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Deerbrook

by Harriet Martineau · English · Gutenberg #24210 · 1,236,434 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Deerbrook

Author: Harriet Martineau


        
Release date: January 7, 2008 [eBook #24210]
                Most recently updated: June 27, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24210

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEERBROOK ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Deerbrook, by Harriet Martineau.

________________________________________________________________________
Harriet Martineau was the daughter of a Norwich textile manufacturer of
Huguenot descent--hence the name and trade.  In 1829 the bank in which
she, her mother and her sisters, had placed their money, failed and she
was forced to earn a living through writing, at which she was very
talented, particularly on political issues, such as the poverty facing a
family on the death of the wage-earner.  In 1839, after her travels in
America, she wrote two long novels, of which Deerbrook was one, and a
book about Toussaint L'Ouverture the other.

This book, therefore gives great insight into the lives of upper middle
class families of the mid nineteenth century.  No one in families these
days talks to the rest of the family in the polite, perhaps over-polite,
terms used in this book.  For this reason, though it was not meant to be
taken as such, this book is a true social document.

________________________________________________________________________
DEERBROOK, BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.



CHAPTER ONE.

AN EVENT.

Every town-bred person who travels in a rich country region, knows what
it is to see a neat white house planted in a pretty situation,--in a
shrubbery, or commanding a sunny common, or nestling between two
hills,--and to say to himself, as the carriage sweeps past its gate, "I
should like to live there,"--"I could be very happy in that pretty
place."  Transient visions pass before his mind's eye of dewy summer
mornings, when the shadows are long on the grass, and of bright autumn
afternoons, when it would be luxury to saunter in the neighbouring
lanes; and of frosty winter days, when the sun shines in over the
laurustinus at the window, while the fire burns with a different light
from that which it gives in the dull parlours of a city.

Mr Grey's house had probably been the object of this kind of
speculation to one or more persons, three times a week, ever since the
stage-coach had begun to pass through Deerbrook.  Deerbrook was a rather
pretty village, dignified as it was with the woods of a fine park, which
formed the background to its best points of view.  Of this pretty
village, Mr Grey's was the prettiest house, standing in a field, round
which the road swept.  There were trees enough about it to shade without
darkening it, and the garden and shrubbery behind were evidently of no
contemptible extent.  The timber and coal yards, and granaries, which
stretched down to the river side, were hidden by a nice management of
the garden walls, and training of the shrubbery.

In the drawing-room of this tempting white house sat Mrs Grey and her
eldest daughter, one spring evening.  It was rather an unusual thing for
them to be in the drawing-room.  Sophia read history and practised her
music every morning in the little blue parlour which looked towards the
road; and her mother sat in the dining-room, which had the same aspect.
The advantage of these rooms was, that they commanded the house of Mr
Rowland, Mr Grey's partner in the corn, coal, and timber business, and
also the dwelling of Mrs Enderby, Mrs Rowland's mother, who lived just
opposite the Rowlands.  The drawing-room looked merely into the garden.
The only houses seen from it were the greenhouse and the summerhouse;
the latter of which now served the purpose of a schoolroom for the
children of both families, and stood on the boundary-line of the gardens
of the two gentlemen of the firm.  The drawing-room was so dull, that it
was kept for company; that is, it was used about three times a-year,
when the pictures were unveiled, the green baize removed, and the
ground-windows, which opened upon the lawn, thrown wide, to afford to
the rare guests of the family a welcome from birds and flowers.

The ground-windows were open now, and on one side sat Mrs Grey, working
a rug, and on the other Sophia, working a collar.  The ladies were
evidently in a state of expectation--a state exceedingly trying to
people who, living at ease in the country, have rarely anything to
expect beyond the days of the week, the newspaper, and their dinners.
Mrs Grey gave her needle a rest every few minutes, to listen! and rang
the bell three times in a quarter of an hour, to make inquiries of her
maid about the arrangements of the best bedroom.  Sophia could not
attend to her work, and presently gave information that Fanny and Mary
were in the orchard.  She was desired to call them, and presently Fanny
and Mary appeared at the window,--twins of ten years old, and very
pretty little girls.

"My dears," said Mrs Grey, "has Miss Young done with you for to-day?"

"Oh yes, mamma.  It is just six o'clock.  We have been out of school
this hour almost."

"Then come in, and make yourselves neat, and sit down with us.  I should
not wonder if the Miss Ibbotsons should be here now before you are
ready.  But where is Sydney?"

"Oh, he is making a pond in his garden there.  He dug it before school
this morning, and he is filling it now."

"Yes," said the other; "and I don't know when he will have done, for as
fast as he fills it, it empties again, and he says he cannot think how
people keep their ponds filled."

"He must have done now, however," said his mother.  "I suppose he is
tearing his clothes to pieces with drawing the water-barrel, and wetting
himself to the skin besides."

"And spoiling his garden," said Fanny.  "He has dug up all his hepaticas
and two rose-bushes to make his pond."

"Go to him, my dears, and tell him to come in directly, and dress
himself for tea.  Tell him I insist upon it.  Do not run.  Walk quietly.
You will heat yourselves, and I do not like Mrs Rowland to see you
running."

Mary informed her brother that he was to leave his pond and come in, and
Fanny added that mamma insisted upon it.  They had time to do this, to
walk quietly, to have their hair made quite smooth, and to sit down with
their two dolls on each side the common cradle, in a corner of the
drawing-room, before the Miss Ibbotsons arrived.

The Miss Ibbotsons were daughters of a distant relation of Mr Grey's.
Their mother had been dead many years; they had now just lost their
father, and were left without any nearer relation than Mr Grey.  He had
invited them to visit his family while their father's affairs were in
course of arrangement, and till it could be discovered what their means
of living were likely to be.  They had passed their lives in Birmingham,
and had every inclination to return to it, when their visit to their
Deerbrook relations should have been paid.  Their old schoolfellows and
friends all lived there: and they thought it would be easier and
pleasanter to make the smallest income supply their wants in their
native town, than to remove to any place where it might go further.
They had taken leave of their friends as for a very short time, and when
they entered Deerbrook, looked around them as upon a place in which they
were to pass a summer.

All Deerbrook had been informed of their expected arrival--as it always
was of everything which concerned the Greys.  The little Rowlands were
walking with their mother when the chaise came up the street; but being
particularly desired not to look at it, they were not much benefited by
the event.  Their grandmamma, Mrs Enderby, was not at the moment under
the same restriction; and her high cap might be seen above the green
blind of her parlour as the chaise turned into Mr Grey's gate.  The
stationer, the parish clerk, and the milliner and her assistant, had
obtained a passing view of sundry boxes, the face of an elderly woman,
and the outline of two black bonnets,--all that they could boast of to
repay them for the vigilance of a whole afternoon.

Sophia Grey might be pardoned for some anxiety about the reception of
the young ladies.  She was four years younger than the younger of them;
and Hester, the elder, was one-and-twenty,--a venerable age to a girl of
sixteen.  Sophia began to think she had never been really afraid of
anything before, though she remembered having cried bitterly when first
left alone with her governess; and though she had always been remarkable
for clinging to her mother's side on all social occasions, in the
approaching trial her mother could give her little assistance.  These
cousins would be always with her.  How she should read history, or
practise music with them in the room, she could not imagine, nor what
she should find to say to them all day long.  If poor Elizabeth had but
lived, what a comfort she would have been now; the elder one would have
taken all the responsibility!  And she heaved a sigh once more, as she
thought, to the memory of poor Elizabeth.

Mr Grey was at a market some miles off; and Sydney was sent by his
mother into the hall, to assist in the work of alighting, and causing
the luggage to alight.  As any other boy of thirteen would have done, he
slunk behind the hall door, without venturing to speak to the strangers,
and left the business to the guests and the maids.  Mrs Grey and Sophia
awaited them in the drawing-room, and were ready with information about
how uneasy they had all been about the rain in the morning, till they
remembered that it would lay the dust, and so make the journey
pleasanter.  The twins shouldered their dolls, and looked on from their
stools, while Sydney stole in, and for want of some better way of
covering his awkwardness, began rocking the cradle with his foot, till
he tilted it over.

Sophia found the first half-hour not at all difficult to surmount.  She
and Margaret Ibbotson informed each other of the precise number of miles
between Deerbrook and Birmingham.  She ascertained fully to her
satisfaction that her guests had dined.  She assisted them in the
observation that the grass of the lawn looked very green after the
streets of Birmingham; and she had to tell them that her father was
obliged to attend the market some miles off, and would not be home for
an hour or two.  Then the time came when bonnets were to be taken off,
and she could offer to show the way to the spare-room.  There she took
Hester and Margaret to the window, and explained to them what they saw
thence; and, as it was necessary to talk, she poured out what was most
familiar to her mind, experiencing a sudden relief from all the unwonted
shyness which had tormented her.

"That is Mr Rowland's house--papa's partner, you know.  Isn't it an
ugly place, with that ridiculous porch to it?  But Mrs Rowland can
never be satisfied without altering her house once a year.  She has made
Mr Rowland spend more money upon that place than would have built a new
one of twice the size.--That house opposite is Mrs Enderby's, Mrs
Rowland's mother's.  So near as she lives to the Rowlands, it is
shocking how they neglect her.  There could be no difficulty in being
properly attentive to her, so near as she is, could there?  But when she
is ill we are obliged to go and see her sometimes, when it is very
inconvenient, because Mrs Rowland has never been near her all day.  Is
not it shocking?"

"I rather wonder she should complain of her family," observed Margaret.

"Oh, she is not remarkable for keeping her feelings to herself, poor
soul!  But really it is wonderful how little she says about it, except
when her heart is quite full,--just to us.  She tries to excuse Mrs
Rowland all she can; and she makes out that Mrs Rowland is such an
excellent mother, and so busy with her children, and all that.  But you
know that is no excuse for not taking care of her own mother."

"Those are the Verdon woods, are they not?" said Hester, leaning out of
the window to survey the whole of the sunny prospect.  "I suppose you
spend half your days in those woods in summer."

"No; mamma goes out very little, and I seldom walk beyond the garden.
But now you are come, we shall go everywhere.  Ours is considered a very
pretty village."

The sisters thought it so beautiful, that they gazed as if they feared
it would melt away if they withdrew their eyes.  The one discovered the
bridge, lying in shadow; the other the pointed roof of the building
which surmounted the spring in the park woods.  Sophia was well pleased
at their pleasure; and their questions, and her descriptions, went on
improving in rapidity, till a knock at the door of the room cut short
the catechism.  It was Morris, the Miss Ibbotsons' maid; and her
appearance gave Sophia a hint to leave her guests to refresh themselves.
She glanced over the room, to see that nothing was wanting; pointed out
the bell, intimated that the washstands were mahogany, which showed
every splash, and explained that the green blinds were meant to be
always down when the sun shone in, lest it should fade the carpet.  She
then withdrew, telling the young ladies that they would find tea ready
when they came down.

"How very handsome Hester is!" was the exclamation of both mother and
daughter, when Sophia had shut the drawing-room door behind her.

"I wonder," said Mrs Grey, "that nobody ever told us how handsome we
should find Hester.  I should like to see what fault Mrs Rowland can
find in her face."

"It is rather odd that one sister should have all the beauty," said
Sophia.  "I do not see anything striking in Margaret."

"Mrs Rowland will say she is plain; but, in my opinion, Margaret is
better looking than any of the Rowlands are ever likely to be.  Margaret
would not be thought plain away from her sister.--I hope they are not
fine ladies.  I am rather surprised at their bringing a maid.  She looks
a very respectable person; but I did not suppose they would keep a maid
till they knew better what to look forward to.  I do not know what Mr
Grey will think of it."

When Hester and Margaret came down, Mrs Grey was ready with an account
of the society of the place.

"We are as well off for society," said she, "as most places of the size.
If you were to ask the bookseller at Blickley, who supplies our club,
he would tell you that we are rather intellectual people: and I hope you
will see, when our friends have called on you, that though we seem to be
living out of the world, we are not without our pleasures.  I think,
Sophia, the Levitts will certainly call."

"Oh, yes, mamma, to-morrow, I have no doubt."

"Dr Levitt is our rector," observed Mrs Grey to her guests.  "We are
dissenters, as you know, and our neighbour, Mrs Rowland, is very much
scandalised at it.  If Mr Rowland would have allowed it, she would have
made a difficulty on that ground about having her children educated with
mine.  But the Levitts' conduct might teach her better.  They make no
difference on account of our being dissenters.  They always call on our
friends the first day after they arrive,--or the second, at furthest.  I
have no doubt we shall see the Levitts to-morrow."

"And Mrs Enderby, I am sure," said Sophia, "if she is at all able to
stir out."

"Oh, yes, Mrs Enderby knows what is right, if her daughter does not.
If she does not call to-morrow, I shall think that Mrs Rowland
prevented her.  She can keep her mother within doors, as we know, when
it suits her purposes."

"But Mr Philip is here, mamma, and Mrs Enderby can do as she likes
when she has her son with her.--I assure you he is here, mamma.  I saw
the cobbler's boy carry home a pair of boots there this morning."

Sydney had better evidence still to produce.  Mr Enderby had been
talking with him about fishing this afternoon.  He said he had come down
for a fortnight's fishing.  Fanny also declared that Matilda Rowland had
told Miss Young to-day, that uncle Philip was coming to see the new
schoolroom.  Mrs Grey was always glad, on poor Mrs Enderby's account,
when she had her son with her: but otherwise she owned she did not care
for his coming.  He was too like his sister to please her.

"He is very high, to be sure," observed Sophia.

"And really there is no occasion for that with us," resumed Mrs Grey.
"We should never think of mixing him up with his sister's proceedings,
if he did not do it himself.  No one would suppose him answerable for
her rudeness; at least, I am sure such a thing would never enter my
head.  But he forces it upon one's mind by carrying himself so high."

"I don't think he can help being so tall," observed Sydney.

"But he buttons up, and makes the most of it," replied Sophia.  "He
stalks in like a Polish count."

The sisters could not help smiling at this proof that the incursions of
the Poles into this place were confined to the book club.  They happened
to be well acquainted with a Polish count, who was short of stature and
did not stalk.  They were spared all necessity of exerting themselves in
conversation, for it went on very well without the aid of more than a
word or two from them.

"Do you think, mamma, the Andersons will come?" asked Sophia.

"Not before Sunday, my dear.  The Andersons live three miles off," she
explained, "and are much confined by their school.  They may possibly
call on Saturday afternoon, as Saturday is a half-holiday; but Sunday
after church is a more likely time.--We do not much approve of Sunday
visits; and I dare say you feel the same: but this is a particular
case,--people living three miles off, you know, and keeping a school.
And being dissenters, we do not like to appear illiberal to those who
are not of our own way of thinking: so the Andersons sometimes come in
after church; and I am sure you will accept their call just as if it was
made in any other way."

Hester and Margaret could only say that they should be happy to see Mr
and Mrs Anderson in any mode which was most convenient to themselves.
A laugh went through the family, and a general exclamation of "Mr and
Mrs Anderson!"  "The Andersons" happened to be two maiden sisters, who
kept a young ladies' school.  It was some time before Mrs Grey herself
could so far command her countenance as to frown with becoming severity
at Fanny, who continued to giggle for some time, with intervals of
convulsive stillness, at the idea that "the Andersons" could mean Mr
and Mrs Anderson.  In the midst of the struggle, Mr Grey entered.  He
laid a hand on the head of each twin, observed that they seemed very
merry, and asked whether his cousins had been kind enough to make them
laugh already.  To these cousins he offered a brief and hearty welcome,
remarking that he supposed they had been told what had prevented his
being on the spot on their arrival, and that he need not trouble them
with the story over again.

Sydney had slipped out as his father entered, for the chance of riding
his horse to the stable,--a ride of any length being in his opinion
better than none.  When he returned in a few minutes, he tried to
whisper to Sophia, over the back of her chair, but could not for
laughing.  After repeated attempts, Sophia pushed him away.

"Come, my boy, out with it!" said his father.  "What you can tell your
sister you can tell us.  What is the joke?"

Sydney looked as if he had rather not explain before the strangers; but
he never dared to trifle with his father.  He had just heard from little
George Rowland, that Mrs Rowland had said at home, that the young
ladies at Mr Grey's, who had been made so much fuss about, were not
_young_ ladies, after all: she had seen the face of one, as they passed
her in the chaise, and she was sure the person could not be less than
fifty.

"She saw Morris, no doubt," said Hester, amidst the general laugh.

"I hope she will come to-morrow, and see some people who are very little
like fifty," said Mrs Grey.  "She will be surprised, I think," she
added, looking at Hester, with a very meaning manner of admiration.  "I
really hope, for her own sake, she will come, though you need not mind
if she does not.  You will have no great loss.  Mr Grey, I suppose you
think she will call?"

"No doubt, my dear.  Mrs Rowland never omits calling on our friends;
and why should she now?"  And Mr Grey applied himself to conversation
with his cousins, while the rest of the family enjoyed further merriment
about Mrs Rowland having mistaken Morris for one of the Miss Ibbotsons.

Mr Grey showed a sympathy with the sisters, which made them more at
home than they had felt since they entered the house.  He knew some of
their Birmingham friends, and could speak of the institutions and
interests of the town.  For a whole hour he engaged them in brisk
conversation, without having once alluded to their private affairs or
his own, or said one word about Deerbrook society.  At the end of that
time, just as Mary and Fanny had received orders to go to bed, and were
putting their dolls into the cradle in preparation, the scrambling of a
horse's feet was heard on the gravel before the front door, and the
house-bell rang.

"Who can be coming at this time of night?" said Mrs Grey.

"It is Hope, I have no doubt," replied her husband.  "As I passed his
door, I asked him to go out to old Mr Smithson, who seems to me to be
rather worse than better, and to let me know whether anything can be
done for the old gentleman.  Hope has come to report of him, no doubt."

"Oh, mamma, don't send us to bed if it is Mr Hope!" cried the little
girls.  "Let us sit up a little longer if it is Mr Hope."

"Mr Hope is a great favourite with the children,--with us all,"
observed Mrs Grey to the sisters.  "We have the greatest confidence in
him as our medical man; as indeed every one has who employs him.  Mr
Grey brought him here, and we consider him the greatest acquisition our
society ever had."

The sisters could not be surprised, at this when they saw Mr Hope.  The
only wonder was, that, in the description of the intellectual society of
Deerbrook, Mr Hope had not been mentioned first.  He was not handsome;
but there was a gaiety of countenance and manner in him, under which the
very lamp seemed to burn brighter.  He came, as Mr Grey had explained,
on business; and, not having been aware of the arrival of the strangers,
would have retreated when his errand was done; but, as opposition was
made to this by both parents and children he sat down for a quarter of
an hour, to be taken into consultation about how the Miss Ibbotsons were
to be conducted through the process of seeing the sights of Deerbrook.

With all sincerity, the sisters declared that the woods of the park
would fully satisfy them,--that they had been accustomed to a life so
quiet, that excursions were not at all necessary to their enjoyment.
Mr Grey was determined that they should visit every place worth seeing
in the neighbourhood, while it was in its summer beauty.  Mr Hope was
exactly the right person to consult, as there was no nook, no hamlet, to
which his tastes or his profession had not led him.  Sophia put paper
before him, on which he was to note distances, according to his and Mr
Grey's computations.  Now, it was one peculiarity of Mr Hope that he
could never see a piece of paper before him without drawing upon it.
Sophia's music-books, and any sheet of blotting-paper which might ever
have come in his way, bore tokens of this: and now his fingers were as
busy as usual while he was talking and computing and arranging.  When,
as he said, enough had been planned to occupy a month, he threw down his
pencil, and took leave till the morning, when he intended to make a call
which should be less involuntary.

The moment he was gone, the little girls laid hands on the sheet of
paper, on which he had been employed.  As they expected, it was covered
with scraps of sketches; and they exclaimed with delight, "Look here!
Here is the spring.  How fond Mr Hope is of drawing the spring!  And
here is the foot-bridge at Dingleford!  And what is this?  Here is a
place we don't know, papa."

"I do not know how you should, my dears.  It is the Abbey ruin down the
river, which I rather think you have never seen."

"No, but we should like to see it.  Are there no faces this time, Fanny?
None anywhere?  No funny faces this time!  I like them the best of Mr
Hope's drawings.  Sophia, do let us show some of the faces that are on
your music-books."

"If you will be sure and put them away again.  But you know if Mr Hope
is ever reminded of them, he will be sure to rub them out."

"He did old Owen fishing so that he can't rub it out if he would," said
Sydney.  "He did it in ink for me; and that is better than any of your
sketches, that will rub out in a minute."

"Come, children," said their father, "it is an hour past your bedtime."

When the children were gone, and Sophia was attending the sisters to
their apartment, Mrs Grey looked at her husband over her spectacles.
"Well, my dear!" said she.

"Well, my dear!" responded Mr Grey.

"Do not you think Hester very handsome?"

"There is no doubt of it, my dear.  She is very handsome."

"Do not you think Mr Hope thinks so too?"

It is a fact which few but the despisers of their race like to
acknowledge, and which those despisers of their race are therefore apt
to interpret wrongly, and are enabled to make too much of--that it is
perfectly natural,--so natural as to appear necessary,--that when young
people first meet, the possibility of their falling in love should occur
to all the minds present.  We have no doubt that it always is so; though
we are perfectly aware that the idea speedily goes out again, as
naturally as it came in: and in no case so speedily and naturally as in
the minds of the parties most nearly concerned, from the moment that the
concern becomes very near indeed.  We have no doubt that the minds in
Mr Grey's drawing-room underwent the common succession of ideas,--
slight and transient imaginations, which pass into nothingness when
unexpressed.  Probably the sisters wondered whether Mr Hope was
married, whether he was engaged, whether he was meant for Sophia, in the
prospect of her growing old enough.  Probably each speculated for half a
moment, unconsciously, for her sister, and Sophia for both.  Probably
Mr Grey might reflect that when young people are in the way of meeting
frequently in country excursions, a love affair is no very unnatural
result.  But Mrs Grey was the only one who fixed the idea in her own
mind and another's by speaking of it.

"Do not you think Mr Hope thinks Hester very handsome, Mr Grey?"

"I really know nothing about it, my dear.  He did not speak on the
subject as he mounted his horse; and that is the only opportunity he has
had of saying anything about the young ladies."

"It would have been strange if he had then, before Sydney and the
servants."

"Very strange indeed."

"But do you not think he must have been struck with her?  I should like
very well to have her settled here; and the corner-house of Mr
Rowland's might do nicely for them.  I do not know what Mrs Rowland
would think of Mr Hope's marrying into our connection so decidedly."

"My dear," said her husband, smiling, "just consider!  For anything we
know, these young ladies may both be attached and engaged.  Hope may be
attached elsewhere--."

"No; that I will answer for it he is not.  I--"

"Well, you may have your reasons for being sure on that head.  But he
may not like the girls; they may not like him:--in short, the only thing
that has happened is, that they have seen each other for one quarter of
an hour."

"Well! there is no saying what may come of it."

"Very true: let us wait and see."

"But there is no harm in my telling you whatever comes into my head!"

"None in the world, unless you get it so fixed there that somebody else
happens to know it too.  Be careful, my dear.  Let no one of these young
people get a glimpse of your speculation.  Think of the consequence to
them and to yourself."

"Dear me, Mr Grey! you need not be afraid.  What a serious matter you
make of a word or two!"

"Because a good many ideas belong to that word or two, my dear."



CHAPTER TWO.

MOONLIGHT TO TOWNSFOLK.

The moment the door closed behind Sophia, as she left the sisters in
their apartment, Hester crossed the room with a step very like a dance,
and threw up the window.

"I had rather look out than sleep," said she.  "I shall be ashamed to
close my eyes on such a prospect.  Morris, if you are waiting for us,
you may go.  I shall sit up a long while yet."

Morris thought she had not seen Hester in such spirits since her
father's death.  She was unwilling to check them, but said something
about the fatigues of the journey, and being fresh for the next day.

"No fear for to-morrow, Morris.  We are in the country, you know, and I
cannot fancy being tired in the fields, and in such a park as that.
Good-night, Morris."

When she too was gone, Hester called Margaret to her, put her arm round
her waist, and kissed her again and again.

"You seem happy to-night, Hester," said Margaret's gentle voice.

"Yes," sighed Hester; "more like being happy than for a long time past.
How little we know what we shall feel!  Here have I been dreading and
dreading this evening, and shrinking from the idea of meeting the Greys,
and wanting to write at the last moment to say that we would not come;--
and it turns out--Oh, so differently!  Think of day after day, week
after week of pure country life!  When they were planning for us
to-night, and talking of the brook, and lanes, and meadows, it made my
very heart dance."

"Thank God!" said Margaret.  "When your heart dances, there is nothing
left to wish."

"But did not yours?  Had you ever such a prospect before,--such a
prospect of delicious pleasure for weeks together,--except perhaps when
we caught our first sight of the sea?"

"Nothing can ever equal that," replied Margaret.  "Do not you hear now
the shout we gave when we saw the sparkles on the horizon,--heaving
sparkles,--when we were a mile off, and mamma held me up that I might
see it better; and baby,--dear baby,--clapped his little hands?  Does it
not seem like yesterday?"

"Like yesterday: and yet, if baby had lived, he would now have been our
companion, taking the place of all other friends to us.  I thought of
him when I saw Sydney Grey; but he would have been very unlike Sydney
Grey.  He would have been five years older, but still different from
what Sydney will be at eighteen--graver, more manly."

"How strange is the idea of having a brother!" said Margaret.  "I never
see girls with their brothers but I watch them, and long to feel what it
is, just for one hour.  I wonder what difference it would have made
between you and me, if we had had a brother."

"You and he would have been close friends--always together, and I should
have been left alone," said Hester, with a sigh.  "Oh, yes," she
continued, interrupting Margaret's protest, "it would have been so.
There can never be the same friendship between three as between two."

"And why should you have been the one left out?" asked Margaret.  "But
this is all nonsense--all a dream," she added.  "The reality is that
baby died--still a baby--and we know no more of what he would have been,
than of what he is.  The real truth is, that you and I are alone, to be
each other's only friend."

"It makes me tremble to think of it, Margaret.  It is not so long since
our home seemed full.  How we used all to sit round the fire, and laugh
and play with papa, as if we were not to separate till we had all grown
old: and now, young as we are, here we are alone!  How do we know that
we shall be left to each other?"

"There is only one thing we can do, Hester," said Margaret, resting her
head on her sister's shoulder.  "We must make the most of being together
while we can.  There must not be the shadow of a cloud between us for a
moment.  Our confidence must be as full and free, our whole minds as
absolutely open, as--as I have read and heard that two minds can never
be."

"Those who say so do not know what may be," exclaimed Hester.  "I am
sure there is not a thought, a feeling in me, that I could not tell you,
though I know I never could to any one else."

"If I were to lose you, Hester, there are many, many things that would
be shut up in me for ever.  There will never be any one on earth to whom
I could say the things that I can tell to you.  Do you believe this,
Hester?"

"I do.  I know it."

"Then you will never again doubt me, as you certainly have done
sometimes.  You cannot imagine how my heart sinks when I see you are
fancying that I care for somebody else more than for you; when you think
that I am feeling differently from you.  Oh, Hester, I know every change
of your thoughts by your face; and indeed your thoughts have been
mistaken sometimes."

"They have been wicked, often," said Hester, in a low voice.  "I have
sometimes thought that I must be hopelessly bad, when I have found that
the strongest affection I have in the world has made me unjust and cruel
to the person I love best.  I have a jealous temper, Margaret; and a
jealous temper is a wicked temper."

"Now you are unkind to yourself, Hester.  I do believe you will never
doubt me again."

"I never will.  And if I find a thought of the kind rising in me, I will
tell you the moment I am aware of it."

"Do, and I will tell you the moment I see a trace of such a thought in
your face.  So we shall be safe.  We can never misunderstand each other
for more than a moment."

By the gentle leave of Heaven, all human beings have visions.  Not the
lowest and dullest but has the coarseness of his life relieved at
moments by some scenery of hope rising through the brooding fogs of his
intellect and his heart.  Such visitations of mercy are the privilege of
the innocent, and the support of the infirm.  Here were the lonely
sisters sustained in bereavement and self-rebuke, by the vision of a
friendship which should be unearthly in its depth and freedom; they were
so happy for the hour, that nothing could disturb them.

"I do not see," observed Hester, "that it will be possible to enjoy any
intimate intercourse with this family.  Unless they are of a different
order from what they seem, we cannot have much in common; but I am sure
they mean to be kind, and they will let us be happy in our own way.  Oh,
what mornings you and I will have together in those woods!  Did you ever
see anything so soft as they look--in this light?"

"And the bend of the river glittering there!  Here, a little more this
way, and you will see it as I do.  The moon is not at the full yet; the
river will be like this for some nights to come."

"And these rides and drives,--I hope nothing will prevent our going
through the whole list of them.  What is the matter, Margaret?  Why are
you so cool about them?"

"I think all the pleasure depends upon the companionship, and I have
some doubts about that.  I had rather sit at work in a drawing-room all
day, than go among mountains with people--"

"Like the Mansons; Oh, that spreading of shawls, and bustle about the
sandwiches, before they could give a look at the waterfall!  I am afraid
we may find something of the same drawback here."

"I am afraid so."

"Well, only let us get out into the woods and lanes, and we will manage
to enjoy ourselves there.  We can contrive to digress here and there
together without being missed.  But I think we are judging rather
hastily from what we saw this evening even about this family; and we
have no right to suppose that all their acquaintance are like them."

"No, indeed; and I am sure Mr Hope, for one, is of a different order.
He dropped one thing, one little saying, which proved this to my mind."

"I know what you mean--about the old man that is to be our guide over
that heath they were talking of--about why that heath is a different and
more beautiful place to him than to us, or to his former self.  Is it
not true, what he said?"

"I am sure it is true.  I have little to say of my own experience, or
wisdom, or goodness, whichever it was that he particularly meant as
giving a new power of sight to the old man; but I know that no tree
waves to my eye as it did ten years ago, and the music of running water
is richer to my ear as every summer comes round."

"Yes; I almost wonder sometimes whether all things are not made at the
moment by the mind that sees them, so wonderfully do they change with
one's mood, and according to the store of thoughts they lay open in
one's mind.  If I lived in a desert island (supposing one's intellect
could go on to grow there), I should feel sure of this."

"But not here, where it is quite clear that the village sot (if there be
one), and Mr Hope, and the children, and we ourselves all see the same
objects in sunlight and moonlight, and acknowledge them to be the same,
though we cannot measure feelings upon them.  I wish Mr Hope may say
something more which may lead to the old man on the heath again.  He is
coming to-morrow morning."

"Yes; we shall see him again to-morrow."



CHAPTER THREE.

MAKING ACQUAINTANCE.

The sisters were not so fatigued with their journey but that they were
early in the open air the next morning.  In the shrubbery they met the
twins, walking hand in hand, each with a doll on the disengaged arm.

"You are giving your dolls an airing before breakfast," said Hester,
stopping them as they would have passed on.

"Yes; we carry out our dolls now because we must not run before
breakfast.  We have made arbours in our own gardens for our dolls, where
they may sit when we are swinging."

"I should like to see your arbours and your gardens," said Margaret,
looking round her.  "Will you take me to them?"

"Not now," answered they; "we should have to cross the grass, and we
must not go upon the grass before breakfast."

"Where is your swing?  I am very fond of swinging."

"Oh! it is in the orchard there, under that large tree.  But you
cannot--"

"I see; we cannot get to it now, because we should have to cross the
grass."  And Margaret began to look round for any place where they might
go beyond the gravel-walk, on which they stood.  She moved towards the
greenhouse, but found it was never unlocked before breakfast.  The
summerhouse remained, and a most unexceptionable path led to it.  The
sisters turned that way.

"You cannot go there," cried the children; "Miss Young always has the
schoolroom before breakfast."

"We are going to see Miss Young," explained Hester, smiling at the
amazed faces with which the children stared from the end of the path.
They were suddenly seen to turn, and walk as fast as they could, without
its being called running, towards the house.  They were gone to their
mother's dressing-room door, to tell her that the Miss Ibbotsons were
gone to see Miss Young before breakfast.

The path led for some little way under the hedge which separated Mr
Grey's from Mr Rowland's garden.  There were voices on the other side,
and what was said was perfectly audible.  Uneasy at hearing what was not
meant for them, Hester and Margaret gave tokens of their presence.  The
conversation on the other side of the hedge proceeded; and in a very
short time the sisters were persuaded that they had been mistaken in
supposing that what was said was not meant for them.

"My own Matilda," said a voice, which evidently came from under a lady's
bonnet which moved parallel with Hester's and Margaret's; "My own
Matilda, I would not be so harsh as to prevent your playing where you
please before breakfast.  Run where you like, my love.  I am sorry for
little girls who are not allowed to do as they please in the cool of the
morning.  My children shall never suffer such restriction."

"Mother," cried a rough little person, "I'm going fishing with Uncle
Philip to-day.  Sydney Grey and I are going, I don't know how far up the
river."

"On no account, my dear boy.  You must not think of such a thing.  I
should not have a moment's peace while you are away.  You would not be
back till evening, perhaps; and I should be fancying all day that you
were in the river.  It is out of the question, my own George."

"But I must go, mother.  Uncle Philip said I might; and Sydney Grey is
going."

"That is only another reason, my dear boy.  Your uncle will yield to my
wishes, I am sure, as he always does.  And if Mrs Grey allows her son
to run such risks, I am sure I should not feel myself justified.  You
will stay with me, love, won't you?  You will stay with your mother, my
own boy."

George ran roaring away, screaming for Uncle Philip; who was not at
hand, however, to plead his cause.

"My Matilda," resumed the fond mother, "you are making yourself a sad
figure.  You will not be fit to show yourself at breakfast.  Do you
suppose your papa ever saw such a frock as that?  There! look--dripping
wet!  Pritchard, take Miss Matilda, and change all her clothes directly.
So much for my allowing her to run on the grass while the dew is on!
Lose no time, Pritchard, lest the child should catch cold.  Leave Miss
Anna with me.  Walk beside me, my Anna.  Ah! there is papa.  Papa, we
must find some amusement for George today, as I cannot think of letting
him go out fishing.  Suppose we take the children to spend the morning
with their cousins at Dingleford?"

"To-morrow would suit me better, my love," replied the husband.  "Indeed
I don't see how I can go to-day, or you either."  And Mr Rowland
lowered his voice, so as to show that he was aware of his liability to
be overheard.

"Oh, as to that, there is no hurry," replied the lady, aloud.  "If I had
nothing else to do, I should not make that call to-day.  Any day will do
as well."

As Hester and Margaret looked at each other, they heard the gentleman
softly say "Hush!"  But Mrs Rowland went on as audibly as ever.

"There is no reason why I should be in any hurry to call on Mrs Grey's
friends, whoever and whatever they may be.  Any day will do for that, my
dear."

Not having been yet forbidden to run before breakfast, Hester and
Margaret fled to the summer-house, to avoid hearing any more of the
domestic dialogues of the Rowland family.

"What shall we do when that woman calls?" said Hester.  "How will it be
possible to speak to her?"

"As we should speak to any other indifferent person," replied Margaret.
"Her rudeness is meant for Mrs Grey, not for us; for she knows nothing
about us: and Mrs Grey will never hear from us what has passed.--Shall
we knock?"

In answer to the knock, they were requested to enter.  Miss Young rose
in some confusion when she found her visitors were other than her
pupils: but she was so lame that Hester made her sit down again, while
they drew seats for themselves.  They apologised for breaking in upon
her with so little ceremony, but explained that they were come to be
inmates at Mr Grey's for some months, and that they wished to lose no
time in making themselves acquainted with every resort of the family, of
which they considered themselves a part.  Miss Young was evidently
pleased to see them.  She closed her volume, and assured them they were
welcome to her apartment; "For," said she, "everybody calls it my
apartment, and why should not I?"

"Do you spend all your time here?" asked Hester.

"Almost the whole day.  I have a lodging in the village; but I leave it
early these fine mornings, and stay here till dark.  I am so lame as to
make it inconvenient to pass over the ground oftener than is necessary;
and I find it pleasanter to see trees and grass through every window
here, than to look out into the farrier's yard,--the only prospect from
my lodging.  The furnace and sparks are pretty enough on a winter's
evening, especially when one is too ill or too dismal to do anything but
watch them; but at this season one grows tired of old horse-shoes and
cinders; and so I sit here."

To the sisters there seemed a world of desolation in these words.  They
were always mourning for having no brother.  Here was one who appeared
to be entirely alone.  From not knowing exactly what to say, Margaret
opened the book Miss Young had laid aside.  It was German--Schiller's
Thirty Years' War.  Every one has something to say about German
literature; those who do not understand it asking whether it is not very
mystical, and wild, and obscure; and those who do understand it saying
that it is not so at all.  It would be a welcome novelty if the two
parties were to set about finding out what it is to be mystical,--a
point which, for aught that is known to the generality, is not yet
ascertained.  Miss Young and her visitors did not enter upon precise
definitions this morning.  These were left for a future occasion.
Meantime it was ascertained that Miss Young had learned the German
language by the aid of dictionary and grammar alone, and also that if
she should happen to meet with any one who wished to enjoy what she was
enjoying, she should be glad to afford any aid in her power.  Hester was
satisfied with thanking her.  She was old enough to know that learning a
new language is a serious undertaking.  Margaret was somewhat younger,
and ready for any enterprise.  She thought she saw before her hours of
long mornings, when she should be glad to escape from the work-table to
Miss Young's companionship and to study.  The bright field of German
literature seemed to open before her to be explored.  She warmly thanked
Miss Young, and accepted her offered assistance.

"So you spend all your days alone here," said she, looking round upon
the rather bare walls, the matted floor, the children's desks, and the
single shelf which held Miss Young's books.

"Not exactly all the day alone," replied Miss Young; "the children are
with me five hours a day, and a set of pupils from the village comes to
me besides, for a spare hour of the afternoon.  In this way I see a good
many little faces every day."

"And some others too, I should hope; some besides little faces?"

Miss Young was silent.  Margaret hastened on--

"I suppose most people would say here what is said everywhere else about
the nobleness and privilege of the task of teaching children.  But I do
not envy those who have it to do.  I am as fond of children as any one;
but then it is having them out to play on the grass, or romping with
them in the nursery, that I like.  When it becomes a matter of desks and
school-books, I had far rather study than teach."

"I believe everybody, except perhaps mothers, would agree with you,"
said Miss Young, who was now, without apology, plying her needle.

"Indeed! then I am very sorry for you."

"Thank you; but there's no need to be sorry for me.  Do you suppose that
one's comfort lies in having a choice of employments?  My experience
leads me to think the contrary."

"I do not think I could be happy," said Hester, "to be tied down to an
employment I did not like."

"Not to a positively disgusting one.  But I am disposed to think that
the greatest number of happy people may be found busy in employments
that they have not chosen for themselves, and never would have chosen."

"I am afraid these very happy people are haunted by longings to be doing
something else."

"Yes: there is their great trouble.  They think, till experience makes
them wiser, that if they were only in another set of circumstances, if
they only had a choice what they would do, a chance for the exercise of
the powers they are conscious of, they would do such things as should be
the wonder and the terror of the earth.  But their powers may be
doubted, if they do not appear in the conquest of circumstances."

"So you conquer these giddy children, when you had rather be conquering
German metaphysicians, or ---, or ---, what else?"

"There is little to conquer in these children," said Miss Young; "they
are very good with me.  I assure you I have much more to conquer in
myself, with regard to them.  It is but little that I can do for them;
and that little I am apt to despise, in the vain desire to do more."

"How more?"

"If I had them in a house by myself, to spend their whole time with me,
so that I could educate, instead of merely teaching them.  But here I am
doing just what we were talking of just now,--laying out a
pretty-looking field of duty, in which there would probably be as many
thorns as in any other.  Teaching has its pleasures,--its great
occasional, and small daily pleasures, though they are not to be
compared to the sublime delights of education."

"You must have some of these sublime delights mixed in with the humbler.
You are, in some degree, educating these children while teaching them."

"Yes: but it is more a negative than a positive function, a very humble
one.  Governesses to children at home can do little more than stand
between children and the faults of the people about them.  I speak quite
generally."

"Is such an occupation one in which anybody can be happy?"

"Why not, as well as in making pins' heads, or in nursing sick people,
or in cutting square blocks out of a chalk pit for thirty years
together, or in any other occupation which may be ordained to prove to
us that happiness lies in the temper, and not in the object of a
pursuit?  Are there not free and happy pin-makers, and sick-nurses, and
chalk-cutters?"

"Yes: but they know how much to expect.  They have no idea of pin-making
in itself being great happiness."

"Just so.  Well: let a governess learn what to expect; set her free from
a hankering after happiness in her work, and you have a happy
governess."

"I thought such a thing was out of the order of nature."

"Not quite.  There have been such, though there are strong influences
against it.  The expectations of all parties are unreasonable; and those
who are too humble, or too amiable, to be dissatisfied with others, are
discontented with themselves, when the inevitable disappointment comes.
There is a great deal said about the evils of the position of a
governess--between the family and the servants--a great deal said that
is very true, and always will be true, while governesses have proud
hearts, like other people: but these are slight evils in comparison with
the grand one of the common failure of the relation.--There! do you hear
that bell?"

"What is it?  The breakfast bell?"

"Yes.  You must go.  I would not be understood as inviting you here; for
it is not, except upon sufferance, my room; and I have no inducement to
offer.  But I may just say, that you will always be welcome."

"Always?" said Margaret.  "In and out of school hours?"

"In and out of school hours, unless your presence should chance to turn
my pupils' heads.  In that case, you will not be offended if I ask you
to go away."

Mary and Fanny had just reported in the breakfast-parlour, that the Miss
Ibbotsons had been "such a time with Miss Young!" when Hester and
Margaret entered.  The testimony there was all in favour of Miss Young.
Mr Grey called her a most estimable young woman; and Mrs Grey declared
that, though she could not agree with her on all points, and decidedly
thought that she overrated Matilda Rowland's talents, she was convinced
that her children enjoyed great advantages under her care.  Sophia
added, that she was very superior,--quite learned.  Mrs Grey further
explained that, though now so much at ease on the subject of her
daughters' education, no one could have an idea of the trouble she had
had in getting the plan arranged.  It had seemed a pity that the
Rowlands and her children should not learn together: it was such an
advantage for children to learn together!  But Mrs Rowland had made a
thousand difficulties.  After breakfast, she would show her young
friends the room which she had proposed should be the schoolroom,--as
airy and advantageous in every way as could be imagined: but Mrs
Rowland had objected that she could not have Matilda and George come out
in all weathers,--as if they would have had to walk a mile, instead of
just the sweep of the gravel-walk!  Mrs Rowland had proposed that her
back-parlour should be the schoolroom: but really it was not to be
thought of--so small and close, and such a dull room for Miss Young!
The gentlemen had been obliged to take it up at last.  Nobody could ever
find out which of them it was that had thought of the summerhouse,
though she was satisfied in her own mind that Mr Rowland was not in the
habit of having such clever ideas; but, however, it was soon settled.
The summer-house was so exactly on the boundary-line between the two
gardens, that really no objection had been left for Mrs Rowland to
make.  She came as near to it as she could, however; for she had had the
walk covered in at great expense from her garden door to the
summer-house, when everybody knew she did not mind her children getting
wet at other times on the grass before the dew was off.

"And the covered way is quite an eyesore from the drawing-room windows,"
added Sophia.

"Quite," said Mrs Grey; "and it can be seen from ours, as I dare say
you observed last night.  But I have no doubt that entered into her
calculations when she had it made."

Mr Grey inquired about the arrangements for the morning, and whether he
could be of any service.  It happened to be a leisure morning with him,
and he did not know when he might have another at command.  Sophia
reminded her father that it would be impossible for the ladies of the
family to go out, when they were expecting the neighbours to call: and
this brought on another speculation as to who would call,--and
especially when the Rowlands might be looked for.  Hester and Margaret
believed they could have settled this matter; but they forbore to speak
of what they had overheard.  They began to wonder whether the subject of
Mrs Rowland was to be served up with every meal, for a continuance; and
Hester found her anticipations of delight in a country life somewhat
damped, by the idea of the frowning ghost of the obnoxious lady being
for ever present.



CHAPTER FOUR.

MORNING CALLS.

The little girls had been dismissed to the schoolroom before Mr Grey
had finally pushed away his tea-cup.  Not being wanted by the ladies, he
walked off to his timber-yard, and his wife followed to ask him some
question not intended for the general ear.  Sophia was struck with a
sudden panic at being left alone with the strangers, and escaped by
another door into the store-room.  As the last traces of the breakfast
things vanished, Hester exclaimed--

"So we may please ourselves, it seems, as to what we are to do with our
morning!"

"I hope so," said Margaret.  "Do let us get down to the meadow we see
from our window--the meadow that looks so flat and green!  We may very
well take two hours' grace before we need sit down here in form and
order."

Hester was willing, and the bonnets were soon on.  As Margaret was
passing down stairs again, she saw Mrs Grey and Sophia whispering in a
room, the door of which stood open.  She heard it shut instantly, and
the result of the consultation soon appeared.  Just as the sisters were
turning out of the house, Sophia ran after them to say that mamma wished
they would be so good as to defer their walk; mamma was afraid that if
they were seen abroad in the village, it would be supposed that they did
not wish to receive visitors: mamma would rather that they should stay
within this morning.  There was nothing for it but to turn back; and
Hester threw down her bonnet with no very good grace, as she observed to
her sister that, to all appearance, a town life was more free than a
country one, after all.

"Let us do our duty fully this first morning," said Margaret.  "Look, I
am going to carry down my work-bag; and you shall see me sit on the same
chair from this hour till dinner-time, unless I receive directions to
the contrary."

The restraint did not amount to this.  Hester's chair was placed
opposite to Mrs Grey, who seemed to have pleasure in gazing at her, and
in indulging in audible hints and visible winks and nods about her
beauty, to every lady visitor who sat near her.  Margaret might place
herself where she pleased.  In the intervals of the visits of the
morning, she was treated with a diversity of entertainments by Sophia,
who occasionally summoned her to the window to see how Matilda Rowland
was allowed to run across the road to her grandmamma's, without so much
as a hat upon her head,--to see Jim Bird, the oldest man in the parish
(believed to be near a hundred), who was resting himself on the bank of
the hedge,--to see the peacock which had been sent as a present from Sir
William Hunter to Mr James, the lawyer, and which was a great nuisance
from its screaming,--to say whether the two little Reeves, dropping
their curtseys as they went home from school, were not little
beauties,--and, in short, to witness all the village spectacles which
present themselves before the windows of an acute observer on a fine
spring morning.  The young ladies had to return to their seats as often
as wheels were heard, or the approach of parasols was discerned.

Among the earliest visitors were Mrs Enderby and her redoubtable son,
Mr Philip.  Mrs Enderby was a bright-eyed, brisk, little old lady, who
was rather apt to talk herself quite out of breath, but who had
evidently a stronger tendency still; and that was, to look on the bright
side of everything and everybody.  She smiled smiles full of meaning and
assent in return for Mrs Grey's winks about Hester's beauty; and really
cheered Hester with accounts of how good everybody was at Deerbrook.
She was thankful that her maid Phoebe was better; she knew that Mrs
Grey would not fail to inquire; really Phoebe was very much better; the
influenza had left sad effects, but they were dispersing.  It would be a
pity the girl should not quite recover, for she was a most invaluable
servant--such a servant as is very rarely to be met with.  The credit of
restoring her belonged to Mr Hope, who indeed had done everything.  She
supposed the ladies would soon be seeing Mr Hope.  He was extremely
busy, as everybody knew--had very large practice now; but he always
contrived to find time for everything.  It was exceedingly difficult to
find time for everything.  There was her dear daughter, Priscilla (Mrs
Rowland, whose husband was Mr Grey's partner); Priscilla devoted her
life to her children (and dear children they were); and no one who knew
what she did for her children would expect anything more from her; but,
indeed, those who knew best, she herself, for instance, were fully
satisfied that her dear Priscilla did wonders.  The apology for Mrs
Rowland, in case she should not call, was made not without ingenuity.
Hester fully understood it; and Mrs Grey showed by her bridling that it
was not lost upon her either.

Mr Enderby, meanwhile, was behaving civilly to Margaret and Sophia;
that is to say, he was somewhat more than merely civil to Margaret, and
somewhat less to Sophia.  It was obviously not without reason that
Sophia had complained of his hauteur.  He could not, as Sydney had
pleaded, help being tall; but he might have helped the excessive
frigidity with which he stood upright till invited to sit down.  The
fact was, that he had reason to believe that the ladies of Mr Grey's
family made very free with his sister's name and affairs; and though he
would have been sorry to have been obliged to defend all she said and
did, he felt some very natural emotions of dislike towards those who
were always putting the worst construction upon the whole of her
conduct.  He believed that Mr Grey's influence was exerted on behalf of
peace and good understanding, and he thought he perceived that Sydney,
with the shrewdness which some boys show very early, was more or less
sensible of the absurdity of the feud between the partners' wives and
daughters; and towards these members of the Grey family, Mr Enderby
felt nothing but good-will; he talked politics with Mr Grey in the
shrubbery after church on Sunday, executed commissions for him in
London, and sent him game: and Sydney was under obligations to him for
many a morning of sport, and many a service such as gentlemen who are
not above five-and-twenty and its freaks can render to boys entering
their teens.  Whatever might be his opinion of women generally, from the
particular specimens which had come in his way, he had too much sense
and gentlemanly feeling to include Mrs Grey's guests in the dislike he
felt towards herself, or to suppose that they must necessarily share her
disposition towards his relations.  Perhaps he felt, unknown to himself
some inclination to prepossess them in favour of his connections; to
stretch his complaisance a little, as a precaution against the
prejudices with which he knew Mrs Grey would attempt to occupy their
minds.  However this might be, he was as amicable with Margaret as his
mother was with her sister.

He soon found out that the strangers were more interested about the
natural features of Deerbrook than about its gossip.  He was amused at
the earnestness of Margaret's inquiries about the scenery of the
neighbourhood, and he laughingly promised that she should see every nook
within twenty miles.

"People always care least about what they have just at hand," said he.
"I dare say, if I were to ask you, you have never seen a glass-bottle
blown, or a tea-tray painted?"

"If I have," said Margaret, "I know many ladies in Birmingham who have
not."

"You will not be surprised, then, if you find some ladies in Deerbrook
who do not ride, and who can tell you no more of the pretty places near
than if they had been brought up in Whitechapel.  They keep their best
sights for strangers, and not for common use.  I am, in reality, only a
visitor at Deerbrook.  I do not live here, and never did; yet I am
better able to be your guide than almost any resident.  The ladies,
especially, are extremely domestic: they are far too busy to have ever
looked about them.  But I will speak to Mr Grey, and--"

"Oh, pray, do not trouble Mr Grey!  He has too much business on his
hands already; and he is so kind, he will be putting himself out of his
way for us; and all we want is to be in the open air in the fields."

"`All you want!' very like starlings in a cage;" and he looked as if he
was smiling at the well-known speech of the starling; but he did not
quote it.  "My mother is now saying that Mr Hope finds time for
everything: and she is right.  He will help us.  You must see Hope, and
you must like him.  He is the great boast of the place, next to the new
sign."

"Is the sign remarkable, or only new?"

"Very remarkable for ingenuity, if not for beauty.  It is `The Bonnet so
Blue:'--a lady's bonnet of blue satin, with brown bows, or whatever you
may call the trimming when you see it; and we are favoured besides with
a portrait of the milliner, holding the bonnet so blue.  We talk nearly
as much of this sign as of Mr Hope; but you must see them both, and
tell us which you like best."

"We have seen Mr Hope.  He was here yesterday evening."

"Well, then, you must see him again; and you must not think the worse of
him for his being praised by everybody you meet.  It is no ordinary case
of a village apothecary."

Margaret laughed; so little did Mr Hope look like the village
apothecary of her imagination.

"Ah, I see you know something of the predilection of villagers for their
apothecary,--how the young people wonder that he always cures everybody;
and how the old people could not live without him; and how the poor
folks take him for a sort of magician; and how he obtains more knowledge
of human affairs than any other kind of man.  But Hope is, though a very
happy man, not this sort of privileged person.  His friends are so
attached to him that they confide to him all their own affairs; but they
respect him too much to gossip at large to him of other people's.  I see
you do not know how to credit this; but I assure you, though the
inhabitants of Deerbrook are as accomplished in the arts of gossip as
any villagers in England, Hope knows little more than you do at this
moment about who are upon terms and who are not."

"My sister and I must learn his art of ignorance," said Margaret.  "If
it be really true that the place is full of quarrels, we shall be afraid
to stay, unless we can contrive to know nothing about them."

"Oh, do not suppose we are worse than others who live in villages.
Since our present rector came, we have risen somewhat above the rural
average of peace and quiet."

"And the country has always been identical with the idea of peace and
quiet to us town-bred people!" said Margaret.

"And very properly, in one sense.  But if you leave behind the din of
streets for the sake of stepping forth from your work-table upon a soft
lawn, or of looking out upon the old church steeple among the trees,
while you hear nothing but bleating and chirping, you must expect some
set-off against such advantages: and that set-off is the being among a
small number of people, who are always busy looking into one another's
small concerns."

"But this is not a necessary evil," said Margaret.  "From what you were
saying just now, it appears that it may be avoided."

"From what I was saying about Hope.  Yes; such an one as Hope may get
all the good out of every situation, without its evils; but--"

"But nobody else," said Margaret, smiling.  "Well, Hester and I must try
whether we cannot have to do with lawns and sheep for a few months,
without quarrelling or having to do with quarrels."

"And what if you are made the subject of quarrels?" asked Mr Enderby.
"How are you to help yourselves, in that case?"

"How does Mr Hope help himself in that case?"

"It remains to be seen.  As far as I know, the whole place is agreed
about him at present.  Every one will tell you that never was society so
blessed in a medical man before;--from the rector and my mother, who
never quarrel with anybody, down to the village scold.  I am not going
to prepossess you against even our village scold, by telling her name.
You will know it in time, though your first acquaintance will probably
be with her voice."

"So we are to hear something besides bleating and chirping?"

A tremendous knock at the door occurred, as if in answer to this.  All
the conversation in the room suddenly stopped, and Mr and Mrs Rowland
walked in.

"This is my sister, Mrs Rowland," observed Mr Enderby to Margaret.

"This is my daughter Priscilla, Mrs Rowland," said Mrs Enderby to
Hester.

Both sisters were annoyed at feeling timid and nervous on being
introduced to the lady.  There is something imposing in hearing a mere
name very often, in the proof that the person it belongs to fills a
large space in people's minds: and when the person is thus frequently
named with fear and dislike, an idea is originated of a command over
powers of evil which makes the actual presence absolutely awful.  This
seemed now to be felt by all.  Sophia had nothing to say: Mrs Grey's
head twitched nervously, while she turned from one to another with
slight remarks: Mrs Enderby ran on about their having all happened to
call at once, and its being quite a family party in Mrs Grey's parlour;
and Mr Philip's flow of conversation had stopped.  Margaret thought he
was trying to help laughing.

The call could not be an agreeable one.  The partners' ladies quoted
their own children's sayings about school and Miss Young, and Miss
Young's praise of the children; and each vied with the other in eulogium
on Miss Young, evidently on the ground of her hopes of Fanny and Mary on
the one hand, and of Matilda, George, and Anna, on the other.  Mrs
Enderby interposed praises of all the children, while Mr Rowland
engaged Hester's attention, calling off her observation and his own from
the sparring of the rival mothers.  Philip informed Margaret at length,
that George was a fine little fellow, who would make a good sportsman.
There was some pleasure in taking such a boy out fishing.  But Mr
Philip had lighted on a dangerous topic, as he soon found.  His sister
heard what he was saying, and began an earnest protest against little
boys fishing, on account of the danger, and against any idea that she
would allow her George to run any such risks.  Of course, this made Mrs
Grey fire up, as at an imputation upon her care of her son Sydney; and
before the rest of the company could talk down the dispute, it bore too
much of the appearance of a recrimination about the discharge of
maternal duties.  Margaret thought that, but for the relationship, Mrs
Rowland might fairly be concluded to be the village scold alluded to by
Mr Enderby.  It was impossible that he could have been speaking of his
sister; but Deerbrook was an unfortunate place if it contained a more
unamiable person than she appeared at this moment.  The faces of the two
ladies were still flushed with excitement when Mr Hope came in.  The
sisters thought he appeared like a good genius, so amiable did the party
grow on his entrance.  It seemed as if he was as great a favourite with
the Rowlands as with the other family; so friendly was the gentleman,
and so gracious the lady; while Mr Hope was, to all appearance,
unconscious of the existence of any unpleasant feelings among his
neighbours.  The talk flowed on about the concerns of personages of the
village, about the aspect of public affairs, about the poets of the age,
and what kind of poetry was most read in Deerbrook, and how the Book
Society went on, till all had grown cordial, and some began to propose
to be hospitable.  Mrs Rowland hoped for the honour of seeing the Miss
Ibbotsons one day the next week, when Mr Rowland should have returned
from a little excursion of business.  Mrs Enderby wondered whether she
could prevail on all her young friends to spend an evening with her
before her son left Deerbrook; and Mrs Grey gave notice that she should
shortly issue her invitations to those with whom she wished her young
cousins to become better acquainted.

All went right for the rest of the morning.  When the Enderbys and
Rowlands went away, the Levitts came.  When Dr Levitt inquired about
the schools of Birmingham, it could not but come out that Hester and
Margaret were dissenters.  Yet, as they were desired to observe, he did
not seem in the least shocked, and his manner was just as kind to them
after this disclosure as before.  He was pronounced a very liberal man.
Mr Hope was asked to stay to dinner, and Mrs Grey complacently related
the events of the morning to her husband as he took his place at table.
Deerbrook had done its duty to Hester and Margaret pretty well for the
first day.  Everybody of consequence had called but the Andersons, and
they would no doubt come on Sunday.



CHAPTER FIVE.

THE MEADOWS.

The afternoon was the time when Miss Young's pupils practised the
mysteries of the needle.  Little girls are not usually fond of sewing.
Till they become clever enough to have devices of their own, to cut out
a doll's petticoat, or contrive a pin-cushion to surprise mamma, sewing
is a mere galling of the fingers and strain upon the patience.  Every
wry stitch shows, and is pretty sure to be remarked upon: the seam or
hem seems longer the oftener it is measured, till the little work-woman
becomes capable of the enterprise of despatching a whole one at a
sitting; after which the glory is found to ameliorate the toil, and
there is a chance that the girl may become fond of sewing.

Miss Young's pupils had not arrived at this stage.  It was a mystery to
them that Miss Young could sit sewing, as fast as her needle could fly,
for the whole afternoon, and during the intervals of their lessons in
the morning.  It was in vain that she told them that some of her
pleasantest hours were those which she passed in this employment: and
that she thought they would perhaps grow as fond of work as their sister
Sophia before they were as old as she.  With languid steps did the twins
return to the house this afternoon for another pair of shirt-sleeves,
and to show mamma the work they had finished.  Hand in hand, as usual,
and carrying up for judgment their last performance, they entered the
house.  In a very different mood did they return.  Running, skipping,
and jumping, they burst again into the summer-house.

"Miss Young, oh, Miss Young, we are to have a holiday!"

"Mamma sends her compliments to you, Miss Young, and she hopes you will
give us a holiday.  It is a fine afternoon, she thinks, and my cousins
have never gathered cowslips; and we are all going into the meadow for a
cowslip-gathering; and Mr Hope will come to us there.  He has to go
somewhere now, but he will come to us before we have half done."

Matilda Rowland looked fall of dismay till she was told that Mrs Grey
hoped she would be of the party, and begged that she would, go directly
and ask her mamma's leave.

"What a quantity of cowslips we shall get!" observed Mary, as she took
down Fanny's basket from the nail on which it hung, and then her own.
"We are each to have a basket, mamma says, that we may not quarrel.
What shall we do with such a quantity of cowslips?"

"Make tea of them, to be sure," replied Fanny.  "We may dry them in this
window, may not we, Miss Young?  And we will give you some of our
cowslip-tea."

Miss Young smiled and thanked them.  She did not promise to drink any of
the promised tea.  She had a vivid remembrance of the cowslip-drying of
her young days, when the picked flowers lay in a window till they were
laced all over with cobwebs; and when they were at length popped into
the teapot with all speed, to hide the fact that they were mouldy.  She
remembered the good-natured attempts of her father and mother to swallow
a doll's cupful of her cowslip-tea, rather than discourage the spirit of
enterprise which, now that she had lost those whom she loved, was all
that she had to trust to.

"Fanny," said Mary, with eyes wide open, "cannot we have a feast here
for my cousins, when we make our cowslip-tea?"

"A feast!  Oh, that would be grand!" replied Fanny.  "I have a shilling,
and so have you; and we could buy a good many nice things for that: and
Matilda Rowland will lend us her doll's dishes to put with ours.  Miss
Young, will you let us have our feast here, one afternoon?  We will ask
my cousins, without telling them anything; and they will be so
surprised!"

Miss Young promised everything, engaged not to tell, smoothed their
hair, tied their bonnets, and sent them away quite happy with their
secret.

Such a holiday as this was one of Miss Young's few pleasures.  There
were several occasions in the year when she could make sure beforehand
of some hours to herself.  Her Sundays were much occupied with the
Sunday-school, and with intercourse with poor neighbours whom she could
not meet on any other day: but Christmas-day, the day of the annual fair
of Deerbrook, and two or three more, were her own.  These were, however,
so appropriated, long before, to some object, that they lost much of
their character of holidays.  Her true holidays were such as the
afternoon of this day,--hours suddenly set free, little gifts of leisure
to be spent according to the fancy of the moment.  Let none pretend to
understand the value of such whose lives are all leisure; who take up a
book to pass the time; who saunter in gardens because there are no
morning visits to make; who exaggerate the writing of a family letter
into important business.  Such have their own enjoyments: but they know
nothing of the paroxysm of pleasure of a really hardworking person on
hearing the door shut which excludes the business of life, and leaves
the delight of free thoughts and hands.  The worst part of it is the
having to decide how to make the most of liberty.  Miss Young was not
long in settling this point.  She just glanced up at her shelf of books,
and down upon her drawing-board, and abroad through the south window,
and made up her mind.  The acacia with its fresh bunches of blossoms was
waving above the window, casting in flickering shadows upon the floor:
the evergreens of the shrubbery twinkled in the sun, as the light breeze
swept over them: the birds were chirruping all about, and a yellow
butterfly alighted and trembled on the window-sill at the moment.  It
was one of the softest and gayest days of spring; and the best thing was
to do nothing but enjoy it.  She moved to the south window with her
work, and sewed or let the wind blow upon her face as she looked out.

The landscape was a wide one.  Far beyond, and somewhat below the garden
and shrubberies in which the summerhouse stood, flat meadows stretched
to the brink of the river, on the other side of which were the park
woods.  All was bathed in the afternoon sunshine, except where a tree
here and there cast a flake of shadow upon the grass of the meadows.

"It is a luxury," thought the gazer, "for one who cannot move about to
sit here and look abroad.  I wonder whether I should have been with the
party if I had not been lame.  I dare say something would have taken off
from the pleasure if I had.  But how well I can remember what the
pleasure is! the jumping stiles--the feel of the turf underfoot,--the
running after every flower,--the going wherever one has a fancy to go,--
how well I remember it all!  And yet it gives me a sort of surprise to
see the activity of these children, and how little they are aware of
what their privilege is.  I fancy, however, the pleasure is more in the
recollection of all such natural enjoyments than at the moment.  It is
so with me, and I believe with everybody.  This very landscape is more
beautiful to me in the dark night when I cannot sleep, than at this very
moment, when it looks its best and brightest: and surely this is the
great difference between that sort of pleasures and those which come
altogether from within.  The delight of a happy mood of mind is beyond
everything at the time; it sets one above all that can happen; it steeps
one in heaven itself; but one cannot recall it: one can only remember
that it was so.  The delight of being in such a place as those woods is
generally more or less spoiled at the time by trifles which are
forgotten afterwards;--one is hungry, or tired, or a little vexed with
somebody, or doubtful whether somebody else is not vexed; but then the
remembrance is purely delicious,--brighter in sunshine, softer in
shade,--wholly tempered to what is genial.  The imagination is a better
medium than the eye.  This is surely the reason why Byron could not
write poetry on Lake Leman, but found he must wait till he got within
four walls.  This is the reason why we are all more moved by the
slightest glimpses of good descriptions in books than by the amplitude
of the same objects before our eyes.  I used to wonder how that was,
when, as a child, I read the openings of scenes and books in `Paradise
Lost.'  I saw plenty of summer sunrises; but none of them gave me a
feeling like the two lines:--

  "`Now morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime
  Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl.'

"If all this be so, our lot is more equalised than is commonly thought.
Once having received pictures into our minds, and possessing a clear eye
in the mind to see them with, the going about to obtain more is not of
very great consequence.  This comforts one for prisoners suffering
_carcere duro_, and for townspeople who cannot often get out of the
streets; and for lame people like me, who see others tripping over
commons and through fields where we cannot go.  I wish there was as much
comfort the other way,--about such as suffer from unhappy moods of mind,
and know little of the joy of the highest.  It would be a small gain to
them to fly like birds,--to see like the eagle itself.--Oh, there are
the children!  So that is their cowslip meadow!  How like children they
all look together, down on the grass!--gathering cowslips, I suppose.
The two in black are more eager about it than Sophia.  She sits on the
stile while they are busy.  The children are holding forth to their
cousins,--teaching them something, evidently.  How I love to overlook
people,--to watch them acting unconsciously, and speculate for them!  It
is the most tempting thing in the world to contrast the little affairs
one sees them busy about, with the very serious ones which await them,--
which await every one.  There are those two strangers busy gathering
cowslips, and perhaps thinking of nothing beyond the fresh pleasure of
the air and the grass, and the scent of their flowers,--their minds
quite filled with the spirit of the spring, when who knows what may be
awaiting them!  Love may be just at hand.  The tempest of passion may be
brewing under this soft sunshine.  They think themselves now as full of
happiness as possible; and a little while hence, upon a few words
spoken, a glance exchanged, they may be in such a heaven of bliss that
they will smile at their own ignorance in being so well pleased to-day.
Or--but I pray they may escape the other chance.  Neither of them knows
anything of that misery yet, I am confident.  They both look too young,
too open, too free to have really suffered.--I wonder whether it is
foolish to fancy already that one of them may be settled here.  It can
hardly be foolish, when the thought occurs so naturally: and these great
affairs of life lie distinctly under the eye of such as are themselves
cut off from them.  I am out of the game, and why should not I look upon
its chances?  I am quite alone; and why should I not watch for others?
Every situation has its privileges and its obligations.--What is it to
be alone, and to be let alone, as I am?  It is to be put into a post of
observation on others: but the knowledge so gained is anything but a
good if it stops at mere knowledge,--if it does not make me feel and
act.  Women who have what I am not to have, a home, an intimate, a
perpetual call out of themselves, may go on more safely, perhaps,
without any thought for themselves, than I with all my best
consideration: but I, with the blessing of a peremptory vocation, which
is to stand me instead of sympathy, ties and spontaneous action,--I may
find out that it is my proper business to keep an intent eye upon the
possible events of other people's lives, that I may use slight occasions
of action which might otherwise pass me by.  If one were thoroughly wise
and good, this would be a sort of divine lot.  Without being at all
wiser or better than others,--being even as weak in judgment and in
faith as I am,--something may be made of it.  Without daring to meddle,
one may stand clear-sighted, ready to help.--How the children are flying
over the meadow towards that gentleman who is fastening his horse to the
gate!  Mr Hope, no doubt.  He is the oldest cowslip gatherer of them
all, I fancy.  If one could overhear the talk in every house along the
village, I dare say some of it is about Mr Hope winning one of these
young ladies.  If so, it is only what I am thinking about myself.  Every
one wishes to see Mr Hope married,--every one, even to the servants
here, who are always disputing whether he will not have Miss Sophia, or
whether Miss Sophia is not to make a grander match.  Sophia will not do
for him; but it is very possible that one of these girls may.  And the
other--but I will not think about that to-day.--How yellow the glow is
upon those woods!  What heavenly hues hang about the world we live in!
but how strange is the lot of some in it!  One would wonder why, when
all are so plainly made to feel and act together, there should be any
one completely solitary.  There must be a reason: I would fain know it;
but I can wait till we may know all."

Such were some of Maria Young's natural and unchecked thoughts.  There
was not much of common holiday spirit in them: but to Maria, liberty and
peace were holiday, and her mind was not otherwise than peaceful.  She
was serious, but not sad.  Any one who could at the moment have seen her
face, would have pronounced her cheerful at heart; and so she was.  She
had been so long and so far banished from ordinary happiness, that her
own quiet speculations were material enough for cheerfulness.  The
subject on which she would not think to-day, was the possibility of one
of the sisters attaching Mr Enderby.  Maria Young had not always been
solitary, and lame, and poor.  Her father had not been very long dead;
and while he lived, no one supposed that his only child would be poor.
Her youth passed gaily, and her adversity came suddenly.  Her father was
wont to drive her out in his gig, almost every summer day.  One evening,
the horse took fright, and upset the gig on a heap of stones by the
road-side.  Mr Young was taken up dead, and Maria was lamed for life.
She had always known the Enderbys very well; and there had been some
gossip among their mutual acquaintance, about the probability that
Philip would prove to be Maria's lover, when he should be old enough to
think of marrying.  It never went further than this,--except in Maria's
own heart.  She had, indeed, hoped--even supposed--that in Philip's mind
the affair had at least been entertained thus far.  She could never
settle to her own satisfaction whether she had been weak and mistaken,
or whether she had really been in any degree wronged.  There had been
words, there had been looks,--but words and looks are so easily
misinterpreted!  The probability was that she had no one to blame but
herself--if fault there was.  Perhaps there was no fault anywhere: but
there was misery, intense and long.  During her illness, no tidings came
of Philip.  He was in another part of the country when the accident
happened; and it was not till long after it had been made known that Mr
Young had died insolvent,--not till after Maria had recovered, as far as
recovery was possible,--not till she had fallen into the habit of
earning her bread, that Philip reappeared, and shook hands with her, and
told her with how much concern he had heard of her sufferings.  This
interview gave her entire possession of herself:--so she believed.  She
got through it calmly, and it left her with one subject at least of
intense thankfulness,--that her mind was known only to herself.
Whatever might be her solitary struggles, she might look without shame
into the face of every human being.  She could bear being pitied for her
poverty, for her lameness, for her change of prospects, when the
recollection of this came across any of her acquaintance.  If it had
been necessary, she could probably have borne to be pitied for having
loved without return; but she could not be too thankful that it was not
necessary.

Maria was right in her supposition that the village was speculating upon
the newly-arrived young ladies.  The parish clerk had for some years,
indeed ever since the death of the late stationer and dispenser of
letters, carried on a flirtation with the widow, notwithstanding the
rumours which were current, as to the cause to which her late husband
owed his death.  It was believed that poor Harry Plumstead died of
exhaustion from his wife's voice; for she was no other than the village
scold, of whose existence Margaret had been warned by Mr Enderby.  Some
thought that Owen was acting a politic part in protracting this
flirtation,--keeping her temper in check by his hold upon her
expectations; and such had little doubt that the affair would linger on
to the end, without any other result than Owen's exemption meanwhile
from the inflictions of her tongue, to which, in the discharge of his
office, he might otherwise become frequently liable.  Others wished to
see them married, believing that in Owen, a Welshman sufficiently
irascible, Mrs Plumstead would at last meet her match.  This afternoon,
an observer would have thought the affair was proceeding to this point.
Mrs Plumstead, looking particularly comely and gracious, was putting up
an unclaimed letter at the window for display, when Owen stopped to ask
if she had seen the pretty young ladies who had come to Deerbrook.  He
remarked that, to be sure, they might have gone to some place where they
were more wanted, for Deerbrook was not without pretty faces of its own
before: and, as he said so, he smiled hard in the widow's face.  He
should not wonder if some work for the rector should rise up before
long, for, where there were pretty faces, weddings might be looked for.
He even asked Mrs Plumstead if she did not think so: and added
something so ambiguous about his own share in the work for the rector
which was to arise, that the widow could not make out whether he spoke
as her admirer or as parish clerk.  In the milliner's workroom there was
a spirited conversation between Miss Nares and her assistant, on the
past wedding dresses of Deerbrook, arising out of the topic of the
day,--the Miss Ibbotsons.  Mrs Howell, who, with her shopwoman, Miss
Miskin, dispensed the haberdashery of the place, smiled winningly at
every customer who entered her shop, and talked of delightful
acquisitions, and what must be felt about Mr Hope, in the midst of such
charming society, and what it must be hoped would be felt; and how gay
the place was likely to be with riding parties, and boating parties, and
some said, dances on the green at Mrs Enderby's; and how partners in a
dance have been known to become partners for life, as she had been
jocosely told when her poor dear Howell prevailed on her to stand up
with him,--the first time for twenty years,--at his niece's wedding.
Hester's beauty, and what Mrs Grey had said about it to her maid, were
discussed, just at the moment when Hester, passing the shop, was
entreated by Sophia to look at a new pattern of embroidery which had
lately arrived from London, and was suspended at the window.  Mrs
Howell and her gossips caught a glimpse of the face of the young lady,
through the drapery of prints and muslins, and the festoons of ribbons;
and when the party proceeded down the street, there was a rush to the
door, in order to obtain a view of her figure.  She was pronounced
beautiful; and it was hoped that some gentleman in the village would
find her irresistible.  It was only rather strange that no gentleman was
in attendance on her now.

If the gossips could have followed the party with their eyes into the
meadow, they would soon have been satisfied; for it was not long before
Mr Hope joined them there.  On leaving Mr Grey's table, he was as
little disposed to go and visit his patient, as medical men are when
they are called away from the merriest company, or at the most
interesting moment of a conversation.  The liability to this kind of
interruption is one of the great drawbacks of the profession, to which
Mr Hope belonged; another is, the impossibility of travelling,--the
being fixed to one place for life, without any but the shortest
intervals of journeying.  Mr Hope had been settled for five years at
Deerbrook; and, during that time, he had scarcely been out of sight of
its steeple.  His own active and gladsome mind had kept him happy among
his occupations.  There was no one in the place with whom he could hold
equal converse; but, while he had it not, he did not feel the pressing
want of it.  He loved his profession, and it kept him busy.  His kind
heart was ever full of interest for his poorer patients.  Seeing the
best side of everybody, he could be entertained, though sometimes vexed,
by his intercourse with the Greys and Rowlands.  Then there was the
kindly-tempered and gentlemanly rector; and Philip Enderby often came
down for a few weeks; and Mr Hope had the chief management of the Book
Society, and could thus see the best new books; and his professional
rides lay through a remarkably pretty country.

He kept up a punctual and copious correspondence with the members of his
own family,--with his married sisters, and with his only brother, now
with his regiment in India,--relating to them every important
circumstance of his lot, and almost every interesting feeling of his
heart.  With this variety of resources, life had passed away cheerily,
on the whole, with Mr Hope, for the five years of his residence at
Deerbrook; though there were times when he wondered whether it was to be
always thus,--whether he was to pass to his grave without any higher or
deeper human intercourses than he had here.  If it had been possible, he
might, like other men as wise as himself, have invested some one of the
young ladies of Deerbrook with imaginary attributes, and have fallen in
love with a creature of his own fancy.  But it really was not possible.
There was no one of the young ladies of Deerbrook who was not so far
inferior to the women of Hope's own family,--to the mother he had lost,
and the sisters who were settled far away,--as to render this commonest
of all delusions impossible to him.

To such a man, so circumstanced, it may be imagined how great an event
was the meeting with Hester and Margaret.  He could not be in their
presence ten minutes without becoming aware of their superiority to
every woman he had seen for five years past.  The beauty of the one, the
sincerity and unconsciousness of the other, and the general elevation of
both, struck him forcibly the first evening.  His earliest thought the
next morning was of some great event having taken place; and when he
left Mr Grey's door after dinner, it was with an unwillingness which
made him spur himself and his horse on to their business, that he might
the sooner return to his new-found pleasure.  His thoughts already
darted forward to the time when the Miss Ibbotsons would be leaving
Deerbrook.  It was already a heavy thought how dull Deerbrook would be
without them.  He was already unconsciously looking at every object in
and around the familiar place with the eyes of the strangers,
speculating on how the whole would appear to them.  In short, his mind
was full of them.  There are, perhaps, none who do not know what this
kind of impression is.  All have felt it, at some time or other,--many
have felt it often,--about strangers whom they have been predisposed to
like, or with whom they have been struck at meeting.  Nine times out of
ten, perhaps, the impression is fleeting; and when it is gone, there is
an unwillingness to return to it, from a sense of absurdity in having
been so much interested about one who so soon became indifferent: but
the fact is not the less real and general for this.  When it happens
between two young people who are previously fancy-free, and
circumstances favour the impression till it sinks deeper than the fancy,
it takes the name of love at first sight.  Otherwise it passes away
without a name, without a record:--for the hour it is a secret: in an
after time it is forgotten.

Possessed unconsciously with this secret, Hope threw himself from his
horse at the entrance of the meadow where the cowslip-gatherers were
busy, fastened his steed to the gate, and joined the party.  The
children ran to him with the gleanings of intelligence which they had
acquired since he saw them last, half an hour before:--that it was well
they did not put off their gathering any longer, for some of the flowers
were beginning to dry up already: that cousins had never tasted
cowslip-tea;--(was not this _very_ odd?)--that cousin Hester would not
help to pick the flowers for drying,--she thought it such a pity to pull
the blossom out of the calyx: that Sophia would not help either, because
it was warm: that cousin Margaret had gathered a great many, but she had
been ever so long watching a spider's nest,--a nasty large spider's nest
that Matilda was just going to break into, when cousin Margaret asked
her not to spoil it?

Margaret was indeed on her knees, prying into the spider's nest.  When
duly laughed at, she owned to having seen cobwebs before, but maintained
that cobwebs in a closet were a very different affair from a spider's
nest in a field.

"I rather think, however," said she, "the word `nest' itself has
something to do with my liking, for what I have been looking at.  Some
of your commonest country words have a charm to the ear and imagination
of townspeople that you could not understand."

"But," said Mr Hope, "I thought nests were very common in Birmingham.
Have you not nests of boxes, and nests of work-tables?"

"Yes, and so we have stacks of chimneys; but yet we do not think of
hay-making when we see the smoke of the town.--I rather think country
words are only captivating as relating to the country; but then you
cannot think how bewitching they are to people who live in streets."

"The children might have found you a prettier sort of nest to indulge
your fancy with, I should think.  There must be plenty of creatures
besides spiders in this wide meadow."

Mr Hope called out to the little girls, that whoever should find any
sort of a nest in the meadow, for Miss Margaret Ibbotson, should have a
ride on his horse.  Away flew the children; and Hester and Sophia came
from the water-side to know what all the bustle was about.  Fanny
returned to inquire whether the nests must be _in_ the meadow; whether
just outside would not do.  She knew there was an ants' nest in the
bank, just on the other side of the hedge.  The decision was that the
ants' nest would do only in case of her not being able to find any other
within bounds.  Sophia looked on languidly, probably thinking all this
very silly.  It put her in mind of an old schoolfellow of hers who had
been called very clever before she came to school at nine years old.
Till she saw her, Sophia had believed that town children were always
clever: but no later than the very first day, this little girl had got
into disgrace with the governess.  Her task was to learn by heart
Goldsmith's Country Clergyman, in the `Deserted Village.'  She said it
quite perfectly, but, when questioned about the meaning, stopped short
at the first line,--"Near yonder copse where once a garden smiled."  She
persisted that she did not know what a copse was: the governess said she
was obstinate, and shut her up in the play hours between morning and
afternoon school.  Sophia never could make out whether the girl was
foolish or obstinate in persisting that she did not know what a copse
was: but her cousin Margaret now put her in mind of this girl, with all
her town feelings, and her fuss about spiders' nests.

"How is old Mr Smithson to-day?"  Sophia inquired of Mr Hope, by way
of introducing something more rational.

"Not better: it is scarcely possible that he should be," was the reply.

"Papa thought last night he must be dying."

"He is dying."

"Have you just come from a patient who is dying?" asked Hester, with a
look of anxiety, with which was mixed some surprise.

"Yes: from one who cannot live many days."

Sophia observed that Mr James had been sent for early this morning--no
doubt to put the finish to the will: but nobody seemed to know whether
the old gentleman would leave his money to his nephew or his step-son,
or whether he would divide it between them.  Hester and Margaret showed
no anxiety on this point, but seemed so ready to be interested about
some others as to make Mr Hope think that they were only restrained by
delicacy from asking all that he could tell about his patient's state.
They knew enough of the profession, however, to be aware that this kind
of inquiry is the last which should be addressed to a medical man.

"You are surprised," said he, "that I am come from a dying patient to
play with the children in the fields.  Come, acknowledge that this is in
your minds."

"If it is, it is an unreasonable thought," said Margaret.  "You must see
so many dying people, it would be hard that in every case you should be
put out of the reach of pleasure."

"Never mind the hardship, if it be fitting," said Hope.  "Hard or not
hard, is it natural,--is it possible?"

"I suppose witnessing death so often does lessen the feelings about it,"
observed Hester.  "Yet I cannot fancy that one's mind could be at
liberty for small concerns immediately after leaving a house full of
mourners, and the sight of one in pain.  There must be something
distasteful in everything that meets one's eyes,--in the sunshine
itself."

"True.  That is the feeling in such cases: but such cases seldom occur.
Yes: I mean what I say.  Such cases are very rare.  The dying person is
commonly old, or so worn out by illness as to make death at last no
evil.  When the illness is shorter, it is usually found that a few hours
in the sick room do the work of months of common life, in reconciling
the minds of survivors."

"I am sure that is true," observed Margaret.

"It is so generally the case that I know no set of circumstances in
which I should more confidently reckon on the calmness, forethought, and
composure of the persons I have to deal with than in the family of a
dying person.  The news comes suddenly to the neighbours: all the
circumstances rush at once into their imaginations: all their
recollections and feelings about the sufferer agitate them in quick
succession; and they naturally suppose the near friends must be more
agitated, in proportion to their nearness."

"The watchers, meanwhile," said Hester, "have had time in the long night
to go over the past and the future, again and again; and by morning all
seems so familiar, that they think they can never be surprised into
grief again."

"So familiar," said Mr Hope, "that their minds are at liberty for the
smallest particulars of their duty.  I usually find them ready for the
minutest directions I may have to give."

"Yes: the time for surprise,--for consternation,--is long afterwards,"
said Hester, with some emotion.  "When the whole has become settled and
finished in other minds, the nearest mourners begin to wake up to their
mourning."

"And thus," said Margaret, "the strongest agitation is happily not
witnessed."

"Happily not," said Mr Hope.  "I doubt whether anybody's strongest
agitations ever are witnessed.  I doubt whether the sufferer himself is
often aware of what are really his greatest sufferings; and he is so
ashamed of them that he hides them from himself when it is possible.  I
cannot but think that any grief which reveals itself is very endurable."

"Is not that rather hard?" asked Margaret.

"How does it seem to you hard?  Is it not merciful that we can keep our
worst sorrows,--that we are disposed, as it were forced, to keep them
from afflicting our friends?"

"But is it not saying that bereavement of friends is not the greatest of
sorrows, while all seem to agree that it is?"

"Is it, generally speaking, the greatest of sorrows?  I think not, for
my own part.  There are cases in which the loss is too heavy to bear
being the subject of any speculation, almost of observation; for
instance, when the happiest married people are separated, or when a
first or only child dies: but I think there are many sorrows greater
than a separation by death of those who have faith enough to live
independently of each other, and mutual love enough to deserve, as they
hope, to meet again hereafter.  I assure you I have sometimes come away
from houses unvisited, and unlikely to be visited by death, with a heart
so heavy as I have rarely or never brought from a deathbed."

"I should have thought that would be left for the rector to say,"
observed Hester.  "I should have supposed you meant cases of guilt or
remorse."

"Cases of guilt or remorse," continued Mr Hope, "and also of infirmity.
People may say what they will, but I am persuaded that there is
immeasurably more suffering endured, both in paroxysms and for a
continuance, from infirmity, tendency to a particular fault, or the
privation of a sense, than from the loss of any friend upon earth,
except the very nearest and dearest; and even that case is no exception,
when there is the faith of meeting again, which almost every mourner
has, so natural and welcome as it is."

"Do you tell your infirm friends the high opinion you have of their
sufferings?" asked Margaret.

"Why, not exactly; that would not be the kindest thing to do, would it?
What they want is, to have their trouble lightened to them, not made the
worst of;--lightened, not by using any deceit, of course, but by simply
treating their case as a matter of fact."

"Then surely you should make light of the case of the dying too: make
light of it even to the survivors.  Do you do this?"

"In one sense I do; in another sense no one can do it.  Not regarding
death as a misfortune, I cannot affect to consider it so.  Regarding the
change of existence as a very serious one, I cannot, of course, make
light of it."

"That way of looking at it regards only the dying person; you have not
said how you speak of it to survivors."

"As I speak of it to you now, or to myself when I see any one die; with
the added consideration of what the survivors are about to lose.  That
is a large consideration certainly; but should not one give them credit
for viewing death as it is, and for being willing to bear their own loss
cheerfully, as they would desire to bear any other kind of loss?
especially if, as they say, they believe it to be only for a time."

"This as looking on the bright side," observed Hester, in a low voice;
but she was overheard by Mr Hope.

"I trust you do not object to the bright side of things," said he,
smiling, "as long as there is so much about us that is really very
dark?"

"What can religion be for," said Margaret, "or reason, or philosophy,
whichever name you may call your faith by, but to show us the bright
side of everything--of death among the rest?  I have often wondered why
we seem to try to make the most of that evil (if evil it be), while we
think it a duty to make the least of every other.  I had some such
feeling, I suppose, when I was surprised to hear that you had come
hither straight from a deathbed: I do not wonder at all now."

"Mr Smithson will not be much missed," observed Sophia, who felt
herself relieved from the solemnity of the occasion, by what had passed,
and at liberty to speak of him as freely as if he was no nearer death
than ever.  "He has never been a sociable neighbour.  I always thought
him an odd old man, from the earliest time I can remember."

"Some few will miss him," said Mr Hope.  "He is a simple-hearted, shy
man, who never did himself justice, except with two or three who saw
most of him.  Their affection has been enough for him--enough to make
him think now that his life has been a very happy one.  There!" cried
Hope, as a lark sprang up almost from under the feet of the
party--"There is another member of Deerbrook society, ladies, who is
anxious to make your acquaintance."  There were two or three larks
hovering above the meadow at this moment, and others were soaring
further off.  The air was full of lark music.  The party stood still and
listened.  Looking up into the sunny sky, they watched one little
warbler, wheeling round, falling, rising again, still warbling, till it
seemed as if it could never be exhausted.  Sophia said it made her head
ache to look up so long; and she seemed impatient for the bird to have
done.  It then struck her that she also might find a nest, like her
sisters; and she examined the place whence the lark had sprung.  Under a
thick tuft of grass, in a little hollow, she found a family of infant
larks huddled together, and pointed them out to her cousins.

The children came upon being called.  They were damped in spirits.  They
did not see how they were to find any nests, if the ants' nest would not
do; unless, indeed, Mr Hope would hold them up into the trees or hedges
to look; but they could not climb trees, Mr Hope knew.  They were
somewhat further mortified by perceiving that they might have found a
nest by examining the ground, if they had happened to think of it.
Margaret begged they would not be distressed at not finding nests for
her; and Mr Hope proposed to try his luck, saying, that if he
succeeded, every one who wished should have a ride on his horse.

To the surprise of the children, he turned towards the water, and walked
along the bank.  The brimming river was smooth as glass; and where it
stood in among the rushes, and in every tiny inlet, it was as clear as
the air, and alive with small fish, which darted at the flies that
dimpled the surface.  A swan, which had been quietly sailing in the
middle of the stream, changed its deportment as the party proceeded
along the bank.  It ruffled its breast feathers, arched back its neck
till the head rested between the erect wings, and drove through the
water with a speed which shivered the pictures in it as a sweeping gale
would have done.

"What is the matter with the creature?" asked Margaret; "I never saw a
swan behave so."

The children seemed rather afraid that the bird would come on shore and
attack them.  Mr Hope took the opportunity of its being at some little
distance, to open the rushes, and show where a fine milk-white egg lay
in a large round nest.

"Oh, Mr Hope, you knew!" cried the children, "you knew there was a
swan's nest near."

"Yes; and did not you, when you saw how the swan behaved?  But I was
aware of this nest before.  Tom Creach has the care of the park swans;
he made this nest, and he told me where it was.  Let your cousins have a
peep; and then we will go, before the poor swan grows too much
frightened.  And now, who will have a ride on my horse?"

All the children chose to ride; and, while Mr Hope was coursing with
them in turn, round and round the meadow, the young ladies proceeded
along the bank.  A quarter of a mile further on, they fell in with
Sydney Grey and his friend Mr Philip.  They had been successful in
their sport.  Mr Enderby had had enough of it, and was stretched on the
grass reading, while Sydney stood on the roots of an old oak, casting
his line into the pool beneath its shadow.

"So, here you are, quite safe!" said Sophia; "George Rowland might have
come after all.  Poor boy!  I am glad he is not with us, he would be so
mortified to see all the fish you have caught without him!"

"How many times have we been in the river, Sydney?  Can you remember?"
asked Mr Enderby.

"I have seen no fish big enough to pull us in," said Sydney; "and I do
not know any other way of getting a wetting at this sport.  Mrs Rowland
should have seen George and me climbing the old oak at the two-mile
turning.  I dared George to it, and there he hung over the water, at the
end of the branch, riding up and down like a see-saw.  She would think
nothing of letting him go fishing after that."

"If the branch had broken," said Mr Enderby, "what would you have done
then?"

"Oh, it is not often that a branch breaks."

"Old oaks are apt to break, sooner or later; and, the next time you dare
George to see-saw over the river, I would advise you to consider
beforehand how you would get him out, in case of his dropping in."

"Oh, he is not afraid.  One day lately, when the water was low, he
offered to cross the weir at Dingleford.  I did not persuade him to
that; but he pulled off his shoes and stockings, and got over and back,
safe enough."

"Indeed! and you tried it too, I suppose?"

"Yes; it would be a shame if I could not do what George can.  It was
almost as easy as walking along this bank."

"I shall talk to Master George, however, before he goes to Dingleford
again, or he may chance to find it easier some day to miss his footing
than to hold it."

"I wonder Mrs Rowland is afraid to let George go out with you," said
Sophia, "considering what things he does when you are not with him."

"She does not know of these pranks, or she would feel as you do; and I
hope every one here will be kind enough not to tell her.  It would only
be making her anxious to no purpose, whenever the boy is out of her
sight.  It would be a pity to make a coward of him; and I think I can
teach him what is mischief, and what is not, without disturbing her.
Come, ladies, suppose you rest yourselves here; you will find a pleasant
seat on this bank: at least, I fell asleep on it just now, as if I had
been on a sofa."

"I wish you would all go to sleep, or else walk off," said Sydney.  "You
make so much noise I shall never catch any fish."

"Suppose you were to go somewhere else," said Mr Enderby. "Would not
that be rather more civil than sending us all away?"

Sydney thought he would find another place: there were plenty along the
bank.  He gathered up bait and basket, and trudged off.  There was an
amusement, however, which he liked better even than fishing; and for
which he now surrendered it.  He was presently seen cantering round the
meadow on Mr Hope's horse.

Mr Enderby hoped the Miss Ibbotsons were able to say "No" with
decision.  If not, he did not envy them their supper this evening; for
Sydney would certainly ask them to eat all the fish he had caught--bream
and dace and all.  The first pleasure of young anglers is to catch these
small fry; and the next is, to make their sisters and cousins eat them.
Sophia solemnly assured her cousins that mamma never allowed Sydney's
fish to come to table, at least in the house.  If the children liked to
get the cook to boil them for their dolls' feasts in the schoolroom,
they might.

"And then Miss Young is favoured with a share, I suppose?" said
Margaret.

"Have you made acquaintance with Miss Young yet?" inquired Mr Enderby.

"Oh, yes!  I had the pleasure of knowing Miss Young long before I knew
you."

"Long! how long?  I was not aware that you had ever met.  Where did you
meet?"

"In the schoolroom, before breakfast,--full four hours before you called
this morning."

"Oh, that is all you mean!  I wondered how you should know her."

Sophia asked whether Margaret and Miss Young were not going to study
together: Margaret assented.  Miss Young was kind enough to promise to
help her to read German.

"And you?" said Mr Enderby to Hester.

"Why, no; I am rather afraid of the undertaking."

"And you, Miss Grey?"

"No.  Mamma says, I have enough to do with my history and my music;
especially while my cousins are here.  I began German once, but mamma
thought I was growing awry, and so I left it off.  I find Mrs Rowland
means Matilda to learn German."

"We are all disposed to have my little nieces learn whatever Miss Young
will be kind enough to teach them; they will gain nothing but good from
her."

"She is very learned, to be sure," observed Sophia.

"And something more than learned, I should think," said Hester; "I fancy
she is wise."

"How can you have discovered that already?" asked Mr Enderby, whose
fingers were busy dissecting a stalk of flowering grass.

"I hardly know; I have nothing to quote for my opinion.  Her
conversation leaves a general impression of her being very sensible."

"Sensible, as she is a woman," observed Margaret; "if she were a man,
she would be called philosophical."

"She _is_ very superior," observed Sophia.  "It was mamma's doing that
she is the children's governess."

"Philosophical!" repeated Mr Enderby.  "It is a happy thing that she is
philosophical in her circumstances, poor thing!"

"As she happens to be unprosperous," said Margaret, smiling.  "If she
were rich, and strong, and admired, her philosophy would be laughed at;
it would only be in the way."

Mr Enderby sighed, and made no answer.  Before any one spoke again, Mr
Hope and his little companions came up.

"How quiet you all are!" exclaimed Sydney.  "I've a good mind to come
and fish here again, if you will only go on to be so drowsy."

Sophia declared that they had been talking, up to the last minute, about
Miss Young, and learning German, and being philosophical.

"And which of the party have you made out to be the most philosophical?"
inquired Mr Hope.

"We have not so much as made out what philosophy is for," said Hester;
"can you tell us?"

As she looked up at Mr Hope, who was standing behind her, Sydney
thought her question was addressed to him.  Swinging his fishing-rod
round, he replied doubtfully that he thought philosophy was good to know
how to do things.  What sort of things?  Why, to make phosphorus lights,
and electrify people, as Dr Levitt did, when he made Sophia jump off
the stool with glass legs.  Sophia was sure that any one else would have
jumped off the stool as she did.  She should take good care never to
jump on it again.  But she wondered Sydney did not know any better than
that what philosophy was for.  Her cousins said Miss Young was
philosophical, and she had nothing to do with phosphorus or electrical
machines.

Mr Enderby explained to Mr Hope that he had said what he was ready to
maintain; that it was a happy thing for any one who, like Miss Young,
was not so prosperous as she had been, to be supported by philosophy.

"And, granting this," said Margaret, "it was next inquired whether this
same philosophy would have been considered equally admirable, equally a
matter of congratulation, if Miss Young had not wanted it for solace."

"A question as old as the brigg at Stirling," replied Mr Hope; "older,
older than any bridges of man's making."

"Why Stirling brigg?  What do you mean?"

"I mean--do not you know the story?--that an old woman wanted to cross
the Forth, and some ferrymen would have persuaded her to go in their
boat when she was confident that a tempest was coming on, which would
have made the ferry unsafe.  They told her at last that she must trust
to Providence.  `Na, na,' said she, `I will ne'er trust to Providence
while there is a brigg at Stirling.'  The common practice is, you know,
with the old woman.--We will not trust to the highest support we profess
to have, till nothing else is left us.  We worship philosophy, but never
think of making use of it while we have prosperity as well."

"The question is whether such practice is wise," said Margaret: "we all
know it is common."

"For my part," said Mr Enderby, "I think the old Scotchwoman was right;
Providence helps those that help themselves, and takes care of those who
take care of themselves."

"Just so," said Hope.  "Her error was in supposing that the one course
was an alternative from the other,--that she would not be trusting in
Providence as much in going by the bridge as in braving the tempest.  I
think we are in the same error when we set up philosophy and prosperity
in opposition to each other, taking up with the one when we cannot get
the other, as if philosophy were not over all, compassing our life as
the blue sky overarches the earth, brightening, vivifying, harmonising
all, whether we look up to see whence the light comes or not."

"You think it a mistake, then," said Margaret, "not to look up to it
till all is night below, and there is no light to be seen but by gazing
overhead?"

"I do not see why we should miss seeing the white clouds and blue depths
at noon because we may reckon upon moon and stars at midnight.  Then
again, what is life at its best without philosophy?"

"I can tell you, as well as anybody," said Mr Enderby, "for I never had
any philosophy,--no, neither wisdom, nor the love of wisdom, nor
patience, nor any of the things that philosophy is understood to mean."

"Oh, Mr Enderby!" cried Sydney, "what pains you took to teach me to
fish, and to make me wait patiently for a bite!  _You_ say you are not
patient!"

"My account of life without philosophy," said Mr Enderby, proceeding as
if he did not hear the children testifying to his patience with
them,--"my account of life without philosophy is, that it slips away
mighty easily, till it is gone, you scarcely know where or how."

"And when you call upon philosophy at last to give an account of it,
what does she say?" asked Margaret.

"I do not understand how life can slip away so," said Hester.  "Is there
ever a day without its sting?--without doubt of somebody, disappointment
in oneself or another, dread of some evil, or weariness of spirit?
Prosperity is no more of a cure for these than for sickness and death.
If philosophy is--"

"Well!" exclaimed Mr Hope, with strong interest, "if philosophy is--"

"Happy they that have her, for all need her."

"Hear a testimony at least as candid as your own, Enderby.  If you
really find life steal away as easily as you now fancy, depend upon it
you are more of a philosopher than you are aware of."

"What is philosophy?" asked Matilda of Sydney in a loud whisper, which
the boy was not in any hurry to take notice of, so little was there in
the conversation which seemed to bear upon phosphorus and electricity.

"A good question," observed Mr Enderby.  "Hope, will you tell us
children what we are talking about,--what philosophy is all this while?"

"You gave us a few meanings just now, which I should put into one.  Call
it enlargement of views, and you have wisdom, and the love of wisdom,
and patience, all at once: ay, Sydney, and your kind of philosophy
too:--It was by looking far and deep into nature that men found
electricity."

"Did Dr Levitt find it out?" asked Matilda: "he is so very
short-sighted!  I don't believe he would see those fish snapping up the
flies, if he sat where I do.  What was that that fell on my bonnet?  Is
it raining?"

Sydney, tired of fishing, had climbed into the oak, and was sending down
twigs and leaves upon the heads of the party.  Sophia desired him to
come down, and even assured him that if he did not, she should be angry.
He replied, that he would only stay to see whether she would be angry
or not.  The experiment was cut short by the whole party rising, and
moving homewards.  The sun was setting, and the picked cowslips must not
have any dew upon them.

As the group passed up the street, Sydney in advance, with his rod and
basket, on Mr Hope's horse, Mr Hope himself following with Hester, and
the tall Mr Enderby, with Sophia and Margaret on either arm, all, like
the little girls, laden with cowslips, the gossips of Deerbrook were
satisfied that the stranger ladies must have enjoyed their walk in the
meadows.



CHAPTER SIX.

THE SCHOOL-ROOM.

Mrs Rowland was mortified that the Greys had been beforehand with her
in the idea of a cowslip-gathering.  From the moment of Matilda's asking
leave to accompany them, she resolved to have such an expedition from
her house as her neighbours should not be able to eclipse.  Like Lear,
she did not yet know what her deed was to be; but it should be the
wonder and terror of the place: she would do such things as should
strike the strangers with admiration.  When she heard an account of it
from her little daughter, she found this had been a very poor
beginning,--a mere walk in the meadows, and home again to tea;--no
boiling the kettle in the woods,--not even a surprise of early
strawberries.  She could not call this being forestalled; it could not
give the young ladies any idea of a proper country excursion, with four
or five carriages, or a boat with an awning.  As soon as Mr Rowland
came home in the evening, she consulted him about the day, the place,
the mode, and the numbers to be invited.  Mr Rowland was so well
pleased to find his lady in the mood to be civil to her neighbours, that
he started no difficulties, and exerted himself to overcome such as
could not be overlooked.  All the planning prospered so well, that notes
to the Grey family and to the Miss Ibbotsons lay on Mr Grey's
breakfast-table the next morning, inviting the whole party to dine with
Mrs Rowland in Dingleford woods, that day week--the carriages to be at
the door at ten o'clock.

The whole village rang with the preparations for this excursion; and the
village was destined to ring with other tidings before it took place.
Mrs Rowland often said that she had the worst luck in the world; and it
seemed as if all small events fell out so as to plague her.  She had an
unusual fertility in such sensible suppositions and reasonable
complaints; and her whole diversity of expressions of this kind was
called into play about this expedition to Dingleford woods.  The hams
were actually boiled, and the chicken-pies baked, when clouds began to
gather in the sky; and on the appointed morning, pattens clinked in the
village street, Miss Young's umbrella was wet through in the mere
transit from the farrier's gate to the schoolroom; the gravel-walk
before Mr Grey's house was full of yellow pools, and the gurgling of
spouts or drips from the trees was heard on every side.  The worst of it
was, this rain came after a drought of many weeks, which had perilled
the young crops, and almost destroyed the hopes of hay; the ladies and
children had been far from sufficiently sorry to hear that some of the
poorer wheat lands in the county had been ploughed up, and that there
was no calculating what hay would be a ton the next winter.  They were
now to receive the retribution of their indifference; rain had set in,
and the farmers hoped that it might continue for a month.  It would not
be wise to fix any country excursion for a few weeks to come.  Let the
young people enjoy any fine afternoon that they might be able to turn to
the account of a walk, or a drive, or a sail on the river; but picnic
parties must be deferred till settled weather came.  There was every
hope that the middle of the summer would be fine and seasonable, if the
rains came down freely now.

This course of meteorological events involved two great vexations to
Mrs Rowland.  One was, that the neighbours, who could pretend to
entertain the strangers only in a quiet way at home, took the
opportunity of the rainy weather to do so, hoping, as they said, not to
interfere with any more agreeable engagements.  Mrs Rowland really
never saw anything so dissipated as the Greys; they were out almost
every evening when they had not company at home.  It was impossible that
Sophia's studies could go on as they ought to do.  What with taking a
quiet cup of tea with one acquaintance, and being at a merry reading
party at another's, and Mrs Enderby's little dance, and dinner at the
Levitts', there were few evenings left; and on those few evenings they
were never content to be alone.  They were always giving the young men
encouragement to go in.  Mr Hope made quite a home house of Mr Grey's;
and as for Philip, he seemed now to be more at Mr Grey's than even at
his own mother's or sister's.  Mrs Grey ought to remember how bad all
this was for a girl of Sophia's age.  It would completely spoil the
excursion to Dingleford woods.  The young people knew one another so
well by this time, that the novelty was all worn off, and they would
have nothing left to say to each other.  It was provoking that Mr
Rowland had promised that the excursion should take place whenever the
weather should be settled enough.  It might so fairly have been given
up! and now it must be gone on with, when every one was tired of the
idea, and the young people must almost be weary of one another, from
being always together!

The other vexation was, that there were frequent short intervals of fine
weather, which were immediately taken advantage of for a drive, or a
walk, or a sail; and it came out one day from the children, who had
learned it in the schoolroom, that the Miss Ibbotsons had been in
Dingleford woods.  There had been no such intention when the party set
out; they had not designed to go nearly so far; but they had been
tempted on by the beauty of the evening and of the scenery, till they
had found it the shortest way to come home through the Dingleford woods.
Mrs Rowland pronounced this abominable; and she was not appeased by
hearing that her brother had been the proposer of this mode of return,
and the guide of the party.  Philip forgot everything, she declared, in
his fancy for these girls; it was always his fault that he was carried
away by the people he was with: he had got the name of a flirt by it,
and a flirt he was; but she had never known him so possessed as he
seemed to be by these strangers.  She must speak to Mr Rowland about
it; the matter might really become serious; and if he should ever be
entrapped into marrying into the Grey connections, among people so
decidedly objectionable, it would be a terrible self-reproach to her as
long as she lived, that she had not interfered in time.  She should
speak to Mr Rowland.

Meanwhile she kept a watchful eye on her brother's proceedings.  She
found from the children that their Uncle Philip had fulfilled his
promise of going to see the schoolroom, and had been so much better than
his word, that he had been there very often.  When he went, it was
always when the Miss Ibbotsons were there, learning German, or drawing,
or talking with Miss Young.  It was impossible to pick a quarrel with
Miss Young about this; for she always sent her visitors away the moment
the clock struck the school hour.  The summer-house was Mr Grey's
property, too; so that Mrs Rowland could only be angry at the studies
which went on in it, and had no power to close the doors against any of
the parties.

The rainy weather had indeed been very propitious to the study of
German.  For a fortnight Margaret had spent some hours of each day with
Miss Young; and over their books they had learned so much of one
another's heart and mind, that a strong regard had sprung up between
them.  This new friendship was a great event to Miss Young;--how great,
she herself could scarcely have believed beforehand.  Her pupils found
that Miss Young was now very merry sometimes.  Mr Grey observed to his
wife that the warmer weather seemed to agree with the poor young woman,
as she had some little colour in her cheeks at last; and Margaret
herself observed a change in the tone of the philosophy she had admired
from the beginning.  There was somewhat less of reasoning in it, and
more of impulse; it was as sound as ever, but more genial.  While never
forgetting the constancy of change in human affairs, she was heartily
willing to enjoy the good that befell her, while it lasted.  It was well
that she could do so; for the good of this new friendship was presently
alloyed.

She was not aware, and it was well that she was not, that Hester was
jealous of her, almost from the hour of Margaret's learning what a vast
number of irregular verbs there is in the German.  Each sister
remembered the conversation by the open window, on the night of their
arrival at Deerbrook.  Remembering it, Margaret made Hester a partaker
in all her feelings about Maria Young; her admiration, her pity, her
esteem.  Reserving to herself any confidence which Maria placed in her
(in which, however, no mention of Mr Enderby ever occurred), she kept
not a thought or feeling of her own from her sister.  The consequence
was, that Hester found that Maria filled a large space in Margaret's
mind, and that a new interest had risen up in which she had little
share.  She, too, remembered the conversation, but had not strength to
act up to the spirit of it.  She had then owned her weakness, and called
it wickedness, and fancied that she could never mistrust her sister
again.  She was now so ashamed of her own consciousness of being once
more jealous, that she strove to hide the fact from herself; and was not
therefore likely to tell it to Margaret.  She struggled hourly with
herself, rebuking her own temper, and making appeals to her own
generosity.  She sat drawing in the little blue parlour, morning after
morning, during Sophia's reading or practising, telling herself that
Margaret and Miss Young had no secrets, no desire to be always
_tete-a-tete_; that they had properly invited her to learn German; and
that she had only to go at any moment, and offer to join them, to be
joyfully received.  She argued with herself,--how mean it would be to do
so; to agree to study at last, in order to be a sort of spy upon them,
to watch over her own interests; as if Margaret--the most sincere and
faithful of living beings--were not to be trusted with them.  She had
often vowed that she would cure the jealousy of her temper; now was the
occasion, and she would meet it; she would steadily sit beside Sophia or
Mrs Grey every morning, when Margaret was not with her, and never let
her sister know how selfish she could be.

This was all very well; but it could not make Margaret suppose her
sister happy when she was not.  She could not be certain what was the
matter, but she saw that something was wrong.  At times, Hester's manner
was so unboundedly affectionate, that it was impossible to suppose that
unkind feelings existed towards herself; though a few pettish words were
at other times let drop.  Hester's moods of magnanimity and jealousy
were accounted for in other ways by her sister.  Margaret believed,
after a course of very close observation, that she had discovered, in
investigating the cause of Hester's discomposure, a secret which was
unknown to her sister herself.  Margaret was not experienced in love,
nor in watching the signs of it; but here was the mind she understood
best, discomposed without apparent cause--more fond, more generous to
herself than ever, yet not reposing its usual confidence in her--and
subject to those starts of delight and disappointment which she had
heard and could understand to be the moods of love.  She was confirmed
in her suspicion by observing that the merits of Mr Hope were becoming
daily a less common subject of conversation between them, while it was
certain that he had in no degree lost favour with either.  They had been
charmed with him from the beginning, and had expressed to each other the
freest admiration of his truth, his gaiety, his accomplishments, and
great superiority to the people amidst whom he lived.  He was now spoken
of less every day, while his visits grew more frequent, longer, and,
Margaret could not but think, more welcome to her sister.  The hours
when he was sure not to come happened to be those which she spent with
Miss Young--the hours in which gentlemen are devoted to their business.
Margaret thus witnessed all that passed; and if her conjecture about
Hester was right, she could have wished to see Mr Hope's manner rather
different from what it was.  He was evidently strongly attracted to the
house; and there was some reason to think that Mrs Grey believed that
Hester was the attraction.  But Margaret had no such impression.  She
saw that Mr Hope admired her sister's beauty, listened to her
conversation with interest, and was moved at times by the generosity of
her tone of moral feeling; but this, though much, was not enough for the
anxious sister's full satisfaction; and the one thing besides which she
would fain have discerned she could not perceive.  These were early days
yet, however; so early that, in the case of any one whom she knew,
except her sister, she should have supposed her own conjectures wild and
almost improper; but Hester's was one of those natures to which time and
circumstance minister more speedily and more abundantly than to the
generality.  By the strength of her feelings, and the activity of her
affections, time was made more comprehensive, and circumstance more
weighty than to others.  A day would produce changes in her which the
impressions of a week would not effect in less passionate natures; and
what were trifling incidents to the minds about her, were great events
to her.

Margaret began to consider what was to be done.  The more she thought,
the more plainly she perceived that there was nothing to be done but to
occupy Hester, simply and naturally, with as many interests as possible.
This was safe practice, be the cause of her occasional discomposure
what it might.  It was particularly desirable that she should not
continue the habit of sitting in silence for a considerable part of
every morning.

One day, just after the voices of the children had been heard in the
hall, giving token that school was over, Hester, sitting in the little
blue parlour alone, with her head on her hand, was apparently
contemplating the drawing on her board, but really considering that
Margaret was now beginning to be happy with her friend, and asking why
Margaret should not be happy with her friend, when Margaret herself
entered.

"Do you want Sophia?" said Hester.  "She is up-stairs."

"No; I want you."

"Indeed!"

There was an ironical tone of surprise in the one word she spoke, which
let fall a weight upon Margaret's heart;--an old feeling, but one to
which she had made no progress towards being reconciled.

"I cannot help you with your German, you know.  How can you pretend to
want me?"

"It is not about the German at all that I want you.  Maria has found a
Spenser at last, and I am going to read her the `Hymn of Heavenly
Beauty,' I know you never can hear that often enough; so come!"

"Perhaps Miss Young had rather not.  I should be sorry to intrude myself
upon her.  But, however," continued she, observing Margaret's look of
surprise, "I will come.  Do not wait for me, dear.  I will come the
moment I have put up my drawing."

Margaret did wait, running over the keys of the open piano meanwhile.

"Shall I call Sophia too?" asked Hester, as she took up her work-bag.
"I dare say she never read any of Spenser."

"I dare say not," replied Margaret; "and she would not care about it
now.  If you think we ought, we will call her.  If not--"

Hester smiled, nodded, and led the way to the schoolroom without calling
Sophia.  She had not been two minutes in the cordial presence of her
sister and Maria, before she felt the full absurdity of the feelings
which had occupied her so lately, and was angry with herself to her own
satisfaction.  Her companions looked at each other with a smile as they
observed at the same moment the downcast attitude of her moistened eyes,
the beautiful blush on her cheek, and the expression of meek emotion on
her lips.  They thought that it was the image of heavenly beauty which
moved her thus.

Before they had quite finished the Hymn, the door was burst open, and
the children entered, dragging in Mr Enderby.  Mr Enderby rebuked
them, good-naturedly, for introducing him with so little ceremony, and
declared to the ladies that Matilda had promised to knock before she
opened the door.  Hester advised Mary and Fanny to be more quiet in
their mode of entrance, observing that they had made Miss Young start
with their hurry.

Matilda was glad her uncle remembered to come sometimes.  He had
promised it several weeks before he came at all; even when he said he
was going away in a fortnight.

"And if I had gone away in a fortnight," said he, "I should not have
seen your schoolroom.  But this is not the first time I have seen it, as
you remember very well.  I have been here often lately."

"But you never attend to me here, uncle!  And I want so to show you my
desk, where I keep my copy-book, and the work-box you gave me on my
birthday."

"Well, you can show me now, cannot you?  So, this is your desk!  It
seems convenient enough, whatever we may think of its beauty.  I suppose
it will hold all the knowledge you will want to have put into your head
for some time to come.  Now show me which is George's desk, and which
Fanny's; and now Mary's,--a nice row of desks!  Now," whispering to her,
"can you show me which is Miss Margaret's desk?"

The little girl giggled as she answered, that Miss Margaret was too old
to be a school-girl.

"So she is: but she learns of Miss Young, and I know she keeps some of
her books here.  Can you show me where?"

There was a desk rather larger than the rest, the lid of which now
happened to be standing open.  Matilda slyly pointed to it.  While the
ladies were engaged with the other children, Mr Enderby cast a glance
into this desk, saw a book which he knew to be Margaret's, laid
something upon it from his pocket, and softly closed the lid; the whole
passing, if it was observed at all, as a survey of the children's desks.
He then pretended to look round for the rod.

"No rod!" said he to the laughing children.  "Oh, I should like to learn
here very much, if there is no rod.  Miss Margaret, do you not find it
very pleasant learning here?"

The children were shouting, "Miss Young, Miss Young, do let uncle Philip
come and learn with us.  He says he will be a very good boy,--won't you,
uncle Philip?  Miss Young, when may uncle Philip come and learn his
lessons?"

Margaret saw that there was constraint in the smile with which Maria
answered the children.  Little as she knew, it struck her that in his
fun with the children, Mr Enderby was relying quite sufficiently on the
philosophy he had professed to admire in Miss Young.  Mr Enderby drew a
chair to the window round which the ladies were sitting, and took up the
volume Margaret had just laid down.

"Go, go, children!" said he; "run away to your gardens!  I cannot spare
you any more play to-day."

"Oh, but uncle, we want to ask you a question."

"Well, ask it."

"But it is a secret.  You must come into the corner with Fanny, and
Mary, and me."

For peace and quiet he went into the corner with them, and they
whispered into each ear a question, how many burnt almonds and
gingerbread-buttons, and how much barley-sugar, two shillings and
threepence halfpenny would buy?  The cowslips were now ready to make tea
of, and the feast on the dolls' dishes might be served any day.  Mr
Enderby promised to inquire at the confectioner's, and not to tell
anybody else; and at last the children were got rid of.

"Now that we have done with mysteries," said he, as he resumed his seat
by the window, "that is, with children's mysteries that we can see to
the bottom of, let us look a little into the poet's mysteries.  What
were you reading?  Show me, and I will be your reader.  Who or what is
this Heavenly Beauty?  We have not done with mysteries yet, I see."

"I was wondering," said Margaret smiling, "whether you take up Spenser
because you are tired of mysteries.  In such a case, some other poet
might suit you better."

"What other?"

"Some one less allegorical, at least."

"I do not know that," said Hester.  "The most cunning allegory that ever
was devised is plain and easy in comparison with the simplest true
story,--fully told: and a man is a poet in proportion as he fully tells
a simple true story."

"A story of the mind, you mean," said Mr Enderby, "not of the mere
events of life?"

"Of the mind, of course, I mean.  Without the mind the mere life is
nothing."

"Is not allegory a very pretty way of telling such a story of the mind,
under the appearance of telling a story of a life?"

"Yes," said Margaret; "and that is the reason why so many like allegory.
There is a pleasure in making one's way about a grotto in a garden; but
I think there is a much higher one in exploring a cave on the sea-shore,
dim and winding, where you never know that you have come to the end,--a
much higher pleasure in exploring a life than following out an
allegory."

"You are a true lover of mystery, Miss Margaret.  You should have lived
a thousand years ago."

"Thank you: I am very glad I did not.  But why so long ago?  Are there
not mysteries enough left?"

"And will there not be enough a thousand years hence?" said Hester.

"I am afraid not.  You and I cannot venture to speak upon what the
Germans may be doing.  But these two ladies can tell us, perhaps,
whether they are not clearing everything up very fast;--making windows
in your cave, Miss Margaret, till nobody will be afraid to look into
every cranny of it."

"And then our complaint," said Miss Young, "will be like Mrs Howell's,
when somebody told her that we were to have the Drummond light on every
church steeple.  `Oh dear, ma'am!' said she, `we shall not know how in
the world to get any darkness.'"

"You speak as if you agreed that the Germans really are the makers of
windows that Mr Enderby supposes them," observed Margaret; "but you do
not think we are any nearer the end of mysteries than ever, do you?"

"Oh, no; not till we have struck our stone to the bottom of the
universe, and walked round it: and I am not aware that the Germans
pretend to be able to do that, any more than other people.  Indeed, I
think there are as many makers of grottoes as explorers of caves among
them.  What do you want, my dear?"

This last was addressed to George, whose round face, red with exertion,
appeared at a back window.  The little girls were hoisting him up, that
he might call out once more, "Uncle Philip, be sure you remember not to
tell."

"It would be a pity that mysteries should come to an end," observed Mr
Enderby, "when they seem to please our human tastes so well.  See there,
how early the love of mystery begins! and who can tell where it ends?
Is there one of your pupils, Miss Young, in whom you do not find it?"

"Not one; but is there not a wide difference between the love of making
mysteries, and a taste for finding them out?"

"Do you not find both in children, and up into old age?"

"In children, one usually finds both: but I think the love of
mystery-making and surprises goes off as people grow wiser.  Fanny and
Mary were plotting all last week how to take their sister Sophia by
surprise with a piece of India-rubber, a token of fraternal affection,
as they were pleased to call it; and you see George has a secret to-day:
but they will have fewer hidings and devices every year: and, if they
grow really wise, they will find that, amidst the actual business of
life, there is so much more safety, and ease, and blessing in perfect
frankness than in any kind of concealment, that they will give
themselves the liberty and peace of being open as the daylight.  Such is
my hope for them.  But all this need not prevent their delighting in the
mysteries which are not of man's making."

"They will be all the more at leisure for them," said Margaret, "from
having their minds free from plots and secrets."

"Surely you are rather hard upon arts and devices," said Philip.
"Without more or fewer of them, we should make our world into a Palace
of Truth,--see the Veillees du Chateau, which Matilda is reading with
Miss Young.  Who ever read it, that did not think the Palace of Truth
the most disagreeable place in the world?"

"And why?" asked Margaret.  "Not because the people in it spoke truth;
but because the truth which they spoke was hatred, and malice, and
selfishness."

"And how much better," inquired Hester, "is the truth that we should
speak, if we were as true as the daylight?  I hope we shall always be
allowed to make mysteries of our own selfish and unkind fancies.  There
would be little mutual respect left if these things were told."

"I think there would be more than ever," said Margaret, carefully
avoiding to meet her sister's eye.  "I think so many mistakes would be
explained, so many false impressions set right, on the instant of their
being made, that our mutual relations would go on more harmoniously than
now."

"And what would you do with the affairs now dedicated to mystery?" asked
Mr Enderby.  "How would you deal with diplomacy, and government, and
with courtship?  You surely would not overthrow the whole art of wooing?
You would not doom lovers' plots and devices?"

The ladies were all silent.  Mr Enderby, however, was determined to
have an answer.  He addressed himself particularly to Margaret.

"You do not disapprove of the little hidden tokens with which a man may
make his feelings secretly known where he wishes them to be
understood;--tokens which may meet the eye of one alone, and carry no
meaning to any other!  You do not disapprove of a more gentle and
mysterious way of saying, `I love you,' than looking full in one
another's face, and declaiming it like a Quaker upon affirmation?  You
do not disapprove--"

"As for disapproving," said Margaret, who chanced to perceive that
Maria's hand shook so that she could not guide her needle, and that she
was therefore apparently searching for something in her work-box,--"as
for disapproving, I do not pretend to judge for other people--"

She stopped short, struck with the blunder she had made.  Mr Enderby
hastened to take advantage of it.  He said, laughing:

"Well, then, speak for yourself.  Never mind other people's case."

"What I mean," said Margaret, with grave simplicity, "is, that all
depends upon the person whose regard is to be won.  There are silly
girls, and weak women, who, liking mysteries in other affairs, are best
pleased to be wooed with small artifices;--with having their vanity and
their curiosity piqued with sly compliments--"

"Sly compliments!  What an expression!"

"Such women agree, as a matter of course, in the old notion,--suitable
enough five centuries ago,--that the life of courtship should be as
unlike as possible to married life.  But I certainly think those much
the wisest and the happiest, who look upon the whole affair as the
solemn matter that it really is, and who desire to be treated, from the
beginning, with the sincerity and seriousness which they will require
after they are married."

"If the same simplicity and seriousness were common in this as are
required in other grave transactions," said Hester, "there would be less
of the treachery, delusion, and heart-breaking, which lie heavy upon the
souls of many a man and many a woman."

Mr Enderby, happening to be looking out of the window here, as if for
something to say, caught the eye of his sister, who was walking in her
garden.  She beckoned to him, but he took no notice, not desiring to be
disturbed at present.  Turning again to Margaret, he said:

"But you would destroy all the graces of courtship: you would--"

"Nay," said Hester, "what is so graceful as the simplicity of entire
mutual trust?--the more entire the more graceful."

"I wish you had left out the word `trust.'  You have spoiled something
that I was going on to say about the simplicity of drawing lots like the
Moravians,--the most sincere courtship of all: but that word `trust'
puts my illustration aside.  You need not protest.  I assure you I am
not so dull as not to understand that you think love necessary to the
wooing which seems graceful in your eyes;--Oh, yes: love, and mutual
knowledge, and mutual reverence, and perfect trust!  Oh, yes, I
understand it all."

"Philip!" cried a soft, sentimental voice under the window:

"Brother, I want your arm for a turn in the shrubbery."

Mrs Rowland's bonnet was visible as she looked up to the window.  She
saw the braids of the hair of the young ladies, and her voice was rather
less soft as she called again, "Philip, do you hear?  I want you."

It was impossible to seem not to hear.  Mr Enderby was obliged to go:
but he left his hat behind him, as a sort of pledge that he meant to
limit himself to the single turn proposed.

For various reasons, the young ladies were all disinclined to speak
after he had left them.  Miss Young was the first to move.  She rose to
go to her desk for something,--the desk in which Margaret kept the books
she used in this place.  Ever on the watch to save Maria the trouble of
moving about, which was actual pain to her, Margaret flew to see if she
could not fetch what was wanted: but Miss Young was already looking into
the desk.  Her eye caught the pretty new little volume which lay there.
She took it up, found it was a volume of Tieck, and saw on the fly-leaf,
in the well-known handwriting, "From PE."  One warm beam of hope shot
through her heart:--how could it be otherwise,--the book lying in her
desk, and thus addressed?  But it was only one moment's joy.  The next
instant's reflection, and the sight of Margaret's German exercise, on
which the book had lain, revealed the real case to her.  In sickness of
heart, she would, upon impulse, have put back the book, and concealed
the incident: but she was not sure but that Margaret had seen the
volume, and she _was_ sure of what her own duty was.  With a smile and a
steady voice she held out the book to Margaret, and said:

"Here is something for you, Margaret, which looks a little like one of
the hidden, and gentle, and mysterious tokens Mr Enderby has been
talking about.  Here it is, lying among your books; and I think it was
not with them when you last left your seat."

Margaret blushed with an emotion which seemed to the one who knew her
best to be too strong to be mere surprise.  She looked doubtful for a
moment about the book being meant for her.  Its German aspect was
conclusive against its being designed for Hester: but Miss Young,--was
it certain that the volume was not hers?  She asked this; but Maria
replied, as her head was bent over her desk:

"There is no doubt about it.  I am sure.  It is nobody's but yours."

Some one proposed to resume the reading.  The `Hymn to Heavenly Beauty'
was finished, but no remark followed.  Each was thinking of something
else.  More common subjects suited their present mood better.  It was
urged upon Hester that she should be one of the daily party; and, her
lonely fancies being for the hour dispersed, she agreed.

"But," she observed, "other people's visits alter the case entirely.  I
do not see how study is to go on if any one may come in from either
house, as Mr Enderby did to-day.  It is depriving Miss Young of her
leisure, too, and making use of her apartment in a way that she may well
object to."

"I am here, out of school hours, only upon sufferance," replied Miss
Young.  "I never call the room mine without this explanation."

"Besides," said Margaret, "it is a mere accident Mr Enderby's coming in
to-day.  If he makes a habit of it, we have only to tell him that we
want our time to ourselves."

Miss Young knew better.  She made no reply; but she felt in her inmost
soul that her new-born pleasures were, from this moment, to be turned
into pains.  She knew Mr Enderby; and knowing him, foresaw that she was
to be a witness of his wooings of another, whom she had just begun to
take to her heart.  This was to be her fate if she was strong enough for
it,--strong enough to be generous in allowing to Margaret opportunities
which could not without her be enjoyed, of fixing the heart of one whom
she could not pronounce to have been faulty towards herself.  His
conversation today had gone far to make her suppose him blameless, and
herself alone in fault; so complete had seemed his unconsciousness with
regard to her.  Her duty then was clearly to give them up to each other,
with such spirit of self-sacrifice as she might be capable of.  If not
strong enough for this, the alternative was a daily painful retreat to
her lodging, whence she might look out on the heaps of cinders in the
farrier's yard, her spirit abased the while with the experience of her
own weakness.  Neither alternative was very cheering.



CHAPTER SEVEN.

FAMILY CONFIDENCE.

"When do you leave us, Philip?" inquired Mrs Rowland, putting her arm
within her brother's, and marching him up the gravel-walk.

"Do you wish me to go?" replied he, laughing.  "Is this what you were so
anxious to say?"

"Why, we understood, six weeks since, that you meant to leave Deerbrook
in a fortnight: that is all."

"So I did: but my mother is kind enough to be pleased that I am staying
longer; and since I am equally pleased myself, it is all very well.  I
rather think, too, that the children consider Uncle Philip a good boy,
who deserves a holiday."

"My mother!  Oh, she always supposes everything right that you do; and
that is the reason why Mr Rowland and I--"

"The reason why Rowland and I agree so well," interrupted the brother.
"Yes, that is one reason, among many.  Rowland's wish is to see the old
lady happy; and she is naturally happiest when she has both her children
with her; and for every merry hour of hers, your good husband looks the
more kindly upon me."

"Of course; all that is a matter of course; though you are not aware,
perhaps, of the fatigue it is to my mother to have any one with her too
long a time.  She will not tell _you_; but you have no idea how low she
is for some time after you go away, if you have stayed more than a few
days, from exhaustion--from pure exhaustion.  Ah! you do not perceive
it, because the excitement keeps her up while you are here; and she
naturally makes an effort, you know.  But if you were to see her as we
do after you are gone;--you cannot think how it sets the Greys talking
about her low spirits."

"Poor soul!  I wish I could be always with her.  I will try whether I
cannot; for some time to come, at least.  But, sister, how does it
happen that neither you nor Rowland ever told me this before?"

"Oh, we would not distress you unnecessarily.  We knew it was an
unavoidable evil.  You cannot always be here, and you must--"

"Yes, I must sometimes come: that is an unavoidable evil; and always
will be, sister, while I have a good old mother living here."

"My dear Philip, how you do misunderstand one!  I never heard anything
so odd."

"Why odd?  Have you not been giving me to understand, all this time,
that you do not wish to have me here,--that you want me to go away?  If
not this, I do not know what you have been talking about."

"What an idea!  My only brother!  What can you be thinking of?  Why upon
earth should I wish you anywhere else?"

"That you may manage my mother and her affairs all your own way, I
imagine."

Mrs Rowland had nothing to oppose to this plain speech but
exclamations.  When she had exhausted all she could muster, she avowed
that the only consideration which could reconcile her to the sacrifice
of her dear brother's society was anxiety for his happiness.

"Then, supposing I am happiest here, we are all satisfied."  And Uncle
Philip would have made a diversion from the path to give George his
favourite swing, quite up to the second branch of the great pear-tree.

"Pray let George swing himself for once, brother.  Hold your tongue,
George!  You are a very troublesome boy, and your uncle and I are busy.
It is about your own affairs, brother, that I want to open my mind to
you.  As for your always remaining here, as you kindly hinted just
now--"

"I did not mean to hint," said Philip; "I thought I had spoken quite
plainly."

"Well, well.  We all know how to appreciate the kindness of your
intentions, I am sure: but your happiness must not be sacrificed to the
good of any of us here.  We can take care of one another: but, as it is
impossible that you should find a companion for life here, and as it is
time you were thinking of settling, we must not be selfish, and detain
you among us when you should be creating an interest elsewhere.  Mr
Rowland and I are extremely anxious to see you happily married, brother;
and indeed we feel it is time you were thinking about it."

"I am glad of that, sister.  I am somewhat of the same opinion myself."

"I rejoice to hear it," replied the lady, in a rather uneasy tone.  "We
have been delighted to hear of these frequent visits of yours to the
Buchanans'.  There is a strong attraction there, I fancy, Philip."

"Joe Buchanan is the attraction to me there.  If you mean Caroline, she
has been engaged these three years to her brother's friend, Annesley."

"You do not say so!  But you did not know it?"

"I have known it these two years, under the seal of secrecy.  Ah!
sister, I have had many an hour's amusement at your schemes on my behalf
about Caroline Buchanan."

"I have been quite out, I see.  When do you go to the Bruces', to make
the visit you were disappointed of at Christmas?"

"When they return from the Continent, where they are gone for three
years.  Miss Mary is out of reach for three years, sister."

"Out of reach!  You speak as if Paris,--or Rome, if you will,--was in
Australia.  And even in Australia one can hardly speak of people being
out of reach."

"If one wishes to overtake them," said Mr Enderby: "whereas, I can wait
very well for the Bruces till they come home again.  Now, no more,
sister!  I cannot stand and hear the young ladies of my acquaintance
catalogued as a speculation for my advantage.  I could not look them in
the face again after having permitted it."

"There is somebody in the schoolroom, I declare!" cried the lady, as if
astonished.  And she stood looking from afar at the summer-house, in
which three heads were distinctly visible.

"Were you not aware of that before?  Did you suppose I was asleep there,
or writing poetry all alone, or what?  The Miss Ibbotsons are there, and
Miss Young."

"You remind me," said the lady, "of something that I declared to Mr
Rowland that I would speak to you about.  My dear brother, you should
have some compassion on the young ladies you fall in with."

"I thought your great anxiety just now was that the young ladies should
have compassion upon me."

"One, Philip; the right one.  But you really have no mercy.  You are too
modest to be aware of the mischief you may be doing.  But let me entreat
you not to turn the head of a girl whom you cannot possibly think
seriously of."

"Whom do you mean?"

"You may be making even more mischief than flattering the poor girl with
vain hopes.  If you once let it get into the heads of the Greys that any
one belonging to us could think of marrying into their connection, you
do not know the trouble you will impose upon Mr Rowland and me."

"Does Rowland say so?"

"Does he say so? one would think--Dear me! brother, there is nothing one
might not think from your manner.  You terrify me."

"Have you a pocket-mirror about you?" asked Philip.  "I should like to
see what this terrible manner of mine is like."

"Now, pray, no joking, Philip.  I declare my nerves will not bear it.
But I tell you what, Philip: if you let your old admiration of beauty
carry you away, and make you forget yourself so far as to dream of
marrying into that connection, you will repent it as long as you live.
I shall never forgive you; and you will kill our poor dear mother."

"I will ask her whether she thinks so," said Philip, "and I give you my
word of honour that I will not kill my mother."

"Girls seem to think that beauty is everything," continued the angry
lady, "and so do their connections for them.  I declare Mrs Grey sits
winking at my mother when Miss Ibbotson has a colour, as if nobody ever
saw a good complexion before.  I declare it makes me sick.  Now, Philip,
you have been fairly warned; and if you fall into the trap, you will not
deserve any consideration from me."

"I have let you lay down the law to me, sister, in your own way, because
I know your way.  Say what you please to me of myself and my affairs,
and a joke is the worst that will come of it.  But I tell you gravely,
that I will not hear of traps--I will not hear imputations like those
you have just spoken against these young ladies or their connections,
without rebuke.  You can know nothing of the Miss Ibbotsons which can
justify this conversation."

"I shall soon believe you are in love," cried the lady, in high
resentment.

"Only take care what grounds you go upon before you speak and act,
sister.  In my turn, I give you fair warning how you take any measures
against them, even in your own inmost mind, without being quite sure
what you are about."

"You do not say now that you do not mean to have that girl?" cried Mrs
Rowland, fixing her fiery eyes upon her brother's face.

"Why should I?  You have not set about obtaining my confidence in any
way which could succeed.  If I am in love, it would not be easy to own
it upon such unwarrantable pressure.  If I am not in love--"

"Ah!  If you are not--"

"In that case I am disinclined to make my not caring for them the
condition, on which those young ladies may receive your civilities.
These civilities are due to them, whatever I may feel or intend; and my
respect for them is such that I shall keep my mind to myself."

"At least," said the lady, somewhat humbled, "do not be so much with
them.  For my sake, do not go into the schoolroom again."

"I am sorry I cannot oblige you," said he, smiling, "but I must go at
this moment:--not to sit down,--not to speak five words, however,--but
only to get my hat.  I have to go into the village, on an errand for the
children.  Can I do anything for you in the village?"

"She thinks only of Hester, it is plain," thought he.  "If I am to have
any more lectures and advice, I hope they will proceed on the same
supposition: it will make my part easier, and save my being driven to
assert my own will, and so plunging poor Priscilla into hysterics.  I
can bear her interference, as long as Margaret's name is not on her
lips.  The moment she casts an evil eye on her, I shall speak to
Rowland; which I had much rather avoid.  It would be delicious, too, to
be _her_ protector, without her knowing it,--to watch over her as she
walks in her bright innocence,--to shield her--but from whom?  From my
own sister?  No! no! better keep her out of suspicion: better let it
pass that it is really Hester.  Hester has plenty of friends to stand by
her.  The Greys are so proud of her beauty, they have no eyes or ears
but for her.  People who meddle with concerns they have no business
with, are strangely blind,--they make odd mistakes, from running away
with notions of their own, prepared beforehand.  Here is everybody
determined that we shall all fall in love with Hester.  Priscilla has
jumped to her conclusion at once,--perhaps in emulation of Mrs Grey.
Mrs Grey has clearly given Hester to Hope, in her own mind.  I rather
think Hope would be obliged to her if she would not show so plainly what
is in her thoughts.  I fear so,--I may be jealous,--but I am afraid Hope
and I are too much of the same mind about these girls.  I will stand up
for Mrs Grey, as long as I live, if she proves right here.  She shall
wink and nod for evermore, and I will justify her, if Hope turns out to
be in love with Hester.  I will be the first to congratulate him, if he
succeeds with her: and really he would be a happy fellow.  She is a
lovely creature; and how she will love whenever she does love!  She
would be a devoted wife.  Why cannot he see the matter so, and leave my
Margaret to me?  Now, how will she look up as I go in?"

His vision of Margaret's looks remained a vision.  No one was in the
schoolroom but Miss Young, writing a letter.

"They are not here!" said Mr Enderby.

"No; they are gone with Mrs Grey into the village, I believe."

"Oh, well, I only came for my hat.  You are in the children's secret, of
course, Miss Young?"

"About their feast.  Yes, I believe I know all about it."

"I am going to ask some important questions for them at the
confectioner's.  You will not object to my bringing them a few good
things?"

"I?  Oh, no."

"I would not act in so serious a matter without asking you.  Can I be of
any use to you in the village?  Or perhaps you may want some pens mended
before I go?"

"No, I thank you."

"Then I will not interrupt your letter any longer.  Good morning."

It was a wonder that the letter was written at all.  When Maria had done
leaning back in her chair, and had taken up her pen again, she was
disturbed by painful sounds from Mrs Rowland's garden.  The lady's own
Matilda, and precious George, and darling Anna, were now pronounced to
be naughty, wilful, mischievous, and, finally, to be combined together
to break their mamma's heart.  It was clear that they were receiving the
discharge of the wrath which was caused by somebody else.  Now a wail,
now a scream of passion, went to Maria's heart.  She hastened on with
her letter, in the hope that Mrs Rowland would presently go into the
house, when the little sufferers might be invited into the schoolroom,
to hear a story, or have their ruffled tempers calmed by some other such
simple means.

"What a life of discipline this is!" thought Maria.  "We all have it,
sooner or later.  These poor children are beginning early.  If one can
but help them through it!  There she goes in, and shuts the door behind
her!  Now I may call them hither, and tell them something or another
about Una and her lion."

At the well-known sound of Miss Young's lame step, the little ones all
came about her.  One ashamed face was hid on her shoulder; another was
relieved of its salt tears; and the boy's pout was first relaxed, and
then forgotten.



CHAPTER EIGHT.

FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE.

From the time of the great event of the arrival of the Miss Ibbotsons,
Mr Hope had longed to communicate all connected with it to his family.
As often as Hester looked eminently beautiful, he wished his sisters
could see her.  As often as he felt his spirit moved and animated by his
conversations with Margaret, he thought of Frank, and wished that the
poor fellow could for a day exchange the heats and fatigues, and vapid
society, of which he complained as accompaniments of service in India,
for some one of the wood and meadow rambles, or garden frolics, which
were the summer pleasures of Deerbrook, now unspeakably enhanced by the
addition lately made to its society.  Frank wrote that the very names of
meadows and kine, of cowslips, trout, and harriers, were a refreshment
to a soldier's fancy, when the heats, and the solitude of spirit in
which he was compelled to live, made him weary of the novelties which
had at first pleased him in the East.  He begged that Edward would go on
to write as he did of everything that passed in the village--of
everything which could make him for a whole evening fancy himself in
Deerbrook, and repose himself in its shacks and quietness.  Mr Hope had
felt, for a month past, that such a letter was by this time due to
Frank, and that he had, for once, failed in punctuality: but he now, for
the first time, found it difficult to get time to write.  He never
dreamed of sending Frank letters, which would be esteemed by others of a
moderate length.  When he did write, it was an epistle indeed: and
during this particular May and June, there was always something
happening which prevented his having his hours to himself.  In other
words, he was always at the Greys' when not engaged in his professional
duties.  The arrival of a letter from Frank one day gave him the
necessary stimulus, and he sat down on the instant to open his heart to
his brother.

Frank was his younger and only brother, and the person in the world most
deeply indebted to him.  Their parents being dead, it was Edward who had
been Frank's dependence as he grew up.  It was Edward who had, at great
cost and pains, gratified his wish to go into the army, and had procured
him the best educational advantages in preparation for a military life.
It was Edward who had always treated him with such familiar friendship,
that he had scarcely felt as if he wanted any other intimate, and who
seemed to forget the five years' difference of age between them at all
times but when it afforded a reason for pressing kindness and assistance
upon him.  The confidence between them was as familiar and entire as if
they had been twin-brothers.  The epistle which Frank was to have the
benefit of, on the present occasion, was even longer than usual, from
the delay which had caused an accumulation of tidings and of thoughts.

  "Deerbrook, _June 20th_, 18--.

  "Dear Frank,--Your letter of December last has arrived to remind me
  how far I am past my time in writing to you.  I make no apologies for
  my delay, however, and I do not pretend to feel any remorse about it.
  We never write to one another from a mere sense of duty; and long may
  it be before we do so!  Unless we write because we cannot help it,
  pray let us let it alone.  As for the reasons why my inclination to
  talk to you has not overpowered all impediments till now,--you shall
  have them by-and-by.  Meanwhile, here, before your eyes, is the proof
  that I cannot but spend this June evening with you.

  "You ask about your grandfather; and I have somewhat to say to you
  about him.  He is still living,--very infirm, as you may suppose, but,
  I think, as clear in mind as I have ever known him.  He sent for me
  two months ago, as you will have heard from the letter I find he
  caused to be written to you about the business which then occupied his
  mind.  My share in that business he would represent to you as it
  appeared to him: but I must give you an account of it as it appears to
  myself.  He sent for me to take leave of me, as he said; but, in my
  opinion, to receive my acknowledgments for his latest disposition of
  his property by will.  The new arrangements did not please me at all;
  and I am confident that you would have liked them no better than I;
  and I wished not a little that you were nearer, that we might have
  acted together.  I know that he once intended to divide his property
  equally among us four; but of late, from some unaccountable feeling of
  indifference about Emily and Anne, or, as is more likely, from some
  notion about women not wanting money, and not knowing how to manage
  it, he has changed his mind, and destined his money for you and me,
  leaving my sisters only a hundred pounds each as a remembrance.  He
  informed me of this, as soon as I arrived.  I thought him quite well
  enough to hear reason, and I spoke my mind plainly to him.  I had no
  right to answer for you, any further than for your sense of justice,
  and your affection for your sisters.  The way in which the matter was
  settled at last, therefore, with great pains and trouble, was, that
  you and our sisters share equally, and that I have the legacy of 100
  pounds, which was destined for one of them.  The reasons why I
  declined a fourth part of the property were sufficient to my mind, and
  will be so, I doubt not, to yours.  Out of this property I have had my
  professional education, while you and my sisters have received nothing
  at all.  This professional education has enabled me to provide
  sufficiently for myself, so far, and this provision will in all
  probability go on to increase; while my sisters want as much as can
  fairly be put into their hands.  Their husbands are not likely ever to
  be rich men, and will probably be poor for some years to come.  Their
  children have to be educated; and in short, there is every reason why
  Emily and Anne should have this money, and none why I should.  I am
  afraid the old gentleman is not very well pleased with my way of
  receiving what he intended for kindness; but that cannot be helped.
  If he falls back into his previous state of mind, and leaves the
  whole, after all, to you and me, I shall set the matter right, as far
  as I can, by dividing my portion between my sisters: and I feel
  confident that you will do the same; but I earnestly hope this will
  not happen.  It will be a very different thing to my sisters receiving
  this money by their grandfather's will as their due, and from our
  hands as a gift--(the way in which they will look at it).  The letter
  to you was sent off without delay, in order that, in case of any
  dissatisfaction whatever on your part, your wishes might have the
  better chance of being made known to us during the old gentleman's
  life.  I doubt not that your thoughts, whatever they may be, will be
  on the way to me before this reaches you; and I can have as little
  doubt what they are.  You know Mr Blunt says, that men are created to
  rob their sisters,--a somewhat partial view of the objects and
  achievements of mortal existence, it must be owned, and a statement
  which I conceive the course of your life, for one, will not go to
  confirm; but a man must have had a good deal of experience, of what he
  is talking of, before he could make so sweeping a generalisation from
  the facts of life; and I am afraid Mr Blunt has some reason for what
  he says.  Medical men receive many confidences in sick rooms, you
  know; and some, among others, which had better be reserved for the
  lawyer.  What I have seen in this way leads me to imagine that my
  grandfather's notion is a very common one,--that women have little
  occasion for money, and do not know how to manage it; and that their
  property is to be drawn upon to the very last, to meet the
  difficulties and supply the purposes of their brothers.  On the utter
  injustice and absurdity of such a notion there can be no disagreement
  between you and me; nor, I imagine, in our actions with regard to it.

  "I heard from Emily yesterday.  The letter is more than half full of
  stories about the children, and accounts of her principles and plans
  with regard to them.  She writes on the same subjects to you, no
  doubt, for her heart is full of them.  Her husband finds the post of
  consul at a little Spanish port rather a dull affair, as we
  anticipated, and groans at the mention of Bristol or Liverpool
  shipping, he says.  But I like the tone of his postscript very well.
  He is thankful for the honest independence his office affords him, and
  says he can tolerate his Spanish neighbours (though they are as
  ignorant as Turkish ladies), for the sake of his family, and of the
  hope of returning, sooner or later, to live in his own country, after
  having discharged his duty to his children.  Theirs must be an irksome
  life enough, as much of it as is passed out of their own doors: but
  they seem to be finding out that it is not so much the _where_ and the
  _how_, as the _what_ people are, that matters to their peace of mind;
  and I suppose those who love each other, and have settled what they
  are living for, can attain what they most want, nearly so well in one
  place as another.

  "Poor Anne wrote to _you_, I know, after the death of her infant--her
  little Highlandman, as she proudly called him in her last letter
  before she lost him.  Gilchrist talked last year of bringing her and
  his boy south this summer, and I had some hopes of seeing them all
  here: but I have not been able to get them to speak again of
  travelling, and I give it up for this year.  I hope your letters and
  theirs fall due seasonably; that your reports of all your devices to
  cool yourself, reach them in the depth of their Caithness winter; and
  that all they say to you of their snow-drifts and freshets is
  acceptable when you are panting in the hottest of your noons.  Anne
  writes more cheerfully than she did, and Gilchrist says she is
  exerting herself to overcome her sorrow.  Their love must be passing
  strange in the eyes of all such as despised Anne's match.  It is such
  as should make Anne's brothers feel very cordially towards Gilchrist.
  We have drifted asunder in life rather strangely, when one comes to
  think of it; and our anchorage grounds are pretty far apart.  Who
  would have thought it, when we four used to climb the old apple-tree
  together, and drop down from the garden wall?  I wonder whether we
  shall ever contrive to meet in one house once more, and whether I may
  be honoured by my house being the place?  It is possible; and I spend
  certain of my dreams upon the project.  Do you not find that one
  effect of this wide separation is, to make one fancy the world smaller
  than one used to think it?  You, on the other side of it, probably
  waked up to this conviction long ago.  It is just opening upon me,
  shut up in my nook of our little island.  When I have a letter from
  you, like that which lies before me, spiced with an old family joke or
  two, and a good many new ones of your own, all exactly like yourself,
  I am persuaded you cannot be very far off; and I should certainly call
  you from my window to come in to tea, but from a disagreeable
  suspicion that I should get no answer.  But do tell me in your next
  whether our globe has not been made far too much of its children, and
  whether its oceans do not look very like ponds, when you cast your eye
  over them to that small old apple-tree I mentioned just now.

  "But you want news,--this being the place of all others to send to
  from the other side of the world for news.  Deerbrook has rung with
  news and rumours of news since winter.  The first report after the ice
  broke up in March was, that I was going to be married to Deborah
  Giles.  `Who is Deborah Giles?' you will ask.  She is not going to be
  a relation of yours, in the first place.  Secondly, she is the
  daughter of the boatman whose boats Enderby and I are wont to hire.
  The young lady may be all that ever woman was, for aught I know, for I
  never spoke to her in my life, except that I one day asked her for
  something to bale the boat with: but I heard that the astonishment of
  Deerbrook was, that I was engaged to a woman who could not read or
  write.  So you see we of Deerbrook follow our old pastime of first
  inventing marvels, and then being scarcely able to believe them.  I
  rather suspect that we have some wag among us who fabricates news, to
  see how much will be received and retailed: but perhaps these rumours,
  even the wildest of them, rise `by natural exhalation' from the nooks
  and crevices of village life.  My five years' residence has not
  qualified me to pronounce absolutely upon this.

  "Old Smithson is dead.  You could not have seen him half-a-dozen times
  when you were here; but you may chance to recollect him,--a short old
  man, with white hair, and deep-set grey eyes.  He is less of a loss to
  the village than almost any other man would be.  He was so shy and
  quiet, and kept so much within his own gate, that some fancied he must
  be a miser: but though he spent little on himself, his money made its
  way abroad, and his heirs are rather disappointed at finding the
  property no larger than when he came into it.  He is much missed by
  his household, and, I own, by myself.  I was not often with him: but
  it was something to feel that there was one among us who was free from
  ambition and worldly cares, content to live on in the enjoyment of
  humble duties and simple pleasures,--one who would not have changed
  colour at the news of a bequest of ten thousand pounds, but could be
  very eager about his grand-nephew's prize at school, and about the
  first forget-me-not of the season beside his pond, and the first
  mushroom in his meadow.  During the fortnight of his illness, the
  village inquired about him; but when it was all over, there was not
  much to forget of one so little known, and we hear of him no more.

  "The Greys and Rowlands go on much as usual, the gentlemen of the
  family agreeing very well, and the ladies rather the reverse.  The
  great grievance this spring has been, that Mrs Rowland has seen fit
  to enlarge her hall, and make a porch to her door.  Her neighbours are
  certain that, in the course of her alterations, every principal beam
  of her house has been cut through, and that the whole will fall in.
  No such catastrophe has yet occurred, however.  I have not been called
  in to set any broken bones; and I have not much expectation of an
  accident, as Mr Rowland understands building too well to allow his
  house to be cut down over his head.  As for the porch, I do not
  perceive what can be alleged to its disadvantage, but that some people
  think it ugly.

  "Here I must cease my gossip.  I regularly begin my letters with the
  intention of telling you all that I hear and see out of my profession
  but I invariably stop short, as I do now, from disgust at the nonsense
  I should have to write.  It is endurable enough to witness; for one
  thing quickly dismisses another, and some relief occurs from the more
  amiable or intellectual qualities of the parties concerned: but I hate
  detail in writing; and I never do get through the whole list of
  particulars that I believe you would like to have.  You must excuse me
  now, and take my word for it, in the large, that we are all pretty
  much what we were when you saw us three years ago, except of course,
  being three years older, and some few of us three years wiser.  It
  will be a satisfaction to you also to know that my practice has made a
  very good growth for the time.  You liked my last year's report of it.
  It has increased more since that time than even during the preceding
  year; and I have no further anxiety about my worldly prospects.  I am
  as well satisfied with my choice of an occupation in life as ever.
  Mine has its anxieties, and _desagremens_, as others have: but I am
  convinced I could not have chosen better.  You saw, when you were with
  me, something of the anxiety of responsibility; what it is, for
  instance, to await the one or the other event of a desperate case: and
  I could tell you a good deal that you do not and cannot know of the
  perils, and troubles attendant upon being the depository of so much
  domestic and personal confidence as my function imposes upon me the
  necessity of receiving.  I sometimes long to be able to see nothing
  but what is apparent to all in society; to perceive what is
  ostensible, and to dream of nothing more,--not exactly like children,
  but like the members of large and happy families, who carry about with
  them the purity and peace of their homes, and therefore take
  cognisance of the pure and peaceful only whom they meet abroad; but it
  is childish, or indolent, or cowardly, to desire this.  While there is
  private vice and wretchedness, and domestic misunderstanding, one
  would desire to know it, if one can do anything to cure or alleviate
  it.  Dr Levitt and I have the same feeling about this; and I
  sometimes hope that we mutually prepare for and aid each other's work.
  There is a bright side to our business, as I need not tell you.  The
  mere exercise of our respective professions, the scientific as well as
  the moral interest of them, is as much to us as the theory of your
  business to you; and that is saying a great deal.  You will not
  quarrel with the idea of the scientific interest of Dr Levitt's
  profession in his hands; for you know how learned he is in the complex
  science of Humanity.  You remember the eternal wonder of the Greys at
  his liberality towards dissenters.  Of that liberality he is
  unconscious: as it is the natural, the inevitable result of his
  knowledge of men,--of his having been `hunting the waterfalls' from
  his youth up,--following up thought and prejudice to their fountains.
  When I see him bland and gay amongst us, I feel pretty confident that
  his greatest pleasure is the same as mine,--that of reposing in the
  society of the innocent, the single-hearted, the unburdened, after
  having seen what the dark corners of social life are.  It is like
  coming out of a foetid cave into the evening sunshine.  Of late, we
  have felt this in an extraordinary degree.  But I must tell you in an
  orderly way what has happened to us.  I have put off entering upon the
  grand subject, partly from the pleasure of keeping one's best news for
  the last, and partly from shyness in beginning to describe what it is
  impossible that you should enter into.  I am well aware of your powers
  of imagination and sympathy: but you have not lived five years within
  five miles of a country village; and you can no more understand our
  present condition than we can appreciate your sherbet and your
  mountain summer-house.

  "There are two ladies here from Birmingham, so far beyond any ladies
  that we have to boast of, that some of us begin to suspect that
  Deerbrook is not the Athens and Arcadia united that we have been
  accustomed to believe it.  You can have no idea how our vanity is
  mortified, and our pride abased, by finding what the world can produce
  out of the bounds of Deerbrook.  We bear our humiliation wonderfully,
  however.  Our Verdon woods echo with laughter; and singing is heard
  beside the brook.  The voices of children, grown and ungrown, go up
  from all the meadows around; and wit and wisdom are wafted over the
  surface of our river at eventide.  The truth is, these girls have
  brought in a new life among us, and there is not one of us, except the
  children, that is not some years younger for their presence.  Mr Grey
  deserts his business for them, like a school-boy; and Mr Rowland
  watches his opportunity to play truant in turn.  Mrs Enderby gives
  dances, and looks quite disposed to lead off in person.  Mrs
  Plumstead has grown quite giddy about sorting the letters, and her
  voice has not been heard further than three doors off since the
  arrival of the strangers.  Dr Levitt is preaching his old sermons.
  Mrs Grey is well-nigh intoxicated with being the hostess of these
  ladies, and has even reached the point of allowing her drawing-room to
  be used every afternoon.  Enderby is a fixture while they are so.
  Neither mother, sister, friend, nor frolic, ever detained him here
  before for a month together.  He was going away in a fortnight when
  these ladies came: they have been here six weeks, and Enderby has
  dropped all mention of the external world.  If you ask, as you are at
  this moment doing in your own heart, how I stand under this influence,
  I really cannot tell you.  I avoid inquiring too closely.  I enjoy
  every passing day too much to question it, and I let it go; and so
  must you.

  "`But who are they?' you want to know.  They are distant cousins of
  Mr Grey's,--orphans, and in mourning for their father.  They are just
  above twenty, and their name is Ibbotson.  `Are they handsome?' is
  your next question.  The eldest, Hester, is beautiful as the evening
  star.  Margaret is very different.  It does not matter what she is as
  to beauty, for the question seems never to have entered her own mind.
  I doubt whether it has often occurred to her whether she can be this,
  or that, or the other.  She _is_, and there is an end of the matter.
  Such pure _existence_, without question, without introspection,
  without hesitation or consciousness, I never saw in any one above
  eight years old.  Yet she is wise; it becomes not me to estimate how
  wise.  You will ask how I know this already.  I knew it the first day
  I saw them; I knew it by her infinite simplicity, from which all
  selfishness is discharged, and into which no folly can enter.  The
  airs of heaven must have been about her from her infancy, to nourish
  such health of the soul.  What her struggle is to be in life I cannot
  conceive, for not a morbid tendency is to be discerned.  I suppose she
  may be destined to make mistakes,--to find her faith deceived, her
  affections rebuked, her full repose delayed.  If, like the rest of us,
  she be destined to struggle, it must be to conflict of this kind; for
  it is inconceivable that any should arise from herself.  Yet is she as
  truly human as the weakest of us,--engrossed by affection, and
  susceptible of passion.  Her affection for her sister is a sort of
  passion.  It has some of the features of the serene guardianship of
  one from on high; but it is yet more like the passionate servitude--of
  the benefited to a benefactor, for instance--which is perhaps the most
  graceful attitude in which our humanity appears.  Where are the words
  that can tell what it is to witness, day by day, the course of such a
  life as this?--to see, living and moving before one's eyes, the very
  spirit that one had caught glimpses of, wandering in the brightest
  vistas of one's imagination, in the holiest hours of thought!  Yet is
  there nothing fearful, as in the presence of a spirit; there is
  scarcely even a sense of awe, so childlike is her deportment.  I go,
  grave and longing to listen; I come away, and I find I have been
  talking more than any one; revealing, discussing, as if I were the
  teacher and not the learner,--you will say the worshipper.  Say it if
  you will.  Our whole little world worships the one or the other.
  Hester is also well worthy of worship.  If there were nothing but her
  beauty, she would have a wider world than ours of Deerbrook at her
  feet.  But she has much more.  She is what you would call a true
  woman.  She has a generous soul, strong affections, and a
  susceptibility which interferes with her serenity.  She is not exempt
  from the trouble and snare into which the lot of women seems to drive
  them,--too close a contemplation of self, too nice a sensitiveness,
  which yet does not interfere with devotedness to others.  She will be
  a devoted wife: but Margaret does not wait to be a wife to be devoted.
  Her life has been devotedness, and will be to the end.  If she were
  left the last of her race, she would spend her life in worshipping the
  unseen that lay about her, and would be as unaware of herself as now.

  "What a comfort it is to speak freely of them!  This is the first
  relief of the kind I have had.  Every one is praising them; every one
  is following them: but to whom but you can I speak of them?  Even to
  you, I filled my first sheet with mere surface matter.  I now wonder
  how I could.  As for the `general opinion' of Deerbrook on the
  engrossing subject of the summer, you will anticipate it in your own
  mind,--concluding that Hester is most worshipped, on account of her
  beauty, and that Margaret's influence must be too subtle and refined
  to operate on more than a few.  This is partly, but not wholly the
  case.  It has been taken for granted from the beginning, by the many,
  that Hester is to be exclusively the adored; and Enderby has, I fancy,
  as many broad hints as myself of this general conclusion.  But I
  question whether Enderby assents, any more than myself.  Margaret's
  influence may be received as unconsciously as it is exerted, but it is
  not, therefore, the less real, while it is the more potent.  I see old
  Jem Bird raise himself up from the churchyard bench by his staff, and
  stand uncovered as Hester passes by; I see the children in the road
  touch one another, and look up at her; I see the admiration which
  diffuses itself like sunshine around her steps: all this homage to
  Hester is visible enough.  But I also see Sydney Grey growing manly,
  and his sisters amiable, under Margaret's eye.  I fancy I perceive
  Enderby--But that is his own affair.  I am sure I daily witness one
  healing and renovating process which Margaret is unconsciously
  effecting.  There is no one of us so worthy of her, so capable of
  appreciating her, as Maria Young: they are friends, and Maria Young is
  becoming a new creature.  Health and spirit are returning to that poor
  girl's countenance: there is absolutely a new tone in her voice, and a
  joyous strain in her conversation, which I, for one, never recognised
  before.  It is a sight on which angels might look down, to see
  Margaret, with her earnest face, listening humbly, and lovingly
  serving the infirm and much-tried friend whom she herself is daily
  lifting up into life and gladness.  I have done with listening to
  abuse of life and the world.  I will never sit still under it again.
  If there are two such as these sisters, springing out of the bosom of
  a busy town, and quietly passing along their path of life, casting
  sanctity around them as they go,--if there are two such, why not more?
  If God casts such seeds of goodness into our nook, how do we know but
  that he is sowing the whole earth with it?  I will believe it
  henceforth.

  "You will wonder, as I have wondered many a time within the last six
  weeks, what is to become of us when we lose these strangers.  I can
  only say, `God help us!'  But that time is far off.  They came for
  several months, and no one hints at their departure yet.  They are the
  most unlearned creatures about country life that you can conceive,
  with a surpassing genius for country pleasures.  Only imagine the
  charm of our excursions!  They are never so happy as when in the
  fields or on the river; and we all feel ourselves only too blest in
  being able to indulge them.  Our mornings are all activity and
  despatch, that our afternoons may be all mirth, and our evenings
  repose.  I am afraid this will make you sigh with mingled envy and
  sympathy; but whatever is that can be told, you may rely upon it that
  I shall tell you, trusting to your feeling both pleasure and pain in
  virtuous moderation.

  "I have done my story; and now I am going to look what o'clock it is--
  a thing I have refrained from, in my impulse to tell you all.  The
  house is quite still, and I heard the church clock strike something
  very long just now; but I would not count.  It is so.  It was midnight
  that the clock struck.  I shall seal this up directly.  I dare not
  trust my morning--my broad daylight mood with it.  Now, as soon as you
  have got thus far, just take up your pen, and answer me, telling me as
  copiously of your affairs as I have written of ours.  Heaven bless
  you.

  "Yours ever,

  "Edward Hope."

It was not only Mr Hope's broad daylight mood which was not to be
trusted with this letter.  In this hour of midnight a misgiving seized
upon him that it was extravagant.  He became aware, when he laid down
his pen, that he was agitated.  The door of his room opened into the
garden.  He thought he would look out upon the night.  It was the night
of the full moon.  As he stood in the doorway, the festoons of creepers
that dangled from his little porch waved in the night breeze; long
shadows from the shrubs lay on the grass; and in the depth of one of
these shadows glimmered the green spark of a glow-worm.  It was
deliciously cool and serene.  Mr Hope stood leaning against the
door-post, with his arms folded, and was not long in settling the
question whether the letter should go.

"Frank will think that I am in love," he considered.  "He will not
understand the real state of my feeling.  He will think that I am in
love.  I should conclude so in his place.  But what matters it what he
infers and concludes?  I have written exactly what I thought and felt at
the moment, and it is not from such revelations that wrong inferences
are usually drawn.  What I have written is true; and truth carries
safely over land and sea--more safely than confidence compounded with
caution.  Frank deserves the simplest and freshest confidence from me.
I am glad that no hesitation occurred to me while I wrote.  It shall
go--every word of it."

He returned to his desk, sealed and addressed the letter, and placed it
where it was sure to be seen in the morning, and carried to the
post-office before he rose.



CHAPTER NINE.

CHILD'S PLAY.

The afternoon arrived when the children were to have their feast in the
summer-house.  From the hour of dinner the little people were as busy as
aldermen's cooks, spreading their table.  Sydney thought himself too old
for such play.  He was hard at work, filling up the pond he had dug in
his garden, having tried experiments with it for several weeks, and
found that it never held water but in a pouring rain.  While he was
occupied with his spade, his sisters and the little Rowlands were
arranging their dishes, and brewing their cowslip-tea.

"Our mamma is coming," said Fanny to Matilda: "is yours?"

"No; she says she can't come--but papa will."

"So will our papa.  It was so funny at dinner.  Mr Paxton came in, and
asked whether papa would ride with him; and papa said it was out of the
question; it must be to-morrow; for he had an engagement this
afternoon."

"A very particular engagement, he said," observed Mary: "and he smiled
at me so, I could not help laughing.  Fanny, do look at Matilda's dish
of strawberries!  How pretty!"

"There's somebody coming," observed little Anna, who, being too young to
help, and liable to be tempted to put her fingers into the good things,
was sent to amuse herself with jumping up and down the steps.

"There now!  That is always the way, is not it, Miss Young?" cried
Fanny.  "Who is it, George?

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