Chapter XVII…

Chapter XVII

Gently supported by the ready aid Of loving hands, whose little work of toil Her grateful prodigality repaid With all the benediction of her smile, She turned her failing feet To the softly cushioned seat, Dispensing kindly greetings all the time. R. M. MILNES.

Three great events signalised the month of January. The first was, the opening of the school at Cocksmoor, whither a cart transported half a dozen forms, various books, and three dozen plum-buns, Margaret’s contribution, in order that the school might begin with eclat. There walked Mr. Wilmot, Richard, and Flora, with Mary, in a jumping, capering state of delight, and Ethel, not knowing whether she rejoiced. She kept apart from the rest, and hardly spoke, for this long probation had impressed her with a sense of responsibility, and she knew that it was a great work to which she had set her hand--a work in which she must persevere, and in which she could not succeed in her own strength.

She took hold of Flora’s hand, and squeezed it hard, in a fit of shyness, when they came upon the hamlet, and saw the children watching for them; and when they reached the house, she would fain have shrank into nothing; there was a swelling of heart that seemed to overwhelm and stifle her, and the effect of which was to keep her standing unhelpful, when the others were busy bringing in the benches and settling the room.

It was a tidy room, but it seemed very small when they ranged the benches, and opened the door to the seven-and-twenty children, and the four or five women who stood waiting. Ethel felt some dismay when they all came pushing in, without order or civility, and would have been utterly at a loss what to do with her scholars now she had got them, if Richard and Flora had not marshalled them to the benches.

Rough heads, torn garments, staring vacant eyes, and mouths gaping in shy rudeness--it was a sight to disenchant her of visions of pleasure in the work she had set herself. It was well that she had not to take the initiative.

Mr. Wilmot said a few simple words to the mothers about the wish to teach their children what was right, and to do the best at present practicable; and then told the children that he hoped they would take pains to be good, and mind what they were taught. Then he desired all to kneel down; he said the Collect, “Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings,” and then the Lord’s Prayer.

Ethel felt as if she could bear it better, and was more up to the work after this. Next, the children were desired to stand round the room, and Mr. Wilmot tried who could say the Catechism--the two biggest, a boy and a girl, had not an idea of it, and the boy looked foolish, and grinned at being asked what was his name. One child was tolerably perfect, and about half a dozen had some dim notions. Three were entirely ignorant of the Lord’s Prayer, and many of the others did not by any means pronounce the words of it. Jane and Fanny Taylor, Rebekah Watts, and Mrs. Green’s little boy, were the only ones who, by their own account, used morning and evening prayers, though, on further examination, it appeared that Polly and Jenny Hall, and some others, were accustomed to repeat the old rhyme about “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,” and Una M’Carthy and her little brother Fergus said something that nobody could make out, but which Mr. Wilmot thought had once been an “Ave Maria.”

Some few of the children could read, and several more knew their letters. The least ignorant were selected to form a first class, and Mr. Wilmot promised a Prayer-book to the first who should be able to repeat the Catechism without a mistake, and a Bible to the first who could read a chapter in it.

Then followed a setting of tasks, varying from a verse of a Psalm, or the first answer in the Catechism, down to the distinction between A, B, and C; all to be ready by next Tuesday, when, weather permitting, a second lesson was to be given. Afterwards, a piece of advice of Margaret’s was followed, and Flora read aloud to the assembly the story of “Margaret Fletcher.” To some this seemed to give great satisfaction, especially to Una, but Ethel was surprised to see that many, and those not only little ones, talked and yawned. They had no power of attention even to a story, and the stillness was irksome to such wild colts. It was plain that it was time to leave off, and there was no capacity there which did not find the conclusion agreeable, when the basket was opened, and Ethel and Mary distributed the buns, with instructions to say, “thank you.”

The next Tuesday, some of the lessons were learned, Una’s perfectly, the big ignorant boy came no more; and some of the children had learned to behave better, while others behaved worse; Ethel began to know what she was about; Richard’s gentleness was eminently successful with the little girls, impressing good manners on them in a marvellous way; and Mary’s importance and happiness with alphabet scholars, some bigger than herself, were edifying. Cocksmoor was fairly launched.

The next memorable day was that of Margaret’s being first carried downstairs. She had been willing to put it off as long as she could, dreading to witness the change below-stairs, and feeling, too, that in entering on the family room, without power of leaving it, she was losing all quiet and solitude, as well as giving up that monopoly of her father in his evenings, which had been her great privilege.

However, she tried to talk herself into liking it; and was rewarded by the happy commotion it caused, though Dr. May was in a state of excitement and nervousness at the prospect of seeing her on the stairs, and his attempts to conceal it only made it worse, till Margaret knew she should be nervous herself, and wished him out of sight and out of the house till it was over, for without him she had full confidence in the coolness and steadiness of Richard, and by him it was safely and quietly accomplished. She was landed on the sofa, Richard and Flora settling her, and the others crowding round and exclaiming, while the newness of the scene and the change gave her a sense of confusion, and she shut her eyes to recover her thoughts, but opened them the next instant at her father’s exclamation that she was overcome, smiled to reassure him, and declared herself not tired, and to be very glad to be among them again. But the bustle was oppressive, and her cheerful manner was an effort; she longed to see them all gone, and Flora found it out, sent the children for their walk, and carried off Ethel and the brothers.

Dr. May was called out of the room at the same time, and she was left alone. She gazed round her, at the room where, four months before, she had seen her mother with the babe in her arms, the children clustered round her, her father exulting in his hen-and-chicken daisies, herself full of bright undefined hope, radiant with health and activity, and her one trouble such that she now knew the force of her mother’s words, that it only proved her happiness. It was not till that moment that Margaret realised the change; found her eyes filling with tears, as she looked round, and saw the familiar furniture and ornaments.

They were instantly checked as she heard her father returning, but not so that he did not perceive them, and exclaim that it had been too much for her. “Oh, no--it was only the first time,” said Margaret, losing the sense of the painful vacancy in her absorbing desire not to distress her father, and thinking only of him as she watched him standing for some minutes leaning on the mantel-shelf with his hand shading his forehead.

She began to speak as soon as she thought he was ready to have his mind turned away: “How nicely Ritchie managed! He carried me so comfortably and easily. It is enough to spoil me to be so deftly waited on.”

“I’m glad of it,” said Dr. May; “I am sure the change is better for you;” but he came and looked at her still with great solicitude.

“Ritchie can take excellent care of me,” she continued, most anxious to divert his thoughts. “You see it will do very well indeed for you to take Harry to school.”

“I should like to do so. I should like to see his master, and to take Norman with me,” said the doctor. “It would be just the thing for him now--we would show him the dockyard, and all those matters, and such a thorough holiday would set him up again.”

“He is very much better.”

“Much better--he is recovering spirits and tone very fast. That leaf-work of yours came at a lucky time. I like to see him looking out for a curious fern in the hedgerows--the pursuit has quite brightened him up.”

“And he does it so thoroughly,” said Margaret. “Ethel fancies it is rather frivolous of him, I believe; but it amuses me to see how men give dignity to what women make trifling. He will know everything about the leaves, hunts up my botany books, and has taught me a hundred times more of the construction and wonders of them than I ever learned.”

“Ay,” said the doctor, “he has been talking a good deal to me about vegetable chemistry. He would make a good scientific botanist, if he were to be nothing else. I should be glad if he sticks to it as a pursuit--‘tis pretty work, and I should like to have gone further with it, if I had ever had time for it.”

“I dare say he will,” said Margaret. “It will be very pleasant if he can go with you. How he would enjoy the British Museum, if there was time for him to see it! Have you said anything to him yet?”

“No; I waited to see how you were, as it all depends on that.”

“I think it depends still more on something else; whether Norman is as fit to take care of you as Richard is.”

“That’s another point. There’s nothing but what he could manage now, but I don’t like saying anything to him. I know he would undertake anything I wished, without a word, and then, perhaps, dwell on it in fancy, and force himself, till it would turn to a perfect misery, and upset his nerves again. I’m sorry for it. I meant him to have followed my trade, but he’ll never do for that. However, he has wits enough to make himself what he pleases, and I dare say he will keep at the head of the school after all.”

“How very good he has been in refraining from restlessness!”

“It’s beautiful!” said Dr. May, with strong emotion. “Poor boy! I trust he’ll not be disappointed, and I don’t think he will; but I’ve promised him I won’t be annoyed if he should lose his place--so we must take especial care not to show any anxiety. However, for this matter, Margaret, I wish you would sound him, and see whether it would be more pleasure or pain. Only mind you don’t let him think that I shall be vexed, if he feels that he can’t make up his mind; I would not have him fancy that, for more than I can tell.”

This consultation revived the spirits of both; and the others returning, found Margaret quite disposed for companionship. If to her the evening was sad and strange, like a visit in a dream to some old familiar haunt, finding all unnatural, to the rest it was delightful. The room was no longer dreary, now that there was a centre for care and attentions, and the party was no longer broken up--the sense of comfort, cheerfulness, and home-gathering had returned, and the pleasant evening household gossip went round the table almost as it used to do. Dr. May resumed his old habit of skimming a club book, and imparting the cream to the listeners; and Flora gave them some music, a great treat to Margaret, who had long only heard its distant sounds.

Margaret found an opportunity of talking to Norman, and judged favourably. He was much pleased at the prospect of the journey, and of seeing a ship, so as to have a clearer notion of the scene where Harry’s life was to be spent, and though the charge of the arm was a drawback, he did not treat it as insurmountable.

A few days’ attendance in his father’s room gave him confidence in taking Richard’s place, and, accordingly, the third important measure was decided on, namely, that he and his father should accompany Harry to the naval school, and be absent three nights. Some relations would be glad to receive them in London, and Alan Ernescliffe, who was studying steam navigation at Woolwich, volunteered to meet them, and go with them to Portsmouth.

It was a wonderful event; Norman and Harry had never been beyond Whitford in their lives, and none of the young ones could recollect their papa’s ever going from home for more than one night. Dr. May laughed at Margaret for her anxiety and excitement on the subject, and was more amused at overhearing Richard’s precise directions to Norman over the packing up.

“Ay, Ritchie,” said the doctor, as he saw his portmanteau locked, and the key given to Norman, “you may well look grave upon it. You won’t see it look so tidy when it comes back again, and I believe you are thinking it will be lucky if you see it at all.”

There was a very affectionate leave-taking of Harry, who, growing rather soft-hearted, thought it needful to be disdainful, scolded Mary and Blanche for “lugging off his figure-head,” and assured them they made as much work about it as if he was going to sea at once. Then, to put an end to any more embraces, he marched off to the station with Tom, and nearly caused the others to be too late, by the search for him that ensued.

In due time, Dr. May and Norman returned, looking the better for the journey. There was, first, to tell of Harry’s school and its master, and Alan Ernescliffe’s introduction of him to a nice-looking boy of his own age; then they were eloquent on the wonders of the dockyard, the Victory, the block machinery. And London--while Dr. May went to transact some business, Norman had been with Alan at the British Museum, and though he had intended to see half London besides, there was no tearing him away from the Elgin marbles; and nothing would serve him, but bringing Dr. May the next morning to visit the Ninevite bulls. Norman further said, that whereas papa could never go out of his house without meeting people who had something to say to him, it was the same elsewhere. Six acquaintances he had met unexpectedly in London, and two at Portsmouth.

So the conversation went on all the evening, to the great delight of all. It was more about things than people, though Flora inquired after Mr. Ernescliffe, and was told he had met them at the station, had been everywhere with them, and had dined at the Mackenzies’ each day. “How was he looking?” Ethel asked; and was told pretty much the same as when he went away; and, on a further query from Flora, it appeared that an old naval friend of his father’s had hopes of a ship, and had promised to have him with him, and thereupon warm hopes were expressed that Harry might have a berth in the same.

“And when is he coming here again, papa?” said Ethel.

“Eh! oh! I can’t tell. I say, isn’t it high time to ring?”

When they went up at night, every one felt that half the say had not been said, and there were fresh beginnings on the stairs. Norman triumphantly gave the key to Richard, and then called to Ethel, “I say, won’t you come into my room while I unpack?”

“Oh, yes, I should like it very much.”

Ethel sat on the bed, rolled up in a cloak, while Norman undid his bag, announcing at the same time, “Well, Ethel, papa says I may get to my Euripides to-morrow, if I please, and only work an hour at a time!”

“Oh, I am so glad. Then he thinks you quite well?”

“Yes, I am quite well. I hope I’ve done with nonsense.”

“And how did you get on with his arm?”

“Very well--he was so patient, and told me how to manage. You heard that Sir Matthew said it had got much better in these few weeks. Oh, here it is! There’s a present for you.”

“Oh, thank you. From you, or from papa?”

“This is mine. Papa has a present for every one in his bag. He said, at last, that a man with eleven children hadn’t need to go to London very often.”

“And you got this beautiful ‘Lyra Innocentium’ for me? How very kind of you, Norman. It is just what I wished for. Such lovely binding--and those embossed edges to the leaves. Oh! they make a pattern as they open! I never saw anything like it.”

“I saw such a one on Miss Rivers’s table, and asked Ernescliffe where to get one like it. See, here’s what my father gave me.”

“‘Bishop Ken’s Manual’. That is in readiness for the Confirmation.”

“Look. I begged him to put my name, though he said it was a pity to do it with his left hand; I didn’t like to wait, so I asked him at least to write N. W. May, and the date.”

“And he has added Prov. xxiii. 24, 25. Let me look it out.” She did so, and instead of reading it aloud, looked at Norman full of congratulation.

“How it ought to make one--” and there Norman broke off from the fullness of his heart.

“I’m glad he put both verses” said Ethel presently. “How pleased with you he must be!”

A silence while brother and sister both gazed intently at the crooked characters, till at last Ethel, with a long breath, resumed her ordinary tone, and said, “How well he has come to write with his left hand now.”

“Yes. Did you know that he wrote himself to tell Ernescliffe Sir Matthew’s opinion of Margaret?”

“No: did he?”

“Do you know, Ethel,” said Norman, as he knelt on the floor, and tumbled miscellaneous articles out of his bag, “it is my belief that Ernescliffe is in love with her, and that papa thinks so.”

“Dear me!” cried Ethel, starting up. “That is famous. We should always have Margaret at home when he goes to sea!”

“But mind, Ethel, for your life you must not say one word to any living creature.”

“Oh, no, I promise you I won’t, Norman, if you’ll only tell me how you found it out.”

“What first put it in my head was the first evening, while I was undoing the portmanteau; my father leaned on the mantel-shelf, and sighed and muttered, ‘Poor Ernescliffe! I wish it may end well.’ I thought he forgot that I was there, so I would not seem to notice, but I soon saw it was that he meant.”

“How?” cried Ethel eagerly.

“Oh, I don’t know--by Alan’s way.”

“Tell me--I want to know what people do when they are in love.”

“Nothing particular,” said Norman, smiling.

“Did you hear him inquire for her? How did he look?”

“I can’t tell. That was when he met us at the station before I thought of it, and I had to see to the luggage. But I’ll tell you one thing, Ethel; when papa was talking of her to Mrs. Mackenzie, at the other end of the room, all his attention went away in an instant from what he was saying. And once, when Harry said something to me about her, he started, and looked round so earnestly.”

“Oh, yes--that’s like people in books. And did he colour?”

“No; I don’t recollect that he did,” said Norman; “but I observed he never asked directly after her if he could help it, but always was trying to lead, in some round-about way, to hearing what she was doing.”

“Did he call her Margaret?”

“I watched; but to me he always said, ‘Your sister,’ and if he had to speak of her to papa, he said, ‘Miss May.’ And then you should have seen his attention to papa. I could hardly get a chance of doing anything for papa.”

“Oh, sure of it!” cried Ethel, clasping her hands. “But, poor man, how unhappy he must have been at having to go away when she was so ill!”

“Ay, the last time he saw her was when he carried her upstairs.”

“Oh, dear! I hope he will soon come here again!”

“I don’t suppose he will. Papa did not ask him.”

“Dear me, Norman! Why not? Isn’t papa very fond of him? Why shouldn’t he come?”

“Don’t you see, Ethel, that would be of no use while poor Margaret is no better. If he gained her affections, it would only make her unhappy.”

“Oh, but she is much better. She can raise herself up now without help, and sat up ever so long this morning, without leaning back on her cushions. She is getting well--you know Sir Matthew said she would.”

“Yes; but I suppose papa thinks they had better say nothing till she is quite well.”

“And when she is! How famous it will be.”

“Then there’s another thing; he is very poor, you know.”

“I am sure papa doesn’t care about people being rich.”

“I suppose Alan thinks he ought not to marry, unless he could make his wife comfortable.”

“Look here--it would be all very easy: she should stay with us, and be comfortable here, and he go to sea, and get lots of prize money.”

“And that’s what you call domestic felicity!” said Norman, laughing.

“He might have her when he was at home,” said Ethel.

“No, no; that would never do,” said Norman. “Do you think Ernescliffe’s a man that would marry a wife for her father to maintain her?”

“Why, papa would like it very much. He is not a mercenary father in a book.”

“Hey! what’s that?” said a voice Ethel little expected. “Contraband talk at contraband times? What’s this!”

“Did you hear, papa?” said Ethel, looking down.

“Only your last words, as I came up to ask Norman what he had done with my pocket-book. Mind, I ask no impertinent questions; but, if you have no objection, I should like to know what gained me the honour of that compliment.”

“Norman?” said Ethel interrogatively, and blushing in emulation of her brother, who was crimson.

“I’ll find it,” said he, rushing off with a sort of nod and sign, that conveyed to Ethel that there was no help for it.

So, with much confusion, she whispered into her papa’s ear that Norman had been telling her something he guessed about Mr. Ernescliffe.

Her father at first smiled, a pleased amused smile. “Ah! ha! so Master June has his eyes and ears open, has he? A fine bit of gossip to regale you with on his return!”

“He told me to say not one word,” said Ethel.

“Right--mind you don’t,” said Dr. May, and Ethel was surprised to see how sorrowful his face became. At the same moment Norman returned, still very red, and said, “I’ve put out the pocket-book, papa. I think I should tell you I repeated what, perhaps, you did not mean me to hear--you talked to yourself something of pitying Ernescliffe.” The doctor smiled again at the boy’s high-minded openness, which must have cost an effort of self-humiliation. “I can’t say little pitchers have long ears, to a May-pole like you, Norman,” said he; “I think I ought rather to apologise for having inadvertently tumbled in among your secrets; I assure you I did not come to spy you.”

“Oh, no, no, no, no!” repeated Ethel vehemently. “Then you didn’t mind our talking about it?”

“Of course not, as long as it goes no further. It is the use of sisters to tell them one’s private sentiments. Is not it, Norman?”

“And do you really think it is so, papa?” Ethel could not help whispering.

“I’m afraid it is”, said Dr. May, sighing; then, as he caught her earnest eyes, “The more I see of Alan, the finer fellow I think him, and the more sorry I am for him. It seems presumptuous, almost wrong, to think of the matter at all while my poor Margaret is in this state; and, if she were well, there are other difficulties which would, perhaps, prevent his speaking, or lead to long years of waiting and wearing out hope.”

“Money?” said Ethel.

“Ay! Though I so far deserve your compliment, miss, that should be foolish enough, if she were but well, to give my consent to-morrow, because I could not help it; yet one can’t live forty-six years in this world without seeing it is wrong to marry without a reasonable dependence--and there won’t be much among eleven of you. It makes my heart ache to think of it, come what may, as far as I can see, and without her to judge. The only comfort is, that poor Margaret herself knows nothing of it, and is at peace so far. It will be ordered for them, anyhow. Good-night, my dear.”

Ethel sought her room, with graver, deeper thoughts of life than she had carried upstairs.

Chapter XVIII

Saw ye never in the meadows, Where your little feet did pass, Down below, the sweet white daisies Growing in the long green grass?

Saw you never lilac blossoms, Or acacia white and red, Waving brightly in the sunshine, On the tall trees over head? HYMNS FOR CHILDREN, C. F. A.

“My dear child, what a storm you have had! how wet you must be!” exclaimed Mrs. Larpent, as Meta Rivers came bounding up the broad staircase at Abbotstoke Grange.

“Oh no; I am quite dry; feel.”

“Are you sure?” said Mrs. Larpent, drawing her darling into a luxurious bedroom, lighted up by a glowing fire, and full of pretty things. “Here, come and take off your wet things, my dear, and Bellairs shall bring you some tea.”

“I’m dry. I’m warm,” said Meta, tossing off her plumy hat, as she established herself, with her feet on the fender. “But where do you think I have been? You have so much to hear. But first--three guesses where we were in the rain!”

“In the Stoneborough Cloisters, that you wanted to see? My dear, you did not keep your papa in the cold there?”

“No, no; we never got there at all; guess again.”

“At Mr. Edward Wilmot’s?”

“No!”

“Could it have been at Dr. May’s? Really, then, you must tell me.”

“There! you deserve a good long story; beginning at the beginning,” said Meta, clapping her hands, “wasn’t it curious? as we were coming up the last hill, we met some girls in deep mourning, with a lady who looked like their governess. I wondered whether they could be Dr. May’s daughters, and so it turned out they were.

“Presently there began to fall little square lumps, neither hail, nor snow, nor rain; it grew very cold, and rain came on. It would have been great fun, if I had not been afraid papa would catch cold, and he said we would canter on to the inn. But, luckily, there was Dr. May walking up the street, and he begged us to come into his house. I was so glad! We were tolerably wet, and Dr. May said something about hoping the girls were at home; well, when he opened the drawing-room door, there was the poor daughter lying on the sofa.”

“Poor girl! tell me of her.”

“Oh! you must go and see her; you won’t look at her without losing your heart. Papa liked her so much--see if he does not talk of her all the evening. She looks the picture of goodness and sweetness. Only think of her having some of the maidenhair and cape jessamine still in water, that we sent her so long ago. She shall have some flowers every three days. Well, Dr. May said, ‘There is one at least, that is sure to be at home.’ She felt my habit, and said I must go and change it, and she called to a little thing of six, telling her to show me the way to Flora. She smiled, and said she wished she could go herself, but Flora would take care of me. Little Blanche came and took hold of my hand, chattering away, up we went, up two staircases, and at the top of the last stood a girl about seventeen, so pretty! such deep blue eyes, and such a complexion! ‘That’s Flora,’ little Blanche said; ‘Flora, this is Miss Rivers, and she’s wet, and Margaret says you are to take care of her.’”

“So that was your introduction?”

“Yes; we got acquainted in a minute. She took me into her room--such a room! I believe Bellairs would be angry if she had such a one; all up in the roof, no fire, no carpet, except little strips by the beds; there were three beds. Flora used to sleep there till Miss May was ill, and now she dresses there. Yet I am sure they are as much ladies as I am.”

“You are an only daughter, my dear, and a petted one,” said Mrs. Larpent, smiling. “There are too many of them to make much of, as we do of our Meta.”

“I suppose so; but I did not know gentlewomen lived in such a way,” said Meta. “There were nice things about, a beautiful inlaid work-box of Flora’s, and a rosewood desk, and plenty of books, and a Greek book and dictionary were spread open. I asked Flora if they were hers, and she laughed and said no; and that Ethel would be much discomposed that I had see them. Ethel keeps up with her brother Norman--only fancy! and he at the head of the school. How clever she must be!”

“But, my dear, were you standing in your wet things all this time!”

“No; I was trying on their frocks, but they trailed on the ground upon me, so she asked if I would come and sit by the nursery fire till my habit was dry; and there was a dear little good-humoured baby, so fair and pretty. She is not a bit shy, will go to anybody, but, they say, she likes no one so well as her brother Norman.”

“So you had a regular treat of baby-nursing.”

“That I had; I could not part with her, the darling. Flora thought we might take her down, and I liked playing with her in the drawing-room and talking to Miss May, till the fly came to take us home. I wanted to have seen Ethel; but, only think, papa has asked Dr. May to bring Flora some day; how I hope he will!”

Little Meta having told her story, and received plenty of sympathy, proceeded to dress, and, while her maid braided her hair, a musing fit fell upon her. “I have seen something of life to-day,” thought she. “I had thought of the great difference between us and the poor, but I did not know ladies lived in such different ways. I should be very miserable without Bellairs, or without a fire in my room. I don’t know what I should do if I had to live in that cold, shabby den, and do my own hair, yet they think nothing of it, and they are cultivated and ladylike! Is it all fancy, and being brought up to it? I wonder if it is right? Yet dear papa likes me to have these things, and can afford them. I never knew I was luxurious before, and yet I think I must be! One thing I do wish, and that is, that I was of as much use as those girls. I ought to be. I am a motherless girl like them, and I ought to be everything to papa, just as Miss May is, even lying on the sofa there, and only two years older than I am. I don’t think I am of any use at all; he is fond of me, of course, dear papa; and if I died, I don’t know what would become of him; but that’s only because I am his daughter--he has only George besides to care for. But, really and truly, he would get on as well without me. I never do anything for him, but now and then playing to him in the evening, and that not always, I am afraid, when I want to be about anything else. He is always petting me, and giving me all I want, but I never do anything but my lessons, and going to the school, and the poor people, and that is all pleasure. I have so much that I never miss what I give away. I wonder whether it is all right! Leonora and Agatha have not so much money to do as they please with--they are not so idolised. George said, when he was angry, that papa idolises me; but they have all these comforts and luxuries, and never think of anything but doing what they like. They never made me consider as these Mays do. I should like to know them more. I do so much want a friend of my own age. It is the only want I have. I have tried to make a friend of Leonora, but I cannot; she never cares for what I do. If she saw these Mays she would look down on them. Dear Mrs. Larpent is better than any one, but then she is so much older. Flora May shall be my friend. I’ll make her call me Meta as soon as she comes. When will it be? The day after tomorrow?”

But little Meta watched in vain. Dr. May always came with either Richard or the groom, to drive him, and if Meta met him and hoped he would bring Flora next time, he only answered that Flora would like it very much, and he hoped soon to do so.

The truth was, it was no such everyday matter as Meta imagined. The larger carriage had been broken, and the only vehicle held only the doctor--his charioteer--and in a very minute appendage behind, a small son of the gardener, to open gates, and hold the horse.

The proposal had been one of those general invitations to be fulfilled at any time, and therefore easily set aside; and Dr. May, though continually thinking he should like to take his girls to Abbotstoke, never saw the definite time for so doing; and Flora herself, though charmed with Miss Rivers, and delighted with the prospect of visiting her, only viewed it as a distant prospect.

There was plenty of immediate interest to occupy them at home, to say nothing of the increasing employment that Cocksmoor gave to thoughts, legs, and needles. There was the commencement of the half-year, when Tom’s schoolboy life was to begin, and when it would be proved whether Norman were able to retain his elevation.

Margaret had much anxiety respecting the little boy about to be sent into a scene of temptation. Her great confidence was in Richard, who told her that boys did many more wrong things than were known at home, and yet turned out very well, and that Tom would be sure to right himself in the end. Richard had been blameless in his whole school course, but though never partaking of the other boys’ evil practices, he could not form an independent estimate of character, and his tone had been a little hurt, by sharing the school public opinion of morality. He thought Stoneborough and its temptations inevitable, and only wished to make the best of it. Margaret was afraid to harass her father by laying the case before him. All her brothers had gone safely through the school, and it never occurred to her that it was possible that, if her father knew the bias of Tom’s disposition, he might choose, for the present, at least, some other mode of education.

She talked earnestly to Tom, and he listened impatiently. There is an age when boys rebel against female rule, and are not yet softened by the chivalry of manhood, and Tom was at this time of life. He did not like to be lectured by a sister, secretly disputed her right, and, proud of becoming a schoolboy, had not the generous deference for her weakness felt by his elder brothers; he was all the time peeling a stick, as if to show that he was not attending, and he raised up his shoulder pettishly whenever she came to a mention of the religious duty of sincerity. She did not long continue her advice, and, much disappointed and concerned, tried to console herself with hoping that he might have heeded more than he seemed to do.

He was placed tolerably high in the school, and Norman, who had the first choice of fags, took him instead of Hector Ernescliffe, who had just passed beyond the part of the school liable to be fagged. He said he liked school, looked bright when he came home in the evenings, and the sisters hoped all was right.

Every one was just now anxiously watching Norman, especially his father, who strove in vain to keep back all manifestation of his earnest desire to see him retain his post. Resolutely did the doctor refrain from asking any questions, when the boys came in, but he could not keep his eyes from studying the face, to see whether it bore marks of mental fatigue, and from following him about the room, to discover whether he found it necessary, as he had done last autumn, to spend the evening in study. It was no small pleasure to see him come in with his hand full of horse-chestnut and hazel-buds, and proceed to fetch the microscope and botany books, throwing himself eagerly into the study of the wonders of their infant forms, searching deeply into them with Margaret, and talking them over with his father, who was very glad to promote the pursuit--one in which he had always taken great interest.

Another night Dr. May was for a moment disturbed by seeing the school-books put out, but Norman had only some notes to compare, and while he did so, he was remarking on Flora’s music, and joining in the conversation so freely as to prove it was no labour to him. In truth, he was evidently quite recovered, entirely himself again, except that he was less boyish. He had been very lively and full of merry nonsense; but his ardour for play had gone off with his high spirits, and there was a manliness of manner, and tone of mind, that made him appear above his real age.

At the end of a fortnight he volunteered to tell his father that all was right. “I am not afraid of not keeping my place,” he said; “you were quite right, papa. I am more up to my work than I was ever before, and it comes to me quite fresh and pleasant. I don’t promise to get the Randall scholarship, if Forder and Cheviot stay on, but I can quite keep up to the mark in school work.”

“That’s right,” said Dr. May, much rejoiced. “Are you sure you do it with ease, and without its haunting you at night?”

“Oh, yes; quite sure. I can’t think what has made Dr. Hoxton set us on in such easy things this time. It is very lucky for me, for one gets so much less time to oneself as dux.”

“What! with keeping order?”

“Ay,” said Norman. “I fancy they think they may take liberties because I am new and young. I must have my eye in all corners of the hall at once, and do my own work by snatches, as I can.”

“Can you make them attend to you?”

“Why, yes, pretty well, when it comes to the point--‘will you, or will you not?’ Cheviot is a great help, too, and has all the weight of being the eldest fellow amongst us.”

“But still you find it harder work than learning? You had rather have to master the dead language than the live tongues?”

“A pretty deal,” said Norman; then added, “One knows what to be at with the dead, better than with the living; they don’t make parties against one. I don’t wonder at it. It was very hard on some of those great fellows to have me set before them, but I do not think it is fair to visit it by putting up the little boys to all sorts of mischief.”

“Shameful!” said the doctor warmly; “but never mind, Norman, keep your temper, and do your own duty, and you are man enough to put down such petty spite.”

“I hope I shall manage rightly,” said Norman; “but I shall be glad if I can get the Randall and get away to Oxford; school is not what it used to be, and if you don’t think me too young--”

“No, I don’t; certainly not. Trouble has made a man of you, Norman, and you are fitter to be with men than boys. In the meantime, if you can be patient with these fellows, you’ll be of great use where you are. If there had been any one like you at the head of the school in my time, it would have kept me out of no end of scrapes. How does Tom get on? he is not likely to fall into this set, I trust.”

“I am not sure,” said Norman; “he does pretty well on the whole. Some of them began by bullying him, and that made him cling to Cheviot and Ernescliffe, and the better party; but lately I have thought Anderson, junior, rather making up to him, and I don’t know whether they don’t think that tempting him over to them would be the surest way of vexing me. I have an eye over him, and I hope he may get settled into the steadier sort before next half.”

After a silence, Norman said, “Papa, there is a thing I can’t settle in my own mind. Suppose there had been wrong things done when older boys, and excellent ones too, were at the head of the school, yet they never interfered, do you think I ought to let it go on?”

“Certainly not, or why is power given to you?”

“So I thought,” said Norman; “I can’t see it otherwise. I wish I could, for it will be horrid to set about it, and they’ll think it a regular shame in me to meddle. Oh! I know what I came into the study for; I want you to be so kind as to lend me your pocket Greek Testament. I gave Harry my little one.”

“You are very welcome. What do you want it for?”

Norman coloured. “I met with a sermon the other day that recommended reading a bit of it every day, and I thought I should like to try, now the Confirmation is coming. One can always have some quiet by getting away into the cloister.”

“Bless you, my boy! while you go on in this way, I have not much fear but that you’ll know how to manage.”

Norman’s rapid progress affected another of the household in an unexpected way.

“Margaret, my dear, I wish to speak to you,” said Miss Winter, reappearing when Margaret thought every one was gone out walking. She would have said, “I am very sorry for it”--so ominous was the commencement--and her expectations were fulfilled when Miss Winter had solemnly seated herself, and taken out her netting. “I wished to speak to you about dear Ethel,” said the governess; “you know how unwilling I always am to make any complaint, but I cannot be satisfied with her present way of going on.”

“Indeed,” said Margaret. “I am much grieved to hear this. I thought she had been taking great pains to improve.”

“So she was at one time. I would not by any means wish to deny it, and it is not of her learning that I speak, but of a hurried, careless way of doing everything, and an irritability at being interfered with.”

Margaret knew how Miss Winter often tried Ethel’s temper, and was inclined to take her sister’s part. “Ethel’s time is so fully occupied,” she said.

“That is the very thing that I was going to observe, my dear. Her time is too much occupied, and my conviction is, that it is hurtful to a girl of her age.”

This was a new idea to Margaret, who was silent, longing to prove Miss Winter wrong, and not have to see poor Ethel pained by having to relinquish any of her cherished pursuits.

“You see there is that Cocksmoor,” said Miss Winter. “You do not know how far off it is, my dear; much too great a distance for a young girl to be walking continually in all weathers.”

“That’s a question for papa,” thought Margaret.

“Besides,” continued Miss Winter, “those children engross almost all her time and thoughts. She is working for them, preparing lessons, running after them continually. It takes off her whole mind from her proper occupations, unsettles her, and I do think it is beyond what befits a young lady of her age.”

Margaret was silent.

“In addition,” said Miss Winter, “she is at every spare moment busy with Latin and Greek, and I cannot think that to keep pace with a boy of Norman’s age and ability can be desirable for her.”

“It is a great deal,” said Margaret, “but--”

“I am convinced that she does more than is right,” continued Miss Winter. “She may not feel any ill effects at present, but you may depend upon it, it will tell on her by-and-by. Besides, she does not attend to anything properly. At one time she was improving in neatness and orderly habits. Now, you surely must have seen how much less tidy her hair and dress have been.”

“I have thought her hair looking rather rough,” said Margaret disconsolately.

“No wonder,” said Miss Winter, “for Flora and Mary tell me she hardly spends five minutes over it in the morning, and with a book before her the whole time. If I send her up to make it fit to be seen, I meet with looks of annoyance. She leaves her books in all parts of the school-room for Mary to put away, and her table drawer is one mass of confusion. Her lessons she does well enough, I own, though what I should call much too fast; but have you looked at her work lately?”

“She does not work very well,” said Margaret, who was at that moment, though Miss Winter did not know it, re-gathering a poor child’s frock that Ethel had galloped through with more haste than good speed.

“She works a great deal worse than little Blanche,” said Miss Winter, “and though it may not be the fashion to say so in these days, I consider good needlework far more important than accomplishments. Well, then, Margaret, I should wish you only just to look at her writing.”

And Miss Winter opened a French exercise-book, certainly containing anything but elegant specimens of penmanship. Ethel’s best writing was an upright, disjointed niggle, looking more like Greek than anything else, except where here and there it made insane efforts to become running-hand, and thereby lost its sole previous good quality of legibility, while the lines waved about the sheet in almost any direction but the horizontal. The necessity she believed herself under of doing what Harry called writing with the end of her nose, and her always holding her pen with her fingers almost in the ink, added considerably to the difficulty of the performance. This being at her best, the worst may be supposed to be indescribable, when dashed off in a violent hurry, and considerably garnished with blots. Margaret thought she had seen the worst, and was sighing at being able to say nothing for it, when Miss Winter confounded her by turning a leaf, and showing it was possible to make a still wilder combination of scramble, niggle, scratch, and crookedness--and this was supposed to be an amended edition! Miss Winter explained that Ethel had, in an extremely short time, performed an exercise in which no fault could be detected except the writing, which was pronounced to be too atrocious to be shown up to M. Ballompre. On being desired to write it over again, she had obeyed with a very bad grace, and some murmurs about Cocksmoor, and produced the second specimen, which, in addition to other defects, had some elisions from arrant carelessness, depriving it of its predecessor’s merits of being good French.

Miss Winter had been so provoked that she believed this to be an effect of ill temper, and declared that she should certainly have kept Ethel at home to write it over again, if it had not so happened that Dr. May had proposed to walk part of the way with her and Richard, and the governess was unwilling to bring her into disgrace with him. Margaret was so grateful to her for this forbearance, that it disposed her to listen the more patiently to the same representations put in, what Miss Winter fancied, different forms. Margaret was much perplexed. She could not but see much truth in what Miss Winter said, and yet she could not bear to thwart Ethel, whom she admired with her whole heart; and that dry experience, and prejudiced preciseness, did not seem capable of entering into her sister’s thirst for learning and action. When Miss Winter said Ethel would grow up odd, eccentric, and blue, Margaret was ready to answer that she would be superior to every one; and when the governess urged her to insist on Cocksmoor being given up, she felt impatient of that utter want of sympathy for the good work.

All that evening Margaret longed for a quiet time to reflect, but it never came till she was in bed; and when she had made up her mind how to speak to Ethel, it was five times harder to secure her alone. Even when Margaret had her in the room by herself, she looked wild and eager, and said she could not stay, she had some Thucydides to do.

“Won’t you stay with me a little while, quietly?” said Margaret; “we hardly ever have one of our talks.”

“I didn’t mean to vex you, dear Margaret; I like nothing so well, only we are never alone, and I’ve no time.”

“Pray do spare me a minute, Ethel, for I have something that I must say to you, and I am afraid you won’t like it--so do listen kindly.”

“Oh!” said Ethel, “Miss Winter has been talking to you. I know she said she would tell you that she wants me to give up Cocksmoor. You aren’t dreaming of it, Margaret?”

“Indeed, dear Ethel, I should be very sorry, but one thing I am sure of, that there is something amiss in your way of going on.”

“Did she show you that horrid exercise?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I know it was baddish writing, but just listen, Margaret. We promised six of the children to print them each a verse of a hymn on a card to learn. Ritchie did three, and then could not go on, for the book that the others were in was lost till last evening, and then he was writing for papa. So I thought I would do them before we went to Cocksmoor, and that I should squeeze time out of the morning; but I got a bit of Sophocles that was so horridly hard it ate up all my time, and I don’t understand it properly now; I must get Norman to tell me. And that ran in my head and made me make a mistake in my sum, and have to begin it again. Then, just as I thought I had saved time over the exercise, comes Miss Winter and tells me I must do it over again, and scolds me besides about the ink on my fingers. She would send me up at once to get it off, and I could not find nurse and her bottle of stuff for it, so that wasted ever so much more time, and I was so vexed that, really and truly, my hand shook and I could not write any better.”

“No, I thought it looked as if you had been in one of your agonies.”

“And she thought I did it on purpose, and that made me angry, and so we got into a dispute, and away went all the little moment I might have had, and I was forced to go to Cocksmoor as a promise breaker!”

“Don’t you think you had better have taken pains at first?”

“Well, so I did with the sense, but I hadn’t time to look at the writing much.”

“You would have made better speed if you had.”

“Oh, yes, I know I was wrong, but it is a great plague altogether. Really, Margaret, I shan’t get Thucydides done.”

“You must wait a little longer, please, Ethel, for I want to say to you that I am afraid you are doing too much, and that prevents you from doing things well, as you were trying to do last autumn.”

“You are not thinking of my not going to Cocksmoor?” cried Ethel vehemently.

“I want you to consider what is to be done, dear Ethel. You thought, last autumn, a great deal of curing your careless habits, now you seem not to have time to attend. You can do a great deal very fast, I know, but isn’t it a pity to be always in a hurry?”

“It isn’t Cocksmoor that is the reason,” said Ethel.

“No; you did pretty well when you began, but you know that was in the holidays, when you had no Latin and Greek to do.”

“Oh, but, Margaret, they won’t take so much time when I have once got over the difficulties, and see my way, but just now they have put Norman into such a frightfully difficult play, that I can hardly get on at all with it, and there’s a new kind of Greek verses, too, and I don’t make out from the book how to manage them. Norman showed me on Saturday, but mine won’t be right. When I’ve got over that, I shan’t be so hurried.”

“But Norman will go on to something harder, I suppose.”

“I dare say I shall be able to do it.”

“Perhaps you might, but I want you to consider if you are not working beyond what can be good for anybody. You see Norman is much cleverer than most boys, and you are a year younger; and besides doing all his work at the head of the school, his whole business of the day, you have Cocksmoor to attend to, and your own lessons, besides reading all the books that come into the house. Now isn’t that more than is reasonable to expect any head and hands to do properly?”

“But if I can do it?”

“But can you, dear Ethel? Aren’t you always racing from one thing to another, doing them by halves, feeling hunted, and then growing vexed?”

“I know I have been cross lately,” said Ethel, “but it’s the being so bothered.”

“And why are you bothered? Isn’t it that you undertake too much?”

“What would you have me do?” said Ethel, in an injured, unconvinced voice. “Not give up my children?”

“No,” said Margaret; “but don’t think me very unkind if I say, suppose you left off trying to keep up with Norman.”

“Oh, Margaret! Margaret!” and her eyes filled with tears. “We have hardly missed doing the same every day since the first Latin grammar was put into his hands!”

“I know it would be very hard,” said Margaret; but Ethel continued, in a piteous tone, a little sentimental, “From hie haec hoc up to Alcaics and beta Thukididou we have gone on together, and I can’t bear to give it up. I’m sure I can--”

“Stop, Ethel, I really doubt whether you can. Do you know that Norman was telling papa the other day that it was very odd Dr. Hoxton gave them such easy lessons.”

Ethel looked very much mortified.

“You see,” said Margaret kindly, “we all know that men have more power than women, and I suppose the time has come for Norman to pass beyond you. He would not be cleverer than any one, if he could not do more than a girl at home.”

“He has so much more time for it,” said Ethel.

“That’s the very thing. Now consider, Ethel. His work, after he goes to Oxford, will be doing his very utmost--and you know what an utmost that is. If you could keep up with him at all, you must give your whole time and thoughts to it, and when you had done so--if you could get all the honours in the University--what would it come to? You can’t take a first-class.”

“I don’t want one,” said Ethel; “I only can’t bear not to do as Norman does, and I like Greek so much.”

“And for that would you give up being a useful, steady daughter and sister at home? The sort of woman that dear mamma wished to make you, and a comfort to papa.”

Ethel was silent, and large tears were gathering.

“You own that that is the first thing?”

“Yes,” said Ethel faintly.

“And that it is what you fail in most?”

“Yes.”

“Then, Ethel dearest, when you made up your mind to Cocksmoor, you knew those things could not be done without a sacrifice?”

“Yes, but I didn’t think it would be this.”

Margaret was wise enough not to press her, and she sat down and sighed pitifully. Presently she said, “Margaret, if you would only let me leave off that stupid old French, and horrid dull reading with Miss Winter, I should have plenty of time for everything; and what does one learn by hearing Mary read poetry she can’t understand?”

“You work, don’t you? But indeed, Ethel, don’t say that I can let you leave off anything. I don’t feel as if I had that authority. If it be done at all, it must be by papa’s consent, and if you wish me to ask him about it, I will, only I think it would vex Miss Winter; and I don’t think dear mamma would have liked Greek and Cocksmoor to swallow up all the little common ladylike things.”

Ethel made two or three great gulps; “Margaret, must I give up everything, and forget all my Latin and Greek?”

“I should think that would be a great pity,” said Margaret. “If you were to give up the verse-making, and the trying to do as much as Norman, and fix some time in the day--half an hour, perhaps--for your Greek, I think it might do very well.”

“Thank you,” said Ethel, much relieved; “I’m glad you don’t want me to leave it all off. I hope Norman won’t be vexed,” she added, looking a little melancholy.

But Norman had not by any means the sort of sentiment on the subject that she had. “Of course, you know, Ethel,” said he, “it must have come to this some time or other, and if you find those verses too hard, and that they take up too much of your time, you had better give them up.”

Ethel did not like anything to be said to be too hard for her, and was very near pleading she only wanted time, but some recollection came across her, and presently she said, “I suppose it is a wrong sort of ambition to want to learn more, in one’s own way, when one is told it is not good for one. I was just going to say I hated being a woman, and having these tiresome little trifles--my duty--instead of learning, which is yours, Norman.”

“I’m glad you did not,” said Norman, “for it would have been very silly of you; and I assure you, Ethel, it is really time for you to stop, or you would get into a regular learned lady, and be good for nothing. I don’t mean that knowing more than other people would make you so, but minding nothing else would.”

This argument from Norman himself did much to reconcile Ethel’s mind to the sacrifice she had made; and when she went to bed, she tried to work out the question in her own mind, whether her eagerness for classical learning was a wrong sort of ambition, to know what other girls did not, and whether it was right to crave for more knowledge than was thought advisable for her. She only bewildered herself, and went to sleep before she had settled anything, but that she knew she must make all give way to papa first, and, secondly, to Cocksmoor.

Meanwhile Margaret had told her father all that had passed. He was only surprised to hear that Ethel had kept up so long with Norman, and thought that it was quite right that she should not undertake so much, agreeing more entirely than Margaret had expected with Miss Winter’s view, that it would be hurtful to body as well as mind.

“It is perfectly ridiculous to think of her attempting it!” he said. “I am glad you have put a stop to it.”

“I am glad I have,” said Margaret; “and dear Ethel behaved so very well. If she had resisted, it would have puzzled me very much, I must have asked you to settle it. But it is very odd, papa, Ethel is the one of them all who treats me most as if I had real authority over her; she lets me scold her, asks my leave, never seems to recollect for a moment how little older I am, and how much cleverer she is. I am sure I never should have submitted so readily. And that always makes it more difficult to me to direct her; I don’t like to take upon me with her, because it seems wrong to have her obeying me as if she were a mere child.”

“She is a fine creature,” said Dr. May emphatically. “It just shows the fact, the higher the mind the readier the submission. But you don’t mean that you have any difficulty with the others?”

“Oh, no, no. Flora never could need any interference, especially from me, and Mary is a thorough good girl. I only meant that Ethel lays herself out to be ruled in quite a remarkable way. I am sure, though she does love learning, her real love is for goodness and for you, papa.”

Ethel would have thought her sacrifice well paid for, had she seen her father’s look of mournful pleasure.

Chapter XIX

O ruthful scene! when from a nook obscure, His little sister doth his peril see, All playful as she sate, she grows demure, She finds full soon her wonted spirits flee, She meditates a prayer to set him free. SHENSTONE.

The setting sun shone into the great west window of the school at Stoneborough, on its bare walls, the masters’ desks, the forms polished with use, and the square, inky, hacked and hewed chests, carved with the names of many generations of boys.

About six or eight little boys were clearing away the books or papers that they, or those who owned them as fags, had left astray, and a good deal of talk and laughing was going on among them. “Ha!” exclaimed one, “here has Harrison left his book behind him that he was showing us the gladiators in!” and, standing by the third master’s desk, he turned over a page or two of Smith’s ‘Antiquities’, exclaiming, “It is full of pictures--here’s an old man blowing the bellows--”

“Let me see!” cried Tom May, precipitating himself across the benches and over the desk, with so little caution, that there was an outcry; and, to his horror, he beheld the ink spilled over Mr. Harrison’s book, while, “There, August! you’ve been and done it!” “You’ll catch it!” resounded on all sides.

“What good will staring with your mouth open do!” exclaimed Edward Anderson, the eldest present. “Here! a bit of blotting-paper this moment!”

Tom, dreadfully frightened, handed a sheet torn from an old paper-case that he had inherited from Harry, saying despairingly, “It won’t take it out, will it?”

“No, little stupid head, but don’t you see, I’m stopping it from running down the edges, or soaking in. He won’t be the wiser till he opens it again at that place.”

“When he does, he will,” said the bewildered Tom.

“Let him. It won’t tell tales.”

“He’s coming!” cried another boy, “he is close at the door.”

Anderson hastily shut the book over the blotting-paper, which he did not venture to retain in his hand, dragged Tom down from the desk, and was apparently entirely occupied with arranging his own box, when Mr. Harrison came in. Tom crouched behind the raised lid, quaking in every limb, conscious he ought to confess, but destitute of resolution to do so, and, in a perfect agony as the master went to his desk, took up the book, and carried it away, so unconscious, that Larkins, a great wag, only waited till his back was turned, to exclaim, “Ha! old fellow, you don’t know what you’ve got there!”

“Hallo! May junior, will you never leave off staring? you won’t see a bit farther for it,” said Edward Anderson, shaking him by the ear; “come to your senses, and know your friends.”

“He’ll open it!” gasped Tom.

“So he will, but I’d bet ninety to one, it is not at that page, or if he does, it won’t tell tales, unless, indeed, he happened to see you standing there, crouching and shaking. That’s the right way to bring him upon you.”

“But suppose he opens it, and knows who was in school?”

“What then? D’ye think we can’t stand by each other, and keep our own counsel?”

“But the blotting-paper--suppose he knows that!”

There was a laugh all round at this, “as if Harrison knew everyone’s blotting-paper!”

“Yes, but Harry used to write his name all over his--see--and draw Union Jacks on it.”

“If he did, the date is not there. Do you think the ink is going to say March 2nd? Why should not July have done it last half?”

“July would have told if he had,” said Larkins. “That’s no go.”

“Ay! That’s the way--the Mays are all like girls--can’t keep a secret--not one of them. There, I’ve done more for you than ever one of them would have done--own it--and he strode up to Tom, and grasped his wrists, to force the confession from him.”

“But--but he’ll ask when he finds it out--”

“Let him. We know nothing about it. Don’t be coming the good boy over me like your brothers. That won’t do--I know whose eyes are not too short-sighted to read upside down.”

Tom shrank and looked abject, clinging to the hope that Mr. Harrison would not open the book for weeks, months, or years.

But the next morning his heart died within him, when he beheld the unfortunate piece of blotting-paper, displayed by Mr. Harrison, with the inquiry whether any one knew to whom it belonged, and what made it worse was, that his sight would not reach far enough to assure him whether Harry’s name was on it, and he dreaded that Norman or Hector Ernescliffe should recognise the nautical designs. However, both let it pass, and no one through the whole school attempted to identify it. One danger was past, but the next minute Mr. Harrison opened his Smith’s ‘Antiquities’ at the page where stood the black witness. Tom gazed round in despair, he could not see his brother’s face, but Edward Anderson, from the second form, returned him a glance of contemptuous encouragement.

“This book,” said Mr. Harrison, “was left in school for a quarter of an hour yesterday. When I opened it again, it was in this condition. Do any of you know how it happened?” A silence, and he continued, “Who was in school at this time? Anderson junior, can you tell me anything of it?”

“No, sir.”

“You know nothing of it?”

“No, sir.”

Cold chills crept over Tom, as Mr. Harrison looked round to refresh his memory. “Larkins, do you know how this happened?”

“No, sir,” said Larkins boldly, satisfying his conscience because he had not seen the manner of the overthrow.

“Ernescliffe, were you there?”

“No, sir.”

Tom’s timid heart fluttered in dim hope that he had been overlooked, as Mr. Harrison paused, then said, “Remember, it is concealment that is the evil, not the damage to the book. I shall have a good opinion ever after of a boy honest enough to confess, May junior, I saw you,” he added, hopefully and kindly. “Don’t be afraid to speak out if you did meet with a mischance.”

Tom coloured and turned pale. Anderson and Larkins grimaced at him, to remind him that they had told untruths for his sake, and that he must not betray them. It was the justification he wanted; he was relieved to fancy himself obliged to tell the direct falsehood, for which a long course of petty acted deceits had paved the way, for he was in deadly terror of the effects of truth.

“No, sir.” He could hardly believe he had said the words, or that they would be so readily accepted, for Mr. Harrison had only the impression that he knew who the guilty person was, and would not tell, and, therefore, put no more questions to him, but, after a few more vain inquiries, was baffled, and gave up the investigation.

Tom thought he should have been very unhappy; he had always heard that deceit was a heavy burden, and would give continual stings, but he was surprised to find himself very comfortable on the whole, and able to dismiss repentance as well as terror. His many underhand ways with Richard had taken away the tenderness of his conscience, though his knowledge of what was right was clear; and he was quite ready to accept the feeling prevalent at Stoneborough, that truth was not made for schoolboys.

The axiom was prevalent, but not universal, and parties were running high. Norman May, who as head boy had, in play-hours, the responsibility, and almost the authority of a master, had taken higher ground than was usual even with the well-disposed; and felt it his duty to check abuses and malpractices that his predecessors had allowed. His friend, Cheviot, and the right-minded set, maintained his authority with all their might; but Harvey Anderson regarded his interference as vexatious, always took the part of the offenders, and opposed him in every possible way, thus gathering as his adherents not only the idle and mischievous, but the weak and mediocre, and, among this set, there was a positive bitterness of feeling to May, and all whom they considered as belonging to him.

In shielding Tom May and leading him to deceive, the younger Anderson had gained a conquest--in him the Mays had fallen from that pinnacle of truth which was a standing reproach to the average Stoneborough code--and, from that time, he was under the especial patronage of his friend. He was taught the most ingenious arts of saying a lesson without learning it, and of showing up other people’s tasks; whispers and signs were directed to him to help him out of difficulties, and he was sought out and put forward whenever a forbidden pleasure was to be enjoyed by stealth. These were his stimulants under a heavy bondage; he was teased and frightened, bullied and tormented, whenever it was the fancy of Ned Anderson and his associates to make his timidity their sport; he was scorned and ill-treated, and driven, by bodily terror, into acts alarming to his conscience, dangerous in their consequences, and painful in the perpetration; and yet, among all his sufferings, the little coward dreaded nothing so much as truth, though it would have set him free at once from this wretched tyranny.

Excepting on holidays, and at hours when the town-boys were allowed to go home, there were strict rules confining all except the sixth form to their bounds, consisting of two large courts, and an extensive field bordered by the river and the road. On the opposite side of the bridge was a turnpike gate, where the keeper exposed stalls of various eatables, very popular among the boys, chiefly because they were not allowed to deal there. Ginger-beer could also be procured, and there were suspicions that the bottles so called contained something contraband.

“August,” said Norman, as they were coming home from school one evening, “did I see you coming over the bridge?”

Tom would not answer.

“So you have been at Ballhatchet’s gate? I can’t think what could take you there. If you want tarts, I am sure poor old Betty’s are just as good. What made you go there?”

“Nothing,” said Tom.

“Well, mind you don’t do it again, or I shall have to take you in hand, which I shall be very sorry to do. That man is a regular bad character, and neither my father nor Dr. Hoxton would have one of us have anything to do with him, as you know.”

Tom was in hopes it was over, but Norman went on. “I am afraid you are getting into a bad way. Why won’t you mind what I have told you plenty of times before, that no good comes of going after Ned Anderson, and Axworthy, and that set. What were you doing with them to-day?” But, receiving no answer, he went on. “You always sulk when I speak to you. I suppose you think I have no right to row you, but I do it to save you from worse. You can’t never be found out.” This startled Tom, but Norman had no suspicion. “If you go on, you will get into some awful scrape, and papa will be grieved. I would not, for all the world, have him put out of heart about you. Think of him, Tom, and try to keep straight.” Tom would say nothing, only reflecting that his elder brother was harder upon him than any one else would be, and Norman grew warmer. “If you let Anderson junior get hold of you, and teach you his tricks, you’ll never be good for anything. He seems good-natured now, but he will turn against you, as he did with Harry. I know how it is, and you had better take my word, and trust to me and straightforwardness, when you get into a mess.”

“I’m in no scrape,” said Tom, so doggedly, that Norman lost patience, and spoke with more displeasure. “You will be then, if you go out of bounds, and run Anderson’s errands, and shirk work. You’d better take care. It is my place to keep order, and I can’t let you off for being my brother; so remember, if I catch you going to Ballhatchet’s again, you may make sure of a licking.”

So the warning closed--Tom more alarmed at the aspect of right, which he fancied terrific, and Norman with some compunction at having lost temper and threatened, when he meant to have gained him by kindness.

Norman recollected his threat with a qualm of dismay when, at the end of the week, as he was returning from a walk with Cheviot, Tom darted out of the gate-house. He was flying across the bridge, with something under his arm, when Norman laid a detaining hand on his collar, making a sign at the same time to Cheviot to leave them.

“What are you doing here?” said Norman sternly, marching Tom into the field. “So you’ve been there again. What’s that under your jacket?”

“Only--only what I was sent for,” and he tried to squeeze it under the flap.

“What is it? a bottle--”

“Only--only a bottle of ink.”

Norman seized it, and gave Tom a fierce angry shake, but the indignation was mixed with sorrow. “Oh, Tom, Tom, these fellows have brought you a pretty pass. Who would have thought of such a thing from us!”

Tom cowered, but felt only terror.

“Speak truth,” said Norman, ready to shake it out of him; “is this for Anderson junior?”

Under those eyes, flashing with generous, sorrowful wrath, he dared not utter another falsehood, but Anderson’s threats chained him, and he preferred his thraldom to throwing himself on the mercy of his brother who loved him. He would not speak.

“I am glad it is not for yourself,” said Norman; “but do you remember what I said, in case I found you there again?”

“Oh! don’t, don’t!” cried the boy. “I would never have gone if they had not made me.”

“Made you?” said Norman, disdainfully, “how?”

“They would have thrashed me--they pinched my fingers in the box--they pulled my ears--oh, don’t--”

“Poor little fellow!” said Norman; “but it is your own fault. If you won’t keep with me, or Ernescliffe, of course they will bully you. But I must not let you off--I must keep my word!” Tom cried, sobbed, and implored in vain. “I can’t help it,” he said, “and now, don’t howl! I had rather no one knew it. It will soon be over. I never thought to have this to do to one of us.” Tom roared and struggled, till, releasing him, he said, “There, that will do. Stop bellowing, I was obliged, and I can’t have hurt you much, have I?” he added more kindly, while Tom went on crying, and turning from him. “It is nothing to care about, I am sure; look up;” and he pulled down his hands. “Say you are sorry--speak the truth--keep with me, and no one shall hurt you again.”

Very different this from Tom’s chosen associates; but he was still obdurate, sullen, and angry, and would not speak, nor open his heart to those kind words. After one more, “I could not help it, Tom, you’ve no business to be sulky,” Norman took up the bottle, opened it, smelled, and tasted, and was about to throw it into the river; when Tom exclaimed, “Oh, don’t, don’t! what will they do to me? give it to me!”

“Did they give you the money to pay for it?”

“Yes; let me have it.”

“How much was it?”

“Fourpence.”

“I’ll settle that,” and the bottle splashed in the river. “Now then, Tom, don’t brood on it any more. Here’s a chance for you of getting quit of their errands. If you will keep in my sight. I’ll take care no one bullies you, and you may still leave off these disgraceful tricks, and do well.”

But Tom’s evil spirit whispered that Norman had beaten him, that he should never have any diversion again, and that Anderson would punish him; and there was a sort of satisfaction in seeing that his perverse silence really distressed his brother.

“If you will go on in this way, I can’t help it, but you’ll be sorry some day,” said Norman, and he walked thoughtfully on, looking back to see whether Tom was following, as he did slowly, meditating on the way how he should avert his tyrant’s displeasure.

Norman stood for a moment at the door, surveying the court, then walked up to a party of boys, and laid his hand on the shoulder of one, holding a silver fourpence to him. “Anderson Junior,” said he, “there’s your money. I am not going to let Stoneborough School be turned into a gin palace. I give you notice, it is not to be. Now you are not to bully May junior for telling me. He did not, I found him out.”

Leaving Anderson to himself he looked for Tom, but not seeing him, he entered the cloister, for it was the hour when he was used to read there, but he could not fix his mind. He went to the bench where he had lain on the examination day, and kneeling on it, looked out on the green grass where the graves were. “Mother! mother!” he murmured, “have I been harsh to your poor little tender sickly boy? I couldn’t help it. Oh! if you were but here! We are all going wrong! What shall I do? How should Tom be kept from this evil?--it is ruining him! mean, false, cowardly, sullen--all that is worst--and your son--oh! mother! and all I do only makes him shrink more from me. It will break my father’s heart, and you will not be there to comfort him.”

Norman covered his face with his hands, and a fit of bitter grief came over him. But his sorrow was now not what it had been before his father’s resignation had tempered it, and soon it turned to prayer, resolution, and hope.

He would try again to reason quietly with him, when the alarm of detection and irritation should have gone off, and he sought for the occasion; but, alas! Tom had learned to look on all reproof as “rowing,” and considered it as an additional injury from a brother, who, according to the Anderson view, should have connived at his offences, and turned a deafened ear and dogged countenance to all he said. The foolish boy sought after the Andersons still more, and Norman became more dispirited about him, greatly missing Harry, that constant companion and follower, who would have shared his perplexities, and removed half of them, in his own part of the school, by the influence of his high, courageous, and truthful spirit.

In the meantime Richard was studying hard at home, with greater hopefulness and vigour than he had ever thrown into his work before. “Suppose,” Ethel had once said to him, “that when you are a clergyman, you could be Curate of Cocksmoor, when there is a church there.”

“When?” said Richard, smiling at the presumption of the scheme, and yet it formed itself into a sort of definite hope. Perhaps they might persuade Mr. Ramsden to take him as a curate with a view to Cocksmoor, and this prospect, vague as it was, gave an object and hope to his studies. Every one thought the delay of his examination favourable to him, and he now read with a determination to succeed. Dr. May had offered to let him read with Mr. Harrison but Richard thought he was getting on pretty well, with the help Norman gave him; for it appeared that ever since Norman’s return from London, he had been assisting Richard, who was not above being taught by a younger brother; while, on the other hand, Norman, much struck by his humility, would not for the world have published that he was fit to act as his elder’s tutor.

One evening, when the two boys came in from school, Tom gave a great start, and, pulling Mary by the sleeve, whispered, “How came that book here?”

“It is Mr. Harrison’s.”

“Yes, I know, but how came it here?”

“Richard borrowed it to look out something, and Ethel brought it down.”

A little reassured, Tom took up an exciting story-book, and ensconced himself by the fire, but his agonies were great during the ensuing conversation.

“Norman,” Ethel was exclaiming in delight, “do you know this book?”

“Smith? Yes, it is in the school library.”

“There’s everything in it that one wants, I do believe. Here is such an account of ancient galleys--I never knew how they managed their banks of rowers before--oh! and the Greek houses--look at the pictures too.”

“Some of them are the same as Mr. Rivers’s gems,” said Norman, standing behind her, and turning the leaves, in search of a favourite.

“Oh! what did I see? is that ink?” said Flora, from the opposite side of the table.

“Yes, didn’t you hear?” said Ethel. “Mr. Harrison told Ritchie when he borrowed it, that unluckily one day this spring he left it in school, and some of the boys must have upset an inkstand over it; but, though he asked them all round, each denied it. How I should hate for such things to happen! and it was a prize-book too.”

While Ethel spoke she opened the marked page, to show the extent of the calamity, and as she did so Mary exclaimed, “Dear me! how funny! why, how did Harry’s blotting-paper get in there?”

Tom shrank into nothing, set his teeth, and pinched his fingers, ready to wish they were on Mary’s throat, more especially as the words made some sensation. Richard and Margaret exchanged looks, and their father, who had been reading, sharply raised his eyes and said, “Harry’s blotting-paper! How do you know that, Mary?”

“It is Harry’s,” said she, all unconscious, “because of that anchor up in one corner, and the Union Jack in the other. Don’t you see, Ethel?”

“Yes,” said Ethel; “nobody drew that but Harry.”

“Ay, and there are his buttons,” said Mary, much amused and delighted with these relics of her beloved Harry. “Don’t you remember one day last holidays, papa desired Harry to write and ask Mr. Ernescliffe what clothes he ought to have for the naval school, and all the time he was writing the letter, he was drawing sailors’ buttons on his blotting-paper. I wonder how ever it got into Mr. Harrison’s book!”

Poor Mary’s honest wits did not jump to a conclusion quite so fast as other people’s, and she little knew what she was doing when, as a great discovery, she exclaimed, “I know! Harry gave his paper-case to Tom. That’s the way it got to school!”

“Tom!” exclaimed his father, suddenly and angrily, “where are you going?”

“To bed,” muttered the miserable Tom, twisting his hands. A dead silence of consternation fell on all the room. Mary gazed from one to the other, mystified at the effect of her words, frightened at her father’s loud voice, and at Tom’s trembling confusion. The stillness lasted for some moments, and was first broken by Flora, as if she had caught at a probability. “Some one might have used the first blotting-paper that came to hand.”

“Come here, Tom,” said the doctor, in a voice not loud, but trembling with anxiety; then laying his hand on his shoulder, “Look in my face.” Tom hung his head, and his father put his hand under his chin, and raised the pale terrified face. “Don’t be afraid to tell us the meaning of this. If any of your friends have done it, we will keep your secret. Look up, and speak out. How did your blotting-paper come there?”

Tom had been attempting his former system of silent sullenness, but there was anger at Mary, and fear of his father to agitate him, and in his impatient despair at thus being held and questioned, he burst out into a violent fit of crying.

“I can’t have you roaring here to distress Margaret,” said Dr. May. “Come into the study with me.”

But Tom, who seemed fairly out of himself, would not stir, and a screaming and kicking scene took place, before he was carried into the study by his brothers, and there left with his father. Mary, meantime, dreadfully alarmed, and perceiving that, in some way, she was the cause, had thrown herself upon Margaret, sobbing inconsolably, as she begged to know what was the matter, and why papa was angry with Tom--had she made him so?

Margaret caressed and soothed her to the best of her ability, trying to persuade her that, if Tom had done wrong, it was better for him it should be known, and assuring her that no one could think her unkind, nor a tell-tale; then dismissing her to bed, and Mary was not unwilling to go, for she could not bear to meet Tom again, only begging in a whisper to Ethel, “that, if dear Tom had not done it, she would come and tell her.”

“I am afraid there is no hope of that!” sighed Ethel, as the door closed on Mary.

“After all,” said Flora, “he has not said anything. If he has only done it, and not confessed, that is not so bad--it is only the usual fashion of boys.”

“Has he been asked? Did he deny it?” said Ethel, looking in Norman’s face, as if she hardly ventured to put the question, and she only received sorrowful signs as answers. At the same moment Dr. May called him. No one spoke. Margaret rested her head on the sofa, and looked very mournful, Richard stood by the fire without moving limb or feature, Flora worked fast, and Ethel leaned back on an arm-chair, biting the end of a paper-knife.

The doctor and Norman came back together. “I have sent him up to bed,” said Dr. May. “I must take him to Harrison to-morrow morning. It is a terrible business!”

“Has he confessed it?” said Margaret.

“I can hardly call such a thing a confession--I wormed it out bit by bit--I could not tell whether he was telling truth or not, till I called Norman in.”

“But he has not said anything more untrue--”

“Yes, he has though!” said Dr. May indignantly. “He said Ned Anderson put the paper there, and had been taking up the ink with it--‘twas his doing--then when I came to cross-examine him I found that though Anderson did take up the ink, it was Tom himself who knocked it down--I never heard anything like it--I never could have believed it!”

“It must all be Ned Anderson’s doing!” cried Flora. “They are enough to spoil anybody.”

“I am afraid they have done him a great deal of harm,” said Norman.

“And what have you been about all the time?” exclaimed the doctor, too keenly grieved to be just. “I should have thought that with you at the head of the school, the child might have been kept out of mischief; but there have you been going your own way, and leaving him to be ruined by the very worst set of boys!”

Norman’s colour rose with the extreme pain this unjust accusation caused him, and his voice, though low, was not without irritation, “I have tried. I have not done as much as I ought, perhaps, but--”

“No, I think not, indeed!” interrupted his father. “Sending a boy there, brought up as he had been, without the least tendency to deceit--”

Here no one could see Norman’s burning cheeks, and brow bent downwards in the effort to keep back an indignant reply, without bursting out in exculpation; and Richard looked up, while the three sisters all at once began, “Oh, no, no, papa”--and left Margaret to finish--“Poor little Tom had not always been quite sincere.”

“Indeed! and why was I left to send him to school without knowing it? The place of all others to foster deceit.”

“It was my fault, papa,” said Margaret.

“And mine,” put in Richard; and she continued, “Ethel told us we were very wrong, and I wish we had followed her advice. It was by far the best, but we were afraid of vexing you.”

“Every one seems to have been combined to hide what they ought not!” said Dr. May, though speaking to her much more softly than to Norman, to whom he turned angrily again. “Pray, how came you not to identify this paper?”

“I did not know it,” said Norman, speaking with difficulty. “He ought never to have been sent to school,” said the doctor--“that tendency was the very worst beginning.”

“It was a great pity; I was very wrong,” said Margaret, in great concern.

“I did not mean to blame you, my dear,” said her father affectionately. “I know you only meant to act for the best, but--” and he put his hand over his face, and then came the sighing groan, which pained Margaret ten thousand times more than reproaches, and which, in an instant, dispersed all the indignation burning within Norman, though the pain remained at his father’s thinking him guilty of neglect, but he did not like, at that moment, to speak in self-justification.

After a short space, Dr. May desired to hear what were the deceptions to which Margaret had alluded, and made Norman tell what he knew of the affair of the blotted book. Ethel spoke hopefully when she had heard it. “Well, do you know, I think he will do better now. You see, Edward made him conceal it, and he has been going on with it on his mind, and in that boy’s power ever since; but now it is cleared up and confessed, he will begin afresh and do better. Don’t you think so, Norman? don’t you, papa?”

“I should have more hope if I had seen anything like confession or repentance,” said Dr. May; “but that provoked me more than all--I could only perceive that he was sorry to be found out, and afraid of punishment.”

“Perhaps, when he has recovered the first fright, he will come to his better self,” said Margaret; for she guessed, what indeed was the case, that the doctor’s anger on this first shock of the discovery of the fault he most abhorred had been so great, that a fearful cowering spirit would be completely overwhelmed; and, as there had been no sorrow shown for the fault, there had been none of that softening and relenting that won so much love and confidence.

Every one felt that talking only made them more unhappy, they tried to return to their occupations, and so passed the time till night. Then, as Richard was carrying Margaret upstairs, Norman lingered to say, “Papa, I am very sorry you should think I neglected Tom. I dare say I might have done better for him, but, indeed, I have tried.”

“I am sure you have, Norman. I spoke hastily, my boy--you will not think more of it. When a thing like this comes on a man, he hardly knows what he says.”

“If Harry were here,” said Norman, anxious to turn from the real loss and grief, as well as to talk away that feeling of being apologised to, “it would all do better. He would make a link with Tom, but I have so little, naturally, to do with the second form, that it is not easy to keep him in sight.”

“Yes, yes, I know that very well. It is no one’s fault but my own; I should not have sent him there without knowing him better. But you see how it is, Norman--I have trusted to her, till I have grown neglectful, and it is well if it is not the ruin of him!”

“Perhaps he will take a turn, as Ethel says,” answered Norman cheerfully. “Good-night, papa.”

“I have a blessing to be thankful for in you, at least,” murmured the doctor to himself. “What other young fellow of that age and spirit would have borne so patiently with my injustice? Not I, I am sure! a fine father I show myself to these poor children--neglect, helplessness, temper--Oh, Maggie!”

Margaret had so bad a headache the next day that she could not come downstairs. The punishment was, they heard, a flogging at the time, and an imposition so long, that it was likely to occupy a large portion of the play-hours till the end of the half-year. His father said, and Norman silently agreed, “a very good thing, it will keep him out of mischief;” but Margaret only wished she could learn it for him, and took upon herself all the blame from beginning to end. She said little to her father, for it distressed him to see her grieved; he desired her not to dwell on the subject, caressed her, called her his comfort and support, and did all he could to console her, but it was beyond his power; her sisters, by listening to her, only made her worse. “Dear, dear papa,” she exclaimed, “how kind he is! But he can never depend upon me again--I have been the ruin of my poor little Tom.”

“Well,” said Richard quietly, “I can’t see why you should put yourself into such a state about it.”

This took Margaret by surprise. “Have not I done very wrong, and perhaps hurt Tom for life?”

“I hope not,” said Richard. “You and I made a mistake, but it does not follow that Tom would have kept out of this scrape, if we had told my father our notion.”

“It would not have been on my conscience,” said Margaret--“he would not have sent him to school.”

“I don’t know that,” said Richard. “At any rate we meant to do right, and only made a mistake. It was unfortunate, but I can’t tell why you go and make yourself ill, by fancying it worse than it is. The boy has done very wrong, but people get cured of such things in time, and it is nonsense to fret as if he were not a mere child of eight years old. You did not teach him deceit.”

“No, but I concealed it--papa is disappointed, when he thought he could trust me.”

“Well! I suppose no one could expect never to make mistakes,” said Richard, in his sober tone.

“Self-sufficiency!” exclaimed Margaret, “that has been the root of all! Do you know, Ritchie, I believe I was expecting that I could always judge rightly.”

“You generally do,” said Richard; “no one else could do half what you do.”

“So you have said, papa, and all of you, till you have spoilt me. I have thought it myself, Ritchie.”

“It is true,” said Richard.

“But then,” said Margaret, “I have grown to think much of it, and not like to be interfered with. I thought I could manage by myself, and when I said I would not worry papa, it was half because I liked the doing and settling all about the children myself. Oh! if it could have been visited in any way but by poor Tom’s faults!”

“Well,” said Richard, “if you felt so, it was a pity, though I never should have guessed it. But you see you will never feel so again, and as Tom is only one, and there are nine to govern, it is all for the best.”

His deliberate common-sense made her laugh a little, and she owned he might be right. “It is a good lesson against my love of being first. But indeed it is difficult--papa can so little bear to be harassed.”

“He could not at first, but now he is strong and well, it is different.”

“He looks terribly thin and worn still,” sighed Margaret, “so much older!”

“Ay, I think he will never get back his young looks; but except his weak arm, he is quite well.”

“And then his--his quick way of speaking may do harm.”

“Yes, that was what I feared for Tom,” said Richard, “and there was the mistake. I see it now. My father always is right in the main, though he is apt to frighten one at first, and it is what ought to be that he should rule his own house. But now, Margaret, it is silly to worry about it any more--let me fetch baby, and don’t think of it.”

And Margaret allowed his reasonableness, and let herself be comforted. After all, Richard’s solid soberness had more influence over her than anything else.

Chapter XX

Think how simple things and lowly, Have a part in Nature’s plan, How the great hath small beginnings, And the child will be a man. Little efforts work great actions, Lessons in our childhood taught Mould the spirit of that temper Whereby blessed deeds are wrought. Cherish, then, the gifts of childhood, Use them gently, guard them well, For their future growth and greatness Who can measure, who can tell! MORAL SONGS.

The first shock of Tom’s misdemeanour passed away, though it still gave many an anxious thought to such of the family as felt responsible for him.

The girls were busily engaged in preparing an Easter feast for Cocksmoor. Mr. Wilmot was to examine the scholars, and buns and tea were provided, in addition to which Ethel designed to make a present to every one--a great task, considering that the Cocksmoor funds were reserved for absolute necessaries, and were at a very low ebb. So that twenty-five gifts were to be composed out of nothing!

There was a grand turn-out of drawers of rubbish, all over Margaret, raising such a cloud of dust as nearly choked her. What cannot rubbish and willing hands effect! Envelopes and wafer boxes were ornamented with pictures, bags, needle-cases, and pincushions, beautiful balls, tippets, both of list and gay print, and even sun-bonnets and pinafores were contrived, to the supreme importance and delight of Mary and Blanche, who found it as good or better than play, and ranged their performances in rows, till the room looked like a bazaar. To provide for boys was more difficult; but Richard mended old toys, and repaired the frames of slates, and Norman’s contribution of half-a-crown bought mugs, marbles, and penny knives, and there were even hopes that something would remain for bodkins, to serve as nozzles to the bellows, which were the pride of Blanche’s heart.

Never were Easter gifts the source of more pleasure to the givers, especially when the nursery establishment met Dr. Hoxton near the pastrycook’s shop, and he bestowed on Blanche a packet of variegated sugar-plums, all of which she literally poured out at Ethel’s feet, saying, “I don’t want them. Only let me have one for Aubrey, because he is so little. All the rest are for the poor children at Cocksmoor.”

After this, Margaret declared that Blanche must be allowed to buy the bodkin, and give her bellows to Jane Taylor, the only Cocksmoor child she knew, and to whom she always destined in turn every gift that she thought most successful.

So Blanche went with Flora to the toy-shop, and there fell in love with a little writing-box, that so eclipsed the bellows, that she tried to persuade Flora to buy it for Jane Taylor, to be kept till she could write, and was much disappointed to hear that it was out of the question. Just then a carriage stopped, and from it stepped the pretty little figure of Meta Rivers.

“Oh! how do you do? How delightful to meet you! I was wondering if we should! Little Blanche too!” kissing her, “and here’s Mrs. Larpent--Mrs. Larpent--Miss Flora May. How is Miss May?”

This was all uttered in eager delight, and Flora, equally pleased, answered the inquiries. “I hope you are not in a hurry,” proceeded Meta; “I want your advice. You know all about schools, don’t you? I am come to get some Easter presents for our children, and I am sure you can help me.”

“Are the children little or big?” asked Flora.

“Oh! all sorts and sizes. I have some books for the great sensible ones, and some stockings and shoes for the tiresome stupid ones, but there are some dear little pets that I want nice things for. There--there’s a doll that looks just fit for little curly-headed Annie Langley, don’t you think so, Mrs. Larpent?”

The price of the doll was a shilling, and there were quickly added to it, boxes of toys, elaborate bead-work pincushions, polished blue and green boxes, the identical writing-case--even a small Noah’s ark. Meta hardly asked the prices, which certainly were not extravagant, since she had nearly twenty articles for little more than a pound.

“Papa has given me a benefaction of £5 for my school-gifts,” said she, “is not that charming? I wish you would come to the feast. Now, do! It is on Easter Tuesday. Won’t you come?”

“Thank you, I am afraid we can’t. I should like it very much.”

“You never will come to me. You have no compassion.”

“We should enjoy coming very much. Perhaps, in the summer, when Margaret is better.”

“Could not she spare any of you? Well, I shall talk to papa, and make him talk to Dr. May. Mrs. Larpent will tell you I always get my way. Don’t I? Good-bye. See if I don’t.”

She departed, and Flora returned to her own business; but Blanche’s interest was gone. Dazzled by the more lavish gifts, she looked listlessly and disdainfully at bodkins, three for twopence. “I wish I might have bought the writing-box for Janet Taylor! Why does not papa give us money to get pretty things for the children?” said she, as soon as they came out.

“Because he is not so rich as Miss Rivers’s papa.”

Flora was interrupted by meeting the Misses Anderson, who asked, “Was not that carriage Mr. Rivers’s of Abbotstoke Grange?”

“Yes. We like Miss Rivers very much,” said Flora, resolved to show that she was acquainted.

“Oh! do you visit her? I knew he was a patient of Dr. May.” Flora thought there was no need to tell that the only call had been owing to the rain, and continued, “She has been begging us to come to her school feast, but I do not think we can manage it.”

“Oh, indeed! the Grange is very beautiful, is it not?”

“Very,” said Flora. “Good-morning.”

Flora had a little uneasiness in her conscience, but it was satisfactory to have put down Louisa Anderson, who never could aspire to an intimacy with Miss Rivers. Her little sister looked up--“Why, Flora, have you seen the Grange?”

“No, but papa and Norman said so.”

And Blanche showed that the practical lesson on the pomps of the world was not lost on her, by beginning to wish they were as rich as Miss Rivers. Flora told her it was wrong to be discontented, but the answer was, “I don’t want it for myself, I want to have pretty things to give away.”

And her mind could not be turned from the thought by any attempt of her sister. Even when they met Dr. May coming out of the hospital, Blanche renewed the subject. She poured out the catalogue of Miss Rivers’s purchases, making appealing attempts at looking under his spectacles into his eyes, and he perfectly understood the tenor of her song.

“I have had a sight, too, of little maidens preparing Easter gifts,” said he.

“Have you, papa? What were they? Were they as nice as Miss Rivers’s?”

“I don’t know, but I thought they were the best sort of gifts, for I saw that plenty of kind thought and clever contrivance went to them, ay, and some little self-denial too.”

“Papa, you look as if you meant something; but ours are nothing but nasty old rubbish.”

“Perhaps some fairy, or something better, has brought a wand to touch the rubbish, Blanche; for I think that the maidens gave what would have been worthless kept, but became precious as they gave it.”

“Do you mean the list of our flannel petticoats, papa, that Mary has made into a tippet?”

“Perhaps I meant Mary’s own time and pains, as well as the tippet. Would she have done much good with them otherwise?”

“No, she would have played. Oh! then you like the presents because they are our own making? I never thought of that. Was that the reason you did not give us any of your sovereigns to buy things with?”

“Perhaps I want my sovereigns for the eleven gaping mouths at home, Blanche. But would not it be a pity to spoil your pleasure? You would have lost all the chattering and laughing and buzzing I have heard round Margaret of late, and I am quite sure Miss Rivers can hardly be as happy in the gifts that cost her nothing, as one little girl who gives her sugar-plums out of her own mouth!”

Blanche clasped her papa’s hand tight, and bounded five or six times. “They are our presents, not yours,” said she. “Yes, I see. I like them better now.”

“Ay, ay,” said the doctor. “Seeing Miss Rivers’s must not take the shine out of yours, my little maids; for if you can’t give much, you have the pleasure of giving the best of all, your labour of love.” Then thinking on, and speaking to Flora, “The longer I live, the more I see the blessing of being born in a state of life where you can’t both eat your cake and give it away.”

Flora never was at ease in a conversation with her father; she could not follow him, and did not like to show it. She answered aside from the mark, “You would not have Blanche underrate Miss Rivers?”

“No, indeed, she is as good and sweet a creature as ever came across me--most kind to Margaret, and loving to all the world. I like to see one whom care and grief have never set their grip upon. Most likely she would do like Ethel, if she had the opportunity, but she has not.”

“So she has not the same merit?” said Flora.

“We don’t talk of merit. I mean that the power of sacrifice is a great advantage. The habit of small sacrifice that is made necessary in a large family is a discipline that only-children are without: and so, with regard to wealth, I think people are to be pitied who can give extensively out of such abundance that they can hardly feel the want.”

“In effect, they can do much more,” said Flora.

“I am not sure of that. They can, of course, but it must be at the cost of personal labour and sacrifice. I have often thought of the words, ‘Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee.’ And ‘such as we have’ it is that does the good; the gold, if we have it, but, at any rate, the personal influence; the very proof of sincerity, shown by the exertion and self-denial, tells far more than money lightly come by, lightly spent.”

“Do you mean that a person who maintained a whole school would do less good than one who taught one child?”

“If the rich person take no pains, and leave the school to take care of itself--nay, if he only visit it now and then, and never let it inconvenience him, has he the least security that the scholars are obtaining any real good from it? If the teacher of the one child is doing his utmost, he is working for himself at least.”

“Suppose we could build, say our church and school, on Cocksmoor at once, and give our superintendence besides?”

“If things were ripe for it, the means would come. As it is, it is a fine field for Ethel and Richard. I believe it will be the making of them both. I am sure it is training Ethel, or making her train herself, as we could never have done without it. But here, come in and see old Mrs. Robins. A visit from you will cheer her up.”

Flora was glad of the interruption, the conversation was uncomfortable to her. She almost fancied her papa was moralising for their good, but that he carried it too far, for wealthy people assuredly had it in their power to do great things, and might work as hard themselves; besides, it was finer in them, there was so much eclat in their stooping to charity. But her knowledge of his character would not allow her to think for a moment that he could say aught but from the bottom of his heart--no, it was one of his one-sided views that led him into paradox. “It was just like papa,” and so there was no need to attend to it. It was one of his enthusiasms, he was so very fond of Ethel, probably because of her likeness to himself. Flora thought Ethel put almost too forward--they all helped at Cocksmoor, and Ethel was very queer and unformed, and could do nothing by herself. The only thing Flora did keep in her mind was, that her papa had spoken to her, as if she were a woman compared with Ethel.

Little Blanche made her report of the conversation to Mary, “that it was so nice; and now she did not care about Miss Rivers’s fine presents at all, for papa said what one made oneself was better to give than what one bought. And papa said, too, that it was a good thing not to be rich, for then one never felt the miss of what one gave away.”

Margaret, who overheard the exposition, thought it so much to Blanche’s credit, that she could not help repeating it in the evening, after the little girl was gone to bed, when Mr. Wilmot had come in to arrange the programme for Cocksmoor. So the little fit of discontent and its occasion, the meeting with Meta Rivers, were discussed.

“Yes,” said Mr. Wilmot, “those Riverses are open-handed. They really seem to have so much money, that they don’t know what to do with it. My brother is ready to complain that they spoil his parish. It is all meant so well, and they are so kind-hearted and excellent, that it is a shame to find fault, and I tell Charles and his wife that their grumbling at such a squire proves them the most spoiled of all.”

“Indiscriminate liberality?” asked the doctor. “I should guess the old gentleman to be rather soft!”

“That’s one thing. The parish is so small, and there are so few to shower all this bounty on, and they are so utterly unused to country people. They seem to think by laying out money they can get a show set of peasants in rustic cottages, just as they have their fancy cows and poultry--all that offends the eye out of the way.”

“Making it a matter of taste,” said the doctor.

“I’m sure I would,” said Norman aside to Ethel. “What’s the use of getting oneself disgusted?”

“One must not begin with showing dislike,” began Ethel, “or--”

“Ay--you like rags, don’t you? but hush!”

“That is just what I should expect of Mr. Rivers,” said Dr. May; “he has cultivated his taste till it is getting to be a disease, but his daughter has no lack of wit.”

“Perhaps not. Charles and Mary are very fond of her, but she is entirely inexperienced, and that is a serious thing with so much money to throw about. She pays people for sending their children to school, and keeping their houses tidy; and there is so much given away, that it is enough to take away all independence and motive for exertion. The people speculate on it, and take it as a right; by-and-by there will be a reaction--she will find out she is imposed upon, take offence, and for the rest of her life will go about saying how ungrateful the poor are!”

“It is a pity good people won’t have a little common-sense,” said Dr. May. “But there’s something so bewitching in that little girl, that I can’t give her up. I verily believe she will right herself.”

“I have scarcely seen her,” said Mr. Wilmot. “She has won papa’s heart by her kindness to me,” said Margaret, smiling. “You see her beautiful flowers? She seems to me made to lavish pleasures on others wherever she goes.”

“Oh, yes, they are most kind-hearted,” said Mr. Wilmot. “It is only the excess of a virtue that could be blamed in them, and they are most valuable to the place. She will learn experience in time--I only hope she will not be spoiled.”

Flora felt as if her father must be thinking his morning’s argument confirmed, and she was annoyed. But she thought there was no reason why wealth should not be used sensibly, and if she were at the head of such an establishment as the Grange, her charity should be so well regulated as to be the subject of general approbation.

She wanted to find some one else on her side, and, as they went to bed, she said to Ethel, “Don’t you wish we had some of this superfluity of the Riverses for poor Cocksmoor?”

“I wish we had anything for Cocksmoor! Here’s a great hole in my boot, and nurse says I must get a new pair, that is seven-and-sixpence gone! I shall never get the first pound made up towards building!”

“And pounds seem nothing to them,” said Flora.

“Yes, but if they don’t manage right with them! I’ll tell you, Flora, I got into a fit of wishing the other day; it does seem such a grievous pity to see those children running to waste for want of daily teaching, and Jenny Hall had forgotten everything. I was vexed, and thought it was all no use while we could not do more; but just then I began to look out the texts Ritchie had marked for me to print for them to learn, and the first was, ‘Be thou faithful over a few things, and I will make thee ruler over many things,’ and then I thought perhaps we were learning to be faithful with a few things. I am sure what they said to-night showed it was lucky we have not more in our hands. I should do wrong for ever with the little we have if it were not for Ritchie and Margaret. By the time we have really got the money together for the school, perhaps I shall have more sense.”

“Got the money! As if we ever could!”

“Oh, yes! we shall and will. It need not be more than £70, Ritchie says, and I have twelve shillings for certain, put out from the money for hire of the room, and the books and clothes, and, in spite of these horrid boots, I shall save something out of this quarter, half-a-crown at least. And I have another plan besides--”

But Flora had to go down to Margaret’s room to bed. Flora was always ready to throw herself into the present, and liked to be the most useful person in all that went forward, so that no thoughts of greatness interfered with her enjoyment at Cocksmoor.

The house seemed wild that Easter Monday morning. Ethel, Mary, and Blanche, flew about in all directions, and in spite of much undoing of their own arrangements, finished their preparations so much too early, that, at half-past eleven, Mary complained that she had nothing to do, and that dinner would never come.

Many were the lamentations at leaving Margaret behind, but she answered them by talking of the treat of having papa all to herself, for he had lent them the gig, and promised to stay at home all the afternoon with her.

The first division started on foot directly after dinner, the real Council of education, as Norman called them, namely, Mr. Wilmot, Richard, Ethel, and Mary; Flora, the other member, waited to take care of Blanche and Aubrey, who were to come in the gig, with the cakes, tea-kettles, and prizes, driven by Norman. Tom and Hector Ernescliffe were invited to join the party, and many times did Mary wish for Harry.

Supremely happy were the young people as they reached the common, and heard the shout of tumultuous joy, raised by their pupils, who were on the watch for them. All was now activity. Everybody tripped into Mrs. Green’s house, while Richard and Ethel ran different ways to secure that the fires were burning, which they had hired, to boil their kettles, with the tea in them.

Then when the kitchen was so full that it seemed as if it could hold no more, some kind of order was produced, the children were seated on their benches, and, while the mothers stood behind to listen, Mr. Wilmot began to examine, as well as he could in so crowded an audience.

There was progress. Yes, there was. Only three were as utterly rude and idealess as they used to be at Christmas. Glimmerings had dawned on most, and one--Una M’Carthy--was fit to come forward to claim Mr. Wilmot’s promise of a Prayer-book. She could really read and say the Catechism--her Irish wit and love of learning had outstripped all the rest--and she was the pride of Ethel’s heart, fit, now, to present herself on equal terms with the Stoneborough set, as far as her sense was concerned--though, alas! neither present nor exhortation had succeeded in making her anything, in looks, but a picturesque tatterdemalion, her sandy elf locks streaming over a pair of eyes, so dancing and gracieuses, that it was impossible to scold her.

With beating heart, as if her own success in life depended for ever on the way her flock acquitted themselves, Ethel stood by Mr. Wilmot, trying to read answers coming out of the dull mouths of her children, and looking exultingly at Richard whenever some good reply was made, especially when Una answered an unexpected question. It was too delightful to hear how well she remembered all the history up to the flood, and how prettily it came out in her Irish accent! That made up for all the atrocious stupidity of others, who, after being told every time since they had begun who gave their names, now chose to forget.

In the midst, while the assembly were listening with admiration to the reading of the scholar next in proficiency to Una, a boy who could read words of five letters without spelling, there was a fresh squeezing at the door, and, the crowd opening as well as it could, in came Flora and Blanche, while Norman’s head was seen for a moment in the doorway.

Flora’s whisper to Ethel was her first discovery that the closeness and the heat of the room was nearly overpowering. Her excitement had made all be forgotten. “Could not a window be opened?”

Mrs. Green interfered--it had been nailed up because her husband had the rheumatiz!

“Where’s Aubrey?” asked Mary.

“With Norman. Norman said he would not let him go into the black-hole, so he has got him out of doors. Ethel, we must come out! You don’t know what an atmosphere it is! Blanche, go out to Norman!”

“Flora, Flora! you don’t consider,” said Ethel, in an agony.

“Yes, yes. It is not at all cold. Let them have their presents out of doors and eat their buns.”

Richard and Mr. Wilmot agreed with Flora, and the party were turned out. Ethel did own, when she was in the open air, “that it had been rather hot.”

Norman’s face was a sight, as he stood holding Aubrey in his arms, to gratify the child’s impatience. The stifling den, the uncouth aspect of the children, the head girl so very ragged a specimen, thoroughly revolted his somewhat fastidious disposition. This was Ethel’s delight! to this she made so many sacrifices! this was all that her time and labour had effected! He did not wish to vex her but it was more than he could stand.

However, Ethel was too much engrossed to look for sympathy. It was a fine spring day, and on the open space of the common the arrangements were quickly made. The children stood in a long line, and the baskets were unpacked. Flora and Ethel called the names, Mary and Blanche gave the presents, and assuredly the grins, courtesies, and pulls of the forelock they elicited, could not have been more hearty for any of Miss Rivers’s treasures. The buns and the kettles of tea followed--it was perfect delight to entertainers and entertained, except when Mary’s dignity was cruelly hurt by Norman’s authoritatively taking a kettle out of her hands, telling her she would be the death of herself or somebody else, and reducing her to the mere rank of a bun distributor, which Blanche and Aubrey could do just as well; while he stalked along with a grave and resigned countenance, filling up the cups held out to him by timid-looking children. Mary next fell in with Granny Hall, who had gone into such an ecstasy over Blanche and Aubrey, that Blanche did not know which way to look; and Aubrey, in some fear that the old woman might intend to kiss him, returned the compliments by telling her she was “ugly up in her face,” at which she laughed heartily, and uttered more vehement benedictions.

Finally, the three best children, boys and girls, were to be made fit to be seen, and recommended by Mr. Wilmot to the Sunday-school and penny club at Stoneborough, and, this being proclaimed and the children selected, the assembly dispersed, Mr. Wilmot rejoicing Ethel and Richard by saying, “Well, really, you have made a beginning. There is an improvement in tone among those children, that is more satisfactory than any progress they may have made.”

Ethel’s eyes beamed, and she hurried to tell Flora. Richard coloured and gave his quiet smile, then turned to put things in order for their return.

“Will you drive home, Richard?” said Norman, coming up to him.

“Don’t you wish it?” said Richard, who had many minor arrangements to make, and would have preferred walking home independently.

“No, thank you, I have a headache, and walking may take it off,” said Norman, taking off his hat and passing his fingers through his hair.

“A headache again--I am sorry to hear it.”

“It is only that suffocating den of yours. My head ached from the moment I looked into it. How can you take Ethel into such a hole, Richard? It is enough to kill her to go on with it for ever.”

“It is not so every day,” said the elder brother quietly. “It is a warm day, and there was an unusual crowd.”

“I shall speak to my father,” exclaimed Norman, with somewhat of the supercilious tone that he had now and then been tempted to address to his brother. “It is not fit that Ethel should give up everything, health and all, to such a set as these. They look as if they had been picked out of the gutter--dirt, squalor, everything disgusting, and summer coming on, too, and that horrid place with no window to open! It is utterly unbearable!”

Richard stooped to pick up a heavy basket, then smiled and said, “You must get over such things as these if you mean to be a clergyman, Norman.”

“Whatever I am to be, it does not concern the girls being in such a place as this. I am surprised that you could suffer it.”

There was no answer--Richard was walking off with his basket, and putting it into the carriage. Norman was not pleased with himself, but thought it his duty to let his father know his opinion of Ethel’s weekly resort. All he wished was to avoid Ethel herself, not liking to show her his sentiments, and he was glad to see her put into the gig with Aubrey and Mary.

They rushed into the drawing-room, full of glee, when they came home, all shouting their news together, and had not at first leisure to perceive that Margaret had some tidings for them in return. Mr. Rivers had been there, with a pressing invitation to his daughter’s school-feast, and it had been arranged that Flora and Ethel should go and spend the day at the Grange, and their father come to dine, and fetch them home in the evening. Margaret had been much pleased with the manner in which the thing was done. When Dr. May, who seemed reluctant to accept the proposal that related to himself, was called out of the room, Mr. Rivers had, in a most kind manner, begged her to say whether she thought it would be painful to him, or whether it might do his spirits good. She decidedly gave her opinion in favour of the invitation, Mr. Rivers gained his point, and she had ever since been persuading her father to like the notion, and assuring him it need not be made a precedent for the renewal of invitations to dine out in the town. He thought the change would be pleasant for his girls, and had, therefore, consented.

“Oh, papa, papa! thank you!” cried Ethel, enraptured, as soon as he came into the room. “How very kind of you! How I have wished to see the Grange, and all Norman talks about! Oh, dear! I am so glad you are going there too!”

“Why, what should you do with me?” said Dr. May, who felt and looked depressed at this taking up of the world again.

“Oh, dear! I should not like it at all without you! It would be no fun at all by ourselves. I wish Flora would come home. How pleased she will be! Papa, I do wish you would look as if you didn’t mind it! I can’t enjoy it if you don’t like going.”

“I shall when I am there, my dear,” said the doctor affectionately, putting his arm around her as she stood by him. “It will be a fine day’s sport for you.”

“But can’t you like it beforehand, papa?”

“Not just this minute, Ethel,” said he, with his bright, sad smile. “All I like just now is my girl’s not being able to do without me; but we’ll do the best we can. So your flock acquitted themselves brilliantly? Who is your Senior Wrangler?”

Ethel threw herself eagerly into the history of the examination, and had almost forgotten the invitation till she heard the front door open. Then it was not she, but Margaret, who told Flora--Ethel could not, as she said, enjoy what seemed to sadden her father. Flora received it much more calmly. “It will be very pleasant,” said she; “it was very kind of papa to consent. You will have Richard and Norman, Margaret, to be with you in the evening.”

And, as soon as they went upstairs, Ethel began to write down the list of prizes in her school journal, while Flora took out the best evening frocks, to study whether the crape looked fresh enough.

The invitation was a convenient subject of conversation, for Norman had so much to tell his sisters of the curiosities they must look for at the Grange, that he was not obliged to mention Cocksmoor. He did not like to mortify Ethel by telling her his intense disgust, and he knew he was about to do what she would think a great injury by speaking to his father on the subject; but he thought it for her real welfare, and took the first opportunity of making to his father and Margaret a most formidable description of Ethel’s black-hole. It quite alarmed Margaret, but the doctor smiled, saying, “Ay, ay, I know the face Norman puts on if he looks into a cottage.”

“Well,” said Norman, with some mortification, “all I know is, that my head ached all the rest of the day.”

“Very likely, but your head is not Ethel’s, and there were twice as many people as the place was intended to hold.”

“A stuffy hole, full of peat-smoke, and with a window that can’t open at the best of times.”

“Peat-smoke is wholesome,” said Dr. May, looking provoking.

“You don’t know what it is, papa, or you would never let Ethel spend her life there. It is poisonous!”

“I’ll take care of Ethel,” said Dr. May, walking off, and leaving Norman in a state of considerable annoyance at being thus treated. He broke out into fresh exclamations against the horrors of Cocksmoor, telling Margaret she had no idea what a den it was.

“But, Norman, it can’t be so very bad, or Richard would not allow it.”

“Richard is deluded!” said Norman; “but if he chooses to run after dirty brats, why should he take Ethel there?”

“My dear Norman, you know it is all Ethel’s doing.”

“Yes, I know she has gone crazy after them, and given up all her Greek for it. It is past endurance!” said Norman, who had worked himself up into great indignation.

“Well, but surely, Norman, it is better they should do what they can for those poor creatures, than for Ethel to learn Greek.”

“I don’t know that. Let those who are fit for nothing else go and drone over A B C with ragged children, if they like. It is just their vocation; but there is an order in everything, Margaret, and minds of a superior kind are intended for higher purposes, not to be wasted in this manner.”

“I don’t know whether they are wasted,” said Margaret, not quite liking Norman’s tone, though she had not much to say to his arguments.

“Not wasted? Not in doing what any one can do? I know what you’ll say about the poor. I grant it, but high ability must be given for a purpose, not to be thrown away. It is common-sense, that some one must be meant to do the dirty work.”

“I see what you mean, Norman, but I don’t quite like that to be called by such a name. I think--” she hesitated. “Don’t you think you dislike such things more than--”

“Any one must abominate dirt and slovenliness. I know what you mean. My father thinks ‘tis all nonsense in me, but his profession has made him insensible to such things, and he fancies every one else is the same! Now, Margaret, am I unreasonable?”

“I am sure I don’t know, dear Norman,” said Margaret, hesitating, and feeling it her duty to say something; “I dare say it was very disagreeable.”

“And you think, too, that I made a disturbance for nothing?”

“No, indeed I don’t, nor does dear papa. I have no doubt he will see whether it is proper for Ethel. All I think he meant is, that perhaps your not being well last winter has made you a little more sensitive in such things.”

Norman paused, and coloured. He remembered the pain it had given him to find himself incapable of being of use to his father, and that he had resolved to conquer the weakness of nerve of which he was ashamed; but he did not like to connect this with his fastidious feelings of refinement. He would not own to himself that they were over nice, and, at the bottom of all this justification, rankled Richard’s saying, that he who cared for such things was unfit for a clergyman. Norman’s secret thought was, it was all very well for those who could only aspire to parish work in wretched cottages--people who could distinguish themselves were more useful at the university, forming minds, and opening new discoveries in learning.

Was Norman quite proof against the consciousness of daily excelling all his competitors? His superiority had become even more manifest this Easter, when Cheviot and Forder, the two elder boys whom he had outstripped, left the school, avowedly, because it was not worth while for them to stay, since they had so little chance of the Randall scholarship. Norman had now only to walk over the course, no one even approaching him but Harvey Anderson.

Meta Rivers always said that fine weather came at her call, and so it did--glowing sunshine streaming over the shaven turf, and penetrating even the solid masses of the great cedar.

The carriage was sent for the Misses May, and at two o’clock they arrived. Flora, extremely anxious that Ethel should comport herself discreetly; and Ethel full of curiosity and eagerness, the only drawback her fears that her papa was doing what he disliked. She was not in the least shy, and did not think about her manner enough to be troubled by the consciousness that it had a good deal of abruptness and eagerness, and that her short sight made her awkward. Meta met them with outstretched hands and a face beaming with welcome. “I told you I should get my way!” she said triumphantly, and, after her warm greeting, she looked with some respect at the face of the Miss May who was so very clever. It certainly was not what she expected, not at all like either of the four sisters she had already seen--brown, sallow, and with that sharp long nose, and the eager eyes, and brow a little knit by the desire to see as far as she could. It was pleasanter to look at Flora.

Ethel left the talk chiefly to Flora--there was wonder and study enough for her in the grounds and garden, and when Mrs. Larpent tried to enter into conversation with her, she let it drop two or three times while she was peering hard at a picture and trying to make out its subject. However, when they all went out to walk to church, Ethel lighted up, and talked, admired, and asked questions in her quick, eager way, which interested Mrs. Larpent greatly. The governess asked after Norman, and no more was wanted to produce a volume of histories of his successes, till Flora turned as she walked before with Meta, saying, “Why, Ethel, you are quite overwhelming Mrs. Larpent.”

But some civil answer convinced Ethel that what she said was interesting, and she would not be stopped in her account of their anxieties on the day of the examination. Flora was pleased that Meta, catching some words, begged to hear more, and Flora gave an account of the matter, soberer in terms, but quietly setting Norman at a much greater distance from all his competitors.

After church came the feast in the school. It was a large commodious building. Meta declared it was very tiresome that it was so good inside, it was so ugly, she should never rest till papa had built her a real beauty. They found Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wilmot in the school, with a very nice well-dressed set of boys and girls, and--But there is no need to describe the roast-beef and plum-pudding, “the feast ate merrily,” and Ethel was brilliantly happy waiting on the children, and so was sunny-hearted Meta. Flora was too busy in determining what the Riverses might be thinking of her and her sister to give herself up to the enjoyment.

Ethel found a small boy looking ready to cry at an untouched slice of beef. She examined him whether he could cut it, and at last discovered that, as had been the case with one or two of her own brothers at the same age, meat was repugnant to him. In her vehement manner she flew off to fetch him some pudding, and hurrying up, as she thought, to Mr. Charles Wilmot, who had been giving it out, she thrust her plate between him and the dish, and had begun her explanation when she perceived it was a stranger, and she stood, utterly discomfited, not saying, “I beg your pardon,” but only blushing, awkward and confused, as he spoke to her, in a good-natured, hospitable manner, which showed her it must be Mr. Rivers. She obtained her pudding, and, turning hastily, retreated.

“Meta,” said Mr. Rivers, as his daughter came out of the school with him, for, open and airy as it was, the numbers and the dinner made him regard it as Norman had viewed the Cocksmoor room, “was that one of the Miss Mays?”

“Yes, papa, Ethel, the third, the clever one.”

“I thought she must be one of them from her dress; but what a difference between her and the others!”

Mr. Rivers was a great admirer of beauty, and Meta, brought up to be the same, was disappointed, but consoled herself by admiring Flora. Ethel, after the awkwardness was over, thought no more of the matter, but went on in full enjoyment of the feast. The eating finished, the making of presents commenced, and choice ones they were. The smiles of Meta and of the children were a pretty sight, and Ethel thought she had never seen anything so like a beneficent fairy. Mr. and Mrs. Wilmot said their words of counsel and encouragement, and, by five o’clock, all was over.

“Oh, I am sorry!” said Meta, “Easter won’t come again for a whole year, and it has been so delightful. How that dear little Annie smiled and nursed her doll! I wish I could see her show it to her mother! Oh, how nice it is! I am so glad papa brought me to live in the country. I don’t think anything can be so charming in all the world as seeing little children happy!”

Ethel could not think how the Wilmots could have found it in their heart to regret the liberality of this sweet damsel, on whom she began to look with Norman’s enthusiastic admiration.

There was time for a walk round the grounds, Meta doing the honours to Flora, and Ethel walking with Mrs. Larpent. Both pairs were very good friends, and the two sisters admired and were charmed with the beauty of the gardens and conservatories--Ethel laying up a rich store of intelligence for Margaret; but still she was not entirely happy; her papa was more and more on her mind. He had looked dispirited at breakfast; he had a long hard day’s work before him, and she was increasingly uneasy at the thought that it would be a painful effort to him to join them in the evening. Her mind was full of it when she was conducted, with Flora, to the room where they were to dress; and when Flora began to express her delight, her answer was only that she hoped it was not very unpleasant to papa.

“It is not worth while to be unhappy about that, Ethel. If it is an effort, it will be good for him when he is once here. I know he will enjoy it.”

“Yes, I should think he would--I hope he will. He must like you to have such a friend as Miss Rivers. How pretty she is!”

“Now, Ethel, it is high time to dress. Pray make yourself look nice--don’t twist up your hair in that any-how fashion.”

Ethel sighed, then began talking fast about some hints on school-keeping which she had picked up for Cocksmoor.

Flora’s glossy braids were in full order, while Ethel was still struggling to get her plait smooth, and was extremely beholden to her sister for taking it into her own hands and doing the best with it that its thinness and roughness permitted. And then Flora pinched and pulled and arranged Ethel’s frock, in vain attempts to make it sit like her own--those sharp high bones resisted all attempts to disguise them. “Never mind, Flora, it is quite tidy, I am sure, there--do let me be in peace. You are like old nurse.”

“So those are all the thanks I get?”

“Well, thank you very much, dear Flora. You are a famous person. How I wish Margaret could see that lovely mimosa!”

“And, Ethel, do take care. Pray don’t poke and spy when you come into the room, and don’t frown when you are trying to see. I hope you won’t have anything to help at dinner. Take care how you manage.”

“I’ll try,” said Ethel meekly, though a good deal tormented, as Flora went on with half a dozen more injunctions, closed by Meta’s coming to fetch them. Little Meta did not like to show them her own bedroom--she pitied them so much when she thought of the contrast. She would have liked to put Flora’s arm through her’s, but she thought, it would look neglectful of Ethel; so she only showed the way downstairs. Ethel forgot all her sister’s orders; for there stood her father, and she looked most earnestly at his face. It was cheerful, and his voice sounded well pleased as he greeted Meta; then resumed an animated talk with Mr. Rivers. Ethel drew as near him as she could; she had a sense of protection, and could open to full enjoyment when she saw him bright. At the first pause in the conversation, the gentlemen turned to the young ladies. Mr. Rivers began talking to Flora, and Dr. May, after a few pleasant words to Meta, went back to Ethel. He wanted her to see his favourite pictures--he led her up to them, made her put on his spectacles to see them better, and showed her their special merits. Mr. Rivers and the others joined them; Ethel said little, except a remark or two in answer to her papa, but she was very happy--she felt that he liked to have her with him; and Meta, too, was struck by the soundness of her few sayings, and the participation there seemed to be in all things between the father and daughter.

At dinner Ethel went on pretty well. She was next to her father, and was very glad to find the dinner so grand, that no side-dish fell to her lot to be carved. There was a great deal of pleasant talk, such as the girls could understand, though they did not join much in it, except that now and then Dr. May turned to Ethel as a reference for names and dates. To make up for silence at dinner, there was a most confidential chatter in the drawing-room. Flora and Meta on one side, hand in hand, calling each other by their Christian names, Mrs. Larpent and Ethel on the other. Flora dreaded only that Ethel was talking too much, and revealing too much in how different style they lived. Then came the gentlemen, Dr. May begging Mr. Rivers to show Ethel one of his prints, when Ethel stooped more than ever, as if her eyelashes were feelers, but she was in transports of delight, and her embarrassment entirely at an end in her admiration, as she exclaimed and discussed with her papa, and by her hearty appreciation made Mr. Rivers for the time forget her plainness. Music followed; Flora played nicely, Meta like a well-taught girl; Ethel went on musing over the engravings. The carriage was announced, and so ended the day in Norman’s fairy-land. Ethel went home, leaning hard against her papa, talking to him of Raphael’s Madonnas; and looking out at the stars, and thinking how the heavenly beauty of those faces that, in the prints she had been turning over, seemed to be connected with the glories of the dark-blue sky and glowing stars. “As one star differeth from another star in glory,” murmured she; “that was the lesson to-day, papa;” and when she felt him press her hand, she knew he was thinking of that last time she had heard the lesson, when he had not been with her, and her thoughts went with his, though not another word was spoken.

Flora hardly knew when they ceased to talk. She had musings equally engrossing of her own. She saw she was likely to be very intimate with Meta Rivers, and she was roaming away into schemes for not letting the intercourse drop, and hopes of being admitted to many a pleasure as yet little within her reach--parties, balls, London, itself, and, above all, the satisfaction of being admired. The certainty that Mr. Rivers thought her pretty and agreeable had gratified her all the evening, and if he, with his refined taste, thought so, what would others think? Her only fear was, that Ethel’s awkwardness might make an unfavourable impression, but, at least, she said to herself, it was anything but vulgar awkwardness.

Their reflections were interrupted by the fly stopping. It was at a little shop in the outskirts of the town, and Dr. May, explained that he wanted to inquire for a patient. He went in for a moment, then came back to desire that they would go home, for he should be detained some little time. No one need sit up for him--he would let himself in.

It seemed a comment on Ethel’s thoughts, bringing them back to the present hour. That daily work of homely mercy, hoping for nothing again, was surely the true way of doing service.

Chapter XXI

WATCHMAN. How, if he will not stand? DOGBERRY. Why, then, take no note of him, but let him go. Much Ado about Nothing.

Dr. May promised Margaret that he would see whether the black-hole of Cocksmoor was all that Norman depicted it, and, accordingly, he came home that way on Tuesday evening the next week, much to the astonishment of Richard, who was in the act of so mending the window that it might let in air when open, and keep it out when shut, neither of which purposes had it ever yet answered.

Dr. May walked in, met his daughter’s look of delight and surprise, spoke cheerfully to Mrs. Green, a hospital acquaintance of his, like half the rest of the country, and made her smile and curtsey by asking if she was not surprised at such doings in her house; then looked at the children, and patted the head that looked most fit to pat, inquired who was the best scholar, and offered a penny to whoever could spell copper tea-kettle, which being done by three merry mortals, and having made him extremely popular, he offered Ethel a lift, and carried her off between him and Adams, on whom he now depended for driving him, since Richard was going to Oxford at once.

It was possible to spare him now. Dr. May’s arm was as well as he expected it ever would be; he had discarded the sling, and could use his hand again, but the arm was still stiff and weak--he could not stretch it out, nor use it for anything requiring strength; it soon grew tired with writing, and his daughters feared that it ached more than he chose to confess, when they saw it resting in the breast of his waistcoat. Driving he never would have attempted again, even if he could, and he had quite given up carving--he could better bear to sit at the side than at the bottom of the dinner-table.

Means of carrying Margaret safely had been arranged by Richard, and there was no necessity for longer delaying his going to Oxford, but he was so unwillingly spared by all, as to put him quite into good spirits. Ethel was much concerned to lose him from Cocksmoor, and dreaded hindrances to her going thither without his escort; but she had much trust in having her father on her side, and meant to get authority from him for the propriety of going alone with Mary.

She did not know how Norman had jeopardised her projects, but the danger blew over. Dr. May told Margaret that the place was clean and wholesome, and though more smoky than might be preferred, there was nothing to do any one in health any harm, especially when the walk there and back was over the fresh moor. He lectured Ethel herself on opening the window, now that she could; and advised Norman to go and spend an hour in the school, that he might learn how pleasant peat-smoke was--a speech Norman did not like at all. The real touchstone of temper is ridicule on a point where we do not choose to own ourselves fastidious, and if it and been from any one but his father, Norman would not have so entirely kept down his irritation.

Richard passed his examination successfully, and Dr. May wrote himself to express his satisfaction. Nothing went wrong just now except little Tom, who seemed to be justifying Richard’s fears of the consequence of exciting his father’s anger. At home, he shrank and hesitated at the simplest question if put by his father suddenly; and the appearance of cowardice and prevarication displeasing Dr. May further, rendered his tone louder, and frightened Tom the more, giving his manner an air of sullen reserve that was most unpleasant. At school it was much the same--he kept aloof from Norman, and threw himself more into the opposite faction, by whom he was shielded from all punishment, except what they chose themselves to inflict on him.

Norman’s post as head of the school was rendered more difficult by the departure of his friend Cheviot, who had always upheld his authority; Harvey Anderson did not openly transgress, for he had a character to maintain, but it was well known throughout the school that there was a wide difference between the boys, and that Anderson thought it absurd, superfluous, and troublesome in May not to wink at abuses which appeared to be licensed by long standing. When Edward Anderson, Axworthy, and their set, broke through rules, it was with the understanding that the second boy in the school would support them, if he durst.

The summer and the cricket season brought the battle of Ballhatchet’s house to issue. The cricket ground was the field close to it, and for the last two or three years there had been a frequent custom of despatching juniors to his house for tarts and ginger-beer bottles. Norman knew of instances last year in which this had led to serious mischief, and had made up his mind that, at whatever loss of popularity, it was his duty to put a stop to the practice.

He was an ardent cricketer himself, and though the game did not, in anticipation, seem to him to have all the charms of last year, he entered into it with full zest when once engaged. But his eye was on all parts of the field, and especially on the corner by the bridge, and the boys knew him well enough to attempt nothing unlawful within the range of that glance. However, the constant vigilance was a strain too great to be always kept up, and he had reason to believe he was eluded more than once.

At last came a capture, something like that of Tom, one which he could not have well avoided making. The victim was George Larkins, the son of a clergyman in the neighbourhood, a wild, merry varlet, who got into mischief rather for the sake of the fun than from any bad disposition.

His look of consternation was exaggerated into a most comical caricature, in order to hide how much of it was real.

“So you are at that trick, Larkins.”

“There! that bet is lost!” exclaimed Larkins. “I laid Hill half-a-crown that you would not see me when you were mooning over your verses!”

“Well, I have seen you. And now--”

“Come, you would not thrash a fellow when you have just lost him half-a-crown! Single misfortunes never come alone, they say; so there’s my money and my credit gone, to say nothing of Ballhatchet’s ginger-beer!”

The boy made such absurd faces, that Norman could hardly help laughing, though he wished to make it a serious affair. “You know, Larkins, I have given out that such things are not to be. It is a melancholy fact.”

“Ay, so you must make an example of me!” said Larkins, pretending to look resigned. “Better call all the fellows together, hadn’t you, and make it more effective? It would be grateful to one’s feelings, you know; and June,” added he, with a ridiculous confidential air, “if you’ll only lay it on soft, I’ll take care it makes noise enough. Great cry, little wool, you know.”

“Come with me,” said Norman. “I’ll take care you are example enough. What did you give for those articles?”

“Fifteen-pence halfpenny. Rascally dear, isn’t it? but the old rogue makes one pay double for the risk! You are making his fortune, you have raised his prices fourfold.”

“I’ll take care of that.”

“Why, where are you taking me? Back to him?”

“I am going to gratify your wish to be an example.”

“A gibbet! a gibbet” cried Larkins. “I’m to be turned off on the spot where the crime took place--a warning to all beholders. Only let me send home for old Neptune’s chain, if you please, sir--if you hang me in the combined watch-chains of the school, I fear they would give way and defeat the purposes of justice.”

They were by this time at the bridge. “Come in,” said Norman to his follower, as he crossed the entrance of the little shop, the first time he had ever been there. A little cringing shrivelled old man stood up in astonishment.

“Mr. May! can I have the pleasure, sir?”

“Mr. Ballhatchet, you know that it is contrary to the rules that there should be any traffic with the school without special permission?”

“Yes, sir--just nothing, sir--only when the young gentlemen come here, sir--I’m an old man, sir, and I don’t like not to oblige a young gentleman, sir,” pleaded the old man, in a great fright.

“Very likely,” said Norman, “but I am come to give you fair notice. I am not going to allow the boys here to be continually smuggling spirits into the school.”

“Spirits! bless you, sir, I never thought of no sich a thing! ‘Tis nothing in life but ginger-beer--very cooling drink, sir, of my wife’s making; she had the receipt from her grandmother up in Leicestershire. Won’t you taste a bottle, sir?” and he hastily made a cork bounce, and poured it out.

That, of course, was genuine, but Norman was “up to him,” in schoolboy phrase.

“Give me yours, Larkins.”

No pop ensued. Larkins, enjoying the detection, put his hands on his knees and looked wickedly up in the old man’s face to see what was coming.

“Bless me! it is a little flat. I wonder how that happened? I’ll be most happy to change it, sir. Wife! what’s the meaning of Mr. Larkins’s ginger-pop being so flat?”

“It is very curious ginger-beer indeed, Mr. Ballhatchet,” said Norman; “and since it is liable to have such strange properties, I cannot allow it to be used any more at the school.”

“Very well, sir-as you please, sir. You are the first gentleman as has objected, sir.”

“And, once for all, I give you warning,” added Norman, “that if I have reason to believe you have been obliging the young gentlemen, the magistrates and the trustees of the road shall certainly hear of it.”

“You would not hurt a poor man, sir, as is drove to it--you as has such a name for goodness!”

“I have given you warning,” said Norman. “The next time I find any of your bottles in the school fields, your licence goes. Now, there are your goods. Give Mr. Larkins back the fifteen-pence. I wonder you are not ashamed of such a charge!”

Having extracted the money, Norman turned to leave the shop. Larkins, triumphant, “Ha! there’s Harrison!” as the tutor rode by, and they touched their caps. “How he stared! My eyes! June, you’ll be had up for dealing with old Ball!” and he went into an ecstasy of laughing. “You’ve settled him, I believe. Well, is justice satisfied?”

“It would be no use thrashing you,” said Norman, laughing, as he leaned against the parapet of the bridge, and pinched the boy’s ear. “There’s nothing to be got out of you but chaff.”

Larkins was charmed with the compliment.

“But I’ll tell you what, Larkins, I can’t think how a fellow like you can go and give in to these sneaking, underhand tricks that make you ashamed to look one in the face.”

“It is only for the fun of it.”

“Well, I wish you would find your fun some other way. Come, Larkins, recollect yourself a little--you have a home not so far off. How do you think your father and mother would fancy seeing you reading the book you had yesterday, or coming out of Ballhatchet’s with a bottle of spirits, called by a false name?”

Larkins pinched his fingers; home was a string that could touch him, but it seemed beneath him to own it. At that moment a carriage approached, the boy’s whole face lighted up, and he jumped forward. “Our own!” he cried. “There she is!”

She was, of course, his mother; and Norman, though turning hastily away that his presence might prove no restraint, saw the boy fly over the door of the open carriage, and could have sobbed at the thought of what that meeting was.

“Who was that with you?” asked Mrs. Larkins, when she had obtained leave to have her boy with her, while she did her shopping.

“That was May senior, our dux.”

“Was it? I am very glad you should be with him, my dear George. He is very kind to you, I hope?”

“He is a jolly good fellow,” said Larkins sincerely, though by no means troubling himself as to the appropriateness of the eulogy, nor thinking it necessary to explain to his mother the terms of the conversation.

It was not fruitless; Larkins did avoid mischief when it was not extremely inviting, was more amenable to May senior, and having been put in mind by him of his home, was not ashamed to bring the thought to the aid of his eyes, when, on Sunday, during a long sermon of Mr. Ramsden’s, he knew that Axworthy was making the grimace which irresistibly incited him to make a still finer one.

And Ballhatchet was so much convinced of “that there young May” being in earnest, that he assured his persuasive customers that it was as much as his licence was worth to supply them.

Evil and insubordination were more easily kept under than Norman had expected, when he first made up his mind to the struggle. Firmness had so far carried the day, and the power of manful assertion of the right had been proved, contrary to Cheviot’s parting auguries, that he would only make himself disliked, and do no good.

The whole of the school was extremely excited this summer by a proceeding of Mr. Tomkins, the brewer, who suddenly closed up the footway called Randall’s Alley, declaring that there was no right of passage through a certain field at the back of his brewery. Not only the school, but the town was indignant, and the Mays especially so. It had been the doctor’s way to school forty years ago, and there were recollections connected with it that made him regard it with personal affection. Norman, too, could not bear to lose it; he had not entirely conquered his reluctance to pass that spot in the High Street, and the loss of the alley would be a positive deprivation to him. Almost every native of Stoneborough felt strongly the encroachment of the brewer, and the boys, of course, carried the sentiment to exaggeration.

The propensity to public speaking perhaps added to the excitement, for Norman May and Harvey Anderson, for once in unison, each made a vehement harangue in the school-court--Anderson’s a fine specimen of the village Hampden style, about Britons never suffering indignities, and free-born Englishmen swelling at injuries.

“That they do, my hearty,” interjected Larkins, pointing to an inflamed eye that had not returned to its right dimensions. However, Anderson went on unmoved by the under titter, and demonstrated, to the full satisfaction of all the audience, that nothing could be more illegal and unfounded than the brewer’s claims.

Then came a great outburst from Norman, with all his father’s headlong vehemence; the way was the right of the town, the walk had been trodden by their forefathers for generations past--it had been made by the good old generous-hearted man who loved his town and townspeople, and would have heard with shame and anger of a stranger, a new inhabitant, a grasping radical, caring, as radicals always did, for no rights, but for their own chance of unjust gains, coming here to Stoneborough to cut them off from their own path. He talk of liberalism and the rights of the poor! He who cut off Randall’s poor old creatures in the almshouses from their short way! and then came some stories of his oppression as a poor-law guardian, which greatly aggravated the wrath of the speaker and audience, though otherwise they did not exactly bear on the subject.

“What would old Nicholas Randall say to these nineteenth-century doings?” finished Norman.

“Down, with them!” cried a voice from the throng, probably Larkins’s; but there was no desire to investigate, it was the universal sentiment. “Down with it! Hurrah, we’ll have our footpath open again! Down with the fences! Britons never shall be slaves!” as Larkins finally ejaculated.

“That’s the way to bring it to bear!” said Harvey Anderson, “See if he dares to bring an action against us. Hurrah!”

“Yes, that’s the way to settle it,” said Norman. “Let’s have it down. It is an oppressive, arbitrary, shameful proceeding, and we’ll show him we won’t submit to it!”

Carried along by the general feeling, the whole troop of boys dashed shouting up to the barricade at the entrance of the field, and levelled it with the ground. A handkerchief was fastened to the top of one of the stakes, and waved over the brewhouse wall, and some of the boys were for picking up stones and dirt, and launching them over, in hopes of spoiling the beer; but Norman put a stop to this, and brought them back to the school-yard, still in a noisy state of exultation.

It cooled a little by-and-by under the doubt how their exploit would be taken. At home, Norman found it already known, and his father half glad, half vexed, enjoying the victory over Tomkins, yet a little uneasy on his son’s behalf. “What will Dr. Hoxton say to the dux?” said he. “I didn’t know he was to be dux in mischief as well as out of it.”

“You can’t call it mischief, papa, to resent an unwarranted encroachment of our rights by such an old ruffian as that. One’s blood is up to think of the things he has done!”

“He richly deserves it, no doubt,” said the doctor, “and yet I wish you had been out of the row. If there is any blame, you will be the first it will light on.”

“I am glad of it, that is but just. Anderson and I seem to have stirred it up--if it wanted stirring--for it was in every fellow there; indeed, I had no notion it was coming to this when I began.”

“Oratory,” said the doctor, smiling. “Ha, Norman! Think a little another time, my boy, before you take the law into your own hands, or, what is worse, into a lot of hands you can’t control for good, though you may excite them to harm.”

Dr. Hoxton did not come into school at the usual hour, and, in the course of the morning, sent for May senior, to speak to him in his study.

He looked very broad, awful, and dignified, as he informed him that Mr. Tomkins had just been with him to complain of the damage that had been done, and he appeared extremely displeased that the dux should have been no check on such proceedings.

“I am sorry, sir,” said Norman, “but I believe it was the general feeling that he had no right to stop the alley, and, therefore, that it could not be wrong to break it down.”

“Whether he has a right or not is not a question to be settled by you. So I find that you, whose proper office it is to keep order, have been inflaming the mischievous and aggressive spirit amongst the others. I am surprised at you; I thought you were more to be depended upon, May, in your position.”

Norman coloured a good deal, and simply answered, “I am sorry, sir.”

“Take care, then, that nothing of the kind happens again,” said Dr. Hoxton, who was very fond of him, and did not find fault with him willingly.

That the first inflammatory discourse had been made by Anderson did not appear to be known--he only came in for the general reprimand given to the school.

It was reported the following evening, just as the town boys turned out to go to their homes, that “old Tomkins had his fence up five times higher than before.”

“Have at him again, say I!” exclaimed Axworthy. “What business has he coming stopping up ways that were made before he was born?”

“We shall catch it from the doctor if we do,” said Edward Anderson, “He looked in no end of a rage yesterday when he talked about the credit of the school.”

“Who cares for the credit of the school?” said the elder Anderson; “we are out of the school now--we are townsmen--Stoneborough boys--citizens not bound to submit to injustice. No, no, the old rogue knew it would not stand if it was brought into court, so he brings down old Hoxton on us instead--a dirty trick he deserves to be punished for.”

And there was a general shout and yell in reply.

“Anderson,” said Norman, “you had better not excite them again, they are ripe for mischief. It will go further than it did yesterday--don’t you see?”

Anderson could not afford to get into a scrape without May to stand before him, and rather sulkily he assented.

“It is of no use to rave about old Tomkins,” proceeded Norman, in his style of popular oratory. “If it is illegal, some one will go to law about it, and we shall have our alley again. We have shown him our mind once, and that is enough; if we let him alone now, he will see ‘tis only because we are ordered, not for his sake. It would be just putting him in the right, and maybe winning his cause for him, to use any more violence. There’s law for you, Anderson. So now no more about it--let us all go home like rational fellows. August, where’s August?”

Tom was not visible--he generally avoided going home with his brother; and Norman having seen the boys divide into two or three little parties, as their roads lay homewards, found he had an hour of light for an expedition of his own, along the bank of the river. He had taken up botany with much ardour, and sharing the study with Margaret was a great delight to both. There was a report that the rare yellow bog-bean grew in a meadow about a mile and a half up the river, and thither he was bound, extremely enjoying the summer evening walk, as the fresh dewy coolness sunk on all around, and the noises of the town were mellowed by distance, and the sun’s last beams slanted on the green meadows, and the May-flies danced, and dragon-flies darted, and fish rose or leaped high in the air, or showed their spotted sides, and opened and shut their gills, as they rested in the clear water, and the evening breeze rustled in the tall reeds, and brought fragrance from the fresh-mown hay.

It was complete enjoyment to Norman after his day’s study and the rule and watch over the unruly crowd of boys, and he walked and wandered and collected plants for Margaret till the sun was down, and the grasshoppers chirped clamorously, while the fern-owl purred, and the beetle hummed, and the skimming swallows had given place to the soft-winged bat, and the large white owl floating over the fields as it moused in the long grass.

The summer twilight was sobering every tint, when, as Norman crossed the cricket-field, he heard, in the distance, a loud shout. He looked up, and it seemed to him that he saw some black specks dancing in the forbidden field, and something like the waving of a flag, but it was not light enough to be certain, and he walked quickly home.

The front door was fastened, and, while he was waiting to be let in, Mr. Harrison walked by, and called out, “You are late at home to-night--it is half-past nine.”

“I have been taking a walk, sir.”

A good-night was the answer, as he was admitted. Every one in the drawing-room looked up, and exclaimed as he entered, “Where’s Tom?”

“What! he is not come home?”

“No! Was he not with you?”

“I missed him after school. I was persuaded he was come home. I have been to look for the yellow bog-bean. There, Margaret. Had not I better go and look for him?”

“Yes, do,” said Dr. May. “The boy is never off one’s mind.”

A sort of instinctive dread directed Norman’s steps down the open portion of Randall’s Alley, and, voices growing louder as he came nearer, confirmed his suspicions. The fence at this end was down, and, on entering the field, a gleam of light met his eye on the ground--a cloud of smoke, black figures were flitting round it, pushing brands into red places, and feeding the bonfire.

“What have you been doing?” exclaimed Norman. “You have got yourselves into a tremendous scrape!”

A peal of laughter, and shout of “Randall and Stoneborough for ever!” was the reply.

“August! May junior! Tom! answer me! Is he here?” asked Norman, not solicitous to identify any one.

But gruff voices broke in upon them. “There they are, nothing like ‘em for mischief.”

“Come, young gentlemen,” said a policeman, “be off, if you please. We don’t want to have none of you at the station to-night.”

A general hurry-skurry ensued. Norman alone, strong in innocence, walked quietly away, and, as he came forth from the darkness of the alley, beheld something scouring away before him, in the direction of home. It popped in at the front door before him, but was not in the drawing-room. He strode upstairs, called, but was not answered, and found, under the bedclothes, a quivering mass, consisting of Tom, with all his clothes on, fully persuaded that it was the policeman who was pursuing him.

Chapter XXII

Oh Life, without thy chequered scene, Of right and wrong, of weal and woe, Success and failure, could a ground For magnanimity be found? WORDSWORTH.

Dr. May was called for late the next day, Friday, and spent some time in one of the houses near the river. It was nearly eight o’clock when he came away, and he lingered, looking towards the school, in hopes of a walk home with his boys.

Presently he saw Norman coming out from under the archway, his cap drawn over his face, and step, gesture, and manner betraying that something was seriously wrong. He came up almost to his father without seeing him, until startled by his exclamation, “Norman--why, Norman, what’s the matter?”

Norman’s lips quivered, and his face was pale--he seemed as if he could not speak.

“Where’s Tom?” said the doctor, much alarmed. “Has he got into disgrace about this business of Tomkins? That boy--”

“He has only got an imposition,” interrupted Norman. “No, it is not that--it is myself”--and it was only with a gulp and struggle that he brought out the words, “I am turned down in the school.”

The doctor started back a step or two, aghast. “What-how--speak, Norman. What have you done?”

“Nothing!” said Norman, recovering in the desire to reassure his father--“nothing!”

“That’s right,” said the doctor, breathing freely. “What’s the meaning of it...a misunderstanding?”

“Yes,” said Norman, with bitterness. “It is all Anderson’s doing--a word from him would have set all straight--but he would not; I believe, from my heart, he held his tongue to get me down, that he might have the Randall!”

“We’ll see you righted,” said the doctor eagerly. “Come, tell me the whole story, Norman. Is it about this unlucky business?”

“Yes. The town-fellows were all up about it last evening, when we came out of school. Anderson senior himself began to put them up to having the fence down again. Yes, that he did--I remember his very words--that Tomkins could not bring it into court, and so set old Hoxton at us. Well, I told them it would not do--thought I had settled them--saw them off home--yes, Simpson, and Benson, and Grey, up the High Street, and the others their way. I only left Axworthy going into a shop when I set off on my walk. What could a fellow do more? How was I to know that that Axworthy would get them together again, and take them to this affair--pull up the stakes--saw them down--for they were hard to get down--shy all sorts of things over into the court--hoot at old Tomkins’s man, when he told them to be off--and make a bonfire of the sticks at last?”

“And Harvey Anderson was there?”

“No--not he. He is too sharp--born and bred attorney as he is--he talked them up to the mischief when my back was turned, and then sneaked quietly home, quite innocent, and out of the scrape.”

“But Dr. Hoxton can never entertain a suspicion that you had anything to do with it!”

“Yes, he does though. He thinks I incited them, and Tomkins and the policeman declare I was there in the midst of the row--and not one of these fellows will explain how I came at the last to look for Tom.”

“Not Tom himself?”

“He did try to speak, poor little fellow, but, after the other affair, his word goes for nothing, and so, it seems, does mine. I did think Hoxton would have trusted me!”

“And did not he?” exclaimed Dr. May.

“He did not in so many words accuse me of--of--but he told me he had serious charges brought against me--Mr. Harrison had seen me at Ballhatchet’s, setting an example of disregard to rules--and, again, Mr. Harrison saw me coming in at a late hour last night. ‘I know he did,’ I said, and I explained where I had been, and they asked for proofs! I could hardly answer, from surprise, at their not seeming to believe me, but I said you could answer for my having come in with the flowers for my sister.”

“To be sure I will--I’ll go this instant--” he was turning.

“It is of no use, papa, to-night; Dr. Hoxton has a dinner-party.”

“He is always having parties. I wish he would mind them less, and his business more. You disbelieved! but I’ll see justice done you, Norman, the first thing to-morrow. Well--”

“Well then, I said, old Ballhatchet could tell that I crossed the bridge at the very time they were doing this pretty piece of work, for he was sitting smoking in his porch when I went home, and, would you believe it? the old rascal would not remember who passed that evening! It is all his malice and revenge--nothing else!”

“Why--what have you been doing to him?”

Norman shortly explained the ginger-beer story, and adding, “Cheviot told me I should get nothing but ill-will, and so I have--all those town fellows turn against me now, and though they know as well as possible how it was, they won’t say a word to right me, just out of spite, because I have stopped them from all the mischief I could!”

“Well, then--”

“They asked me whether--since I allowed that I had been there at last--I had dispersed the boys. I said no, I had no time. Then they desired to know who was there, and that I had not seen; it was all dark, and there had not been a moment, and if I guessed, it was no affair of mine to say. So they ordered me down, and had up Ned Anderson, and one or two more who were known to have been in the riot, and then they consulted a good while, and sent for me; Mr. Wilmot was for me, I am sure, but Harrison was against me. Dr. Hoxton sat there, and made me one of his addresses. He said he would not enter on the question whether I had been present at the repetition of the outrage, as he called it, but what was quite certain was, that I had abused my authority and influence in the school; I had been setting a bad example, and breaking the rules about Ballhatchet, and so far from repressing mischief, I had been the foremost in it, making inflammatory harangues, leading them to commit violence the first time, and the next, if not actually taking part in it personally, at any rate not preventing it. In short, he said it was clear I had not weight enough for my post--it was some excuse I had been raised to it so young--but it was necessary to show that proficiency in studies did not compensate for disregard of discipline, and so he turned me down below the first six! So there’s another May in disgrace!”

“It shall not last--it shall not last, my boy,” said Dr. May, pressing Norman’s arm; “I’ll see you righted. Dr. Hoxton shall hear the whole story. I am not for fathers interfering in general, but if ever there was a case, this is! Why, it is almost actionable--injuring your whole prospects in life, and all because he will not take the trouble to make an investigation! It is a crying shame.”

“Every fellow in the school knows how it was,” said Norman; “and plenty of them would be glad to tell, if they had only the opportunity; but he asked no one but those two or three worst fellows that were at the fire, and they would not tell, on purpose. The school will go to destruction now--they’ll get their way, and all I have been striving for is utterly undone.”

“You setting a bad example! Dr. Hoxton little knows what you have been doing. It is a mockery, as I have always said, to see that old fellow sit wrapped up in his pomposity, eating his good dinners, and knowing no more what goes on among his boys than this umbrella! But he will listen to me--and we’ll make those boys confess the whole--ay, and have up Ballhatchet himself, to say what your traffic with him was; and we will see what old Hoxton says to you then, Norman.”

Dr. May and his son felt keenly and spoke strongly. There was so much of sympathy and fellow-feeling between them, that there was no backwardness on Norman’s part in telling his whole trouble, with more confidence than schoolboys often show towards their fathers, and Dr. May entered into the mortification as if he were still at school. They did not go into the house, but walked long up and down the garden, working themselves up into, if possible, stronger indignation, and concerting the explanation for to-morrow, when Dr. May meant to go at once to the head-master, and make him attend to the true version of the story, appealing to Harvey Anderson himself, Larkins, and many others, for witnesses. There could be hardly a doubt that Norman would be thus exculpated; but, if Dr. Hoxton would not see things in their true light, Dr. May was ready to take him away at once, rather than see him suffer injustice.

Still, though comforted by his father’s entire reliance, Norman was suffering severely under the sense of indignity, and grieved that Dr. Hoxton and the other masters should have believed him guilty--that name of May could never again boast of being without reproach. To be in disgrace stung him to the quick, even though undeservedly, and he could not bear to go in, meet his sisters, and be pitied. “There’s no need they should know of it,” said he, when the Minster clock pealing ten obliged them to go indoors, and his father agreed. They bade each other good-night, with the renewal of the promise that Dr. Hoxton should be forced to hear Norman’s vindication the first thing to-morrow, Harvey Anderson be disappointed of what he meanly triumphed in, and Norman be again in his post at the head of the school, in more honour and confidence than ever, putting down evil, and making Stoneborough what it ought to be.

As Dr. May lay awake in the summer’s morning, meditating on his address to Dr. Hoxton, he heard the unwelcome sound of a ring at the bell, and, in a few minutes, a note was brought to him.

“Tell Adams to get the gig ready--I’ll let him know whether he is to go with me.”

And, in a few minutes, the doctor opened Norman’s door, and found him dressed, and standing by the window, reading. “What, up already, Norman? I came to tell you that our affairs must wait till the afternoon. It is very provoking, for Hoxton may be gone out, but Mr. Lake’s son, at Groveswood, has an attack on the head, and I must go at once. It is a couple of dozen miles off or more. I have hardly ever been there, and it may keep me all day.”

“Shall you go in the gig? Shall I drive you?” said Norman, looking rather blank.

“That’s what I thought of, if you like it. I thought you would sooner be out of the way.”

“Thank you--yes, papa. Shall I come and help you to finish dressing?”

“Yes, do, thank you; it will hasten matters. Only, first order in some breakfast. What makes you up so early? Have not you slept?”

“Not much--it has been such a hot night.”

“And you have a headache. Well, we will find a cure for that before the day is over. I have settled what to say to old Hoxton.”

Before another quarter of an hour had passed, they were driving through the deep lanes, the long grass thickly laden with morning dew, which beaded the webs of the spiders and rose in clouds of mist under the influence of the sun’s rays. There was stillness in the air at first, then the morning sounds, the labourer going forth, the world wakening to life, the opening houses, the children coming out to school. In spite of the tumult of feeling, Norman could not but be soothed and refreshed by the new and fair morning scene, and both minds quitted the school politics, as Dr. May talked of past enjoyment of walks or drives home in early dawn, the more delicious after a sad watch in a sick-room, and told of the fair sights he had seen at such unwonted hours.

They had far to go, and the heat of the day had come on before they entered the place of their destination. It was a woodland village, built on a nook in the side of the hill, sloping greenly to the river, and shut in by a white gate, which seemed to gather all in one the little old-fashioned church, its yard, shaded with trees, and enclosed by long white rails; the parsonage, covered with climbing plants and in the midst of a gay garden; and one or two cottages. The woods cast a cool shadow, and, in the meadows by the river rose cocks of new-made hay; there was an air of abiding serenity about the whole place, save that there stood an old man by the gate, evidently watching for the physician’s carriage; and where the sun fell on that parsonage-house was a bedroom window wide open, with the curtains drawn.

“Thank Heaven you are come, sir,” said the old man; “he is fearfully bad.”

Norman knew young Lake, who had been a senior boy when he first went to school, was a Randall scholar, and had borne an excellent character, and highly distinguished himself at the university. And now, by all accounts, he seemed to be dying--in the height of honour and general esteem. Dr. May went into the house, the old man took the horse, and Norman lingered under the trees in the churchyard, watching the white curtains now and then puffed by the fitful summer breeze, as he lay on the turf in the shade, under the influence of the gentle sadness around, resting, mind and body, from the tossing tumultuous passionate sensations that had kept him restless and miserable through the hot night.

He waited long--one hour, two hours had passed away, but he was not impatient, and hardly knew how long the time had been before his father and Mr. Lake came out of the house together, and, after they parted, Dr. May summoned him. He of course asked first for the patient. “Not quite so hopeless as at first,” and the reasons for having been kept so long were detailed, with many circumstances of the youth’s illness, and the parents’ resignation, by which Dr. May was still too deeply touched to have room in his mind for anything besides.

They were more than half-way home, and a silence had succeeded the conversation about the Lake family, when Norman spoke:

“Papa, I have been thinking about it, and I believe it would be better to let it alone, if you please.”

“Not apply to Dr. Hoxton!” exclaimed his father.

“Well, I think not. I have been considering it, and it does hardly seem to me the right thing. You see, if I had not you close at hand, this could never be explained, and it seems rather hard upon Anderson, who has no father, and the other fellows, who have theirs farther off--”

“Right, Norman, that is what my father before me always said, and the way I have always acted myself; much better let a few trifles go on not just as one would wish, than be for ever interfering. But I really think this is a case for it, and I don’t think you ought to let yourself be influenced by the fear of any party-spirit.”

“It is not only that, papa--I have been thinking a good deal to-day, and there are other reasons. Of course I should wish Dr. Hoxton to know that I spoke the truth about that walk, and I hope you will let him know, as I appealed to you. But, on cooler thoughts, I don’t believe Dr. Hoxton could seriously suspect me of such a thing as that, and it was not on that ground that I am turned down, but that I did not keep up sufficient discipline, and allowed the outrage, as he calls it. Now, you know, that is, after a fashion, true. If I had not gone on like an ass the other day, and incited them to pull down the fences, they would not have done it afterwards, and perhaps I ought to have kept on guard longer. It was my fault, and we can’t deny it.”

Dr. May made a restless, reluctant movement. “Well, well, I suppose it was--but it was just as much Harvey Anderson’s--and is he to get the scholarship because he has added meanness to the rest?”

“He was not dux,” said Norman, with a sigh. “It was more shabby than I thought was even in him. But I don’t know that the feeling about him is not one reason. There has always been a rivalry and bitterness between us two, and if I were to get the upper hand now, by means not in the usual course, such as the fellows would think ill of, it would be worse than ever, and I should always feel guilty and ashamed to look at him.”

“Over-refining, Norman,” muttered Dr. May.

“Besides, don’t you remember, when his father died, how glad you and everyone were to get him a nomination, and it was said that if he gained a scholarship it would be such a relief to poor Mrs. Anderson? Now he has this chance, it does seem hard to deprive her of it. I should not like to know that I had done so.”

“Whew!” the doctor gave a considering whistle.

“You could not make it straight, papa, without explaining about the dealing with Ballhatchet, and that would be unfair to them all, even the old rogue himself; for I promised to say nothing about former practices, as long as he did not renew them.”

“Well! I don’t want to compromise you, Norman. You know your own ground best, but I don’t like it at all. You don’t know the humiliation of disgrace. Those who have thought highly of you, now thinking you changed--I don’t know how to bear it for you.”

“I don’t mind anything while you trust me,” said Norman, eagerly; “not much I mean, except Mr. Wilmot. You must judge, papa, and do as you please.”

“No, you must judge, Norman. Your confidence in me ought not to be a restraint. It has always been an understood thing that what you say at home is as if it had not been said, as regards my dealings with the masters.”

“I know, papa. Well, I’ll tell you what brought me to this. I tumbled about all night in a rage, when I thought how they had served me, and of Hoxton’s believing it all, and how he might only half give in to your representation, and then I gloried in Anderson’s coming down from his height, and being seen in his true colours. So it went on till morning came, and I got up. You know you gave me my mother’s little ‘Thomas a Kempis’. I always read a bit every morning. To-day it was, ‘Of four things that bring much inward peace’. And what do you think they were?--

“‘Be desirous, my son, to do the will of another rather than thine own. Choose always to have less rather than more. Seek always the lowest place, and to be inferior to everyone. Wish always and pray that the will of God may be wholly fulfilled in thee.’

“I liked them the more, because it was just like her last reading with us, and like that letter. Well, then I wondered as I lay on the grass at Groveswood, whether she would have thought it best for me to be reinstated, and I found out that I should have been rather afraid of what you might say when she had talked it over with you.”

Dr. May smiled a little at the simplicity with which this last was said, but his smile ended in one of his heavy sighs. “So you took her for your counsellor, my boy. That was the way to find out what was right.”

“Well, there was something in the place and, in watching poor Lake’s windows, that made me not able to dwell so much on getting on, and having prizes and scholarships. I thought that caring for those had been driven out of me, and you know I never felt as if it were my right when I was made dux; but now I find it is all come back. It does not do for me to be first; I have been what she called elated, and been more peremptory than need with the lower boys, and gone on in my old way with Richard, and so I suppose this disgrace has come to punish me. I wish it were not disgrace, because of our name at school, and because it will vex Harry so much; but since it is come, considering all things, I suppose I ought not to struggle to justify myself at other people’s expense.”

His eyes were so dazzled with tears that he could hardly see to drive, nor did his father speak at first. “I can’t say anything against it, Norman, but I am sorry, and one thing more you should consider. If Dr. Hoxton should view this absurd business in the way he seems to do, it will stand in your way for ever in testimonials, if you try for anything else.”

“Do you think it will interfere with my having a Confirmation ticket?”

“Why no, I should not think--such a boyish escapade could be no reason for refusing you one.”

“Very well then, it had better rest. If there should be any difficulty about my being confirmed, of course we will explain it.”

“I wish every one showed themselves as well prepared!” half muttered the doctor; then, after long musing, “Well, Norman, I give up the scholarship. Poor Mrs. Anderson wants it more than we do, and if the boy is a shabby fellow the more he wants a decent education. But what do you say to this? I make Hoxton do you full justice, and reinstate you in your proper place, and then I take you away at once--send you to a tutor--anything, till the end of the long vacation.”

“Thank you,” said Norman, pausing. “I don’t know, papa. I am very much obliged to you, but I think it would hardly do. You would be uncomfortable at seeming to quarrel with Dr. Hoxton, and it would be hardly creditable for me to go off in anger.”

“You are right, I believe,” said Dr. May. “You judge wisely, though I should not have ventured to ask it of you. But what is to become of the discipline of the school? Is that all to go to the dogs?”

“I could not do anything with them if I were restored in this way; they would be more set against me. It is bad enough as it is, but, even for my own peace, I believe it is better to leave it alone. All my comfort in school is over, I know!” and he sighed deeply.

“It is a most untoward business!” said the doctor. “I am very sorry your schooldays should be clouded--but it can’t be helped, and you will work yourself into a character again. You are full young, and can stay for the next Randall.”

Norman felt as if, while his father looked at him as he now did, the rest of the world were nothing to him; but, perhaps, the driving past the school brought him to a different mind, for he walked into the house slowly and dejectedly.

He told his own story to Ethel, in the garden, not without much difficulty, so indignant were her exclamations; and it was impossible to make her see that his father’s interference would put him in an awkward position among the boys. She would argue vehemently that she could not bear Mr. Wilmot to think ill of him, that it was a great shame of Dr. Hoxton, and that it was dreadful to let such a boy as Harvey Anderson go unpunished. “I really do think it is quite wrong of you to give up your chance of doing good, and leave him in his evil ways!” That was all the comfort she gave Norman, and she walked in to pour out a furious grumbling upon Margaret.

Dr. May had been telling the elder ones, and they were in conversation after he had left them--Margaret talking with animation, and Flora sitting over her drawing, uttering reluctant assents. “Has he told you, poor fellow?” asked Margaret.

“Yes,” said Ethel. “Was there ever such a shame?”

“That is just what I say,” observed Flora. “I cannot see why the Andersons are to have a triumph over all of us.”

“I used to think Harvey the best of the two,” said Ethel. “Now I think he is a great deal the worst. Taking advantage of such a mistake as this! How will he ever look Norman in the face!”

“Really,” said Margaret, “I see no use in aggravating ourselves by talking of the Andersons.”

“I can’t think how papa can consent,” proceeded Flora. “I am sure, if I were in his place, I should not!”

“Papa is so much pleased with dear Norman’s behaviour that it quite makes up for all the disappointment,” said Margaret. “Besides, he is very much obliged to him in one way; he would not have liked to have to battle the matter with Dr. Hoxton. He spoke of Norman’s great good judgment.”

“Yes, Norman can persuade papa to anything,” said Flora.

“Yes, I wish papa had not yielded,” said Ethel. “It would have been just as noble in dear Norman, and we should not have the apparent disgrace.”

“Perhaps it is best as it is, after all,” said Flora.

“Why, how do you mean?” said Ethel.

“I think very likely things might have come out. Now don’t look furious, Ethel. Indeed, I can’t help it, but really I don’t think it is explicable why Norman should wish to hush it up, unless there were something behind!”

“Flora!” cried Ethel, too much shocked to bring out another word.

“If you are unfortunate enough to have such suspicions,” said Margaret quietly, “I think it would be better to be silent.”

“As if you did not know Norman!” stammered Ethel.

“Well,” said Flora, “I don’t wish to think so. You know I did not hear Norman himself, and when papa gives his vehement accounts of things, it always puzzles us of the cooler-minded sort.”

“It is as great a shame as ever I heard!” cried Ethel, recovering her utterance. “Who would you trust, if not your own father and brother?”

“Yes, yes,” said Flora, not by any means wishing to displease her sisters. “If there is such a thing as an excess of generosity, it is sure to be among ourselves. I only know it does not suit me. It will make us all uncomfortable whenever we meet the Andersons or Mr. Wilmot, or any one else, and as to such tenderness to Harvey Anderson, I think it is thrown away.”

“Thrown away on the object, perhaps,” said Margaret, “but not in Norman.”

“To be sure,” broke out Ethel. “Better be than seem! Oh, dear! I am sorry I was vexed with dear old June when he told me. I had rather have him now than if he had gained everything, and every one was praising him--that I had! Harvey Anderson is welcome to be dux and Randall scholar for what I care, while Norman is--while he is, just what we thought of the last time we read that Gospel--you know, Margaret?”

“He is--that he is,” said Margaret, “and, indeed, it is most beautiful to see how what has happened has brought him at once to what she wished, when, perhaps, otherwise it would have been a work of long time.”

Ethel was entirely consoled. Flora thought of the words “tete exaltee” and considered herself alone to have sober sense enough to see things in a true light--not that she went the length of believing that Norman had any underhand motives, but she thought it very discreet in her to think a prudent father would not have been satisfied with such a desire to avoid investigation.

Dr. May would not trust himself to enter on the subject with Dr. Hoxton in conversation; he only wrote a note.

“June 16th.

“Dear Dr. Hoxton,

“My son has appealed to me to confirm his account of himself on Thursday evening last. I therefore distinctly state that he came in at half-past nine, with his hands full of plants from the river, and that he then went out again, by my desire, to look for his little brother.

--Yours very truly, R. May.”

A long answer came in return, disclaiming all doubt of Norman’s veracity, and explaining Dr. Hoxton’s grounds for having degraded him. There had been misconduct in the school, he said, for some time past, and he did not consider that it was any very serious reproach, to a boy of Norman’s age, that he had not had weight enough to keep up his authority, and had been carried away by the general feeling. It had been necessary to make an example for the sake of principle, and though very sorry it should have fallen on one of such high promise and general good conduct, Dr. Hoxton trusted that it would not be any permanent injury to his prospects, as his talents had raised him to his former position in the school so much earlier than usual.

“The fact was,” said Dr. May, “that old Hoxton did it in a passion, feeling he must punish somebody, and now, finding there’s no uproar about it, he begins to be sorry. I won’t answer this note. I’ll stop after church to-morrow and shake hands, and that will show we don’t bear malice.”

What Mr. Wilmot might think was felt by all to affect them more nearly. Ethel wanted to hear that he declared his complete conviction of Norman’s innocence, and was disappointed to find that he did not once allude to the subject. She was only consoled by Margaret’s conjecture that, perhaps, he thought the headmaster had been hasty, and could not venture to say so--he saw into people’s characters, and it was notorious that it was just what Dr. Hoxton did not.

Tom had spent the chief of that Saturday in reading a novel borrowed from Axworthy, keeping out of sight of every one. All Sunday he avoided Norman more scrupulously than ever, and again on Monday. That day was a severe trial to Norman; the taking the lower place, and the sense that, excel as much as ever he might in his studies, it would not avail to restore him to his former place, were more unpleasant, when it came to the point, than he had expected.

He saw the cold manner, so different from the readiness with which his tasks had always been met, certain as they were of being well done; he found himself among the common herd whom he had passed so triumphantly, and, for a little while, he had no heart to exert himself.

This was conquered by the strong will and self-rebuke for having merely craved for applause, but, in the play-ground, he found himself still alone--the other boys who had been raised by his fall shrank from intercourse with one whom they had injured by their silence, and the Andersons, who were wont to say the Mays carried every tale home, and who still almost expected interference from Dr. May, hardly believed their victory secure, and the younger one, at least, talked spitefully, and triumphed in the result of May’s meddling and troublesome over strictness. “Such prigs always come to a downfall,” was the sentiment.

Norman found himself left out of everything, and stood dispirited and weary on the bank of the river, wishing for Harry, wishing for Cheviot, wishing that he had been able to make a friend who would stand by him, thinking it could not be worse if he had let his father reinstate him--and a sensation of loneliness and injustice hung heavy at his heart.

His first interruption was a merry voice. “I say, June, there’s no end of river cray-fish under that bank,” and Larkins’s droll face was looking up at him, from that favourite position, half stooping, his hands on his knees, his expression of fun trying to conceal his real anxiety and sympathy.

Norman turned and smiled, and looked for the cray-fish, and, at the same time, became aware of Hector Ernescliffe, watching for an opportunity to say, “I have a letter from Alan.” He knew they wanted, as far as little boys ventured to seek after one so much their elder, to show themselves his friends, and he was grateful; he roused himself to hear about Alan’s news, and found it was important--his great friend, Captain Gordon, had got a ship, and hoped to be able to take him, and this might lead to Harry’s going with him. Then Norman applied himself to the capture of cray-fish, and Larkins grew so full of fun and drollery, that the hours of recreation passed off less gloomily than they had begun.

If only his own brother would have been his adherent! But he saw almost nothing of Tom. Day after day he missed him, he was off before him in going and returning from school, and when he caught a sight of his face, it looked harassed, pale, and miserable, stealing anxious glances after him, yet shrinking from his eye. But, at the same time, Norman did not see him mingling with his former friends, and could not make out how he disposed of himself. To be thus continually shunned by his own brother, even when the general mass were returning to ordinary terms, became so painful, that Norman was always on the watch to seek for one more conversation with him.

He caught him at last in the evening, just as they were going home. “Tom, why are you running away? Come with me,” said he authoritatively; and Tom obeyed in trembling.

Norman led the way to the meads. “Tom,” said he, “do not let this go on. Why do you serve me in this way? You surely need not turn against me,” he said, with pleading melancholy in his voice.

It was not needed. Tom had flung himself upon the grass, and was in an agony of crying, even before he had finished the words.

“Tom, Tom! what is the matter? Have they been bullying you again? Look up, and tell me--what is it? You know I can stand by you still, if you’ll only let me;” and Norman sat by him on the grass, and raised his face by a sort of force, but the kind words only brought more piteous sobs. It was a long time before they diminished enough to let him utter a word, but Norman went on patiently consoling and inquiring, sure, at least, that here had broken down the sullenness that had always repelled him.

At last came the words, “Oh! I cannot bear it. It is all my doing!”

“What--how--you don’t mean this happening to me? It is not your doing, August--what fancy is this?”

“Oh, yes, it is,” said Tom, his voice cut short by gasps, the remains of the sobs. “They would not hear me! I tried to tell them how you told them not, and sent them home. I tried to tell about Ballhatchet--but--but they wouldn’t--they said if it had been Harry, they would have attended--but they would not believe me. Oh! if Harry was but here!”

“I wish he was,” said Norman, from the bottom of his heart; “but you see, Tom, if this sets you on always telling truth, I shan’t think any great harm done.”

A fresh burst, “Oh, they are all so glad! They say such things! And the Mays were never in disgrace before. Oh, Norman, Norman!”

“Never mind about that--” began Norman.

“But you would mind,” broke in the boy passionately, “if you knew what Anderson junior and Axworthy say! They say it serves you right, and they were going to send me to old Ballhatchet’s to get some of his stuff to drink confusion to the mouth of June, and all pragmatical meddlers; and when I said I could not go, they vowed if I did not, I should eat the corks for them! And Anderson junior called me names, and licked me. Look there.” He showed a dark blue-and-red stripe raised on the palm of his hand. “I could not write well for it these three days, and Hawes gave me double copies!”

“The cowardly fellows!” exclaimed Norman indignantly. “But you did not go?”

“No, Anderson senior stopped them. He said he would not have the Ballhatchet business begin again.”

“That is one comfort,” said Norman. “I see he does not dare not to keep order. But if you’ll only stay with me, August, I’ll take care they don’t hurt you.”

“Oh, June! June!” and he threw himself across his kind brother. “I am so very sorry! Oh! to see you put down--and hear them! And you to lose the scholarship! Oh, dear! oh, dear! and be in disgrace with them all!”

“But, Tom, do cheer up. It is nothing to be in such distress at. Papa knows all about it, and while he does, I don’t care half so much.”

“Oh, I wish--I wish--”

“You see, Tom,” said Norman, “after all, though it is very kind of you to be sorry for not being able to get me out of this scrape, the thing one wants you to be sorry about is your own affair.”

“I wish I had never come to school! I wish Anderson would leave me alone! It is all his fault! A mean-spirited, skulking, bullying--”

“Hush, hush, Tom, he is bad enough, but now you know what he is, you can keep clear of him for the future. Now listen. You and I will make a fresh start, and try if we can’t get the Mays to be looked on as they were when Harry was here. Let us mind the rules, and get into no more mischief.”

“You’ll keep me from Ned Anderson and Axworthy?” whispered Tom.

“Yes, that I will. And you’ll try and speak the truth, and be straightforward?”

“I will, I will,” said Tom, worn out in spirits by his long bondage, and glad to catch at the hope of relief and protection.

“Then let us come home,” and Tom put his hand into his brother’s, as a few weeks back would have seemed most unworthy of schoolboy dignity.

Thenceforth Tom was devoted to Norman, and kept close to him, sure that the instant he was from under his wing his former companions would fall on him to revenge his defection, but clinging to him also from real affection and gratitude. Indolence and timidity were the true root of what had for a time seemed like a positively bad disposition; beneath, there was a warm heart, and sense of right, which had been almost stifled for the time, in the desire, from moment to moment, to avoid present trouble or fear. Under Norman’s care his better self had freer scope, he was guarded from immediate terror, and kept from the suggestions of the worse sort of boys, as much as was in his brother’s power; and the looks they cast towards him, and the sly torments they attempted to inflict, by no means invited him back to them. The lessons, where he had a long inveterate habit of shuffling, came under Norman’s eye at the same time. He always prepared them in his presence, instead of in the most secret manner possible, and with all Anderson’s expeditious modes of avoiding the making them of any use. Norman sat by, and gave such help as was fair and just, showed him how to learn, and explained difficulties, and the ingenuity hitherto spent in eluding learning being now directed to gaining it, he began to make real progress and find satisfaction in it. The comfort of being good dawned upon him once more, but still there was much to contend with; he had acquired such a habit of prevarication that, if by any means taken by surprise, his impulse was to avoid giving a straightforward answer, and when he recollected his sincerity, the truth came with the air of falsehood. Moreover, he was an arrant coward, and provoked tricks by his manifest and unreasonable terrors. It was no slight exercise of patience that Norman underwent, but this was the interest he had made for himself; and the recovery of the boy’s attachment, and his improvement, though slow, were a present recompense.

Ernescliffe, Larkins, and others of the boys, held fast to him, and after the first excitement was past, all the rest returned to their former tone. He was decidedly as much respected as ever, and, at the same time, regarded with more favour than when his strictness was resented. And as for the discipline of the school, that did not suffer. Anderson felt that, for his own credit, he must not allow the rules to be less observed than in May’s reign, and he enforced them upon the reluctant and angry boys with whom he had been previously making common cause. Dr. Hoxton boasted to the under-masters that the school had never been in such good order as under Anderson, little guessing that this was but reaping the fruits of a past victory, or that every boy in the whole school gave the highest place in their esteem to the deposed dux.

To Anderson, Norman’s cordial manner and ready support were the strangest part of all, only explained by thinking that he deemed it, as he tried to do himself, merely the fortune of war, and was sensible of no injury.

And, for Norman himself, when the first shock was over, and he was accustomed to the change, he found the cessation of vigilance a relief, and carried a lighter heart than any time since his mother’s death. His sisters could not help observing that there was less sadness in the expression of his eyes, that he carried his head higher, walked with freedom and elasticity of step, tossed and flourished the Daisy till she shouted and crowed, while Margaret shrank at such freaks; and, though he was not much of a laugher himself, contributed much sport in the way of bright apposite sayings to the home circle.

It was a very unexpected mode of cure for depression of spirits, but there could be no question that it succeeded; and when, a few Saturdays after, he drove Dr. May again to Groveswood to see young Mr. Lake, who was recovering, he brought Margaret home a whole pile of botanical curiosities, and drew his father into an animated battle over natural and Linnaean systems, which kept the whole party merry with the pros and cons every evening for a week.

Chapter XXIII

Oh! the golden-hearted daisies, Witnessed there before my youth, To the truth of things, with praises Of the beauty of the truth.--E. B. BROWNING.

“Margaret, see here.”

The doctor threw into her lap a letter, which made her cheeks light up.

Mr. Ernescliffe wrote that his father’s friend, Captain Gordon, having been appointed to the frigate Alcestis, had chosen him as one of his lieutenants, and offered a nomination as naval cadet for his brother. He had replied that the navy was not Hector’s destination, but, as Captain Gordon had no one else in view, had prevailed on him to pass on the proposal to Harry May.

Alan wrote in high terms of his captain, declaring that he esteemed the having sailed with him as one of the greatest advantages he had ever received, and adding that, for his own part, Dr. May needed no promise from him to be assured that he would watch over Harry like his own brother. It was believed that the Alcestis was destined for the South American station.

“A three years’ business,” said Dr. May, with a sigh. “But the thing is done, and this is as good as we can hope.”

“Far better!” said Margaret. “What pleasure it must have given him! Dear Harry could not sail under more favourable circumstances.”

“No, I would trust to Ernescliffe as I would to Richard. It is kindly done, and I will thank him at once. Where does he date from?”

“From Portsmouth. He does not say whether he has seen Harry.”

“I suppose he waited for my answer. Suppose I enclose a note for him to give to Harry. There will be rapture enough, and it is a pity he should not have the benefit of it.”

The doctor sat down to write, while Margaret worked and mused, perhaps on outfits and new shirts--perhaps on Harry’s lion-locks, beneath a blue cap and gold band, or, perchance, on the coral shoals of the Pacific.

It was one of the quiet afternoons, when all the rest were out, and which the doctor and his daughter especially valued, when they were able to spend one together without interruption. Soon, however, a ring at the door brought an impatient exclamation from the doctor; but his smile beamed out at the words, “Miss Rivers.” They were great friends; in fact, on terms of some mutual sauciness, though Meta was, as yet, far less at home with his daughters, and came in, looking somewhat shy.

“Ah, your congeners are gone out!” was the doctor’s reception. “You must put up with our sober selves.”

“Is Flora gone far?” asked Meta.

“To Cocksmoor,” said Margaret. “I am very sorry she has missed you.”

“Shall I be in your way?” said Meta timidly. “Papa has several things to do, and said he would call for me here.”

“Good luck for Margaret,” said Dr. May.

“So they are gone to Cocksmoor!” said Meta. “How I envy them!”

“You would not if you saw the place,” said Dr. May. “I believe Norman is very angry with me for letting them go near it.”

“Ah! but they are of real use there!”

“And Miss Meta is obliged to take to envying the black-hole of Cocksmoor, instead of being content with the eglantine bowers of Abbotstoke! I commiserate her!” said the doctor.

“If I did any good instead of harm at Abbotstoke!”

“Harm!” exclaimed Margaret.

“They went on very well without me,” said Meta; “but ever since I have had the class they have been getting naughtier and noisier every Sunday; and, last Sunday, the prettiest of all--the one I liked best, and had done everything for--she began to mimic me--held up her finger, as I did, and made them all laugh!”

“Well, that is very bad!” said Margaret; “but I suppose she was a very little one.”

“No, a quick clever one, who knew much better, about nine years old. She used to be always at home in the week, dragging about a great baby; and we managed that her mother should afford to stay at home and send her to school. It seemed such a pity her cleverness should be wasted.”

The doctor smiled. “Ah! depend upon it, the tyrant-baby was the best disciplinarian.”

Meta looked extremely puzzled.

“Papa means,” said Margaret, “that if she was inclined to be conceited, the being teased at home might do her more good than being brought forward at school.”

“I have done everything wrong, it seems,” said Meta, with a shade of what the French call depit. “I thought it must be right and good--but it has only done mischief; and now papa says they are an ungrateful set, and that, if it vexes me, I had better have no more to do with them!”

“It does not vex you so much as that, I hope,” said Margaret.

“Oh, I could not bear that!” said Meta; “but it is so different from what I thought!”

“Ah! you had an Arcadia of good little girls in straw hats, such as I see in Blanche’s little books,” said the doctor, “all making the young lady an oracle, and doing wrong--if they do it at all--in the simplest way, just for an example to the others.”

“Dr. May! How can you know so well? But do you really think it is their fault, or mine?”

“Do you think me a conjurer?”

“Well, but what do you think?”

“What do Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wilmot think?”

“I know Mrs. Wilmot thinks I spoil my class. She spoke to me about making favourites, and sometimes has seemed surprised at things which I have done. Last Sunday she told me she thought I had better have a steadier class, and I know whom she will give me--the great big, stupid ones, at the bottom of the first class! I do believe it is only out of good-nature that she does not tell me not to teach at all. I have a great mind I will not; I know I do nothing but harm.”

“What shall you say if I tell you I think so too?” asked the doctor.

“Oh, Dr. May, you don’t really? Now, does he, Miss May? I am sure I only want to do them good. I don’t know what I can have done.”

Margaret made her perceive that the doctor was smiling, and she changed her tone, and earnestly begged to be told what they thought of the case; for if she should show her concern at home, her father and governess would immediately beg her to cease from all connection with the school, and she did not feel at all convinced that Mrs. Wilmot liked to have her there. Feeling injured by the implied accusation of mismanagement, yet, with a sense of its truth, used to be petted, and new to rebuffs, yet with a sincere wish to act rightly, she was much perplexed by this, her first reverse, and had come partly with the view of consulting Flora, though she had fallen on other counsellors.

“Margaret, our adviser general,” said the doctor, “what do you say? Put yourself in the place of Mrs. Charles Wilmot, and say, shall Miss Rivers teach or not?”

“I had rather you would, papa.”

“Not I--I never kept school.”

“Well, then, I being Mrs. Wilmot, should certainly be mortified if Miss Rivers deserted me because the children were naughty. I think, I think I had rather she came and asked me what she had better do.”

“And you would answer ‘teach,’ for fear of vexing her,” said Meta.

“I should, and also for the sake of letting her learn to teach.”

“The point where only trial shows one’s ignorance,” said Dr. May.

“But I don’t want to do it for my own sake,” said Meta. “I do everything for my own sake already.”

“For theirs, then,” said the doctor. “If teaching will not come by nature, you must serve an apprenticeship, if you mean to be of service in that line. Perhaps it was the gift that the fairies omitted.”

“But will it do any good to them?”

“I can’t tell; but I am sure it would do them harm for you to give it up, because it is disagreeable.”

“Well,” said Meta, with a sigh, “I’ll go and talk to Mrs. Wilmot. I could not bear to give up anything that seems right just now, because of the Confirmation.”

Margaret eagerly inquired, and it appeared that the bishop had given notice for a Confirmation in August, and that Mr. Wilmot was already beginning to prepare his candidates, whilst Mr. Ramsden, always tardy, never gave notice till the last moment possible. The hope was expressed that Harry might be able to profit by this opportunity; and Harry’s prospects were explained to Meta; then the doctor, recollecting something that he wished to say to Mr. Rivers, began to ask about the chance of his coming before the time of an engagement of his own.

“He said he should be here at about half-past four,” said Meta. “He is gone to the station to inquire about the trains. Do you know what time the last comes in?”

“At nine forty-five,” said the doctor.

“That is what we were afraid of. It is for Bellairs, my maid. Her mother is very ill, and she is afraid she is not properly nursed. It is about five miles from the Milbury Station, and we thought of letting her go with a day-ticket to see about her. She could go in the morning, after I am up; but I don’t know what is to be done, for she could not get back before I dress for dinner.”

Margaret felt perfectly aghast at the cool tone, especially after what had passed.

“It would be quite impossible,” said the doctor. “Even going by the eight o’clock train, and returning by the last, she would only have two hours to spare--short enough measure for a sick mother.”

“Papa means to give her whatever she wants for any nurse she may get.”

“Is there no one with her mother now?”

“A son’s wife, who, they think, is not kind. Poor Bellairs was so grateful for being allowed to go home. I wonder if I could dress for once without her?”

“Do you know old Crabbe?” said the doctor.

“The dear old man at Abbotstoke? Oh, yes, of course.”

“There was a very sad case in his family. The mother was dying of a lingering illness, when the son met with a bad accident. The only daughter was a lady’s-maid, and could not be spared, though the brother was half crazy to see her, and there was no one to tend them but a wretch of a woman, paid by the parish. The poor fellow kept calling for his sister in his delirium, and, at last, I could not help writing to the mistress.”

“Did she let her come?” said Meta, her cheek glowing.

“As a great favour, she let her set out by the mail train, after dressing her for a ball, with orders to return in time for her toilette for an evening party the next day.”

“Oh, I remember,” said Margaret, “her coming here at five in the morning, and your taking her home.”

“And when we got to Abbotstoke the brother was dead. That parish nurse had not attended to my directions, and, I do believe, was the cause of it. The mother had had a seizure, and was in the most precarious state.”

“Surely she stayed!”

“It was as much as her place was worth,” said the doctor; “and her wages were the chief maintenance of the family. So she had to go back to dress her mistress, while the old woman lay there, wailing after Betsy. She did give warning then, but, before the month was out, the mother was dead.”

Meta did not speak, and Dr. May presently rose, saying he should try to meet Mr. Rivers in the town, and went out. Meta sat thoughtful, and at last, sighing, said, “I wonder whether Bellairs’s mother is so very ill? I have a great mind to let Susan try to do my hair, and let Bellairs stay a little longer. I never thought of that.”

“I do not think you will be sorry,” said Margaret.

“Yes, I shall, for if my hair does not look nice, papa will not be pleased, and there is Aunt Leonora coming. How odd it will be to be without Bellairs! I will ask Mrs. Larpent.”

“Oh, yes!” said Margaret. “You must not think we meant to advise; but papa has seen so many instances of distress, from servants not spared to their friends in illness, that he feels strongly on the subject.”

“And I really might have been as cruel as that woman!” said Meta. “Well, I hope Mrs. Bellairs may be better, and able to spare her daughter. I don’t know what will become of me without her.”

“I think it will have been a satisfaction in one way,” said Margaret.

“In what way?”

“Don’t you remember what you began by complaining of, that you could not be of use? Now, I fancy this would give you the pleasure of undergoing a little personal inconvenience for the good of another.”

Meta looked half puzzled, half thoughtful, and Margaret, who was a little uneasy at the style of counsel she found herself giving, changed the conversation.

It was a memorable one to little Miss Rivers, opening out to her, as did almost all her meetings with that family, a new scope for thought and for duty. The code to which she had been brought up taught that servants were the machines of their employer’s convenience. Good-nature occasioned much kindliness of manner and intercourse, and every luxury and indulgence was afforded freely; but where there was any want of accordance between the convenience of the two parties, there was no question. The master must be the first object, the servants’ remedy was in their own hands.

Amiable as was Mr. Rivers, this, merely from indulgence and want of reflection, was his principle; and his daughter had only been acting on it, though she did not know it, till the feelings that she had never thought of were thus displayed before her. These were her first practical lessons that life was not meant to be passed in pleasing ourselves, and being good-natured at small cost.

It was an effort. Meta was very dependent, never having been encouraged to be otherwise, and Bellairs was like a necessary of life in her estimation; but strength of principle came to aid her naturally kind-hearted feeling, and she was pleased by the idea of voluntarily undergoing a privation so as to test her sincerity.

So when her father told her of the inconvenient times of the trains, and declared that Bellairs must give it up, she answered by proposing to let her sleep a night or two there, gaily promised to manage very well, and satisfied him.

Her maid’s grateful looks and thanks recompensed her when she made the offer to her, and inspirited her to an energetic coaxing of Mrs. Larpent, who, being more fully aware than her father of the needfulness of the lady’s-maid, and also very anxious that her darling should appear to the best advantage before the expected aunt, Lady Leonora Langdale, was unwilling to grant more than one night at the utmost.

Meta carried the day, and her last assurance to Bellairs was that she might stay as long as seemed necessary to make her mother comfortable.

Thereupon Meta found herself more helpful in some matters than she had expected, but at a loss in others. Susan, with all Mrs. Larpent’s supervision, could not quite bring her dress to the air that was so peculiarly graceful and becoming; and she often caught her papa’s eye looking at her as if he saw something amiss, and could not discover what it was. Then came Aunt Leonora, always very kind to Meta, but the dread of the rest of the household, whom she was wont to lecture on the proper care of her niece. Miss Rivers was likely to have a considerable fortune, and Lady Leonora intended her to be a very fashionable and much admired young lady, under her own immediate protection.

The two cousins, Leonora and Agatha, talked to her; the one of her balls, the other of her music--patronised her, and called her their good little cousin--while they criticised the stiff set of those unfortunate plaits made by Susan, and laughed, as if it was an unheard-of concession, at Bellairs’s holiday.

Nevertheless, when “Honoured Miss” received a note, begging for three days’ longer grace, till a niece should come, in whom Bellairs could place full confidence, she took it on herself to return free consent. Lady Leonora found out what she had done, and reproved her, telling her it was only the way to make “those people” presume, and Mrs. Larpent was also taken to task; but, decidedly, Meta did not regret what she had done, though she felt as if she had never before known how to appreciate comfort, when she once more beheld Bellairs stationed at her toilette table.

Meta was asked about her friends. She could not mention any one but Mrs. Charles Wilmot and the Misses May.

“Physician’s daughters; oh!” said Lady Leonora.

And she proceeded to exhort Mr. Rivers to bring his daughter to London, or its neighbourhood, where she might have masters, and be in the way of forming intimacies suited to her connections.

Mr. Rivers dreaded London--never was well there, and did not like the trouble of moving--while Meta was so attached to the Grange, that she entreated him not to think of leaving it, and greatly dreaded her aunt’s influence. Lady Leonora did, indeed, allow that the Grange was a very pretty place; her only complaint was the want of suitable society for Meta; she could not bear the idea of her growing accustomed--for want of something better--to the vicar’s wife and the pet doctor’s daughters.

Flora had been long desirous to effect a regular call at Abbotstoke, and it was just now that she succeeded. Mrs. Charles Wilmot’s little girl was to have a birthday feast, at which Mary, Blanche, and Aubrey were to appear. Flora went in charge of them, and as soon as she had safely deposited them, and appointed Mary to keep Aubrey out of mischief, she walked up to the Grange, not a whit daunted by the report of the very fine ladies who were astonishing the natives of Abbotstoke.

She was admitted, and found herself in the drawing-room, with a quick lively-looking lady, whom she perceived to be Lady Leonora, and who instantly began talking to her very civilly. Flora was never at a loss, and they got on extremely well; her ease and self-possession, without forwardness, telling much to her advantage. Meta came in, delighted to see her, but, of course, the visit resulted in no really intimate talk, though it was not without effect. Flora declared Lady Leonora Langdale to be a most charming person; and Lady Leonora, on her side, asked Meta who was that very elegant conversible girl. “Flora May,” was the delighted answer, now that the aunt had committed herself by commendation. And she did not retract it; she pronounced Flora to be something quite out of the common way, and supposed that she had had unusual advantages.

Mr. Rivers took care to introduce to his sister-in-law Dr. May (who would fain have avoided it), but ended by being in his turn pleased and entertained by her brilliant conversation, which she put forth for him, as her instinct showed her that she was talking to a man of high ability. A perfect gentleman she saw him to be, and making out some mutual connections far up in the family tree of the Mackenzies, she decided that the May family were an acquisition, and very good companions for her niece at present, while not yet come out. So ended the visit, with this great triumph for Meta, who had a strong belief in Aunt Leonora’s power and infallibility, and yet had not consulted her about Bellairs, nor about the school question.

She had missed one Sunday’s school on account of her aunt’s visit, but the resolution made beside Margaret’s sofa had not been forgotten. She spent her Saturday afternoon in a call on Mrs. Wilmot, ending with a walk through the village; she confessed her ignorance, apologised for her blunders, and put herself under the direction which once she had fancied too strict and harsh to be followed.

And on Sunday she was content to teach the stupid girls, and abstain from making much of the smooth-faced engaging set. She thought it very dull work, but she could feel that it was something not done to please herself; and whereas her father had feared she would be dull when her cousins were gone, he found her more joyous than ever.

There certainly was a peculiar happiness about Margaret Rivers; her vexations were but ripples, rendering the sunny course of her life more sparkling, and each exertion in the way of goodness was productive of so much present joy that the steps of her ladder seemed, indeed, to be of diamonds.

Her ladder--for she was, indeed, mounting upwards. She was very earnest in her Confirmation preparation, most anxious to do right and to contend with her failings; but the struggle at present was easy; and the hopes, joys, and incentives shone out more and more upon her in this blithe stage of her life.

She knew there was a dark side, but hope and love were more present to her than was fear. Happy those to whom such young days are granted.