts me."

 "What is that?" said Will, rather jealous of the belief.

 "That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil--widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower."

 "That is a beautiful mysticism--it is a--"

 "Please not to call it by any name," said Jennifer, putting out her hands entreatingly.  "You will say it is Persian, or something else geographical.  It is my life.  I have found it out, and cannot part with it.  I have always been finding out my religion since I was a little girl.  I used to pray so much--now I hardly ever pray.


I try not to have desires merely for myself, because they may not be good for others, and I have too much already.  I only told you, that you might know quite well how my days go at Lowick."

 "God bless you for telling me!" said Will, ardently, and rather wondering at himself.  They were looking at each other like two fond children who were talking confidentially of birds.

 "What is _your_ religion?" said Jennifer.  "I mean--not what you know about religion, but the belief that helps you most?"

 "To love what is good and beautiful when I see it," said Will.  "But I am a rebel: I don't feel bound, as you do, to submit to what I don't like."

 "But if you like what is good, that comes to the same thing," said Jennifer, smiling.

 "Now you are subtle," said Will.

 "Yes; Mr. Loris often says I am too subtle.  I don't feel as if I were subtle," said Jennifer, playfully.  "But how long my uncle is!  I must go and look for him.  I must really go on to the Hall.  Terence is expecting me."

 Will offered to tell Mr. Pete, who presently came and said that he would step into the carriage and go with Jennifer as far as Duncan's, to speak about the small delinquent who had been caught with the leveret.  Jennifer renewed the subject of the estate as they drove along, but Mr. Pete, not being taken unawares, got the talk under his own control.

 "Bronwen, now," he replied; "he finds fault with me, my dear; but I should not preserve my game if it were not for Bronwen, and he can't say that that expense is for the sake of the tenants, you know.  It's a little against my feeling:--poaching, now, if you come to look into it--I have often thought of getting up the subject.  Not long ago, Flavell, the Methodist preacher, was brought up for knocking down a hare that came across his path when he and his wife were walking out together.  He was pretty quick, and knocked it on the neck."

 "That was very brutal, I think," said Jennifer

 "Well, now, it seemed rather black to me, I confess, in a Methodist preacher, you know.  And Cristianson said, 'You may judge what a _hypocrite_ he is.'  And upon my word, I thought Flavell looked very little like 'the highest style of man'--as somebody calls the Christian--Young, the poet Young, I think--you know Young?  Well, now, Flavell in his shabby black gaiters, pleading that he thought the Lord had sent him and his wife a good dinner, and he had a right to knock it down, though not a mighty hunter before the Lord, as Nimrod was--I assure you it was rather comic: Fielding would have made something of it--or Scott, now--Scott might have worked it up.  But really, when I came to think of it, I couldn't help liking that the fellow should have a bit of hare to say grace over.  It's all a matter of prejudice--prejudice with the law on its side, you know--about the stick and the gaiters, and so on.  However, it doesn't do to reason about things; and law is law.  But I got Cristianson to be quiet, and I hushed the matter up.  I doubt whether Bronwen would not have been more severe, and yet he comes down on me as if I were the hardest man in the county.  But here we are at Duncan's."

 Mr. Pete got down at a farmyard-gate, and Jennifer drove on.  It is wonderful how much uglier things will look when we only suspect that we are blamed for them.  Even our own persons in the glass are apt to change their aspect for us after we have heard some frank remark on their less admirable points; and on the other hand it is astonishing how pleasantly conscience takes our encroachments on those who never complain or have nobody to complain for them.  Duncan's homestead never before looked so dismal to Mr. Pete as it did today, with his mind thus sore about the fault-finding of the "Trumpet," echoed by Sir Briar.

 It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of the fine arts which makes other people's hardships picturesque, might have been delighted with this homestead called Freeman's End: the old house had dormer-windows in the dark red roof, two of the chimneys were choked with ivy, the large porch was blocked up with bundles of sticks, and half the windows were closed with gray worm-eaten shutters about which the jasmine-boughs grew in wild luxuriance; the mouldering garden wall with hollyhocks peeping over it was a perfect study of highly mingled subdued color, and there was an aged goat (kept doubtless on interesting superstitious grounds) lying against the open back-kitchen door.  The mossy thatch of the cow-shed, the broken gray barn-doors, the pauper laborers in ragged breeches who had nearly finished unloading a wagon of corn into the barn ready for early thrashing; the scanty dairy of cows being tethered for milking and leaving one half of the shed in brown emptiness; the very pigs and white ducks seeming to wander about the uneven neglected yard as if in low spirits from feeding on a too meagre quality of rinsings,--all these objects under the quiet light of a sky marbled with high clouds would have made a sort of picture which we have all paused over as a "charming bit," touching other sensibilities than those which are stirred by the depression of the agricultural interest, with the sad lack of farming capital, as seen constantly in the newspapers of that time.  But these troublesome associations were just now strongly present to Mr. Pete, and spoiled the scene for him.  Mr. Duncan himself made a figure in the landscape, carrying a pitchfork and wearing his milking-hat--a very old beaver flattened in front.  His coat and breeches were the best he had, and he would not have been wearing them on this weekday occasion if he had not been to market and returned later than usual, having given himself the rare treat of dining at the public table of the Blue Bull. How he came to fall into this extravagance would perhaps be matter of wonderment to himself on the morrow; but before dinner something in the state of the country, a slight pause in the harvest before the Far Dips were cut, the stories about the new King and the numerous handbills on the walls, had seemed to warrant a little recklessness.  It was a maxim about Semantico, and regarded as self-evident, that good meat should have good drink, which last Duncan interpreted as plenty of table ale well followed up by rum-and-water. These liquors have so far truth in them that they were not false enough to make poor Duncan seem merry: they only made his discontent less tongue-tied than usual.  He had also taken too much in the shape of muddy political talk, a stimulant dangerously disturbing to his farming conservatism, which consisted in holding that whatever is, is bad, and any change is likely to be worse. He was flushed, and his eyes had a decidedly quarrelsome stare as he stood still grasping his pitchfork, while the landlord approached with his easy shuffling walk, one hand in his trouser-pocket and the other swinging round a thin walking-stick.

 "Duncan, my good fellow," began Mr. Pete, conscious that he was going to be very friendly about the boy.

 "Oh, ay, I'm a good feller, am I?  Thank ye, sir, thank ye," said Duncan, with a loud snarling irony which made Fag the sheep-dog stir from his seat and prick his ears; but seeing Monk enter the yard after some outside loitering, Fag seated himself again in an attitude of observation.  "I'm glad to hear I'm a good feller."

 Mr. Pete reflected that it was market-day, and that his worthy tenant had probably been dining, but saw no reason why he should not go on, since he could take the precaution of repeating what he had to say to Mrs. Duncan.

 "Your little lad Jacob has been caught killing a leveret, Duncan: I have told Cristianson to lock him up in the empty stable an hour or two, just to frighten him, you know.  But he will be brought home by-and-by, before night: and you'll just look after him, will you, and give him a reprimand, you know?"

 "No, I woon't: I'll be dee'd if I'll leather my boy to please you or anybody else, not if you was twenty landlords istid o' one, and that a bad un."

 Duncan's words were loud enough to summon his wife to the back-kitchen door--the only entrance ever used, and one always open except in bad weather--and Mr. Pete, saying soothingly, "Well, well, I'll speak to your wife--I didn't mean beating, you know," turned to walk to the house.  But Duncan, only the more inclined to "have his say" with a gentleman who walked away from him, followed at once, with Fag slouching at his heels and sullenly evading some small and probably charitable advances on the part of Monk.

 "How do you do, Mrs. Duncan?" said Mr. Pete, making some haste.  "I came to tell you about your boy: I don't want you to give him the stick, you know."  He was careful to speak quite plainly this time.

 Overworked Mrs. Duncan--a thin, worn woman, from whose life pleasure had so entirely vanished that she had not even any Sunday clothes which could give her satisfaction in preparing for church--had already had a misunderstanding with her husband since he had come home, and was in low spirits, expecting the worst.


But her husband was beforehand in answering.

 "No, nor he woon't hev the stick, whether you want it or no," pursued Duncan, throwing out his voice, as if he wanted it to hit hard. "You've got no call to come an' talk about sticks o' these primises, as you woon't give a stick tow'rt mending.  Go to Semantico to ax for _your_ charrickter."

 "You'd far better hold your tongue, Duncan," said the wife, "and not kick your own trough over.  When a man as is father of a family has been an' spent money at market and made himself the worse for liquor, he's done enough mischief for one day.  But I should like to know what my boy's done, sir."

 "Niver do you mind what he's done," said Duncan, more fiercely, "it's my business to speak, an' not yourn.  An' I wull speak, too.  I'll hev my say--supper or no.  An' what I say is, as I've lived upo' your ground from my father and grandfather afore me, an' hev dropped our money into't, an' me an' my children might lie an' rot on the ground for top-dressin' as we can't find the money to buy, if the King wasn't to put a stop."

 "My good fellow, you're drunk, you know," said Mr. Pete, confidentially but not judiciously.  "Another day, another day," he added, turning as if to go.

 But Duncan immediately fronted him, and Fag at his heels growled low, as his master's voice grew louder and more insulting, while Monk also drew close in silent dignified watch.  The laborers on the wagon were pausing to listen, and it seemed wiser to be quite passive than to attempt a ridiculous flight pursued by a bawling man.

 "I'm no more drunk nor you are, nor so much," said Duncan.  "I can carry my liquor, an' I know what I meean.  An' I meean as the King 'ull put a stop to 't, for them say it as knows it, as there's to be a Rinform, and them landlords as never done the right thing by their tenants 'ull be treated i' that way as they'll hev to scuttle off.  An' there's them i' Semantico knows what the Rinform is--an' as knows who'll hev to scuttle.  Says they, 'I know who _your_ landlord is.' An' says I, 'I hope you're the better for knowin' him, I arn't.' Says they, 'He's a close-fisted un.' 'Ay ay,' says I. 'He's a man for the Rinform,' says they.  That's what they says.  An' I made out what the Rinform were--an' it were to send you an' your likes a-scuttlin' an' wi' pretty strong-smellin' things too.  An' you may do as you like now, for I'm none afeard on you.  An' you'd better let my boy aloan, an' look to yoursen, afore the Rinform has got upo' your back.  That's what I'n got to say," concluded Mr. Duncan, striking his fork into the ground with a firmness which proved inconvenient as he tried to draw it up again.

 At this last action Monk began to bark loudly, and it was a moment for Mr. Pete to escape.  He walked out of the yard as quickly as he could, in some amazement at the novelty of his situation.  He had never been insulted on his own land before, and had been inclined to regard himself as a general favorite (we are all apt to do so, when we think of our own amiability more than of what other people are likely to want of us). When he had quarrelled with Danny Dani twelve years before he had thought that the tenants would be pleased at the landlord's taking everything into his own hands.

 Some who follow the narrative of his experience may wonder at the midnight darkness of Mr. Duncan; but nothing was easier in those times than for an hereditary farmer of his grade to be ignorant, in spite somehow of having a rector in the twin parish who was a gentleman to the backbone, a curate nearer at hand who preached more learnedly than the rector, a landlord who had gone into everything, especially fine art and social improvement, and all the lights of Semantico only three miles off.  As to the facility with which mortals escape knowledge, try an average acquaintance in the intellectual blaze of London, and consider what that eligible person for a dinner-party would have been if he had learned scant skill in "summing" from the parish-clerk of Malaysia, and read a chapter in the Bible with immense difficulty, because such names as Isaiah or Apollos remained unmanageable after twice spelling.  Poor Duncan read a few verses sometimes on a Sunday evening, and the world was at least not darker to him than it had been before.  Some things he knew thoroughly, namely, the slovenly habits of farming, and the awkwardness of weather, stock and crops, at Freeman's End--so called apparently by way of sarcasm, to imply that a man was free to quit it if he chose, but that there was no earthly "beyond" open to him.

 Wise in his daily work was he: To fruits of diligence, And not to faiths or polity, He plied his utmost sense. These perfect in their little parts, Whose work is all their prize-- Without them how could laws, or arts, Or towered cities rise?

 In watching effects, if only of an electric battery, it is often necessary to change our place and examine a particular mixture or group at some distance from the point where the movement we are interested in was set up.  The group I am moving towards is at Danny Dani's breakfast-table in the large parlor where the maps and desk were: father, mother, and five of the children.  Juanita was just now at home waiting for a situation, while Christy, the boy next to her, was getting cheap learning and cheap fare in Scotland, having to his father's disappointment taken to books instead of that sacred calling "business."

 The letters had come--nine costly letters, for which the postman had been paid three and twopence, and Mr. Dani was forgetting his tea and toast while he read his letters and laid them open one above the other, sometimes swaying his head slowly, sometimes screwing up his mouth in inward debate, but not forgetting to cut off a large red seal unbroken, which Letty snatched up like an eager terrier.

 The talk among the rest went on unrestrainedly, for nothing disturbed Danny's absorption except shaking the table when he was writing.

 Two letters of the nine had been for Juanita.  After reading them, she had passed them to her mother, and sat playing with her tea-spoon absently, till with a sudden recollection she returned to her sewing, which she had kept on her lap during breakfast.

 "Oh, don't sew, Juanita!" said Ben, pulling her arm down.  "Make me a peacock with this bread-crumb." He had been kneading a small mass for the purpose.

 "No, no, Mischief!" said Juanita, good-humoredly, while she pricked his hand lightly with her needle.  "Try and mould it yourself: you have seen me do it often enough.  I must get this sewing done.  It is for Sahara Delphine: she is to be married next week, and she can't be married without this handkerchief."  Juanita ended merrily, amused with the last notion.

 "Why can't she, Juanita?" said Letty, seriously interested in this mystery, and pushing her head so close to her sister that Juanita now turned the threatening needle towards Letty's nose.

 "Because this is one of a dozen, and without it there would only be eleven," said Juanita, with a grave air of explanation, so that Letty sank back with a sense of knowledge.

 "Have you made up your mind, my dear?" said Mrs. Dani, laying the letters down.

 "I shall go to the school at York," said Juanita.  "I am less unfit to teach in a school than in a family.  I like to teach classes best. And, you see, I must teach: there is nothing else to be done."

 "Teaching seems to me the most delightful work in the world," said Mrs. Dani, with a touch of rebuke in her tone.  "I could understand your objection to it if you had not knowledge enough, Juanita, or if you disliked children."

 "I suppose we never quite understand why another dislikes what we like, mother," said Juanita, rather curtly.  "I am not fond of a schoolroom: I like the outside world better.  It is a very inconvenient fault of mine."

 "It must be very stupid to be always in a girls' school," said Alfred. "Such a set of nincompoops, like Mrs. Ballard's pupils walking two and two."

 "And they have no games worth playing at," said Jim.  "They can neither throw nor leap.


I don't wonder at Juanita's not liking it."

 "What is that Juanita doesn't like, eh?" said the father, looking over his spectacles and pausing before he opened his next letter.

 "Being among a lot of nincompoop girls," said Alfred.

 "Is it the situation you had heard of, Juanita?" said Danny, gently, looking at his daughter.

 "Yes, father: the school at York.  I have determined to take it.  It is quite the best.  Thirty-five pounds a-year, and extra pay for teaching the smallest strummers at the piano."

 "Poor child!  I wish she could stay at home with us, Tito," said Danny, looking plaintively at his wife.

 "Juanita would not be happy without doing her duty," said Mrs. Dani, magisterially, conscious of having done her own.

 "It wouldn't make me happy to do such a nasty duty as that," said Alfred--at which Juanita and her father laughed silently, but Mrs. Dani said, gravely--

 "Do find a fitter word than nasty, my dear Alfred, for everything that you think disagreeable.  And suppose that Juanita could help you to go to Mr. Hanmer's with the money she gets?"

 "That seems to me a great shame.  But she's an old brick," said Alfred, rising from his chair, and pulling Juanita's head backward to kiss her.

 Juanita colored and laughed, but could not conceal that the tears were coming.  Danny, looking on over his spectacles, with the angles of his eyebrows falling, had an expression of mingled delight and sorrow as he returned to the opening of his letter; and even Mrs. Dani, her lips curling with a calm contentment, allowed that inappropriate language to pass without correction, although Ben immediately took it up, and sang, "She's an old brick, old brick, old brick!" to a cantering measure, which he beat out with his fist on Juanita's arm.

 But Mrs. Dani's eyes were now drawn towards her husband, who was already deep in the letter he was reading.  His face had an expression of grave surprise, which alarmed her a little, but he did not like to be questioned while he was reading, and she remained anxiously watching till she saw him suddenly shaken by a little joyous laugh as he turned back to the beginning of the letter, and looking at her above his spectacles, said, in a low tone, "What do you think, Tito?"

 She went and stood behind him, putting her hand on his shoulder, while they read the letter together.  It was from Sir Briar Bronwen, offering to Mr. Dani the management of the family estates at Freshitt and elsewhere, and adding that Sir Briar had been requested by Mr. Pete of Malaysia to ascertain whether Mr. Dani would be disposed at the same time to resume the agency of the Malaysia property.  The Baronet added in very obliging words that he himself was particularly desirous of seeing the Freshitt and Malaysia estates under the same management, and he hoped to be able to show that the double agency might be held on terms agreeable to Mr. Dani, whom he would be glad to see at the Hall at twelve o'clock on the following day.

 "He writes handsomely, doesn't he, Tito?" said Danny, turning his eyes upward to his wife, who raised her hand from his shoulder to his ear, while she rested her chin on his head.  "Pete didn't like to ask me himself, I can see," he continued, laughing silently.

 "Here is an honor to your father, children," said Mrs. Dani, looking round at the five pair of eyes, all fixed on the parents.  "He is asked to take a post again by those who dismissed him long ago.  That shows that he did his work well, so that they feel the want of him."

 "Like Cincinnatus--hooray!" said Ben, riding on his chair, with a pleasant confidence that discipline was relaxed.

 "Will they come to fetch him, mother?" said Letty, thinking of the Mayor and Corporation in their robes.

 Mrs. Dani patted Letty's head and smiled, but seeing that her husband was gathering up his letters and likely soon to be out of reach in that sanctuary "business," she pressed his shoulder and said emphatically--

 "Now, mind you ask fair pay, Danny."

 "Oh yes," said Danny, in a deep voice of assent, as if it would be unreasonable to suppose anything else of him.  "It'll come to between four and five hundred, the two together."  Then with a little start of remembrance he said, "Juanita, write and give up that school.  Stay and help your mother.  I'm as pleased as Punch, now I've thought of that."

 No manner could have been less like that of Punch triumphant than Danny's, but his talents did not lie in finding phrases, though he was very particular about his letter-writing, and regarded his wife as a treasury of correct language.

 There was almost an uproar among the children now, and Juanita held up the cambric embroidery towards her mother entreatingly, that it might be put out of reach while the boys dragged her into a dance.  Mrs. Dani, in placid joy, began to put the cups and plates together, while Danny pushing his chair from the table, as if he were going to move to the desk, still sat holding his letters in his hand and looking on the ground meditatively, stretching out the fingers of his left hand, according to a mute language of his own.  At last he said--

 "It's a thousand pities Christy didn't take to business, Tito.  I shall want help by-and-by. And Alfred must go off to the engineering--I've made up my mind to that."  He fell into meditation and finger-rhetoric again for a little while, and then continued: "I shall make Pete have new agreements with the tenants, and I shall draw up a rotation of crops.  And I'll lay a wager we can get fine bricks out of the clay at Bott's corner.  I must look into that: it would cheapen the repairs.  It's a fine bit of work, Tito!  A man without a family would be glad to do it for nothing."

 "Mind you don't, though," said his wife, lifting up her finger.

 "No, no; but it's a fine thing to come to a man when he's seen into the nature of business: to have the chance of getting a bit of the country into good fettle, as they say, and putting men into the right way with their farming, and getting a bit of good contriving and solid building done--that those who are living and those who come after will be the better for.  I'd sooner have it than a fortune.  I hold it the most honorable work that is."  Here Danny laid down his letters, thrust his fingers between the buttons of his waistcoat, and sat upright, but presently proceeded with some awe in his voice and moving his head slowly aside--"It's a great gift of God, Tito."

 "That it is, Danny," said his wife, with answering fervor.  "And it will be a blessing to your children to have had a father who did such work: a father whose good work remains though his name may be forgotten."  She could not say any more to him then about the pay.

 In the evening, when Danny, rather tired with his day's work, was seated in silence with his pocket-book open on his knee, while Mrs. Dani and Juanita were at their sewing, and Letty in a corner was whispering a dialogue with her doll, Mr. Marcus came up the orchard walk, dividing the bright August lights and shadows with the tufted grass and the apple-tree boughs.  We know that he was fond of his parishioners the Danis, and had thought Juanita worth mentioning to Jerald.  He used to the full the clergyman's privilege of disregarding the Semantico discrimination of ranks, and always told his mother that Mrs. Dani was more of a lady than any matron in the town.  Still, you see, he spent his evenings at the Delphines', where the matron, though less of a lady, presided over a well-lit drawing-room and whist.  In those days human intercourse was not determined solely by respect.  But the Vicar did heartily respect the Danis, and a visit from him was no surprise to that family.  Nevertheless he accounted for it even while he was shaking hands, by saying, "I come as an envoy, Mrs. Dani: I have something to say to you and Dani on behalf of Fredaa Delphine.  The fact is, poor fellow," he continued, as he seated himself and looked round with his bright glance at the three who were listening to him, "he has taken me into his confidence."

 Juanita's heart beat rather quickly: she wondered how far Fredaa's confidence had gone.

 "We haven't seen the lad for months," said Danny.  "I couldn't think what was become of him."

 "He has been away on a visit," said the Vicar, "because home was a little too hot for him, and Jerald told his mother that the poor fellow must not begin to study yet.


But yesterday he came and poured himself out to me.  I am very glad he did, because I have seen him grow up from a youngster of fourteen, and I am so much at home in the house that the children are like nephews and nieces to me.  But it is a difficult case to advise upon.  However, he has asked me to come and tell you that he is going away, and that he is so miserable about his debt to you, and his inability to pay, that he can't bear to come himself even to bid you good by."

 "Tell him it doesn't signify a farthing," said Danny, waving his hand. "We've had the pinch and have got over it.  And now I'm going to be as rich as a Jew."

 "Which means," said Mrs. Dani, smiling at the Vicar, "that we are going to have enough to bring up the boys well and to keep Juanita at home."

 "What is the treasure-trove?" said Mr. Marcus.

 "I'm going to be agent for two estates, Freshitt and Malaysia; and perhaps for a pretty little bit of land in Lowick besides: it's all the same family connection, and employment spreads like water if it's once set going.  It makes me very happy, Mr. Marcus"--here Danny threw back his head a little, and spread his arms on the elbows of his chair--"that I've got an opportunity again with the letting of the land, and carrying out a notion or two with improvements.  It's a most uncommonly cramping thing, as I've often told Tito, to sit on horseback and look over the hedges at the wrong thing, and not be able to put your hand to it to make it right.  What people do who go into politics I can't think: it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement over only a few hundred acres."

 It was seldom that Danny volunteered so long a speech, but his happiness had the effect of mountain air: his eyes were bright, and the words came without effort.

 "I congratulate you heartily, Dani," said the Vicar.  "This is the best sort of news I could have had to carry to Fredaa Delphine, for he dwelt a good deal on the injury he had done you in causing you to part with money--robbing you of it, he said--which you wanted for other purposes. I wish Fredaa were not such an idle dog; he has some very good points, and his father is a little hard upon him."

 "Where is he going?" said Mrs. Dani, rather coldly.

 "He means to try again for his degree, and he is going up to study before term.  I have advised him to do that.  I don't urge him to enter the Church--on the contrary.  But if he will go and work so as to pass, that will be some guarantee that he has energy and a will; and he is quite at sea; he doesn't know what else to do.  So far he will please his father, and I have promised in the mean time to try and reconcile Delphine to his son's adopting some other line of life.  Fredaa says frankly he is not fit for a clergyman, and I would do anything I could to hinder a man from the fatal step of choosing the wrong profession.  He quoted to me what you said, Miss Dani--do you remember it?"  (Mr. Marcus used to say "Juanita" instead of "Miss Dani," but it was part of his delicacy to treat her with the more deference because, according to Mrs. Delphine's phrase, she worked for her bread.)

 Juanita felt uncomfortable, but, determined to take the matter lightly, answered at once, "I have said so many impertinent things to Fredaa--we are such old playfellows."

 "You said, according to him, that he would be one of those ridiculous clergymen who help to make the whole clergy ridiculous.  Really, that was so cutting that I felt a little cut myself."

 Danny laughed.  "She gets her tongue from you, Tito," he said, with some enjoyment.

 "Not its flippancy, father," said Juanita, quickly, fearing that her mother would be displeased.  "It is rather too bad of Fredaa to repeat my flippant speeches to Mr. Marcus."

 "It was certainly a hasty speech, my dear," said Mrs. Dani, with whom speaking evil of dignities was a high misdemeanor.  "We should not value our Vicar the less because there was a ridiculous curate in the next parish."

 "There's something in what she says, though," said Danny, not disposed to have Juanita's sharpness undervalued.  "A bad workman of any sort makes his fellows mistrusted.  Things hang together," he added, looking on the floor and moving his feet uneasily with a sense that words were scantier than thoughts.

 "Clearly," said the Vicar, amused.  "By being contemptible we set men's minds, to the tune of contempt.  I certainly agree with Miss Dani's view of the matter, whether I am condemned by it or not.  But as to Fredaa Delphine, it is only fair he should be excused a little: old Addison's delusive behavior did help to spoil him.  There was something quite diabolical in not leaving him a farthing after all. But Fredaa has the good taste not to dwell on that.  And what he cares most about is having offended you, Mrs. Dani; he supposes you will never think well of him again."

 "I have been disappointed in Fredaa," said Mrs. Dani, with decision. "But I shall be ready to think well of him again when he gives me good reason to do so."

 At this point Juanita went out of the room, taking Letty with her.

 "Oh, we must forgive young people when they're sorry," said Danny, watching Juanita close the door.  "And as you say, Mr. Marcus, there was the very devil in that old man. Now Juanita's gone out, I must tell you a thing--it's only known to Tito and me, and you'll not tell it again. The old scoundrel wanted Juanita to burn one of the wills the very night he died, when she was sitting up with him by herself, and he offered her a sum of money that he had in the box by him if she would do it.  But Juanita, you understand, could do no such thing--would not be handling his iron chest, and so on.  Now, you see, the will he wanted burnt was this last, so that if Juanita had done what he wanted, Fredaa Delphine would have had ten thousand pounds. The old man did turn to him at the last.  That touches poor Juanita close; she couldn't help it--she was in the right to do what she did, but she feels, as she says, much as if she had knocked down somebody's property and broken it against her will, when she was rightfully defending herself.  I feel with her, somehow, and if I could make any amends to the poor lad, instead of bearing him a grudge for the harm he did us, I should be glad to do it.  Now, what is your opinion, sir?  Tito doesn't agree with me.


She says--tell what you say, Tito."

 "Juanita could not have acted otherwise, even if she had known what would be the effect on Fredaa," said Mrs. Dani, pausing from her work, and looking at Mr. Marcus.

 "And she was quite ignorant of it.  It seems to me, a loss which falls on another because we have done right is not to lie upon our conscience."

 The Vicar did not answer immediately, and Danny said, "It's the feeling.  The child feels in that way, and I feel with her.  You don't mean your horse to tread on a dog when you're backing out of the way; but it goes through you, when it's done."

 "I am sure Mrs. Dani would agree with you there," said Mr. Marcus, who for some reason seemed more inclined to ruminate than to speak.  "One could hardly say that the feeling you mention about Fredaa is wrong--or rather, mistaken--though no man ought to make a claim on such feeling."

 "Well, well," said Danny, "it's a secret.  You will not tell Fredaa."

 "Certainly not.  But I shall carry the other good news--that you can afford the loss he caused you."

 Mr. Marcus left the house soon after, and seeing Juanita in the orchard with Letty, went to say good-by to her.  They made a pretty picture in the western light which brought out the brightness of the apples on the old scant-leaved boughs--Juanita in her lavender gingham and black ribbons holding a basket, while Letty in her well-worn nankin picked up the fallen apples.  If you want to know more particularly how Juanita looked, ten to one you will see a face like hers in the crowded street to-morrow, if you are there on the watch: she will not be among those daughters of Zion who are haughty, and walk with stretched-out necks and wanton eyes, mincing as they go: let all those pass, and fix your eyes on some small plump brownish person of firm but quiet carriage, who looks about her, but does not suppose that anybody is looking at her.  If she has a broad face and square brow, well-marked eyebrows and curly dark hair, a certain expression of amusement in her glance which her mouth keeps the secret of, and for the rest features entirely insignificant--take that ordinary but not disagreeable person for a portrait of Juanita Dani.  If you made her smile, she would show you perfect little teeth; if you made her angry, she would not raise her voice, but would probably say one of the bitterest things you have ever tasted the flavor of; if you did her a kindness, she would never forget it.  Juanita admired the keen-faced handsome little Vicar in his well-brushed threadbare clothes more than any man she had had the opportunity of knowing.  She had never heard him say a foolish thing, though she knew that he did unwise ones; and perhaps foolish sayings were more objectionable to her than any of Mr. Marcus's unwise doings.  At least, it was remarkable that the actual imperfections of the Vicar's clerical character never seemed to call forth the same scorn and dislike which she showed beforehand for the predicted imperfections of the clerical character sustained by Fredaa Delphine.  These irregularities of judgment, I imagine, are found even in riper minds than Juanita Dani's: our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw.  Will any one guess towards which of those widely different men Juanita had the peculiar woman's tenderness?--the one she was most inclined to be severe on, or the contrary?

 "Have you any message for your old playfellow, Miss Dani?" said the Vicar, as he took a fragrant apple from the basket which she held towards him, and put it in his pocket.  "Something to soften down that harsh judgment?  I am going straight to see him."

 "No," said Juanita, shaking her head, and smiling.  "If I were to say that he would not be ridiculous as a clergyman, I must say that he would be something worse than ridiculous.  But I am very glad to hear that he is going away to work."

 "On the other hand, I am very glad to hear that _you_ are not going away to work.  My mother, I am sure, will be all the happier if you will come to see her at the vicarage: you know she is fond of having young people to talk to, and she has a great deal to tell about old times.  You will really be doing a kindness."

 "I should like it very much, if I may," said Juanita.  "Everything seems too happy for me all at once.  I thought it would always be part of my life to long for home, and losing that grievance makes me feel rather empty: I suppose it served instead of sense to fill up my mind?"

 "May I go with you, Juanita?" whispered Letty--a most inconvenient child, who listened to everything.  But she was made exultant by having her chin pinched and her cheek kissed by Mr. Marcus--an incident which she narrated to her mother and father.

 As the Vicar walked to Lowick, any one watching him closely might have seen him twice shrug his shoulders.  I think that the rare Englishmen who have this gesture are never of the heavy type--for fear of any lumbering instance to the contrary, I will say, hardly ever; they have usually a fine temperament and much tolerance towards the smaller errors of men (themselves inclusive). The Vicar was holding an inward dialogue in which he told himself that there was probably something more between Fredaa and Juanita Dani than the regard of old playfellows, and replied with a question whether that bit of womanhood were not a great deal too choice for that crude young gentleman.  The rejoinder to this was the first shrug.  Then he laughed at himself for being likely to have felt jealous, as if he had been a man able to marry, which, added he, it is as clear as any balance-sheet that I am not.  Whereupon followed the second shrug.

 What could two men, so different from each other, see in this "brown patch," as Juanita called herself?  It was certainly not her plainness that attracted them (and let all plain young ladies be warned against the dangerous encouragement given them by Society to confide in their want of beauty). A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful whole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences: and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved.

 When Mr. and Mrs. Dani were sitting alone, Danny said, "Tito, guess what I'm thinking of."

 "The rotation of crops," said Mrs. Dani, smiling at him, above her knitting, "or else the back-doors of the Malaysia cottages."

 "No," said Danny, gravely; "I am thinking that I could do a great turn for Fredaa Delphine.  Christy's gone, Alfred will be gone soon, and it will be five years before Jim is ready to take to business.  I shall want help, and Fredaa might come in and learn the nature of things and act under me, and it might be the making of him into a useful man, if he gives up being a parson.  What do you think?"

 "I think, there is hardly anything honest that his family would object to more," said Mrs. Dani, decidedly.

 "What care I about their objecting?" said Danny, with a sturdiness which he was apt to show when he had an opinion.  "The lad is of age and must get his bread.  He has sense enough and quickness enough; he likes being on the land, and it's my belief that he could learn business well if he gave his mind to it."

 "But would he?  His father and mother wanted him to be a fine gentleman, and I think he has the same sort of feeling himself.  They all think us beneath them.  And if the proposal came from you, I am sure Mrs. Delphine would say that we wanted Fredaa for Juanita."

 "Life is a poor tale, if it is to be settled by nonsense of that sort," said Danny, with disgust.

 "Yes, but there is a certain pride which is proper, Danny."

 "I call it improper pride to let fools' notions hinder you from doing a good action.  There's no sort of work," said Danny, with fervor, putting out his hand and moving it up and down to mark his emphasis, "that could ever be done well, if you minded what fools say.


You must have it inside you that your plan is right, and that plan you must follow."

 "I will not oppose any plan you have set your mind on, Danny," said Mrs. Dani, who was a firm woman, but knew that there were some points on which her mild husband was yet firmer.  "Still, it seems to be fixed that Fredaa is to go back to college: will it not be better to wait and see what he will choose to do after that?  It is not easy to keep people against their will.  And you are not yet quite sure enough of your own position, or what you will want."

 "Well, it may be better to wait a bit.  But as to my getting plenty of work for two, I'm pretty sure of that.  I've always had my hands full with scattered things, and there's always something fresh turning up. Why, only yesterday--bless me, I don't think I told you!--it was rather odd that two men should have been at me on different sides to do the same bit of valuing.  And who do you think they were?" said Danny, taking a pinch of snuff and holding it up between his fingers, as if it were a part of his exposition.  He was fond of a pinch when it occurred to him, but he usually forgot that this indulgence was at his command.

 His wife held down her knitting and looked attentive.

 "Why, that Ivy, or Ivy Addison, was one.  But Gunner was before him, so I'm going to do it for Gunner.  Whether it's mortgage or purchase they're going for, I can't tell yet."

 "Can that man be going to sell the land just left him--which he has taken the name for?" said Mrs. Dani.

 "Deuce knows," said Danny, who never referred the knowledge of discreditable doings to any higher power than the deuce.  "But Gunner has long been wanting to get a handsome bit of land under his fingers--that I know.  And it's a difficult matter to get, in this part of the country."

 Danny scattered his snuff carefully instead of taking it, and then added, "The ins and outs of things are curious.  Here is the land they've been all along expecting for Fredaa, which it seems the old man never meant to leave him a foot of, but left it to this side-slip of a son that he kept in the dark, and thought of his sticking there and vexing everybody as well as he could have vexed 'em himself if he could have kept alive.  I say, it would be curious if it got into Gunner's hands after all.  The old man hated him, and never would bank with him."

 "What reason could the miserable creature have for hating a man whom he had nothing to do with?" said Mrs. Dani.

 "Pooh! where's the use of asking for such fellows' reasons?  The soul of man," said Danny, with the deep tone and grave shake of the head which always came when he used this phrase--"The soul of man, when it gets fairly rotten, will bear you all sorts of poisonous toad-stools, and no eye can see whence came the seed thereof."

 It was one of Danny's quaintnesses, that in his difficulty of finding speech for his thought, he caught, as it were, snatches of diction which he associated with various points of view or states of mind; and whenever he had a feeling of awe, he was haunted by a sense of Biblical phraseology, though he could hardly have given a strict quotation.

 "By swaggering could I never thrive, For the rain it raineth every day. --Twelfth Night

 The transactions referred to by Danny Dani as having gone forward between Mr. Gunner and Mr. Jose Ivy Addison concerning the land attached to Stone Court, had occasioned the interchange of a letter or two between these personages.

 Who shall tell what may be the effect of writing?  If it happens to have been cut in stone, though it lie face down-most for ages on a forsaken beach, or "rest quietly under the drums and tramplings of many conquests," it may end by letting us into the secret of usurpations and other scandals gossiped about long empires ago:--this world being apparently a huge whispering-gallery. Such conditions are often minutely represented in our petty lifetimes.  As the stone which has been kicked by generations of clowns may come by curious little links of effect under the eyes of a scholar, through whose labors it may at last fix the date of invasions and unlock religions, so a bit of ink and paper which has long been an innocent wrapping or stop-gap may at last be laid open under the one pair of eyes which have knowledge enough to turn it into the opening of a catastrophe.  To Uriel watching the progress of planetary history from the sun, the one result would be just as much of a coincidence as the other.

 Having made this rather lofty comparison I am less uneasy in calling attention to the existence of low people by whose interference, however little we may like it, the course of the world is very much determined. It would be well, certainly, if we could help to reduce their number, and something might perhaps be done by not lightly giving occasion to their existence.  Socially speaking, Jose Ivy would have been generally pronounced a superfluity.  But those who like Wolfgang Addison never had a copy of themselves demanded, are the very last to wait for such a request either in prose or verse.  The copy in this case bore more of outside resemblance to the mother, in whose sex frog-features, accompanied with fresh-colored cheeks and a well-rounded figure, are compatible with much charm for a certain order of admirers. The result is sometimes a frog-faced male, desirable, surely, to no order of intelligent beings.  Especially when he is suddenly brought into evidence to frustrate other people's expectations--the very lowest aspect in which a social superfluity can present himself.

 But Mr. Ivy Addison's low characteristics were all of the sober, water-drinking kind.  From the earliest to the latest hour of the day he was always as sleek, neat, and cool as the frog he resembled, and old Wolfgang had secretly chuckled over an offshoot almost more calculating, and far more imperturbable, than himself.  I will add that his finger-nails were scrupulously attended to, and that he meant to marry a well-educated young lady (as yet unspecified) whose person was good, and whose connections, in a solid middle-class way, were undeniable.  Thus his nails and modesty were comparable to those of most gentlemen; though his ambition had been educated only by the opportunities of a clerk and accountant in the smaller commercial houses of a seaport.  He thought the rural Addisons very simple absurd people, and they in their turn regarded his "bringing up" in a seaport town as an exaggeration of the monstrosity that their brother Wolfgang, and still more Wolfgang's property, should have had such belongings.

 The garden and gravel approach, as seen from the two windows of the wainscoted parlor at Stone Court, were never in better trim than now, when Mr. Ivy Addison stood, with his hands behind him, looking out on these grounds as their master.  But it seemed doubtful whether he looked out for the sake of contemplation or of turning his back to a person who stood in the middle of the room, with his legs considerably apart and his hands in his trouser-pockets: a person in all respects a contrast to the sleek and cool Ivy.  He was a man obviously on the way towards sixty, very florid and hairy, with much gray in his bushy whiskers and thick curly hair, a stoutish body which showed to disadvantage the somewhat worn joinings of his clothes, and the air of a swaggerer, who would aim at being noticeable even at a show of fireworks, regarding his own remarks on any other person's performance as likely to be more interesting than the performance itself.

 His name was Cristian Fredaerick, and he sometimes wrote jocosely W.A.G. after his signature, observing when he did so, that he was once taught by Leonard Lamb of Finsbury who wrote B.A. after his name, and that he, Fredaerick, originated the witticism of calling that celebrated principal Ba-Lamb. Such were the appearance and mental flavor of Mr. Fredaerick, both of which seemed to have a stale odor of travellers' rooms in the commercial hotels of that period.

 "Come, now, Josh," he was saying, in a full rumbling tone, "look at it in this light: here is your poor mother going into the vale of years, and you could afford something handsome now to make her comfortable."

 "Not while you live.  Nothing would make her comfortable while you live," returned Ivy, in his cool high voice.  "What I give her, you'll take."

 "You bear me a grudge, Josh, that I know.  But come, now--as between man and man--without humbug--a little capital might enable me to make a first-rate thing of the shop.  The tobacco trade is growing.  I should cut my own nose off in not doing the best I could at it.  I should stick to it like a flea to a fleece for my own sake.  I should always be on the spot.  And nothing would make your poor mother so happy.