V. WORKING FOR BREAD…

V. WORKING FOR BREAD

'Parson's lass 'ant nowt, an' she weant 'a nowt when 'e's dead; Mun be a guvness, lad, or summut, an' addle her bread.' Tennyson.

'Tell, little one,' said Mr. Rugg, the doctor, as he found Geraldine on the landing-place outside her mother's room, and spoke to her in a voice that to her reluctant ears, as well as to those of Sister Constance, who followed him, sounded all the more vulgar because it was low, wheedling, and confidential; 'you are always about the house, you know everything--what accident has your mamma met with?'

Cherry's face grew set.

'She has, then,' said the doctor, looking at Sister Constance. 'I thought so. Now, be a good child, and tell us all about it.'

'I cannot,' she said.

'Come, don't be silly and sulk. No one will punish you; we know it was an accident; out with it.'

'My dear,' said Sister Constance, 'this is a pity. Much may depend on your speaking.'

Cherry began to cry very piteously, though still silently.

'Yes, yes, we see you are sorry,' said Mr. Rugg, 'but there's nothing for it now but to let us hear the truth.'

She shook her head violently, and brow and neck turned crimson.

Mr. Rugg grew angered, and tried a sharper tone. 'Miss Geraldine, this is regular naughtiness. Let me hear directly.'

The flush became purple, and something like 'I won't' came from behind the handkerchief.

'Leave her to me, if you please,' said Sister Constance gently; 'I think she will tell me what is right to be told.'

'As you please, Lady Somerville,' said Mr. Rugg, who, since he had discovered her title, was always barbarously misusing it; 'but the thing must be told. It is doing Mrs. Underwood a serious injury to let childish naughtiness conceal the truth.'

Constance put her arm round the little girl, a tiny weight for thirteen years old, and took her into the room where she had last seen her father. She was sobbing violently, not without passion, and the more distressingly because she carefully stifled every sound, and the poor little frame seemed as if it would be rent to pieces. 'Cherry, dear child, don't,' said Constance, sitting down and gathering her into her arms; 'do try and calm yourself, and think--'

'He--he--I won't tell him!' sobbed the child. 'He's a bad man--he tells stories. He said he would not hurt me--when he knew he should most terribly. Papa said it was very wrong. Papa was quite angry--he called it deceiving, he did! I won't tell him!'

'My dear child, is there anything to tell? Don't think about him, think about what is good for your mother.'

'She told me not,' sobbed Cherry, but not with the anger there had been before. 'No, no, don't ask me; she told me not.'

'Your mother? My dear little girl, whatever it is, you ought to say it. Your dear mother seems to be too ill and confused to recollect everything herself, and if it is not known whether she has been hurt, how can anything be done for her?'

Cherry sat upon her friend's lap, and with a very heaving chest said, 'If Felix says I ought--then I will. Papa said we should mind Felix-- like him.'

'I will call Felix,' said Sister Constance.

Mr. Rugg looked very impatient of the delay; but Felix, who had just come in to dinner, was summoned. He came at once, and was soon standing by Geraldine's chair.

'Yes, Geraldine, I think you ought to tell,' he said, as the loyal little thing gazed up at her new monarch. 'What did happen?'

'It was on the day after New Year's Day,' said Geraldine, now speaking very fast. 'You were all at church, and she came out of--this room with Bernard in her arms--and called to me that I might come and sit with--him, because she was going down to the kitchen to make some beef-tea. And just then she put her foot into a loop of whip-cord, and fell. She could not save herself at all, because of Bernard; but she went backwards--against the steps.'

'Did she seem hurt at the time?'

'I did not think so. She pulled herself up by the baluster before I could get up to help her, and she never let Bernard go all the time--he did not even scream. She only said, "Now mind, Cherry, do not say one word of this to Papa or anybody else," and she told me she wasn't hurt. Oh! was she really?' as the Sister left the room.

'I wonder whose the string was,' said Felix vindictively.

'Oh, never mind! He'll be so sorry! Oh! I hope she won't be very much vexed at my telling!'

'She will not mind now!' said Felix; 'it was only not to frighten Papa.'

And Felix had his little sister in that one position where she felt a sort of comfort--like a baby in his arms to be rocked--when Sister Constance returned with the doctor. He spoke without either the anger or the persuasive tone now, and Cherry could bear it better, though she slipped off her brother's lap instantly, and stood up in dignity.

'So your Mamma told you to conceal this mishap. That is some excuse. Now, tell me, how far did she fall?'

'Not more than four steps, I am sure--I think three.'

'And backwards?'

'Yes.'

'Do you think she struck her head?'

'Yes, the back of it.'

'Ah! And she spoke and moved at once, not like one stunned?'

'Oh no, not at all. She got up and made the beef-tea.'

'The 2nd of January! That must have been about the time you began to observe that change of manner--the irritability your sister remarked,' said the doctor, turning to Felix.

He nodded, angry as he had been with Alda for remarking it.

All that the doctor further said was, that he must have another examination now that he knew a little more about the case; and he went away with Sister Constance, saying to her, 'Mrs. Underwood is a lady of wonderful fortitude and resolution, and really they are the worst kind of patients.'

It was now more than a fortnight since that 6th of January which saw the birth of the twins and the death of their father, and Mrs. Underwood still lay quiet and almost torpid in her bed, seldom speaking, hardly ever originating anything, and apparently taking no interest whatsoever in anything outside her room; and yet there was no symptom unfavourable to her recovery to be detected. Within the last day or two they had tried to rouse her; papers had been brought to her to sign, and she did so obediently, but she did not follow the subject: she did not refuse, but did not second, any proposal for her beginning to sit up; and this was the more remarkable, as, being a woman of much health and energy in her quiet way, she had always recovered rapidly, and filled her place in the family alarmingly soon. The nurse had begun to suspect that besides the torpor of mind there was some weakness of limb; and with the new lights acquired, Mr. Rugg had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that there was a slight concussion of the spine, causing excitement at first, and now more serious consequences; and though he did not apprehend present danger, he thought complete recovery very doubtful.

'So they are almost worse than orphans,' said Sister Constance, when the Curate went down from reading to the invalid, and she could tell him the verdict.

'Do they know?'

'The fact? There is no need to lay the future on the shoulders of the present.'

'A very dark present. I feel as if a great bright sun, warming and invigorating, had gone out of my life. Yet I knew him but two years.'

'I can understand it, though I knew him but two days.'

'I hope he may have been the making of me,' sighed Mr. Audley. 'He ought to be.'

'I think he has been,' said she, smiling. 'There is some difference between you and the boyish young deacon that came here two years ago.'

'Who thought life without shooting barely endurable by the help of croquet! I trust so! He was very patient and tolerant--made holidays for me that first summer which it cuts me to recollect.'

'To live and share in a great sorrow does make a great step in life,' said Constance, thoughtfully looking at the much graver and more earnest brow of her husband's young cousin; 'and you were a comfort to them all as no one else could be.'

'Must you go?' he said. 'I wanted to consult you. I am thinking of giving up my present lodgings to this Mowbray Smith, who is coming as curate, and coming here.'

'Here! My dear Charles!'

'I thought I had heard legends of twelve foot square?'

'Not with thirteen children. Besides, we were seasoned!'

'Stay; you don't understand. There are three rooms on this floor. Poor Mrs. Underwood will hardly want to occupy these two just yet. I take them, and put in some furniture--live to myself, but let them board and lodge me. They may as well have what is to be made by it as any one else.'

'But can they? And, forgive me, Charles, are you prepared for the cookery here? Really, some of those children have appetites so small, that I can't bear to see them at dinner.'

'That's the very point. They all say the invaluable Sibby is as good a nurse as she is bad as a cook. Now, if they have no help, Wilmet must stay at home to look after her mother and the twins; and that is not fit for such a young girl. Now, my coming might enable them to get some one who knows the use of meat and fires, and would send upstairs the only woman who would undertake such a charge as that must be.'

'I don't like to say a word against it. It seems excellent for them.'

'I would not live with them, but I should be there to help. I could keep Felix up in his Latin, and--'

'Only one suggestion more, Charles. If you do not stay here long?'

'Well--if not, every week I am here is so much tided over; and just at this time the charge must be heaviest. Those boys may be disposed of after a time.'

'I wish we could keep those two little girls at St. Faith's, but there is no place yet for children of their class. I am wanted there this day week, and I cannot say but that I shall be glad to leave you here. Only, I recollect your mother's feelings.'

'Mothers must draw in the horns of their feelings when their sons are ordained,' he said, laughing. 'I shall consult that notable person, Wilmet.'

Wilmet started and blushed with pleasure. It would be so much less dreary; and, poor girl! she was feeling as if she were half rent asunder at the thought of Alda's going. So good for Felix, too. Only she must ask Mamma. And she did ask Mamma, and, to her great pleasure, Mrs. Underwood listened, and said, 'It is very kind.'

'And shall it be, Mamma?'

'I shall like for you to have some one in the house. Yes, my dear, I think--' then she paused. 'My dear, you and Sibby and Sister Constance had better talk it over. I do not seem able to consider it. But Sister Constance will tell you. My dear Wilmet, I am afraid you must have a great deal laid on you.'

'Oh, never mind, Mamma; I like doing things. Besides, you are so much better.'

'I'll try to help you more,' added Mrs. Underwood wistfully. 'Which room did you say?'

And she listened, and even made a few suggestions, as Wilmet explained how she thought of making a sitting-room upstairs, and giving the two downstairs front ones to Mr. Audley, using the back room for the boys and children; she was altogether so much more open to comprehension, and ready to speak, that Wilmet was full of hope and assurance that she was really mending.

When Sister Constance came in, the readiness to converse continued. She consulted her friend on the scheme, and its expedience for Mr. Audley, saying that she feared he would be uncomfortable; but she could not reject so great a help for her children. She had even thought of the advantage of keeping Sibby upstairs to attend on the babies and herself--work not fit to rest entirely on Wilmet, though the good girl had fully counted on giving up her work at school.

It was evident that the examination by the doctor and Wilmet's consultation had thoroughly roused her, and she was as clear-headed as ever. Indeed, it seemed to Sister Constance that she was a little excited, and in that mood in which the most silent and reserved people suddenly become the most unreserved.

She was asked at last what Mr. Rugg thought of her, and Sister Constance in reply asked whether she remembered her accident. She thought a little. 'Why--yes--I believe I did slip on the stairs; but it did not hurt me, and I forgot it. Does he think anything of it?'

'I think he fears you gave yourself a shock.'

'Not unlikely,' she said in an indifferent tone, and did not speak again for some minutes; then said, 'Yes, I see! I am thankful it did not tell on me sooner,' and her look brought the tears into Constance's eyes.

'It told more than you did,' said Constance, endeavouring at a smile.

'Not on the babies,' she said; 'and he never knew it, so there is no harm done! Thank God!'

She lay a little longer, and Constance thought her going into her usual state of torpor; but she roused herself to say, 'Would you kindly look into that desk? You will find a green book.'

'Yes.'

'Please tear out the leaves, and burn it for me. I would not have one of the children see it on any account.'

Constance began to obey, and saw that it was a diary. 'Are you sure it ought to be done?' she asked. 'Might it not be better to wait till you are better?'

'I cannot tell that I shall be much less helpless. I know how things like this go,' she said.

Constance was still reluctant, and Mrs. Underwood added, 'I will tell you. It is nothing good, I assure you. When we drove from the door at Vale Leston, the home of all our lives, he turned to me and said, "Now, Mary, that page is shut for ever. Let us never speak a word to make the children or ourselves feel turned out of paradise." And I never did; but, oh! I wrote it. There are pages on pages of repinings there--I could not let them see it!'

'Nay, but you were resigned.'

'Resigned! What of that? I held my tongue! It was all I could do! I never knew things could be worse till I saw it was killing him, and then all I could do was still to keep silence.'

There was an agony in her voice that Constance had never heard there before.

'Silence was, no doubt--as things were--an exceeding kindness to him,' said Constance, 'and one that must have cost you much.'

'Once--once, so tenderly, with tears in his eyes, he did beg me as a favour not to complain, or talk of Fulbert Underwood! I did not; but I never could be the companion I was before to him. He was always happy, he did believe me so; but I could often only smile. If I talked, it could only have been of his health and our cares.'

'You kept him happy by taking the weight so entirely to yourself.'

'Perhaps; if he had only known how miserable it made me, we might have moved to a healthier place; but after that one time, I never could vex him or trust myself. To hear him console me and grieve for me, was worst of all.'

Constance began to see how the whole woman, brought up to affluence, had been suddenly crushed by the change; and almost the more so for her husband's high and cheerful resolution, which had forced back her feelings into herself. Her powers had barely sufficed for the cares of her household and her numerous family, and her endurance had consisted in 'suffering, and being still.' No murmur had escaped, but only by force of silence. She had not weakened his energies by word or look of repining; but while his physical life was worn out by toil and hardship, her mental life had almost been extinguished in care, drudgery, and self-control; and all his sweetness, tenderness, and cheerfulness had not been able to do more than just to enable her to hold out, without manifesting her suffering. Enid had been a very suitable name for her; though without a Geraint in any respect to blame for what she underwent, she had borne all in the same silent and almost hopeless spirit, and with the same unfailing calm temper: but outside her own house, she had never loved nor taken real interest in anything since the day she drove from the door of Vale Leston; she had merely forced herself to seem to do so, rather than disappoint her eager husband and children.

And now, how much of her torpor had been collapse, how much the effect of the accident, could not be guessed. She herself was greatly roused for the present, dwelt on the necessity of trying to get up the next day, and was altogether in a state excitable enough to make the Sister anxious.

Other troubles too there were that evening, which made all feel that even though Mr. Audley was to live to himself, his presence in the house would be no small comfort.

Fulbert, never the most manageable of the party, had procured a piece of wood from the good-natured carpenter, and was making a sparrow-trap on an improved plan, when Wilmet, impatient to have the room clear for Mr. Audley to come for the final decision--as he was to do in the evening--anxious to clear away the intolerable litter, and with more anxiety for Fulbert's holiday task than for the sparrows, ordered him to bed--ten minutes too early, and in too peremptory a tone.

Fulbert did not stir.

'Fulbert, I say, clear up that litter, and go to bed.'

'Don't you hear, Fulbert?' said Felix, looking up from his book.

Fulbert gave a pull to the newspaper that was spread under his works on the table, and sent all his chips and saw-dust on the ground.

'O Fulbert! how naughty!' broke out Alda.

'Fulbert, are you going to mind?' asked Wilmet. 'Please remember.'

'I shall go in proper time,' growled Fulbert.

'That is not the way to speak to your sister,' interposed Felix, with authority.

Fulbert eyed him defiantly all over.

Felix rose up from his chair, full of wrath and indignation. There was quite difference enough in their size and strength to give him the complete mastery, for Fulbert was only ten years old; but Wilmet, dreading nothing so much as a scuffle and outcry, sprang up, imploring, 'O Felix! remember, Mamma is wide awake to-night. Let him alone--pray, let him alone.'

Felix was thoroughly angry, and kept his hands off with exceeding difficulty. 'Little sneak,' he said; 'he chooses to take advantage.'

'He always was a sneak; his nose is the shape of it,' said Edgar.

As Felix and Wilmet had the sense to let this amiable observation drop, Edgar contented himself with making some physiognomical outlines of sneaks' noses on a slate; and silence prevailed till the church clock struck the half-hour, when Clement got up, and taking the slate, where he had been solacing himself with imitating Edgar's caricatures, he was about to make it an impromptu dust-pan, and went down on his knees to sweep up Fulbert's malicious litter, but was rewarded with a vicious kick on the cheek. It was under the table, out of sight; and Clement, like a true son of his mother, made no sign, but went off to bed like a Spartan.

'Fulbert,' said Lance, rising to follow his example, 'it is time now.'

He still sat on; and Felix, in intolerable wrath and vexation, found himself making such deep bites into a pencil, that he threw it from him with shame, just as Mr. Audley's bell sounded, and he ran down to let him in.

'Now, Ful,' said Wilmet coaxingly, 'please go--or Mr. Audley will see.'

'Let him.'

Mr. Audley was there in a moment, and the next, Alda, in all the ruffle of offended dignity, was telling him that Fulbert was in one of his tempers, and would attend to nobody. Fulbert's back looked it. It evidently intended to remain in that obstinate curve till midnight.

'I am sorry,' said Mr. Audley, 'I thought no one would have added to the distress of the house! What is it, Fulbert?' he added, laying his hand on his shoulder, and signing to Alda to hold her peace.

'They bother,' said Fulbert, in the sulky tone; but still, as he regarded the new-comer as less of an enemy than the rest--'I'd have gone at half-past eight if they would let a fellow alone.'

'Then the fellow had better give them no right to bother,' said Mr. Audley. 'Come, Fulbert, no ship can sail unless the crew obey. No mutiny. Here's your captain ready to shake hands and wish you good-night.'

Fulbert could not face Mr. Audley's determined look, but he was not conquered. He took up his tools and his trap, gave a final puff to spread his sawdust farther, and marched off without a single good-night.

'He has the worst temper of us all,' cried Alda.

'You should be very cautious of provoking him,' said Mr. Audley.

'I am afraid it was my fault,' sighed Wilmet.

'Nonsense,' said Felix; 'he is an obstinate little dog. I wish I was licking him. I hope he is not pitching into Clem!'

'Clem is the biggest,' said Alda.

'Yes, but he is much the meekest,' added Wilmet.

'Tina's meek sauce is aggravation, itself,' observed Edgar. 'I should hope he was catching it!'

'He is certainly not slow to put in his oar,' said Mr. Audley; 'did you hear of his performance in the vestry the other day?'

'No. I hope he did not make an unusual ass of himself,' said Felix.

'He and Mowbray Smith had last Tuesday's Evensong nearly to themselves, when Master Clem not only assisted Smith in putting on his hood, but expressed his doubts as to the correctness of it (never, of course, having seen any bachelor's but Oxford or Cambridge), and further gave him some good advice as to his manner of intoning.'

'I hope he won't go on in that way at St. Matthew's!' exclaimed Wilmet.

'It is lucky he is going so soon,' said Mr. Audley. 'I doubt if Mowbray Smith will ever get over it!'

'Regular snob that he is,' said Edgar; 'just one of my Lady's sort! What did he do? Go crying to her?'

'O Edgar!' remonstrated Wilmet.

'Well, Mettie, if even our spiritual pastors will be snobs, one must have the relief of expressing one's opinion now and then.'

'I should say it was better to keep any such fact out of one's mind as much as might be,' said Mr. Audley, feeling himself unable to deny what had been so broadly expressed.

'And we, at any rate, had better drop talking of snobs,' said Felix.

'Hollo, Felix! I am sure you for one would not be a snob if you had turned chimney-sweeper, and let Tom Underwood nail me to his office; he'll never make one of me!'

'I trust so,' said Felix; 'but it is not the way to keep from it to throw about the word at other folks.'

'What's that?' cried Alda. 'Really, that boy must be falling upon some of them.'

It was Lance, in great deshabille, who, opening a crack of the door, called cautiously, 'Wilmet, please come here.'

Wilmet hastily obeyed, saying anxiously, as the door was shut, 'Never mind, dear Lance, he's in a horrid mood; but do bear it, and not make Felix more in a rage.'

'Bosh about Ful,' said Lance unceremoniously. 'It is Cherry; she is crying so upstairs, and Clem and I can't get a word out of her.'

Cherry, though older than the boys, had to precede them in vanishing for the night, as her undressing was a long operation dependent upon Sibby. Wilmet ran up in haste, and did indeed find poor little Geraldine with her face smothered under the clothes in an agony of weeping, very serious for so frail a little creature.

'Cherry! Cherry, dear, don't! Are you feeling solitary? Are you missing him? Oh, don't! Yes, dear, 'tis so sad; but we all do love you so.'

Wilmet would have kissed and fondled her, but the child almost thrust her away.

'Not that. Oh, not that! I wish it was.'

'My dear Cherry, you can't have been naughty!'

'Yes, yes! indeed I have. And now--'

'I can't think--O Cherry, if you would only tell me what you mean!' cried Wilmet, aghast.

And with agonised sobs, Cherry whispered, 'Mr. Rugg--O Mettie--such things as I said about him to Sister Constance--I made sure I had forgiven--long ago--and now--now, after that.'

If Wilmet had not known how deeply both Geraldine and her father had resented what Mr. Rugg had meant as a little friendly gloss to save terror before a painful operation, she would have been utterly at a loss. And now, she found herself incapable by any argument or caress of soothing her sister's sense of heinous offence; for that rite, of which she had partaken with her father, had required charity with all men, and now she found she had been deceitful--she hated Mr. Rugg all the time. Oh, what should she do! how could she be so wicked!

Wilmet tried to tell her that she had not known how it was at the time, but this seemed no comfort; and it was plain that that day's solemnity had lessened the inequality between the two girls so much, that for Wilmet to console her as a child was vain; and indeed, her invalid state and constant companionship with her father had rendered her religious feeling much more excitable, and more developed, than were as yet Wilmet's; and meantime, this piteous sobbing and weeping was doing great bodily harm.

Wilmet at last, hearing a door open as if the nurse were taking Sister Constance's place, ran down to take counsel with that kind friend on the way. She whispered her trouble on the stairs, and the Sister was soon kneeling over the little bed; but her comfort was not persuading the child to think less of the fault, but promising that she should tell all to Mr. Audley to-morrow.

Nay, seeing that even this was too long hence for the 'weary soul, and burdened sore,' to look forward to--indeed, that the preparation for the interview would be sleep-destroying--she said, 'Then you shall see him at once, my dear.'

Wilmet opened her eyes in dismay. That little attic, bare of all but beds, was her thought; but Sister Constance, ever an effective woman, had the little black frock, the shoes and stockings, on in no time, and throwing a shawl over all, actually gathered the small light frame up into her arms, and carried her down to the fire in the room now vacated by the nurses and babies. And there she fetched Mr. Audley to her. 'It will not do,' she whispered on the way to Wilmet, 'to treat her as a child now.'

'He always made so much of her,' sighed Wilmet.

'Yes; and now she is a Communicant.'

They left her to Mr. Audley, and presently, when the door opened again, it was he who was carrying her upstairs again; and when Sister Constance had taken possession of her, she whispered, 'Yes, thank you. He says I may come on Sunday, and I think it is forgiven. I shall say a prayer about charity always now!' And with a deep sigh, the worn-out little penitent lay down to her sleep.

'O Mr. Audley, it is plain we cannot do without you,' sighed Wilmet, as she came down, not without tears in her eyes.

And then came the conference upon ways and means, rooms and attendance. Mr. Audley had parted with his horse and groom in the autumn, observing that they ate their heads off; and the terms he now proposed for lodging, board, and attendance were what Felix and Wilmet would have known to be wondrously liberal but for their inexperience, especially as he meant to send in some, at least, of the furniture. He was to have his meals, at his own times, in his sitting-room; and Sister Constance had a person in her eye at Dearport, who was likely to do well in the kitchen, and not quarrel with Sibby.

Wilmet had made up her mind that she must remain at home all day, and had even told Miss Pearson so; but that good lady had refused to accept her resignation, and had come to Mr. Bevan about it; and now both the Sister and the Curate united in telling her that she ought not, as long as it was possible, to give up this means of improving herself, as well as lessening the family burthen. To give up her education now would be to sink into a housewifely drudge, who would hardly be able to maintain herself when the younger ones would be getting out into the world; and as Geraldine must stay at home to be a companion to her mother, there was no need for her being also always in attendance, while Sibby was equal to the charge. Indeed, Mrs. Underwood herself had said something that showed her to contemplate Wilmet's remaining at school.

'You must,' said Felix decidedly. 'Why, you might as well turn nursery-girl at once.'

'I should like it,' said Wilmet. 'I shall be miserable at school--always thinking something is going wrong. And Cherry can never bear with the babies! Oh! please don't tell me I must.'

'I tell you to begin,' said Sister Constance. 'You can always give it up if you feel that the need lies at home; but I think the few hours' change every day--for duty's sake, mind--will give you vigour not to be worn down by the home cares.'

'But Cherry will have them always! She who cares for books and drawing so much more than I!'

'Yes; but if you go on learning, you can teach her,' said Sister Constance.

'Oh!' cried Wilmet; 'Cherry knows more than I do.'

'Little Cherry is the cleverest of us all,' added Felix.

'Still,' said the Sister, 'the mere going over your work with you will give her change and interest. I do feel strongly convinced, dear Wilmet, that to shut yourself up with her, without gathering anything from elsewhere, would be very bad for both.'

'We must see how Mamma is, and how Cherry gets on,' was all that Wilmet would say, but the arrangement was made, and was to take effect in ten days' time, when Mr. Mowbray Smith was coming to be second curate, and Sister Constance must change places with the three absent children, and Alda would be gone to her adopted home.

Then Mr. Audley took leave; and as Felix went to the front door with him, he said, 'Forgive me, Felix; but I am a younger brother myself, and I do hope you do not mean to assert your authority by licking.'

Felix coloured a little; and though he spoke respectfully, it was with some little annoyance. 'There is nothing else that does with Fulbert.'

'Stay, Felix; I am not questioning that he may be the sort of boy for whom flogging may be good from some one.'

'He is!' said Felix. 'He never will behave himself till he has felt his master! It has been so at school; and once, even my father made himself quite ill for a week with having to flog Fulbert for disobedience. It settled him; but he is not like the others--Clem and Lance are not any trouble; but--I know it will come to it sooner or later; Ful will never mind me or Wilmet till I have done it once.'

'And when his strength is equal to yours?'

'Then I hope he will have more sense.'

'Yes, Felix; but what if by forcing him into dogged submission by your bodily strength you have lost his confidence, and have no moral power over him? Things that can be borne from a father come very differently from a brother.'

Felix was quite crimson now. 'But what shall I do, Mr. Audley, when he defies Wilmet, and teases Cherry and the little ones?'

'Try all you can with his better sense, but don't anger him by tones of authority. What you think needful rule may seem to him domineering. And if necessary, call me. My blows will not leave the after rankling that yours will, even if they are necessary.'

Felix sighed. He was not desirous of beating his brother in the main; but being unhappily master of the house, he was unwilling not to be so entirely. He wished Mr. Audley good-night, not in his most perfectly cordial tone.

However, the next morning he had brought himself to thank Mr. Audley.

'Thank you, Felix,' said the Curate; 'it is a great relief to me. I was afraid you thought you were going to bring a meddling fellow in upon you.'

Felix coloured, and with an effort--for which Mr. Audley liked him the better--said, 'I know I shall always deserve what advice you give me, and I hope another time I may take it better than the last.'

Soon after, one train carried away four of the young Underwoods to begin life elsewhere. The Thomas Underwoods had desired that Alda and Edgar should meet them at the station, and at Felix's entreaty had also undertaken to convoy Clement, who, thanks to Mr. Audley, was to be a chorister, and live in the clergy-house at St. Matthew's, Whittingtonia. It would have been Fulbert, only unluckily he had no ear, and so he was left at home, while Lady Price, Mrs. Thomas Underwood, and all the ladies they could enlist in their service, canvassed desperately, and made the cards of 'Fulbert James and Lancelot Oswald, sons of the Rev. Edward Fulbert Underwood, THIRTEEN children,' a weariness to every friend of a subscriber to clergy-orphan schools. Robina was not quite old enough to stand for the like election; but Sister Constance had negotiated with a lady who had devoted herself to educating children of better birth than means, and the little girl was to be dropped at the nearest station to her school at Catsacre. It had all been settled in a wonderfully short time, by Sister Constance and Mr. Audley, with full though helpless acquiescence from Mrs. Underwood. They felt it well to lessen the crowd of children in the house, and the responsibilities of the elder ones, and acted at once.

As to Alda, she was too miserable at home not to be ready to follow Edgar, though she had at first implored to stay and help Wilmet till their mother was about again; but the Thomas Underwoods were unwilling to consent to this--and after all, Alda was more apt to cry than to be of much real use. Sister Constance saw that she was only another weight on her sister's hands, and that, terrible as the wrench would be between the twins, Wilmet would be freer when it was once over. Poor Wilmet! she had felt as if she could hardly have lived over these weeks save for fondling the younger twins, and waiting on her mother. She was almost passive, and ran up and downstairs, or prepared the wardrobes of the departing children, just as she was bidden, all in one quiet maze of grief. The tears seemed to be always in her eyes, very often dropping, and yet they never hindered her, and she never uttered a word of deprecation or complaint; only she could not eat, and a kiss would bring down a whole shower; and at night, the two sisters would hold each other tight, and cry and kiss themselves to sleep.

So had come the last day--the last for all four. Robina, who had only just come back from St. Faith's, was grave, puzzled, and awestruck, clinging chiefly to Lancelot, and exchanging confidences in corners with him, in which they were probably much less childish than they showed themselves to the outer world. Clement was very grave and unhappy; but seemed to be most distressed at parting with Harry Lamb, a favourite school-fellow of his own quiet stamp, with whom he spent all available time. Alda and Wilmet were hand in hand at every possible moment, and if possible cheek to cheek--each felt as if herself was cut in two.

Then Edgar, who had only come home for that farewell Sunday, had another of his paroxysms of sorrow at the changes at home, which he contrived to forget when at Centry. All that was becoming in a manner usual to the others was a shock to him, and he was so very miserable the whole day, that he treated every attempt of the others to cheer him as a mere token of their hardness of heart. He went in to see his mother, and was so overcome at finding her no better, that he rushed away, and threw himself on a sofa as if he was going to faint; and when at church he saw his father's place filled up he fell into such a fit of sobbing, that half-a-dozen smelling-bottles were handed across the seats.

However, he had recovered himself on Monday morning, and made it his particular request that nobody would come bothering to the station, to make them look like Fulbert's canvassing-card of the thirteen children--and as the mention of it always affronted Fulbert deeply, it was plain that he would be no good company. However, Felix had been allowed an hour from his business for that very purpose, and he simply said, 'Nonsense, Edgar, I shall take Robin down.' Wilmet submitted, though with a great pang. She had no assurance that she should not break down, and a crying match at the station--oh no! It might make Bobbie roar all the way.

So Alda clung round her neck and Geraldine's in their own little parlour, and wished her mother good-bye, scarcely knowing whether it were with a full understanding how many were parted from the wing that now seemed unable to shelter them; and then Wilmet went up and quietly lay down by her mother on her bed, feeling as if there was nothing she cared for in all life, and as if youth, hope, and happiness were gone away from her for ever, and she were as much widowed as her mother. She was even past crying--she could do nothing but lie still. But then her mother's hand came out and stroked her; and presently one of the babies cried, and Wilmet was walking up and down the room with it, and all activity with her outward senses, though her heart felt dead. Meantime, the luggage went in the omnibus, the four children walked up together only escorted by Felix, and were passed on their way by the prancing and thundering carriage from Centry.

But the sense of usefulness that came gave strength and energy to Felix and Wilmet Underwood as the first excitement passed away, and they better understood their tasks.

Of the absent ones they heard good accounts. Alda was altogether one with her cousin's family, and seemed to be completely on an equality with Marilda; and Edgar had been sent by Thomas Underwood to acquire modern languages under the care of an Englishman who took private pupils at Louvaine, whence Edgar despatched most amusing letters and clever sketches. Clement was in great favour, both musically and morally, at St. Matthew's; and little Robina was reported to have bewailed her home with floods of nightly tears, but to have soon settled down into the bonnie little pet of the elder girls.

Except for the separation, the cloud had hardly fallen on these, but their departure had made a great hole in the hitherto unbroken family; and while Felix and Wilmet, by the loss of their contemporaries, seemed placed at a point far away from the others, Geraldine was conscious of much loneliness. The twins had always consorted together, and regarded her as a mere child, and her chief companions had been her father and Edgar, so that she seemed left at an equal distance both from the elder and younger party.

Then the world around her was so busy, and she could do so little. She slept in a little inner room beyond the large nursery, where Wilmet kept guard over Angela and Bernard; and long before six o'clock, she always heard the call pass between the eldest brother and sister; and knew that as soon as he was dressed, Felix--it must out--was cleaning the family boots, including those of the lodger, who probably supposed that nature did it, and never knew how much his young landlord had done before joining him in his early walk to St. Oswald's.

Meantime Wilmet conducted the toilette of the two little children, and gave the assistance that Cherry needed, as well as discharging some of the lighter tasks of the housemaid; leaving the heavier ones to Sibby and Martha, a stout, willing, strong young woman, whom Sister Constance had happily found for them, and who was disqualified, by a loutish manner and horrible squint, from the places to which her capabilities might have raised her.

Then Wilmet helped her sister downstairs, and a visit was paid to the mother and the twins, who were Sibby's charge for the night. Mrs. Underwood was still in the same state. It was indeed possible to rouse her, but at the expense of much suffering and excitement; and in general, she was merely tender, placid, and content, mechanically busied about her babies, and responding to what was said, but entirely incapable of any exertion of body, and as inactive in mind as in limb. Wilmet attended to her while Sibby went to her breakfast, returning with that of her mistress in time to send Wilmet down to preside at the family meal, a genuine Irish dish of stir-about--for which all had inherited a taste from their father's Irish mother. Only Cherry was too delicate for such food, and was rather ashamed of her cup of tea and slice of bread.

However, this was one of the few times when she could hope she was useful; for when Felix was gone to the printing-office, the boys to the grammar-school, and Wilmet, first to the kitchen, and then to Miss Pearson's, she remained with bowl and cloth to wash up in her own peculiarly slow and dainty way, never breaking but always dreaming, while Angela carried them one by one, first to her, then to the kitchen.

'Now Cherry.'

Mr. Audley's door opened, he would step forward and take the well-worn books in one hand, and hold the doors open with the other as Cherry tardily hopped in, and perched herself by the table. Her confirmation studies had been left in his charge; and then followed a little Greek, some Latin, a page or two of French, the revision of an exercise, and some help in Euclid and fractions--all studies begun with her father, and both congenial and useful to her, as the occupation that (next to drawing) best prevented her from feeling the dreary loneliness of her days; for though he could seldom give her more than an hour, the preparation--after he had helped her upstairs--occupied her during the whole period of tranquillity while the younger children slept. Angela appeared first, and did some small lessons, cat-and-dog readings, and easy hymns, then was generally content to sit on the floor in Mamma's room, admiring or amusing the twins. Then Cherry, according to her sense of duty, drew or worked. There was a horrible never-ending still-beginning basket of mending in the family, which Wilmet replenished every Saturday; and though Mrs. Underwood's instinct for piecing and darning had revived as soon as she was taken out of bed, her work now always needed a certain revision to secure the boys from the catastrophe of which Wilmet often dreamt--appearing in public in ragged shirt-sleeves! Geraldine knew that every stitch she left undone would have to be put in by her sister in late evening or early morning, and therefore often wrenched herself from the pencil and paints that best beguiled her thoughts from the heart-ache for her father, and the craving for Edgar, or the mere craving for light, air, liberty, and usefulness. Her only excuse to her own conscience for allowing herself her chief pleasure was, that it was her way of helping an old woman who kept a stall of small wares on market days, and could sometimes dispose of little pictures on domestic and Scriptural subjects, if highly coloured, glazed with gum, and bound with bright paper--pickings and stealings, as Felix called them, gleaned from advertisements and packing-boxes at Mr. Froggatt's; but these did not allow much scope for the dreams of her fancy.

Nor had she much choice when Bernard once awoke and came down, in all the unreasoning tyranny of two years old, when it was an even chance whether he would peaceably look at the old scrap-book, play with Angela, or visit Mamma; or be uproarious, and either coalesce with Angela in daring mischief, fight a battle-royal with her, or be violent with and jealous of the twins. The urchin had found out that when once Cherry's crutch was out of her reach she could not get at him; and he had ridden off upon it so often, before committing any of his worst misdemeanours, that Cherry always lay down on it to secure it. After all, he was a fine, affectionate, impetuous little fellow, but with a very high, proud, unmanageable will; and she was very fond and proud of him; but never more so than when he slept till dinner-time.

That was the hour which brought Felix home to help Sibby to carry his mother into the sitting-room, pay a little court to the babies, and enliven Cherry with any chance scrap of news or occupation. Best of all were the proofs of that unfinished comment on the Epistle to Philippi, which was being printed by subscription of the congregation, and the clergy of the diocese. It always did Mrs. Underwood good to have these read aloud to her by her little daughter, and she could sometimes find a clue to the understanding of sentences that had puzzled even Mr. Audley.

The two school-boys never appeared till dinner was imminent; and then--one unuttered wish of poor Cherry was that Mr. Audley could have dined with them; but he kept to his own hours, and they were late.

Whereby dinners on five days of the week were apt to be something on this fashion. Bell-ringing--Felix helping Geraldine to her seat, Angela trotting after; a large dish of broth, with meat and rice, and another of mashed potato; no sign of the boys; Angela lisping Grace; Sibby waiting with a tray.

Felix filled a soup-plate for his mother, and a basin for Bernard. 'We must begin, I suppose,' and he helped his sisters and himself.

'Here, Angel, push over your plate; I'll cut that.--How did you get on to-day?'

'Very well; the only mistake I made I found out before Smith saw it. I know all the stationery and steel pens apart now, and haven't made a mistake for a week. Yesterday Bartlett junior came in, he stood like a post before Mr. Froggatt till he caught sight of me, and then he shouted out, "O Blunderbore, you know! What is it that Collis wants?"'

'And did you?'

'When he said it was a horrid sum-book all little a's and b's.--What have you been doing, Cherry?'

'I have begun an abstract of the first Punic--'

The door flew open with a bounce, and two hot, wild-locked boys, dust everywhere except in their merry blue eyes, burst in, and tumbled on their chairs. 'I say--isn't it a horrid sell? we ain't to have a holiday for Squire's wedding.--Come, Fee, give us some grub.'

'You have not said Grace,' said Cherry.

Lance, abashed, stood up and bowed; Fulbert looked grim, and mumbled something.

'You have not washed your hands,' added Felix.

'Bosh! What's the good?' said Fulbert.

'They'll be as jolly dirty again directly,' said Lance.

'But you would be more decent company in the meantime,' said Felix.

At that moment there was a splash in his plate, a skip-jack made of the breast-bone of a chicken had alighted there with a leap.

'There's Felix's master come after him,' cried Fulbert, and Lance went off into choking laughter.

'Boys, how can you?' broke out Cherry.

'Look at Blunderbore fishing out his master!' was Fulbert's answer.

'The frog is in the bog, And Felix is squeamish,'

chanted Lance.

'Bad rhyme, Lance,' said Felix, who could bear these things much better from the younger than the elder. Indeed, he scarcely durst notice them in Fulbert, lest he should be betrayed into violence by letting out his temper.

'I say!' cried Lance, struck by a new idea, 'what prime stuff it is for making a fort!' and he began to scrape the more solid parts of his plateful to one side.

'Oh, I say, isn't it?' echoed Fulbert: 'but I've eaten up the best part of my castle;' and he grasped at the ladle.

'No, I thank you,' said Felix, putting it on the other side. 'While I am here, you don't play tricks with that.'

Fulbert swallowed a spoonful in a passion, but a bright thought struck Lance, who always cared much more for fun than for food. 'I say, we'll empty it all into one, and eat it down.'

'You horrid boys!' plaintively exclaimed Cherry, almost crying--for this return to savage life was perfect misery to her. 'I can't bear it.'

'I will not have Cherry tormented,' said Felix, beginning to be very irate.

'We ain't doing anything to Cherry,' said Lance, amazed.

'Don't you know it spoils Cherry's appetite to see you so disgusting?'

'Then she'll have the more next time,' said Fulbert. 'Get along, Captain--you've splashed my face!'

'Hurrah! the red-hot shot! The rice is the cannon-balls! Where's some bread?'

'O Lance!' entreated Cherry; 'no waste--think of Wilmet and the bills.'

'We'll eat it every bit up,' asseverated Lance; but Fulbert growled, 'If you bother any more, I shall crumble the whole lot out at window.'

'It is wicked to waste bread,' lisped Angela, and Martha at that moment appeared to fetch the tureen for the kitchen dinner.

'Can't you eat any more, Cherry?' asked Felix gloomily.

'Not a bit, thank you,' she said.

'We've not done!' shouted the boys, seizing on her scarcely-tasted and half-cold plate.

'You must finish after. Come, Cherry!' Then, as they left the room, and she laid her head on his shoulder--'Little ruffians!' he said under his breath.

'Oh, never mind, Felix. I don't--at least I ought not to mind--they don't mean it.'

'Lance does not, but I think Fulbert does. He'll make me thrash him within two inches of his life, before he has done. And then there's no one to take me in hand for it. It is horridly bad for them, too, to live just like young bears.'

But he smoothed his brow as he came into the room where his mother was, and amused her till his time was up.

Mr. Froggatt had explained to his father long ago, that Felix's work would not be that of a clerk in a great publishing house, but veritably that belonging to the country bookseller and printer, and that he must go through all the details, so as to be thoroughly conversant with them. The morning's work was at the printing-house, the afternoon's at the shop. The mechanical drudgery and intense accuracy needed in the first were wearisome enough; and moreover, he had to make his way with a crusty old foreman who was incredulous of any young gentleman's capabilities, and hard of being convinced that he would or could be useful; but old Smith's contempt was far less disagreeable to him than the subdued dislike he met with from Redstone, the assistant in the shop, a sharp, half-educated young man, who had aspired to the very post of confidence for which Felix was training--and being far less aware of his own utter unfitness for it than was Mr. Froggatt, regarded the lad as an interloper; and though he durst not treat him with incivility, was anxious to expose any deficiency or failure on his part. Having a good deal of quickness and dexterity, he could act as a reporter, draw up articles of a certain description for the newspaper, and had, since the death of Mr. Froggatt's eldest son, been absolutely necessary to him in carrying on the business; and now, it was a matter of delicate discretion on the master's part to avoid hurting the feelings of the assistant, whom a little more would have made his tyrant, and a dread of the appearance of favouritism made it needful to keep Felix thoroughly in a subordinate post, till real superiority of mind and education should assert itself over elder years and mere familiarity with detail. This reserved ill-will of Redstone's had much increased the natural discomfort of appearing behind the counter to former acquaintance, and had rendered the learning the duties there doubly troublesome and confusing; though, in recalling the day's doings, there was some amusement in contrasting the behaviour of different people, some--of whom Mr. Ryder was the type--speaking to him freely in his own person, others leaving him as an unrecognized shop-boy; and a third favouring him with a horrid little furtive nod, which he liked least of all. But though awkward and embarrassed at first, use soon hardened him, and made the customers indifferent, so that by the spring he had begun to be useful, and to feel no particular excitement about it.

The worst of his business was that it kept him so late, that he had but a very short evening, and no time for exercise. He was on his feet most of the day, but indoors, and his recreation chiefly consisted in choir-practice twice a week. Not that he missed more positive amusement; the cares of life and Edgar's departure seemed to have taken the boyish element of frolic out of him; and left him gravely cheerful indeed, but with no greater desire of entertainment than could find vent in home conversation, or playing with the little ones.

Wilmet and the two boys were at liberty full two hours before him. The latter generally stayed out as long as light and hunger permitted. Mr. Audley continually stumbled on them playing at marbles, racing headlong in teams of pack-thread harness with their fellows, upsetting the nerves of quiet folk--staring contentedly at such shows as required no outlay, or discontentedly at the outside of those that demanded the pennies they never had. They were thorough little street-boys; and all that he could do for them was to enforce their coming in at reasonable hours, and, much to their sister's relief, cause their daily lessons to be prepared in his room. Otherwise their places in their classes would have been much less creditable.

Wilmet's return was always Geraldine's great relief, for the afternoon of trying to amuse her mother, and keep the peace between the children, was almost more than she was equal to; though, on fine days, Sibby always took out the two elder babies, with an alternate twin, for an hour's air, and Mr. Audley daily visited the invalid. Mr. Bevan did so twice a week, with a gentle sympathising tone and manner that was more beneficial than Lady Price's occasional endeavours to make her 'rouse herself.' Miss Pearson and a few humbler friends now and then looked in, but Mrs. Underwood had been little known. With so large a family, and such straitened means, the part of the active clergyman's wife was impossible to her; she had shrunk from society, and most people knew nothing more of her than that the faded lady-like figure they used to see among her little flock at church, was Mrs. Underwood.

Wilmet's coming home was always a comfort; and though to her it was running from toil to care, the change was life to her. To have been either only the teacher or only the housewife might have weighed over heavily on her; but the two tasks together seemed to lighten each other. She had a real taste and talent for teaching, and she and her little class were devoted to one another, while the elder girls loved her much better since Alda had been away. The being with them, and sharing their recreation in the middle of the day, was no doubt the best thing to hinder her from becoming worn by the depressing atmosphere around her mother. She always brought home spirits and vigour for whatever lay before her, brightening her mother's face, dispelling squabbles between Angela and Bernard, and taking a load of care from Geraldine.

There was sure to be some anecdote to enliven the home-keepers, or some question to ask Cherry, whose grammar and arithmetic stood on firmer foundations than any at Miss Pearson's, and who was always pleased to help Wilmet. The evening hours were the happiest of the day, only they always ended too soon for Cherry, who was ordered up by Sibby as soon as her mother was put to bed, and had, in consequence, a weary length of wakeful solitude and darkness--only enlivened by the reflection from the gas below--while Felix and Wilmet sat downstairs, she with her mending, and he either reading, or talking to her.

On Saturday, which she always spent at home, and in very active employment in the capacities of nurse, housemaid, or even a slight taste of the cook and laundress, the evening topic was always the accounts--the two young heads anxiously casting the balance--proud and pleased if there were even a shilling below the mark, but serious and sad under such a communication as, 'There's mutton gone up another half-penny;' or, 'Wilmet, I really am afraid those boots of mine cannot be mended again;' or again, 'See what Lance has managed to do to this jacket. If one only could send boys to school in sacking!'

'Are not there a few pence to spare for the chair for Cherry? She will certainly get ill, if she never goes out now spring is coming on.'

'Indeed, Felix, I don't know how! If there is a penny over, it is wanted towards shoes for Bernard; and Cherry begs me, with tears in her eyes, not to let her be an expense!'

Poor Geraldine! the costing anything, and the sense of uselessness, were becoming, by the help of her nightly wakefulness, a most terrible oppression on her spirits. Her father was right. His room had been a hot-bed to a naturally sensitive and precocious character, and the change that had come over her as time carried her farther and farther away from him, affected her more and more.

Her brother and sister, busy all day, and scarcely ever at home, hardly knew what was becoming a sore perplexity to Mr. Audley.

A young tutor, not yet twenty-six, could not exactly tell what to do with a girl not fourteen, who fell into floods of tears on the smallest excuse.

'No, no, Cherry--that is not the nominative.'

The voice faltered, struggled to go on, and melted away behind the handkerchief. Then--'O Mr. Audley, I am so sorry--'

'That's exactly what I don't want you to be, Cherry.'

'Oh, but it was so careless,' and there was another flood.

Or, 'Don't you see, Cherry, you should not have put the negative sign to that equation. My dear Cherry, what have I said?'

'Oh, oh--nothing. Only I did think--'

'We shall have you a perfect Niobe, if you go on at this rate, Cherry. Really, we must not have these lessons, if they excite you so much.'

'Oh! that would be the worst punishment of all!' and the weeping became so piteously violent, that the Curate looked on in distressed helplessness.

'I know it is very tiresome of me; I would help it, if I could--indeed I would.' And she cried the more because she had cried.

Or, as he came in from the town, he would hear ominous sounds, that his kind heart would not let him neglect, and would find Cherry sitting on the landing-place in a paroxysm of weeping. She always crept out of her mother's room on these occasions, for the sight of tears distressed and excited Mrs. Underwood; and the poor child, quite unable, in her hysterical condition, to drag herself alone up that steep stair, had no alternative but to sit, on what Mr. Audley called her stool of repentance, outside the door, till she had sobbed herself into exhaustion and calm--or till either Sibby scolded her, or he heard her confession.

She had been 'so cross' to Bernard, or to Angel--or, once or twice, even to Mamma. She had made an impatient answer when interrupted in her lessons or in a dream over a drawing; she had been reluctant to exert herself when wanted. She had scolded fretfully--or snatched things away angrily, when the little ones were troublesome; and every offence of this sort was bewailed with an anguish of tears; that, by weakening her spirits and temper, really rendered the recurrence more frequent. 'The one thing they trust to me, I fail in!'

He was very kind to her. He did not yield to the mannish loathing for girlish tears that began to seize on him, after the first two or three occasions. He thought and studied--tried comfort, and fancied it relaxed her--tried rebuke, and that made it worse; tried the showing her François de Sales' admirable counsel to Philothée, to be 'doux envers soi,' and saw she appreciated and admired it; but she was not an atom more douce envers soi when she had next spoken peevishly.

At last he fairly set off by the train, to lay the case before Sister Constance.

'What is to be done, when a child never does anything but cry?'

Sister Constance listened to the symptoms, and promptly answered, 'Give her a glass of port wine every day, before you let her out of your room.'

'If I can!'

'Tell her they are my orders. Does she eat?'

'I imagine not. I heard Felix reproaching her with a ghoul's dinner of a grain of rice.'

'Does she sleep?'

'She has told me a great deal of midnight meditation on her own deficiencies.'

'She must be taken out of doors somehow or other! It is of no use to reason with her; the tears are not temper, or anything else! Poor Charlie! it is an odd capacity for you to come out in, but I suppose no one else can attend to her.'

'No, poor child, she is rather worse than motherless! Well--I will find some excuse for taking her out for a drive now and then; I don't know how to speak to the others about having the chair for her, for they are barely scraping on.'

'Poor children! Well, this year is probably the worst. Either they will get their heads above water, or there will be a crisis. But they do scrape?'

'Yes. At Lady-day there was great jubilation, for the rent was paid, the taxes were ready, there was not a debt; and there was seven-pence over, with which Felix wanted to give Cherry a drive; but Wilmet, who is horribly prudent, insisted that it must go to mend Fulbert's broken window.'

'Well--poor Wilmet! one can't blame her. How does she treat Cherry's tears?'

'I don't think she has much pity for them. Felix does much better with Cherry; he rocks her and pets her; though, indeed, she hardly ever breaks down when he is there; but even his Sundays are a good deal taken up--and I always hunt him out for a walk on the Sunday afternoons.'

'Is he still in the choir and teaching at the Sunday school?'

'Yes--though it is not Mowbray Smith's fault.'

'What, is your colleague what you apprehended?'

'My Lady could not have found a curate more to her mind, or more imbued with her dislike to all that bears the name of Underwood. I own it is hard to have one's predecessor flung constantly in one's teeth, and by the very people who were the greatest thorns to dear Underwood himself. Then Clem, who is a born prig, though a very good boy, gave some of his little interfering bits of advice before he went away, and it has all been set down to Felix's account! One Sunday, Smith made a complaint of Felix having the biggest boys in the school. It was the consequence of his having taken them whenever his father could not, till it came to his having them entirely. He always took great pains with them, and there was a fellow-feeling between him and them that could hardly be with an older person. I said all this--too strongly, most likely--and the Rector put in a mild word, as to his goodness in coming at all. Smith thought there was nothing wonderful in liking what ministered to his conceit; and at last it came out that a baker's boy had met Felix and Smith consecutively in the street, and only touched his hat to one, and that the wrong one.'

'I should have been only thankful that he touched his hat to anybody.'

'That is the very remark by which I put my foot in it; but my Lady was horrified, and the consequence was, that it fell to me to advise Felix to resign the class. I never hated a piece of work so much in my life, for he had worked the lads well, and we both knew that there would be an end of them. Moreover, Felix has some of the true Briton about him, and he stood out--would give up the class if the Rector ordered him, but would relinquish Sunday-school altogether in that case; and the two girls were furious; but, after one Sunday, he came to me, said that he found hostility poisoned his teaching, gave up, and accepted the younger ones.'

'Of course the boys deserted.'

'Which has not softened Smith, though it has made him tolerate Felix in the choir. His voice is of very little use at present; but he is such an influence, that we should be glad of him if he could not sing a note, and he clings to it with all his heart. I believe music is about the only pleasure he has, and it excites his mother too much to have any at home. We have little Lance in the choir now, with a voice like a thrush in a dewy morning.'

Mr. Audley acted on the port-wine prescription, to the horror and dismay of Cherry, who only submitted with any shadow of philosophy on being told that the more she cried the more necessary she rendered it; but on the Saturday, Sister Constance suddenly knocked at Mr. Audley's door. She had been talking the matter over with the Superior; and the result was, that she had set off on a mission to see for herself, and if she thought it expedient, to bring Geraldine back with her. She had chosen Saturday as the time for seeing Wilmet, and was prepared to overlook that the stairs were a Lodore of soap, this being Sibby's cleaning day, while Wilmet kept guard over the mother and the twins.

Geraldine was in the sitting-room, writing a Latin exercise, with a great pucker in her forehead whenever Angela looked up from her wooden bricks to speak to her. And though the sharp little pinched face was all one beam of joy as the visitor came in, Sister Constance saw at once that the child's health had deteriorated in these last months. She sat down, and with Angela on her lap, questioned anxiously. Cherry had no complaints--she always was like this in the spring. How was her foot? As usual, a falter. Was it really? Well, yes, she thought so. And then, as the motherly eyes looked into hers, there came a burst of the ready tears; and 'Oh, please don't talk about it--please don't ask.'

'I know what you are afraid of,' said Sister Constance, remembering her horror of the Bexley medical attendant, 'but is it right to conceal this, my dear child?'

'I don't think I do,' said Cherry pitifully. 'You know Sibby does it every night, and it only aches a little more now. And if they did find it out, then they would have him, and there would be a doctor's bill, and, oh! that would be dreadful!'

Sister Constance saw that the question of right or wrong would be infinitely too much for Geraldine, and drew off her mind from it to tell of the good accounts of Robina from Catsacre, and Clement from Whittingtonia; but when presently Wilmet was so far free as to come in with only the boy-baby in her arms, and take the guest up to take off her bonnet, it was the time for entering on the subject.

'Cherry? do you think her looking ill? She always is poorly in the spring, you know.'

'I do not like what I hear of her appetite, or her sleep, or her spirits.'

'Oh! but Cherry is always fanciful, you know. Please, please don't put things in her head.'

'What kind of things do you mean?'

'Fancying herself worse, I mean, or wanting things. You know we must be so careful, and Mamma and the babies--'

'My dear, I know you have many to care for, and it is hard to strike the balance; but somehow your voice sounds to me as if Geraldine were the one you most willingly set aside.'

Wilmet did not like this, and said, a little bit hastily, 'I am sure Geraldine has everything we can give her. If she complains, it is very wrong of her.'

'She has not said one word of complaint. Her grief and fear is only of being a burden on you. What brought me here was, that Mr. Audley was anxious about her.'

Wilmet was silent, a little abashed.

'Did you know that her ankle is painful again?'

'Sister Constance,' said Wilmet, 'I don't think you or Mr. Audley know how soon Cherry fancies all sorts of things. She does get into whiny states, and is regularly tiresome; and the more you notice her, the worse she is. I know Mamma thought so.'

'My dear, a mother can venture on wholesome neglect when a sister's neglect is not wholesome. I am not accusing you of neglect, mind; only you want experience and sympathy to judge of a thing with a frame like Cherry's. Now, I will tell you what I want to do. I am come to take her back with me, and get her treated by our kind doctor for a month or so, and the sea air and rest will send her back, most likely, in a much more cheery state.'

'Indeed!' cried Wilmet, startled; 'it is very good, but how could we do without her? Mamma and the children! If she could only wait till the holidays.'

'Let her only hear you say that, Wilmet, and it will do her more good than anything.'

'What--that she is of use? Poor little thing, she tries to be; but if Marilda could have had her way, and taken her instead of Alda, it would have been much better for her and all. Ah! there's Felix. May I call him in?'

Felix, dashing up to wash his hands, smooth his hair, and dress himself for the reading-room work instead of the printing-office, had much rather these operations had been performed before he was called to the consultation in the nursery; but he agreed instantly and solicitously, knowing much better than Wilmet what the dinners were to Cherry, and talking of her much more tenderly.

'Yes, poor little dear, she always breaks down more or less in the spring; but I thought she would mend when we could get her out more,' he said. 'Do you think her really so unwell, Sister Constance?'

'Oh, no, no!' cried Wilmet, fearfully.

'Not very unwell, but only so that I long to put her under our good doctor, who comes to any one in our house, and who is such a fatherly old gentleman, that she would not go through the misery the thought of Mr. Rugg seems to cause her.'

'Dr. Lee?' asked Felix. 'Tom Underwood sent him to see my father once. I remember my father liked him, but called it waste for himself, only longed for his opinion on Cherry. Thank you, I am sure it is the greatest kindness.'

'But, Felix, how can she before the holidays?' cried Wilmet.

'Well, Mamma does not want her before dinner; and as to the kids, why can't you take Angel to school with you? Oh, yes, Miss Pearson will let you. Then Mr. Audley, or Mr. Bevan, is always up in the afternoon, and you come home by four.'

'Perhaps I could earlier on days when the girls go out walking,' said Wilmet. 'If it is to do Cherry good, I don't like to prevent it.'

Wilmet had evidently got all her household into their niches, and the disarrangement puzzled her. A wonderful girl she was to contrive as she did, and carry out her rule; but Sister Constance feared that a little dryness might be growing on her in consequence, and that, like many maidens of fifteen or sixteen, while she was devoted to the little, she was impatient of the intermediate.

So when they went down, and Cherry heard of the scheme, and implored against it in nervous fear of leaving home and dread of new faces, Wilmet, having made up her practical mind that the going was necessary, only made light of that value at home which was Cherry's one comfort, and which made herself feel it so hard to part with her, that this very want of tact was all unselfishness.

Felix was much more comfortable to Cherry when he made playful faces at the bear-garden that the dining-room would become without her, and showed plainly that he at least would miss her dreadfully. Still she nourished a hope that Mamma would say she should not go; but Mamma always submitted to the decrees of authority, and Wilmet and Felix were her authorities now. Sister Constance felt no misgiving lest Wilmet were hardening, when she heard the sweet discretion and cheerful tenderness with which she propounded the arrangement to the sick mother, without giving her the worry of decision, yet still deferentially enough to keep her in her place as the head of the family.

Yet it was with unnecessarily bracing severity that Wilmet observed to Geraldine, 'Now, don't you go crying, and asking questions, and worrying Mamma.'

'I suppose no person can be everything at once, far less a girl of fifteen,' thought Sister Constance, as she drove up to the station in the omnibus with Cherry, who was too miserable and bewildered to cry now; not that she was afraid of either the Sister or the Sisterhood, but only because she had never left home in her life, and felt exactly like a callow nestling shoved out on the ground with a broken wing.

In two months more the omnibus was setting her down again, much nearer plumpness, with a brighter face and stronger spirits. She had been very full of enjoyment at St. Faith's. She had the visitor's room, with delightful sacred prints and photographs, and a window looking out on the sea--a sight enough to fascinate her for hours. She had been out every fine day on the shore; she had sat in the pleasant community-room with the kind Sisters, who talked to her as a woman, not a baby; she had plenty of books; one of the Sisters had given her daily drawing lessons, and another had read Tasso with her; she had been to the lovely oratory constantly, and to the beautiful church on Sunday, and had helped to make the wreaths for the great May holidays; she had made many new friends, and among them the doctor, who, if he had hurt her, had never deceived her, and had really made her more comfortable than she had ever been for the last five years, putting her in the way of such self-management as might very possibly avert some of that dreadful liability to be cross.

But with all this, and all her gratitude, Geraldine's longing had been for home. She was very happy, and it was doing her a great deal of good; but Mamma, and Felix, and Wilmet, and Sibby, and the babies, were tugging at her heart, and would not let it go out from them. She was always dreaming that Felix's heels were coming through his stockings, that Mamma was calling and nobody coming, or that Bernard was cutting off the heads of the twins with the blunt scissors. And when Dr. Lee's course of treatment was over, and Felix had a holiday to come and fetch her home, it is not easy to say which was happiest. For she was so glad to be at home amid the dear faces, troubling and troublous as they often were, and so comfortable in the old wheel-ruts of care and toil, that it really seemed as if a new epoch of joy had begun. Felix openly professed how sorely he had missed her, and she clung to his arm with exulting mutual delight; but it was almost more triumphant pleasure to be embraced by Wilmet with the words: 'Dear, dear Cherry, there you are at last. You can't think how we have all wanted you! I never knew how useful you are.'

'I suppose,' said Felix quaintly, 'the world would rather miss its axis, and yet that does not move.'

'Yes, it does,' said Cherry, 'it wobbles. I suppose Wilmet says rotates, just about as much as I am going to do now I have got back into my own dear sphere again.'

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VI. THE CACIQUE

'Devouring flames resistless glow, And blazing rafters downward go, And never halloo, "Heads below!" Nor notice give at all.' Rejected Addresses.

It was a warm night in September, and Wilmet had laid herself down in bed in her nursery with a careful, but not an oppressed heart. About many matters she was happier than before. Her mother had revived in some degree, could walk from her bed-room to the sitting-room, and took more interest in what was passing; and this the hopeful spirits of the children interpreted into signs of recovery. Geraldine's health and spirits had evidently taken a start for the better. Fulbert, too, was off her mind--safe gone to a clergy orphan foundation; and though Lancelot had not yet been elected, owing, Mr. Audley imagined, to Lady Price's talk about their fine friends, Wilmet could not be sorry, he was such a little fellow, and the house would be so dull without his unfailing merriment and oddities. And though there had been sore disappointment that Mrs. Thomas Underwood had chosen to go to Brighton instead of coming home, there was the promise of a visit from Alda before Christmas to feed upon. Little Robina had come home for the summer holidays, well, happy, and improved, and crying only in a satisfactory way on returning to school. Moreover, Wilmet's finances had been pleasantly increased by an unexpected present of five pounds at the end of the half year from Miss Pearson, and the promise of the like for the next; increasing as her usefulness increased; and she was also allowed to bring Angela to school with her. The balance of accounts at Midsummer had been satisfactory, and Felix had proudly pronounced her to be a brick of a housekeeper. And thus altogether Wilmet did not feel that the weight of care was so heavy and hopeless as when it first descended upon her; and she went to bed as usual, feeling how true her father's words of encouragement and hope had been, how kind friends were, how dear a brother Felix was, and above all, how there is verily a Father of the fatherless. And so she fell fast asleep, but was ere long waked by a voice from the inner room where Cherry slept with the door open.

'Wilmet, Wilmet, what is it?'

Then she saw that the room was aglow with red light from the window, and heard a loud distant hubbub. Hurrying out of bed, she flew to the window of Cherry's room, and drew up the blind. 'O Wilmet, is it fire?'

'Yes,' low and awe-struck, said Wilmet. 'Not here. No. There's nothing to be frightened at Cherry. It is out--out there. I think it must be the Fortinbras Arms. Oh, what a sight!'

'It is dreadful!' said Cherry, shrinking trembling to the foot of her little bed, whence she could see the window. 'How plain one can see everything in the room! Oh! the terrible red glow in the windows! I wonder if all the people are safe. Wilmet, do call Felix.'

'I will,' said Wilmet, proceeding in search of her clothes; but her hands shook so that she could hardly put them on. They longed for Felix as a protection, and yet Cherry could hardly bear to let her sister go out of sight.

'I only hope Mamma does not hear,' said Wilmet.

'How lucky her room looks out the other way! but, oh! Wilmet, don't fires spread?'

'Felix and Mr. Audley will see about us in time, if there is any fear of that,' said Wilmet, trembling a good deal as she wrapped a shawl round Cherry, who sat in a heap on her bed, gazing fascinated at the red sky and roofs. Felix slept at the back of the house; her knock did not waken him, but her entrance startled both him and Lance.

'Felix, the Fortinbras Arms is on fire.--Hush, Lance; take care; the little ones and Mamma! O Felix, do come to our room.'

They followed her there in a few seconds, but they had only glanced from the window before they simultaneously rushed away, to the increased dismay of their sisters, to whom their manly instinct of rushing into the fray had not occurred.

'I'll go down. I'll try to catch them,' said Wilmet; and she too was gone before Cherry could call to her. She found that Felix and Mr. Audley were in the act of undoing the front door, and this gave her just time to fly down with the entreaty that Felix would not leave them. It was a great deal more to ask of him than she knew.

'To the end of the street I must go, Wilmet,' he said.

'Oh! but Cherry is so frightened! and if Mamma wakes,' she said, gasping.

'It is all quiet in her room,' said Felix.

'Tell Cherry there is no danger at all here now,' said Mr. Audley; 'but if it makes her happier you may dress her. Don't disturb your mother. If needful, we will carry her out in her bed; but I do not think it will be.'

'We can only see out in the street,' added Felix, opening the door as he spoke; and that moment out flew Lance, before anybody had thought of stopping him, and the necessity of pursuing the little fellow into the throng, and keeping him out of danger, made both Felix and Mr. Audley dash after him; while Wilmet, abashed at the men hurrying by, could not even gaze from the door, but fled upstairs in terror lest the two little ones should be awake and crying at the appalling red light and the din, which seemed to her one continuous roar of 'Fire! fire!'

To her great relief, they were still asleep, but Cherry was in a chilled agony of trembling prayer for the 'poor people,' and the sisters crouched up together shivering in each other's arms as they watched the rush of flames streaming up into the sky over the brew-house opposite to them.

Presently Wilmet heard feet again downstairs. 'Cherry dear, I must go down, they may want me. Indeed, I don't think there is real danger as long as that brew-house is safe.'

There was a scuffle of feet that frightened her very much. She remembered it last Michaelmas when her father was brought home from church, and as she stood on the stairs--one choking petition in her heart, 'Let it not be Felix!' she saw that the figure, whatever it was, was carried by Mr. Audley and a strange man. And so great a horror came over her, that, regardless of her toilette, and the hair that had fallen over the jacket on her shoulders, she dropped at once among them as they were bearing the senseless form into Mr. Audley's bed-room, with a low but piteous cry, 'Felix! Felix! oh, what has happened?'

'It is not Felix, my dear,' said Mr. Audley; 'he is safe--he is gone for the doctor. This poor boy has fallen from a window. You can help us, Wilmet; call Martha, and get some water made hot. The fire is getting under.'

Wilmet needed no second hint. She was up, reassuring Cherry at one moment; then breaking into Martha's heavy slumbers, impressing upon her the necessity of not shrieking; then downstairs again, reviving the dying kitchen fire, and finding that, as usual, there was some water not yet cold. For, as she now saw, it was not yet one o'clock. She durst not go to her mother's room, where ready means of heating food were always to be found. As she brought the jug to the door, Felix came in with Mr. Rugg, who, living in a street out of sight, and having ears for no sound but his own night-bell, had been ready at once to obey the call. Felix told his sister the little he knew.

'It was a terrible sight. Just as we got to that one big window--a passage one, I believe, which looks out into this street--we saw this poor boy and a black man up on the sill, with all the glare of light behind them, screaming out for help.'

'But where was everybody?'

'In the High Street, round the corner. Crowds there; and here in our street only ourselves and a few men that hurried up after us. Mr. Audley shouted to them that we would get a ladder, but whether they could not hold on any more, or they thought we were going quite away--O Wilmet! I didn't see; but there was the most horrible thump and crash on the pavement.'

'What! down from that window?'

'Yes,' said Felix, leaning against the wall, and looking very pale. 'And there was that good black man, he had got the boy in his arms, as if he had wound himself round to keep him from harm.'

'Oh! And he?'

'Killed--quite killed. Don't ask me about it, Wilmet. It is much too dreadful to hear of;' and he shuddered all over. 'But this boy's head was safe at least, and as there seemed no one to attend to anything, Mr. Audley said he would bring him here, and I went for Mr. Rugg.'

'And where's Lance? Did he go with you?'

'Lance! Is not he in? I never saw or thought of him, I must go and seek for him,' exclaimed Felix, darting off in haste and alarm at the thought of little nine-year-old Lance alone among the midnight crowd, just as Mr. Audley opened the door to try to find a messenger to Mr. Rugg's surgery. He paused to tell Wilmet that it was a lad about Felix's age, moaning some word that sounded like Diego, and with a broken leg and ribs; and then, as Martha was in attendance, she felt herself obliged to return to Cherry, whom indeed she could not leave again, for though the fire had sunk, and only thick clouds of smoke showed the play of the engines, the effects of the terror were not so quickly over in the tender little frame, which was in a quivering hysterical state, so deadly cold, that Wilmet was frightened, and went once more down to warm some flannel, and get some hot drink for her. She intended tea, but meeting Mr. Audley again, he sent up a glass of wine. Even with this in hot water, Cherry could hardly be warmed again, and Wilmet lay down, clasping her round, and not daring to let her know of her own continued anxiety about the two brothers. At last, however, when the red light had almost faded quite away, the cautious steps were heard coming up the stairs, and Felix called into the room in a low voice--

'All right, Wilmet.'

'Oh! come in,' the sisters called. 'Where did you find him, Fee? Is he safe?'

'O Cherry, you never saw such a lark!' cried Lance in a gusty whisper. 'Wouldn't Fulbert have given his ears to have seen it? To see the engines pouring down, and the great hose twining about like jolly old sea-serpents spouting.'

'Hush, Lance; how can you? How could you! Does Mr. Audley know he is safe?'

'Yes,' said Felix, 'he opened the door, and said he might have known Lance was too much of a gamin to come to grief.'

'What's a gamin?' said Lance.

'A street ragamuffin at Paris,' said Wilmet. 'But really, Lance, it was a terrible thing to do.'

'And where do you think I found him?' said Felix. 'In between little Jacky Brown and that big old coal-heaver who was so impudent about the blanket-club, hanging like a monkey upon the rails of the terrace, and hallooing as loud as they.'

''Twas the coal-heaver that helped me up,' said Lance. 'He's a jolly good fellow, I can tell you. He said, "You be one of Parson Underwood's little chaps, baint you? A rare honest gentleman of the right sort war he--he war!" and he pulled down another boy and put me up instead, and told me all about the great fire at Stubbs's factory. You can't think what fun it was. Roar, roar, up went the flame. Swish, wish, went the water--such a bellowing--such great clouds of smoke!'

'Was everybody saved?' whispered Cherry's tremulous murmur.

There was a silence; then Lance said, 'Weren't they?' and Cherry had another shuddering fit.

'Who?' Wilmet asked.

'Poor Mr. Jones's youngest child and his nursemaid were in an attic room where nobody could get at them,' said Felix in a hurried and awe-struck voice, causing Cherry to renew that agony of trembling and sobbing so convulsive and painful that her elder brother and sister could only devote themselves to soothing her, till at last she lay still again in Wilmet's arms, with only a few long gasps coming quivering up through her frame. Then Wilmet implored Felix to go away and make Lance go to bed, and finding this the only means of reducing the little excited fellow to quiet, he went. And though all were sure they should not sleep, they overslept themselves far into Sunday morning, except Wilmet, who was wakened by the clamours of the undisturbed Angela and Bernard, and succeeded in dressing them without disturbing the other three.

Very tired and stiff, and very anxious she felt, but she was obliged to go down as soon as she was dressed, since she always took charge of her mother before breakfast on Sunday while Sibby went to mass. It was so late that she could only listen in vain at the top of the stairs before she went into the room, where she found Sibby very indignant at having missed all the excitement of the night past. 'As if she could not have been trusted not to have wakened the mistress. She believed they would have let her alone till they all were burnt in their beds!'

It was not till breakfast, which took place unusually late, that Wilmet heard much. Felix and Lance had just come downstairs, rather ashamed of having overslept themselves, and Mr. Audley came in and begged for a cup of tea.

He told them that the father and uncle of the boy had arrived. They were American merchants or speculators of some kind, he thought, named Travis, and they had gone on business to Dearport the day before, meaning to dine there, and return by the mail train in the night, and leaving the boy with the black servant in the unfortunate hotel.

On arriving, at about three o'clock, not long after Felix had brought Lance home, they had telegraphed to Dearport for a doctor and nurse, who were momentarily expected to arrive. The patient was only half conscious, and though he knew his father, continued to murmur for Diego. Martha was sitting with him whenever she could, for his father did not seem to understand nursing, and it would be a great relief when a properly-trained person arrived.

She came, and so did the doctor, but not till close upon church-time, and little but stray reports from the sick-room reached the population upstairs all that day, as Mr. Audley, whenever he was not at church, was obliged to be in attendance on his strange guests. All that reached the anxious and excited young people was the tidings of the patient being not unlikely to do well, though he was in great pain and high fever, and continually calling for the poor negro who had saved his life at the expense of his own.

This was the last bulletin when the household parted to go their several ways on Monday morning, not to be all collected again and free to speak till seven o'clock in the evening, when they met round the table for tea.

'Mamma looks cheery,' said Felix, coming into the little back room where Wilmet was spreading bread and butter.

'Yes,' said Wilmet, 'I think she has cared to hear about the fire. So many people have come in and talked, that it has enlivened her.'

'And how is the boy?'

'A little better, Martha heard; but he keeps on talking of Diego, and seems not to care about any one else.'

'No wonder. His father must be an unmitigated brute,' said Felix. 'He came to the inquest, and talked just as if it had been an old Newfoundland dog; I really think he cared rather less than if it had been.'

'Tell us about the inquest, Felix,' said Lance. 'I wish they'd have wanted me there.'

'I don't see why, Lance,' said Felix gravely; 'it was a terrible thing to see poor Mr. Jones hardly able to speak for grief, and the mother of that poor young nurse went on sobbing as if her heart was breaking.'

'Nobody knows the cause of the fire, do they?' asked Cherry. 'Lady Price said it was the gas.'

'No; no one knows. Way, the waiter, saw a glare under the door of the great assembly-room as he was going up very late to bed, and the instant he opened the door the flame seemed to rush out at him. I suppose a draught was all it wanted. He saw this poor Diego safe downstairs once, but he must have gone back to save his young master, and got cut off in coming back. Poor fellow! he is a Mexican negro, belonging to an estate that came to Mr. Travis's wife, and he has always clung to her and her son just like a faithful dog.'

'But he could not be a slave in England,' said Cherry eagerly.

'No; but as this Travis said, his one instinct was the boy: he did not know how to get rid of him, he said, and I do believe he thinks it a lucky chance.'

'I wish it had been he!' said Lance.

'Sibby has asked leave to go to the burial,' added Wilmet.

'I hope you gave it,' said Felix. 'Mr. Macnamara came and asked if he were not a Roman Catholic, and those two Travises laughed a little offensively, and said they guessed he was so, as much as a nigger was anything; and the Papists were welcome to his black carcase, only they would not be charged for any flummery. "I won't be made a fool of about a nigger," one said. And then, I was so glad, Mr. Audley begged to know when the funeral would be, and said he would go anywhere to do honour to faithfulness unto death.'

'Well done, Mr. Audley!' cried Lance. 'Won't we go too, Fee?'

'It will be at nine to-morrow,' said Felix; at which Lance made a face, since of course he would be in school at the time.

'Maybe I shall have to go,' added Felix; 'for only think, as my good luck would have it, Redstone went on Saturday night to see his mother or somebody, and only came back this morning; and Mr. Froggatt himself was "out at his box," as he calls it, so he told me this morning to write the account of the fire for the paper, and he would pay me for it extra, as he does Redstone.'

'Well, and have you done it?'

'I was pretty much at sea at first, till I recollected the letter I began to Edgar yesterday night, and by following that, I made what I thought was a decent piece of business of it.'

'Oh, did you put in the way they threw the things out at window at Jessop's without looking what they were?' cried Lance; 'and the jolly smash the jugs and basins made, and when their house was never on fire at all: and how the coal-heaver said "Hold hard, frail trade there!"'

'Well,' said Felix quaintly, 'I put it in a different form, you see. I said the inhabitants of the adjacent houses hurled their furniture from the windows with more precipitation than attention to the fragility of the articles. And, after all, that intolerable ass, Redstone, has corrected fire every time into "the devouring element," and made "the faithful black" into "the African of sable integument, but heart of precious ore."'

'Now, Felix!'

'Bald, sir, bald,' he said, with such a face. '"Yes, Mr. Underwood," even good old Froggy said, when he saw me looking rather blue, "you and I may know what good taste and simplicity is, but if we sent out the Pursuivant with no mouth-filling words in it, we should be cut out with some low paper in no time among the farmers and mechanics."'

'Is he so led by Mr. Redstone?' asked Wilmet.

'Not exactly; but I believe there's nothing he dreads more than Redstone's getting offended and saying that I am no use, as he would any day if he could. O, Mr. Audley, are you coming to stay?'

'Will you have a cup of tea?' said Wilmet.

'Thank you, yes; I've got to dine with these fellows at the Railway Hotel at eight, but I wanted to speak to you first, Wilmet,' said Mr. Audley, sitting down as if he were weary of his day.

'How is the boy?'

'Better. He has been quite sensible ever since he woke at twelve o'clock to-day, only he was dreadfully upset about poor Diego--about whom his father told him very abruptly--without the least notion he would feel it so much.'

'I wish I had the kicking of that father,' observed Felix, driving the knife hard into the loaf.

'He is not altogether such a bad fellow,' said Mr. Audley thoughtfully.

'Not for an American, perhaps.'

'He is not an American at all. He was born and bred in my own country, and took me by surprise by calculating that I was one of the Audleys of Wrightstone Court, and wanting to know whether my father were Sir Robert or Sir Robert's son. Then he guessed that I might have heard of his father, if I was not too young, and by-and-by it dawned on me that whenever there is any complication about business matters, or any one is in bad circumstances, my father always vituperates one Travis, who, it seems, was a solicitor greatly trusted by all the country round, till he died, some twenty years ago, and it appeared that he had ruined everybody, himself included. These men are his sons. They went out to America, and got up in the world. They told me the whole story of how they had knocked about everywhere, last evening, but I was too sleepy to enter into it much, though I daresay it was curious enough; successful speculations and hair's-breadth escapes seemed to come very thick one upon another, but all I am clear about is that this poor boy, Fernando's mother was a Mexican heiress, they--one of them, I mean--managed to marry; her father English, but her mother old Spanish blood allied to the old Caciques, he says; whether it is a boast I don't know, but the boy looks like it--such a handsome fellow; delicate straight profile, slender limbs, beautifully made, inky-black hair and brows, pure olive skin--the two doctors were both in raptures. Well, they thought affairs in Mexico insecure, so they sold the poor woman's estate and carried her off to Texas. No; was it? I really can't remember where; but, at any rate, Diego stuck to her wherever she went, and when she died, to her child; nursed him like an old woman, and-- In short, it was that touching negro love that one sometimes hears of. Now they seem to have grown very rich--the American Vice-Consul, who came over this morning from Dearport, knew all about them--and they came home partly on business, and partly to leave Fernando to be made into an English gentleman, who, Mr. Travis says, if he has money to spend, does whip creation. He's English enough for that still. Well, they have got a telegram that makes them both want to sail by the next steamer.'

'That's a blessing. But the boy?'

'He cannot be moved for weeks. It is not only the fractures, but the jar of the fall. He may get quite over it, but must lie quite still on his back. So here he is, a fixture, by your leave, my lady housekeeper.'

'It is your room, Mr. Audley,' said Wilmet. 'But can his father really mean to leave him alone so very ill, poor boy?'

'Well, as his father truly says, he is no good to him, but rather the reverse; and as the Travis mind seems rather impressed by finding an Audley here, I am to be left in charge of him now, and to find a tutor for him when he gets better. So we are in for that!'

'But what is to become of you?' asked Wilmet. 'The nurse has got the little back study.'

'I have got a room at Bolland's to sleep in, thank you,' he answered; 'and I have been representing the inconvenience to the house of this long illness, so that the Travises, who are liberal enough--'

'I thought them horrid misers,' said Felix.

'That was only the American conscience as to negroes. In other matters they are ready to throw money about with both hands; so I hope I have made a good bargain for you, Wilmet. You are to have five guineas a week, and provide for boy and nurse, all but wine and beer, ice and fruit.'

'Five guineas!' murmured Wilmet, quite overpowered at the munificent sum.

'I am afraid you will not find it go as far as you expect, for he will want a good deal of dainty catering.'

'And your room should be deducted,' said Wilmet.

'Not at all. Mrs. Bolland said she did not take lodgers, but should esteem it a favour if I would sleep there while her son is away. It is all safe, I think. He has given me orders on his London banker, and they say here at the bank that they are all right. It is a strange charge,' he added thoughtfully; 'we little thought what we were taking on ourselves when we picked up that poor fellow, Felix; and I cannot help thinking it will turn out well, there was something so noble about the poor lad's face as he lay insensible.'

It was about three weeks later, that one Sunday evening, when Mr. Audley came in from church, Felix followed him to his sitting-room, and began with unusual formality. 'I think I ought to speak to you, sir.'

'What's the matter?'

'About Lance, and him in there. I have had such a queer talk with him!'

'As how?'

'Why he wanted us to stop from church, asked me to let off the poor little coon; and when I said we couldn't, because we were in the choir, wanted to know what we were paid, then why we did it at all; and so it turned out that he thinks churches only meant for women and psalm-singing niggers and Methodists, and has never been inside one in his life, never saw the sense of it, wanted to know why I went.'

'What did you tell him?'

'I don't know; I was so taken aback. I said something about our duty to God, and it's being all we had to get us through life; but I know I made a dreadful mess of it, and the bell rang, and I got away. But he seems a sheer heathen, and there's Lance in and out all day.'

'Yes, Felix, I am afraid it is true that the poor lad has been brought up with no religion at all--a blank sheet, as his father called him.'

'Wasn't his father English?'

'Yes; but he had lived a roving, godless life. I began, when I found the boy must stay here, by asking whether he were of his father's or his mother's communion, and in return heard a burst of exultation that he had never let a priest into his house. His father-in-law had warned him against it, and he had carried his wife out of their reach long before the child's birth; he has not even been baptized, but you see, Felix, I could not act like Abraham to the idolater in the Talmud.'

Felix did not speak, but knocked one foot against the other in vexation, feeling that it was his house after all, and that Mr. Audley should not have turned this young heathen loose into it to corrupt his brother, without consulting him.

'I told Travis,' continued the Curate, 'that if I undertook the charge as he wished, it must be as a priest myself, and I must try to put some religion into him. And, to my surprise, he said he left it to me. Fernando was old enough to judge, and if he were to be an English squire, he must conform to old-country ways; besides, I was another sort of parson from Yankee Methodists and Shakers or Popish priests--he knew the English clergy well enough, of the right sort.'

'So he is to learn religion to make him a squire?'

'I was thankful enough to find no obstruction.'

'And have you begun?' asked Felix moodily.

'Why--no. He has been too ill and too reserved. I have attempted nothing but daily saying a short prayer for him in his hearing, hoping he would remark on it. But you know the pain is still very absorbing at times, and it leaves him exhausted; and besides, I fancy he has a good deal of tropical languor about him, and does not notice much. Nothing but Lance has roused him at all.'

'I would never have let Lance in there by himself, if I had known,' said Felix. 'He is quite bewitched.'

'It would have been difficult to prevent it. Nor do I think that much harm can be done. I believe I ought to have told you, Felix; but I did not like denouncing my poor sick guest among the children, or its getting round all the town and to my Lady. After all, Lance is a very little fellow; it is not as if Edgar or Clem were at home.'

'I suppose it cannot be helped,' sighed Felix; 'but my father--' and as he recollected the desire to take his brothers away from Mr. Ryder, he felt as if his chosen guardian had been false to his trust, out of pity and enthusiasm.

'Your father would have known how to treat him,' sighed Mr. Audley. 'At any rate, Felix, we must not forget the duties of hospitality and kindness; and I hope you will not roughly forbid Lance to go near him, without seeing whether the poor fellow is not really inoffensive.'

'I'll see about it,' was all that Felix could get himself to say; for much as he loved Mr. Audley, he could not easily brook interference with his brothers, and little Lance, so loyal to himself, and so droll without a grain of malice, was very near to his heart. 'A young Pagan,' as he thought to himself, 'teaching him all the blackguard tricks and words he has learnt at all the low schools in north or south!' and all the most objectionable scenes he had met with in American stories, from 'Uncle Tom' onwards, began to rise before his eyes. 'A pretty thing to do in a fit of beneficence! I'll order Lance to keep away, and if he dares disobey, I'll lick him well to show him who is master.'

So he felt, as he swung himself upstairs, and halted with some intention of pouring out his vexed spirit to Wilmet, because Mr. Audley had no business to make it a secret; but Wilmet was putting her mother to bed, and he went on upstairs. There he found all the doors open, and heard a murmuring sound of voices in Geraldine's room. In a mood to be glad of any excuse for finding fault, he strode across the nursery, where Angela and Bernard slept, and saw that Lance, who ought to have gone at once to bed on coming in, was standing in his sister's window, trying to read in the ray of gas-light that came up from a lamp at the brewhouse door.

'Go to bed, Lance,' he said; 'if you have not learnt your lessons in proper time, you must wake early, or take the consequences. I won't have it done on Sunday night.'

Lance started round angrily, and Cherry cried, 'O Felix, it is no such thing! Only would you tell us where to find about the king and his priests that defeated the enemy by singing the "mercy endureth for ever" psalm?'

'In the Bible!' said Felix, as if sure it was a blunder. 'There's no such story.'

'Indeed there is,' cried Lance, 'for Papa (the word low and reverently) took out his blue poly-something Bible and read it out in the sermon. Don't you remember, Fee, a hot day in the summer, when he preached all about those wild robbers--horrid fellows with long spears--coming up in the desert to make a regular smash of the Jews?'

'Lance!' cried Cherry.

'Well, he did not say that, of course, but they wanted to; and how the king sent out the priests without a fighting man, only all in white, praising God in the beauty of holiness, and singing, "His mercy endureth for ever." I saw him read that, though he told us all the rest without book; how all the enemy began to quarrel, and all killed one another, and the Jews had nothing to do but to pick up the spoil, and sing another psalm coming back.'

'I remember now,' said Felix, in a very different tone. 'It was Jehoshaphat, Lancey boy. I'll find it for you in the book of Chronicles. Did you want it for anything?'

Lance made an uneasy movement.

'It was to show poor Fernando Travis, wasn't it?' said Cherry; and as Lance wriggled again, she added, 'He seems to have been taught nothing good.'

'Now, Cherry,' broke out Lance, 'I told you to say not a word.'

'I know a little about it, Lance,' said Felix, sitting down on the window-seat and lifting Lance on his knee, as he said, in a tone very unlike his intended expostulation, 'You must not let him do you harm, Lance.'

'He wouldn't; but he does not know anything about anything,' said the little boy. 'They never taught him to say his prayers, nor sing hymns, nor chant, and he thinks it is only good for niggers. So I told him that singing psalms once beat an army, and he laughed; and I thought Cherry was sure to know where it was--but girls will always tell.'

'Indeed you never told me not,' said Cherry, humbly.

'She has done no harm,' said Felix. 'Mr. Audley has just been talking to me about that poor boy. He really is as untaught as that little scamp at the potteries that we tried to teach.'

'He's a stunning good fellow,' broke in Lance; 'he has seen an alligator, and ridden mustangs.'

'Never mind that now, Lance; I dare say he is very amusing, but--'

'Don't hinder me from going to him,' broke in the younger boy vehemently.

'If,' said Felix gravely, 'you can be quite sure my father would not mind it.'

Lance was nestling close up to him in the dark, and he was surprised to find that round face wet with tears. 'Papa would not let him lie dull and moped all day long,' he said. 'O Fee, I can't keep away; I am so sorry for him. When that terrible cramp comes, it is of no use to say those sort of things to him.'

'What sort of things?'

'Oh, you know; verses such as Papa used to have said to him. They weren't a bit of good. No, not though I did get the book Papa marked for Cherry.'

'You did!' gasped Cherry, who little thought that sacred possession of hers was even known to Master Lance.

'You'd have done it yourself, Cherry,' said the little boy, 'if you had only seen how bad he was; he got quite white, and had great drops on his forehead, and panted so, and would not let out a bit of a cry, only now and then a groan; and so I ran to get the verse Papa used to say over and over to you when your foot was bad. And I'm sure it was the right one, but--but--it did him no good, for, oh! he didn't know who our Saviour is;' and the little fellow clung to his brother in a passion of tears, while Felix felt a pang at the contrast.

'Have you been telling him, Lancey?' he asked.

'I wanted him to ask Mr. Audley, but he said he was a parson, and his father said that there would be no parsons if men were not fools. Now, Fee, I've told you, but don't keep me away.'

'It would be hard on a poor sick fellow,' said Felix, thoroughly softened. 'Only, Lance, you know I can't be with you; will you promise to go away if ever you think Papa would wish it?'

'Oh yes; one has to do that, you know, when our own fellows get blackguardly,' said little Lance, freely; whereat Cherry shuddered somewhat. 'And, Fee,' he added, 'if you would only come and make him understand about things.'

'Mr. Audley must do that,' said Felix; 'I can't.'

'You teach the boys in the Sunday-school,' said Lance. 'And he'd mind you, Blunderbore. He says you are the grandest and most splendiferous fellow he ever did set eyes on, and that he feels something like, when you've just looked in and spoken to him.'

'You little ass, he was chaffing you.'

'No, no, indeed he wasn't. I told him all about it, because he liked your face so much. And he does care so very much when you look in. Oh! do, do, Fee; he is so jolly, and it is so lonely and horrid for him, and I do so want Papa for him;' and the child cried silently, but Felix felt the long deep sobs, and as Geraldine, much moved, said, 'Dear little Lancey,' he carried him over to her as she sat up in bed, and she kissed and fondled him, and murmured in his ear, 'Dear Lance, I'm sure he'll get good. We will get Mr. Audley to talk to him, you know, and we will say a prayer every day for him.'

Lance, beginning to recover, put his arms round Cherry's neck, gave her a tremendous hug, released himself from his brother's arms, and ran off to bed. Felix remained a few moments, while Cherry exclaimed, 'Oh! the dear good little fellow!'

'Better than any of us,' said Felix. 'I was quite savage with Mr. Audley when I found out about it. I must go down and tell him. I never thought all that was in the little chap! I'm glad he came to you, Cherry. Good-night.'

'And you will try to teach this poor boy, Felix?'

'I don't say that. I don't in the least know how; but I shall not dare to hinder Lance, now I see how he goes on.'

On his way down he heard voices in the sitting-room, where, in fact, Mr. Audley had joined Wilmet, to explain to her how vexed he was to have so much annoyed Felix, and perhaps also something of his own annoyance at the manner in which Felix took it. Wilmet, partly from her 'growing on the sunny side of the wall,' partly from her early authority, was in some ways older than her brother, and could see that there was in him a shade of boyish jealousy of his prerogative; and as she sat, in her pretty modest gravity, with her fair hair and her Sunday frock, she was softly but earnestly telling Mr. Audley that she was sure Felix would not mind long, and that he was very sorry for the poor boy really, only he was so anxious about Lance, and he did like to be consulted. Both looked up, startled, as Felix opened the door, and they saw that his eyes were full of tears. He came up to Mr. Audley, and said, 'I beg your pardon, sir; I'd no business to grumble, and that little fellow has been--'

'Beforehand with us?' asked Mr. Audley, as Felix broke down. 'The nurse has been just telling me how he sat on his bed saying bits of psalms and verses to him when he had that bad fit of cramp, "so pretty," she said; but I was afraid it must have been rather like a spell.'

Felix told his story, feeling it too much not to make it lame, and with the tearfulness trembling in his voice and eyes all the time.

'Our little gamin has the most of the good Samaritan in him,' said Mr. Audley. ''Tis not quite the end I should have begun at, but perhaps it may work the better.'

'Dear little boy, that he should have remembered that sermon!' exclaimed Wilmet.

'I am afraid it is more than I do,' said Felix; 'all last summer the more I tried to listen, the more I saw how he was changing. Do you remember it, Wilmet?'

'Yes; the text was, "The joy of the Lord is your strength," and he said how praising God, and going on thinking about His goodness and thankfulness, was the way to make our adversaries dissolve before us, and never trouble us at all, just like the bands of the Moabites and Ammonites before Jehoshaphat.'

'I recollect it well, and how I thought it such a likeness of himself,' said Mr. Audley; 'he was walking over his troubles, scarcely seeing them, as if they could not dim the shine of his armour while he went on looking up and being thankful. I fancy little Lance has a good deal of that kind of bright fearless way.'

'He has,' said Felix in a grave thoughtful tone that made the Curate look at him and sigh to think how early care and grief had come to make that joyous buoyancy scarce possible to the elder boy, little more than seventeen though he was.

'He is very idle, though,' added Wilmet; 'such caricatures as there are all over his books! Edgar's were bad enough, but Lance puts pig-tails and cocked hats to all Edgar's.'

So Lance's visits to the sick stranger remained unobstructed. He had no notion of teaching him; but the foreign boy in his languor and helplessness curiously fascinated him, perhaps from the very contrast of the passive, indolent, tropical nature with his own mercurial temperament. The Spaniard, or perhaps the old Mexican, seemed to predominate in Fernando, as far as could be guessed in one so weak and helpless. He seemed very quiet and inanimate, seldom wanting or seeking diversion, but content to lie still, with half-closed eyes; his manner was reserved, and with something of courteous dignity, especially when Lady Price came to visit him; and the Yankeeisms that sometimes dropped from his tongue did not agree with the polish of the tone, and still less with the imperious manner in which he sometimes addressed the nurse. He seemed, though not clever, to be tolerably well cultivated; he had been at the schools of whatever cities his father had resided in, and his knowledge of languages was of course extensive.

However, he never talked freely to Mr. Audley. He had bitterly resented that gentleman's interference, one day when he was peremptorily commanding the nurse to place him in a position that had been forbidden, and the endeavour to control him had made him fearfully angry. There was a stormy outbreak of violent language, only checked by a severe rebuke, for which he did not forgive the Curate; he was coldly civil, and accepted the attentions he could not dispense with in a grave formal manner that would have been sulky in an English lad, but had something of the dreary grandeur of the Spanish Don from that dark lordly visage, and made Mr. Audley half provoked, half pitying, speak of him always as his Cacique. He only expanded a little even to Lance, though the little boy waited on him assiduously, chattering about school doings, illustrating them on a slate, singing to him, acting Blondin, exhibiting whatever he could lay his hands on, including the twins, whom he bore down one after the other, to the great wrath of Sibby, not to say of little Stella herself, while Theodore took the exhibition with perfect serenity.

As to Felix, he was, as Lance said, the subject of the sick lad's fervent admiration. Perhaps the open, fair, cheerful, though grave countenance, fresh complexion, and strong, steadfast, upright bearing had something to do with the strange adoration that in his silent way Fernando paid to the youth, who looked in from time to time, bringing a sort of air of refreshment with his good-natured shy smile, even when he least knew what to say. Or else it was little Lance's fervent affection for Felix which had conduced to the erection of the elder brother into the idol of Fernando's fancy; and his briefest visit was the event of the long autumnal days spent in the uncurtained iron bed in the corner of the low room. The worship, silent though it was, was manifest enough to become embarrassing and ridiculous to the subject of it, whose sense of duty and compassion was always at war with his reluctance to expose himself to it. Not another word passed on any religious subject. Mr. Audley was not forgiven enough to venture on the attempt; the Rector was shy and frightened about it, and could make no beginning; and Mr. Mowbray Smith, who found great fault with them for their neglect, had been fairly stared down by the great black eyes, which, when the heavy lids were uplifted, proved to be of an immense size and force; and Felix was so sure that it could not be his business while three clergymen were going in and out that he had never done more than describe the weather, or retail any fresh bit of London news that had come down to the office.

At last, however, one November day, he found Fernando sitting up in bed, and Lance, perched on the table, talking so earnestly as not to perceive his entrance, until Fernando broke upon his words: 'There! it's no use!'

'Yes, it is,' cried Lance, jumping down. 'O Fee, I am glad you are come; I want you to tell him the rights of it.'

'The rights of what, Lance?'

'Tell him that it is all the devil's doing, and the men he has got on his side; and that it was the very thing our Saviour came for to set us free, only everybody won't,' said Lance clinging to his brother's hand, and looking up in his face.

'That's about right, Lance,' said Felix; 'but I don't quite know what you are talking about.'

'Just this,' said Fernando. 'Lance goes on about God being merciful and good and powerful--Almighty, as he says; but whatever women may tell a little chap like that, nobody can think so that has seen the things I have, down in the West, with my own eyes.'

'Felix!' cried Lance, 'say it. You know and believe just as I do, as everybody good does, men and all.'

'Yes, indeed!' said Felix with all his heart.

'Then tell me how it can be,' said Fernando.

Felix stood startled and perplexed, feeling the awful magnitude and importance of the question, but also feeling his own incompetence to deal with it; and likewise that Wilmet was keeping the tea waiting for him. He much wished to say, 'Keep it for Mr. Audley,' but he feared to choke the dawning of faith, and he likewise feared the appearance of hesitation.

'Nobody can really explain it,' he said, 'but that's no wonder. One cannot explain a thunderstorm, but one knows that it is.'

'That's electricity,' said Fernando.

'And what's electricity?'

'A fluid that--'

'Yes; that's another word. But you can't get any further. God made electricity, or whatever it is, and when you talk about explaining it, you only get to something that is. You know it is, and you can't get any further,' he repeated.

'Well, that's true; though science goes beyond you in America.'

'But no searching finds out all about God!' said Felix reverently. 'All we know is that He is so infinitely great and wise, that of course we cannot understand why all He does is right, any more than a private soldier understands his general's orders.'

'And you--you,' said Fernando, 'are content to say you don't understand.'

'Why not?' said Felix.

There was a silence. Fernando seemed to be thinking; Lance gazed from one to the other, as if disappointed that his brother was not more explicit.

'And how do you know it is true?' added Fernando. 'I mean, what Lance has been telling me! What makes you sure of it, if you are?'

'If I am?' cried Felix, startled into indignation. 'To be sure I am!'

'But how?'

'I know it!' said Felix.

'How?'

'The Bible!' gasped Lance impatiently.

'Ay; so you have said for ever,' broke in Fernando; 'but what authenticates that?'

'The whole course of history,' said Felix. 'There is a great chain of evidence, I know, but I never got it up. I can't tell it you, Fernando; I never wanted it, never even tried to think about the proofs. It is all too sure.'

'But wouldn't a Mahometan say that?' said Fernando.

'If he did, look at the Life of our Lord and of Mahomet together, and see which must be the true Prophet--the Way, the Life, the Truth.'

'That one could do,' said Fernando thoughtfully. 'I say,' as Felix made a movement as if he thought the subject concluded, 'I want to know one thing more. Lance says it is believing all this that makes you--any one I mean--good.'

'I don't know what else should,' said Felix, smiling a little; the question seemed to him so absurd.

'Is it really what makes you go and slave away at that old boss's of yours?'

'Why, that's necessity and my duty,' said Felix.

'And is it what makes this little coon come and spend all his play-hours on a poor fellow with a broken leg? I've been at many schools, and never saw the fellow who would do that.'

'Oh! you are such fun!' cried Lance.

'All that is right comes from God first and last,' said Felix gravely.

'And you--you that are no child--you believe all that Lance tells me you do, and think it makes you what you are!'

'I believe it; yes, of course. And believing it should make me much better than I am! I hope it will in time.'

'Ah!' sighed Fernando. 'I never heard anything like it since my father said he'd take the cow-hide to poor old Diego, if he caught him teaching me nigger-cant.'

They left him.

'Poor fellow!' sighed Felix; 'what have you been telling him, Lance?'

'Oh, I don't know; only why things were good and bad,' was Lance's lucid answer; and he was then intent on detailing the stories he had heard from Fernando. He had been in the worst days of Southern slavery ere its extinction, on the skirts of the deadly warfare with the Red Indians; and the poor lad had really known of horrors that curdled the blood of Wilmet and Geraldine, and made the latter lie awake or dream dreadful dreams all night.

But the next day, Mr. Audley was startled to hear the two friends in the midst of an altercation. When Lance had come in for his mid-day recreation, Fernando had produced five shillings, desiring him to go and purchase a Bible for him; but Lance, who had conceived the idea that the Scriptures ought not to be touched by an unchristened hand, flatly refused, offering, however, to read from his own. Now Lance's reading was at that peculiar school-boy stage which seems calculated to combine the utmost possible noise with the least possible distinctness; and though he had good gifts of ear and voice, and his reciting and singing were both above the average, the moment a book was before him, he roared his sentences between his teeth in horrible monotony. And as he began with the first chapter of St. Matthew, and was not perfectly able to cope with all the names, Fernando could bear it no longer, and insisted on having the book itself. Lance shook his head and refused; and matters were in this stage when Mr. Audley, not liking the echoes of the voices, opened the door. 'What is it?' he asked anxiously.

'Nothing,' replied Fernando, proudly trying to swallow his vexation.

'Lance!' said Mr. Audley rather severely; but just then, seeing what book the child was holding tight under his arm, he decided to follow him out of the room and interrogate.

'What was it, Lance?'

'He ought not to touch a Bible--he sha'n't have mine,' said Lance resentfully.

'Was he doing anything wrong with it?'

'Oh no! But he ought not to have it before he is christened, and I would have read to him.'

Mr. Audley knew what Lance's reading was, and smiled. 'Was that all, Lance? I like your guardianship of the Bible, my boy; but it was not given only to those who are Christians already, or how could any one learn?'

'He sha'n't touch mine, though,' said Lance, with an odd sturdiness; stumping upstairs with his treasure, a little brown sixpenny S. P. C. K. book, but in which his father had written his name on his last birth-day but one.

Mr. Audley only waited to take down a New Testament, and present himself at Fernando's bedside, observing gladly that there was much more wistfulness than offence about his expression.

'It was a scruple on the young man's part,' said Mr. Audley, smiling, though full of anxiety; 'he meant no unkindness.'

'I know he did not,' said Fernando quietly, but gazing at the purple book in the clergyman's hands.

'Did you want this?' said Mr. Audley; 'or can I find anything in it for you?'

'Thank you;' and there was a pause. The offended manner towards Mr. Audley had been subsiding of late into friendliness under his constant attentions, and Fernando's desire for an answer prevailed at last. 'Felix told me to read the Life of Christ,' he said, not irreverently, 'and that it would show me He must be True.'

'I hope and trust that so it may be,' said Mr. Audley, more moved than he could bear to show, but with fervour in his voice far beyond his words.

'Felix,' said Fernando, resting on the name, 'Felix does seem as if he must be right, Mr. Audley; can it be really as he says--and Lance--that their belief makes them like what they are?'

'Most assuredly.'

'And you don't say so only because you are a minister?' asked the boy distrustfully.

'I say so because I know it. I knew that it is the Christian faith that makes all goodness, long before I was a minister.'

'But I have seen plenty of Christians that were not in the least like Felix Underwood.'

'So have I; but in proportion as they live up to their faith, they have what is best in him.'

'I should like to be like him,' mused Fernando; 'I never saw such a fellow. He, and little Lance too, seem to belong to something bright and strong, that seems inside and outside, and I can't lay hold of what it is.'

'One day you will, my dear boy,' said Mr. Audley. 'Let me try to help you.'

Fernando scarcely answered, save by half a smile, and a long sigh of relief: but when Mr. Audley put his hand over the long brown fingers, they closed upon it.

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VII. THE CHESS-PLAYER'S BATTLE

'Dost thou believe, he said, that Grace Itself can reach this grief? With a feeble voice and a woeful eye-- "Lord, I believe," was the sinner's reply, "Help Thou mine unbelief."' Southey.

By the beginning of the Christmas holidays, Fernando Travis was able to lie on a couch in Mr. Audley's sitting-room. His recovery was even tardier than had been expected, partly from the shock, and partly from the want of vigour of the tropical constitution: and he still seemed to be a great way from walking, though there was no reason to fear that the power would not return. His father wrote, preparing for a journey to Oregon, and seemed perfectly satisfied, and he was becoming very much at home with his host.

He was much interested in that which he was learning from Mr. Audley, and imbibing from the young Underwoods. The wandering life he had hitherto led, without any tenderness save from the poor old negro, without time to make friends, and often exposed to the perception of some of the darkest sides of human life, in the terrible lawlessness of the Mexican frontier, had hitherto made him dull, dreary, and indifferent, with little perception that there could be anything better; but first the kindness and then the faith he saw at Bexley, had awakened new perceptions and sensations. His whole soul was opening to perceive what the love of God and man might be; and the sense of a great void, and longing to have it satisfied, seemed to fill him with a constant craving for the revelation of that inner world, whose existence had just dawned upon him.

After a little hesitation, Mr. Audley decided on reading with Geraldine in his presence after he had come into the sitting-room, explaining to her how he thought it might be helpful. She did not much like it, but acquiesced: she used to hop in with her sweet smile, shy greeting, and hand extended to the invalid, who used to lie looking at her through his long eyelashes, and listening to her low voice reading or answering, as if she were no earthly creature; but the two were far too much in awe of one another to go any further; and he got on much better with Wilmet, when she looked in on him now and then with cheery voice and good-natured care.

Then Fulbert and Robina came home; and the former was half suspicious, half jealous, of Lance's preoccupation with what he chose to denominate 'a black Yankee nigger.' He avoided the room himself, and kept Lance from it as much as was in his power; and one day Lance appeared with a black eye, of which he concealed the cause so entirely, that Felix, always afraid of his gamin tendencies, entreated Fulbert, as a friend, to ease his mind by telling him it was not given in a street row.

'I did it,' said Fulbert; 'he was so cocky about his Yankee that I could not stand it.'

'Why shouldn't he be kind to a poor sick fellow?'

'He has no business to be always bothering about Fernando here--Fernando there--Fernando for ever. I shall have him coming up to school a regular spoon, and just not know what to do with him.'

'Well, Fulbert, I think if you had a broken leg you'd wish some one to speak to you. At any rate, I can't have Lance bullied for his good nature; I was very near doing it myself once, but I was shamed out of it.'

'Were you--were you, indeed?' cried Fulbert, delighted at this confession of human nature; and Felix could not help laughing. And that laugh did much to bring him down from the don to the brother. At any rate, Fulbert ceased his persecution in aught but word.

Robina, always Lance's companion, followed him devotedly, and only hung about the stairs forlorn when he went to Fernando without her; or if admitted, she was quite content to sit serenely happy in her beloved Lance's presence, expecting neither notice nor amusement, only watching their occupation of playing at draughts. Sometimes, however, Lance would fall to playing with her, and they would roll on the floor, a tumbling mass of legs, arms, and laughter, to the intense diversion of Fernando, to whom little girls were beings of an unknown order.

So came on Christmas, with the anniversaries so sweet and so sad, and the eve of holly-dressing, when a bundle of bright sprays was left by some kind friend at No. 8, and Lance and Bobbie were vehement to introduce Fernando to English holly and English decking.

Geraldine suggested that they had better wait for either Mr. Audley or Wilmet to come in, but for this they had no patience, and ran down with their arms full of the branches, and their tongues going with the description of the night's carols, singing them with their sweet young voices as they moved about the room. Fernando knew now what Christmas meant, but the joy and exhilaration of the two children seemed to him strange for such a bygone event. He asked them if they would have any treat.

'Oh no! except, perhaps, Mr. Audley said he should drink tea one day,' said Robina. And then she broke out again, 'Hark! the herald angels,' like a little silver bell.

Suddenly there was a cry of dismay. She had been standing on a chair over the mantelpiece, sticking holly into the ornaments, behind and under which, in true man's fashion, a good many papers and letters had accumulated. One of these papers--by some unlucky movement--fell, and by a sudden waft of air floated irrevocably into the hottest place in the fire.

'O dear! oh dear!' wailed Robina.

'That's a pretty go,' cried Lancelot.

'That comes of your open fires,' observed Fernando.

'What was it?' asked Lance.

'I don't know. I think it was a list of names! Oh! how vexed he'll be, and Wilmet; for she told me never to get on a chair over the fender, and I forgot.' Bobbie's round face was puckering for a cry.

'No, no, don't cry, Bob; I told you to get up, and I'll say so,' said Lance, smothering her in his arms after the wont of consoling brothers.

'I dare say he'll not miss it,' said Fernando good-naturedly; 'he very seldom meddles with those things.'

Bobbie's great round grey eyes came out over Lance's shoulder, and flashed amazement and wrath at him. 'I'm not going to tell stories,' she said stoutly.

'No,' said Lance, equally scandalized; 'I thought you had learnt better, Fernando.'

Robina, be it observed, was ignorant of Fernando's untaught state.

'I only said you could hold your tongue,' was of course Fernando's rejoinder.

'That's just as bad,' was the little girl's response.

'But, Lance, you held your tongue about your black eye.'

'That's my affair, and nobody else's,' said Lance, flushing up and looking cross at the allusion.

'And Fulbert told!' added Robina.

'Will they punish you?' asked Fernando.

'I think Wilmet will, because it was disobedience! I don't think she'll let me have any butter at tea,' Bobbie nearly sobbed. 'Mr. Audley won't punish! But he'll look--' and she quite cried now.

'And do you like that better than not telling?' said Fernando, still curious.

She looked up, amazed again. 'I must! I don't like it! But I couldn't ever have a happy Christmas if I didn't tell! I wish they would come that I might have it over.'

The street door opened at the moment, and Mr. Audley and Wilmet came in together from Lady Price's convocation of the parish staff. Fernando heard the sobbing confession in the passage, and Lance's assurance that he had been art and part in the disobedience, and Wilmet gravely blaming the child, and Mr. Audley telling her not to think so much about the loss as the transgression; and then the door was shut, and he heard no more, till Mr. Audley came in, examined the chimney-piece, and performed the elegy of the list in a long low whistle.

'Is much harm done?' Fernando asked.

'Not much; only I must go and get another list made out, and I am afraid I shall not be able to come in again before church.'

'I hope they have not punished her.'

'Wilmet recommended not taking the prize prayer-book to church, and she acquiesced with tears in her eyes. A good child's repentance is a beautiful thing--

"O happy in repentance' school So early taught and tried."'

These last words were said to himself as he picked up his various goods, and added, 'I must get some tea at the Rectory. I am sorry to leave you, but I hope one of them will come down.'

They did not, except that they peeped in for a moment to wish him good-night, and regretted that they had not known him to be alone.

As Felix was going out to begin the Christmas Feast in the darkness of morning, he looked in as he usually did, since Mr. Audley, sleeping out of the house, never came in till after early church. The nurse, who still slept in the room, was gone to dress; there was only a flickering night-light, and the room looked very desolate and forlorn, still more so the voice that called out to him, 'Felix! oh, Felix! is that you?'

'Yes. A happy Christmas to you,' said Felix.

'Happy--!' there was a sort of groan.

'Why, what's the matter? have you had a bad night? Aren't you so well?'

'I don't know. Come here; I must speak to you.'

Felix was, as usual, in a great haste, but the tone startled him.

'Felix, I can't stand this any longer. I must let you know what a frightful, intolerable wretch I've been. I tried to teach Lance to bet.'

'Fernando!' He was so choked with indignation, he could not say more.

'He wouldn't do it. Not after he understood it. It seems he tried it with another little boy at school, and one of the bigger ones boxed his ears and rowed him.'

'Ay; Bruce promised me to look after him.'

'So he refused. He told me he was on his honour to you not to stay if I did anything your father would have disapproved. He did leave me once, when I would not leave off.'

'But how could you?'

'I was so bored--so intolerably dull--and it is the only thing on earth that one cares to do.'

'But Lance had nothing to stake.'

'I could lend him! Ah! you don't know what betting is; why, we all do it--women, boys and all!' His voice became excited, and Felix in consternation broke in--

'When did you do this?'

'Oh! weeks ago. Before I was out of bed. When I found my dice in my purse; but I have not tried it since, with him!'

'With whom, then?'

'Why--don't fall on him--with Fulbert. He knew what it meant. Now, Felix, don't come on him for it. Come on me as much as you please. I've been a traitor to you. I see it now.'

'Anything but that!' sighed Felix, too much appalled for immediate forgiving, dejected as was the voice that spoke to him.

'Yes, yes, I know! I see. The worst thing I could do,' said Fernando, turning his face in on the pillow, in so broken-hearted a manner that Felix's kindness and generosity were roused.

'Stay, don't be so downcast,' he said. 'There's no harm done with Lance, and you being so sorry will undo it with Fulbert! I do thank you for telling me, really, only it upset me at first.'

'Upset! Yes, you'll be more so when you hear the rest,' said Fernando, raising his head again. 'Do you know who set that inn on fire?'

'Nobody does.'

'Well, I did.'

'Nonsense! You've had a bad night! You don't know what you are talking about,' said Felix, anxiously laying hold of one of the hot hands--perceiving that his own Christmas Day must begin with mercy, not sacrifice, and beginning to hope the first self-accusation was also delirious.

'Tell me. Didn't the fire begin in the ball-room? Somebody told me so.'

'Yes, the waiter saw it there.'

'Then I did it; I threw the end of a cigar among the flummery in the grate,' cried Fernando, falling back from the attitude into which he had raised himself, with a gesture of despair.

'Nobody can blame you.'

'Stay. It was after father and uncle had gone! I was smoking at the window of our room, and the landlord came in and ordered me not, because some ladies in the next room objected. He told me I might come down to the coffee-room; but I had never heard of such meddling, and I jawed him well; but he made me give in somehow. Only when I saw that big ball-room all along the side of the building, I just took a turn in it with my cigar to spite him. Poor Diego came up and begged me not, but you know the way one does with a nigger. Oh!'

Felix did not know; but the voice broke down in such misery and horror, that his soul seemed to sink within him. 'Have you had this on your mind all this time?' he asked kindly.

'No, no. It didn't come to me. I think I've been a block or a stone. The dear faithful fellow, that loved me as no one ever did. I've been feeling the kiss he gave me at the window all to-night. And then I've been falling--falling--falling in his black arms--down--down to hell itself. Not that he is there; but I murdered him, you know--and some one else besides, wasn't there?'

'This is like delirium, really, Fernando,' said Felix, putting his arms round him to lay him down, as he raised himself on his elbow. 'I must call some one if you seem so ill.'

'I wish it was illness,' said Fernando with a shudder. 'Oh! don't go--don't let me go--if you can bear to touch me--when you know all!'

'There can't be any worse to know. You had better not talk.'

'I must! I must tell you all I really am; though you will never let your brothers come near me, or the little angels--your sisters. I'd not have dared look at them myself if I had known it, but things never seemed so to me before.'

Felix shivered at the thought of what he was to hear, but he gave himself up to listen kindly, and to his relief he gathered from the incoherent words that there was no great stain of crime, as he had feared; but that the boy had come to open his eyes to the evils of the life in which he had shared according to his age, and saw them in their foulness, and with an agonised sense of shame and pollution. Felix could not help asking whether this had long dwelt on his thoughts.

'No,' he said, 'that's the wonder! I thought myself a nice, gentlemanly, honourable fellow. Oh!' with a groan. 'Fancy that! I never thought of recollecting these things, or what they have made me. Only, somehow, when those children seemed so shocked at my advising them to hold their tongues about their bit of mischief--I thought first what fools you all were to be so scrupulous; and then I recollected the lots of things I have concealed, till I began to think, Is this honour--would it seem so to Lance--or Felix? And then came down on me the thought of what you believe, of God seeing it all, and laying it up against one for judgment; and I know--I know it is true!' and there came another heavy groan, and the great eyes shone in the twilight in terror.

'If you know that is true,' said Felix, steadfastly and tenderly, 'you know something else too. You know Whom He sent into the world for our pardon for these things.'

There was a tightening of the grasp as if in acquiescence and comfort; but the nurse came back to tidy the room, and still Fernando clung to Felix, and would not let him go. She opened the shutters, and then both she and Felix were dismayed to see how ill and spent her patient looked; for she had slept soundly through his night of silent anguish and remorse--misery that, as Felix saw by his face, was pressing on him still with intolerable weight.

By the time the woman had finished Mr. Audley came in, and seeing at once that Felix's absence was accounted for by Fernando's appearance, he stepped up at once to the bed, full of solicitude. Felix hardly knew whether to reply or escape; but Fernando's heart was too full for his words not to come at once.

'No, I am not worse, but I see it all now.--Tell him, Felix; I cannot say it again.'

'Fernando thinks--' Felix found he could hardly speak the words either--'Fernando is afraid that it was an accident of his own--'

'Don't say an accident. It was passion and spite,' broke in Fernando.

'That caused the fire at the Fortinbras Arms,' Felix was obliged to finish.

'Not on purpose!' exclaimed Mr. Audley.

'Almost as much as if it had been,' said Fernando. 'I smoked to spite the landlord for interfering, and threw away the end too angry to heed where. There!' he added grimly; 'Felix won't tell me how many I murdered besides my poor old black. How many?'

'Do not speak in that way, my poor boy,' said Mr. Audley. 'At least, this is better than the weight you have had on your mind so long.'

'How many?' repeated Fernando.

'Two more lives were lost,' said Mr. Audley gently, 'Mr. Jones's baby and its nurse. But you must not use harder words than are just, Fernando. It was a terrible result, but consequences do not make the evil.'

He made a kind of murmur; then turning round, uneasily said, 'That is not all; I have seen myself, Mr. Audley.'

Mr. Audley looked at Felix, who spoke with some difficulty and perplexity. 'He has been very unhappy all night. He thinks things wrong that he never thought about before.'

Mr. Audley felt exceedingly hopeful at those words; but he was alarmed at the physical effect on his patient, and felt that the present excitement was mischievous. 'I understand in part,' he said. 'But it seems to me that he is too restless and uncomfortable to think or understand now. It may be that he may yet see the joy of to-day; but no more talk now. Have you had your breakfast?'

He shook his head, but Felix had to go away, and breakfast and dressing restored Fernando to a more tranquil state. He slept, too, wearied out, when he was placed on his couch; while Felix was at Christmas service, singing, as he had never sung before,--

'Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.'

Oh! was the poor young stranger seeing the way to that reconciliation? and when Lancelot's sweet clear young notes rose up in all their purity, and the rosy honest face looked upwards with an expression elevated by the music, Felix could not help thinking that the boy had verily sung those words of truth and hope into the poor dark lonely heart. Kindness, steadfastness, truth, in that merry-hearted child had been doing their work; and when Lance marched away with the other lesser choristers, the elder brother felt as if the younger had been the more worthy to 'draw near in faith.'

Fernando was more like himself when Felix came in, but he was a good deal shaken, and listened to the conventional Christmas greeting like mockery, shrinking from the sisters, when they looked in on him, with what they thought a fresh access of shyness, but which was a feeling of terrible shame beside the innocence he ascribed to them.

'I wish I could help that poor boy,' sighed Wilmet. 'He does look so very miserable!'

And Geraldine's eyes swam in tears as she thought of the loneliness of his Christmas, and without that Christmas joy that even her mother's dulled spirit could feel--the joy that bore them through the recollections of this time last year.

Lance's desire to cheer took the more material form of acting as Fernando's special waiter at the consumption of the turkey, which Mr. Audley had insisted on having from home, and eating in company with the rest, to whom it was a 'new experience,' being only a faint remembrance even to Felix and Wilmet; but Fernando had no appetite, and even the sight of his little friend gave him a pang.

'Do you want any one to stay with you?' asked Lance. 'If Cherry would do--for Felix said he would take Fulbert and me out for a jolly long walk, to see the icicles at Bold's Hatch.'

'No, I want no one. You are better without me.'

'I'll stay if you do want it,' said Lance, very reluctantly. 'I don't like your not having one bit of Christmas. Shall I sing you one Christmas hymn before I go?' And Lance broke into the 'Herald Angels' again.

'Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die; Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.'

Fernando's face was bathed in tears; he held out his arms, and to little Lance's great amazement, somewhat to his vexation, he held him fast and kissed him.

'What did you do that for?' he asked in a gruff astonished voice.

'Never mind!' said Fernando. 'Only I think I see what this day can be! Now go.'

Presently Mr. Audley came softly in. The lad's face was turned in to his cushion, his handkerchief over it; and as the young priest stood watching him, what could be done but pray for the poor struggling soul? At last he turned round, and looked up.

'I saw it again,' he said with a sigh.

'Saw what?'

'What you all mean. It touched me, and seemed true and real when Lance was singing. What was it--"Born to save the sons of earth"? Oh! but such as I am, and at my age, too!'

And with a few words from Mr. Audley, there came such a disburthening of self-accusation as before to Felix. It seemed as if the terrible effects of his wilfulness at the inn--horrified as he was at them--were less oppressive to his conscience than his treachery to his host in his endeavour to gamble with the little boys. He had found a pair of dice in his purse when looking for the price of a Bible, and the sight had awakened the vehement hereditary Mexican passion for betting, the bane of his mother's race. His father, as a clever man of the world, hated and prohibited the practice; but Fernando had what could easily become a frenzy for that excitement of the lazy south, and even while he had seen it in its consequences, the intense craving for the amusement had mastered him more than once, when loathing the dulness and weariness of his confinement, and shrinking from the doctrines he feared to accept. He knew it was dishonourable--yet he had given way; and he felt like one utterly stained, unpardonable, hopeless: but there was less exaggeration in his state of mind than in the early morning; and when Mr. Audley dwelt on the Hope of sinners, his eyes glistened and brightened; and at the further words that held out to him the assurance that all these sins might be washed away, and he himself enabled to begin a new life, his looks shone responsively; but he shook his head soon--'It went away from him,' he said; poor boy! 'it was too great and good to be true.'

Then Mr. Audley put prayer before him as a means of clinging even blindly to the Cross that he was barely beginning to grasp, and the boy promised. He would do anything they would, could he but hope to be freed from the horrible weight of sense of hopeless pollution that had come upon him.

For some days he did not seem able to read anything but the Gospels and the Baptismal Service; and at length, after a long silence, he said, 'Mr. Audley, if your sermon is finished, can you listen to me? May I be baptized?'

Then indeed the Curate's heart bounded, but he had to keep himself restrained. The father's consent he had secured beforehand, but he thought Fernando ought to write to him; and it was also needful to consult the Rector as to the length of actual preparation and probation.

Then, when the question came, 'Can I indeed be like Felix and Lancelot' the reply had to be cautious. 'You will be as entirely pardoned, as entirely belonging to the holiness within and without, as they; but how far you will have the consciousness, I cannot tell; and it is very probable that your temptations may be harder. Guilt may be forgiven, while habits retain their power; and they have been guarded, taught self-restraint, and had an example before them in their father, such as very few have been blessed with.'

Fernando sighed long and sadly, and said, 'Then you do not think it will make much difference.'

'The difference between life and death! But you must expect to have to believe rather than feel. But go on, and it will all be clear.'

The Rector was at first anxious to wait for definite sanction from the father; but as Mr. Audley was sure of the permission he had received, and no letter could be had for several months, he agreed to examine the lad, and write to the Bishop--a new Bishop, who had been appointed within the last year, and who was coming in the spring for a Confirmation.

Mr. Bevan was really delighted with the catechumen, and wrote warmly of him. The reply was, that if the Baptism could take place the day before the Confirmation, which was to be in a month's time, the Bishop himself would like to be present, and the youth could be confirmed the next day. There was much that was convenient in this, for it gave time for Fernando to make progress in moving about. He had made a start within the last week or two, was trying to use crutches, and had been out on fine days in a chair; and once or twice Lady Price had taken him for a drive, though she had never thought of doing so by Geraldine. The doctor said that change of air would probably quite restore his health; and he had only to wait to be a little less dependent before he was to go to a tutor, an old friend of the Audley family.

Everything promised well; but one wet afternoon, in the interim between the end of Lance's and that of Fulbert's holidays, Mr. Audley, while coming down from a visit to Mrs. Underwood, fancied he heard an ominous rattle, and opening the door suddenly, found Fernando and Fulbert eagerly throwing the dice and with several shillings before them.

Both started violently as he entered, and Fulbert put his arm and hand round as if to hide the whole affair; while Fernando tried to look composed.

All that the Curate said in his surprise was one sharp sentence. 'Fernando Travis, if you are to renounce the devil, you will have to begin by throwing those dice into the fire.'

Fernando's eyes looked furious, and he swept the dice and the money into his pocket--all but three shillings. Fulbert stole out of the room quietly. No doubt these were his winnings, which he did not dare to touch.

Mr. Audley took up a book and waited, fully expecting that sorrow would follow; but Fernando did not speak; and when at length he did on some indifferent matter, it was in his ordinary tone. Well, there must be patience. No doubt repentance would come at night! No; the evening passed on, and Fernando was ready for all their usual occupations. Perhaps it would come with Felix, or in the dawn after a troubled night. Alas! no. And moreover, Felix, to whom it was necessary to speak, was exceedingly angry and vexed, and utterly incredulous of there being any good in the character that could be so fickle, if not deceitful and hypocritical. His own resolute temper had no power of comprehending the unmanliness of erring against the better will; he was absolutely incapable of understanding the horrible lassitude and craving for excitement that must have tempted Fernando, and he was hard and even ashamed of himself for having ever believed in the lad's sincerity.

This anger too made him speak with such a threatening tone to Fulbert, as to rouse the doggedness of the boy's nature. All that could be got out of Fulbert was that 'his going there was all Felix's doing,' and he would not manifest any sign of regret, such as would be any security against his introducing the practice among the clergy orphans, or continuing it all his life. He was not a boy given to confidences, and neither Wilmet nor Cherry could get him beyond his glum declaration that it was Felix's fault, he only wanted to keep out of the fellow's way. They could only take comfort in believing that he was really ashamed, and that he suffered enough within to be a warning against the vice itself.

As to Fernando, he made no sign, he went on as if nothing had happened; and nothing was observable about him, but that he showed himself intensely weary of his present mode of life, put on at times the manners that were either those of the Spanish Don or of the Indian Cacique, and seemed to shrink from the prospect of the English tutor. Yet he continued his preparation for baptism, and Mr. Bevan was satisfied with him; but Mr. Audley was perplexed and unhappy over the reserve that had sprung up between them, and could not decide whether to make another attempt or leave the lad to himself.

One afternoon, only ten days from the time fixed for the Bishop's visit, Mr. Audley returned from a clerical meeting to find an unexpected visitor in the room--namely, Alfred Travis, Fernando's uncle, a more Americanized and rougher person than his brother. He rose as he entered. 'Good morning, Mr. Audley; you have taken good care of your charge. He is fit to start with me to-morrow. See a surgeon in town--then to Liverpool--'

'Indeed!' Mr. Audley caught a deprecating look from Fernando. 'Do you come from his father?'

'Well--yes and no. His father is still in the Oregon; but he and I have always been one--and opening the boy's letters, and finding him ready to move, I thought, as I had business in England, I'd come and fetch him, and just settle any claim the fellow at yonder hotel may have cheek enough to set up, since Fernan was green enough to let it out.'

'May I ask if you have any authority from his father?'

'Authority! Bless you! William will be glad to see his boy; we don't go by authority between brothers.'

'Because,' continued Mr. Audley, 'I heard from your brother that he wished Fernando to remain with me to receive an English education.'

'All sentiment and stuff! He knew better before we had sailed! An English squire in this wretched old country, forsooth! when the new republic is before him! No, no, Mr. Audley, I'll be open with you. I saw what you were up to when I got your letter, and Fernan--Got his lesson very well, he had. And when I came down, a friend in London gave me another hint. It won't do, I can assure you. That style of thing is all very well for you spruce parsons of good family, as you call it in the old country; but we are not going to have a rising young fellow like this, with a prospect of what would buy out all your squires and baronets in the old country, beslobbered and befooled with a lot of Puseyite cant. You've had your turn of him; it is time he should come and be a man again.'

Mr. Audley was dizzy with consternation. Fernando was no child. He was full sixteen, and he was so far recovered that his health formed no reason for detaining him. If he chose to go with his uncle, he must. If not--what then? He looked at Fernando, who sat uneasily.

'You hear what your uncle says?' he asked.

'I told him,' said Fernando, 'I must wait for a fortnight.' He spoke with eyes cast down, but not irresolutely.

His uncle broke out--He knew what that meant; it was only that he might be flattered by the Bishop and all the ladies, and made a greater fool of than ever. No, no, he must be out again by May, and he should just have time to take Fernan to one of the gay boarding-houses at Saratoga, and leave him there to enjoy himself.

'I have letters from my father,' said Fernando, looking up to Mr. Audley, 'before he went to Oregon. He said nothing.'

'Do you wish to stay?' said Mr. Audley, feeling that all depended on that, and trying to hide the whirl of anxiety and disappointment he felt.

The answer was not what he expected. Fernando sat upright in his chair, looked up to him and then at his uncle, and said low but resolutely, 'I will stay.'

'Then you shall stay,' said Mr. Audley.

'You have worked upon him, I see, Sir, with your old-world prejudiced superstition,' said Alfred Travis, evidently under the delusion that he was keeping his temper. 'A proper fool my brother was to leave him to you. But you do it at your peril. I shall see if there's power even in this old country to keep a boy from his own relations. You'll see me again, Fernan. You had better make ready.'

The words were not unaccompanied with expletives such as had never been personally uttered to Charles Audley before, and that brought the hot colour to his cheek. When he looked round, Fernando's face was covered with his hands. 'Oh! Mr. Audley,' he cried, as his uncle hastily shut the door, 'is he going to send for the police?'

'I do not believe he can do any such thing,' said Mr. Audley, seeing that Fernando was in great nervous agitation. 'I have authority from your father, he has none; and you are old enough to make your own decision. You really mean and wish to stay?' he added.

'I told him so from the first,' said Fernando.

'Then he has no power to force you away.'

Fernando was silent. Then he said, 'If I could have gone after my Baptism.'

'Would you have wished that?' said Mr. Audley, somewhat disappointed.

The tears were now on the long black lashes.

'Oh, don't think me ungrateful, or-- But this English life does come over me as intolerably dull and slow. No life nor go in it. Sometimes I feel sick of it; and going back to books and all, after what I have been used to. If my uncle could wait for my Baptism, or,' more hesitating, 'if I could be baptized at once. Men do lead Christian lives out there. I would try to keep from evil, Mr. Audley. I see your face! Is this another temptation of the devil?'

'I think it is an attempt of his,' said Mr. Audley, sadly. 'Even here you have not been able to abstain entirely from giving way to your old passion, when you had little temptation, and felt your honour bound. What will it be when you have comparatively no restraint?'

'I am resolved not to go unbaptized,' said Fernando. 'I said so from the first, but he will not wait! Yet if my father sends for me, I must go.'

'Then it will be your duty, and you will have more right to look for help. Besides, a summons from your father could not come for three or four months, and in that time you would have had time to gain something in Christian practice and training.'

'Oh, there is the bell! Must you go, Mr. Audley? He will come back!'

'I wish I could stay, but Smith is gone to Dearport, and I do not know whether the Rector is in. Besides, this must be your own doing, Fernan, not mine. I shall pray for you, that you well know. Pray for yourself, for this is a real crisis of life. God bless you, my dear boy.' He laid his hand on the head, and Fernando looked up gratefully, then said, 'You never did that before. May Lance come to me, if he has not gone?'

'I will call him,' said Mr. Audley, seeing that he really dreaded being alone. The little boy was on the stairs with something in his hand. 'Go in to Fernan,' he was told; 'he wants you. What have you got there?'

'This queer drawing. Cherry found it in an old portfolio, and has been copying it.'

It was Retzsch's outline of the chess-player, and it almost startled Mr. Audley by its appropriateness. He went out to Evensong, and never was more glad to get back to reinforce the feeble garrison.

Lance opened the front door to him. 'I'm so glad you are come!' he said. 'Mr. Bruce is there.'

'Not the uncle?'

'No, only Mr. Bruce.'

Mr. Bruce was a lawyer, and a very respectable man, in whom Mr. Audley felt confidence. He rose at the clergyman's entrance, and asked to speak to him in another room, so he was taken into the little back dining-room, and began--'This is a very unpleasant business, Mr. Audley; this gentleman is very much annoyed, and persuaded that he has a right to carry off his nephew; but as I told him, it all turns upon the father's expressions. Have you any written authority from him?'

Mr. Audley had more than one letter, thanking him, and expressing full satisfaction in the proposed arrangements for Fernando; and this Mr. Bruce thought was full justification, together with the youth's own decided wishes. The words were likewise clear, by which William Travis had given consent to his son's Baptism, but there was no witness of them. Mr. Bruce explained that Alfred Travis, who seemed to regard Fernando as the common property of the brothers, had come to him in what he gently termed 'a great state of excitement,' complaining of a Puseyite plot. He had evidently taken umbrage at the tone of the letters he had opened for his brother, and had been further prejudiced by some Dearport timber-merchant he had met at Liverpool, who had told him how the parson had got hold of his nephew, and related a farrago of gossip about St. Oswald's. He was furious at the opposition, and could not understand that law in the old country was powerless in this case, because he was neither father nor guardian. In fact he seemed to be master of his brother; and Mr. Bruce told Mr. Audley that it was quite to be considered whether though law was on his side now, the father might not be brought over to the brother's side, be very angry at the detention of the boy, and refuse the payment, which, while he was in America, could not be forced from him. Of that Mr. Audley could happily afford to run the risk; and Mr. Bruce said he had also set before the young gentleman that he might have to suffer much displeasure from his father for his present refusal, although his right to make it was incontestable. To this Fernando had likewise made up his mind; and Mr. Bruce, who had never seen him before, thought he looked utterly unfit for a long journey and sea voyage, so that the uncle had taken nothing by his application to the law.

Fernando was flushed and panting, but more resolute, for resentment at the attempt at force had come to back him up, and rouse the spirit of resistance. Not half an hour had elapsed before there was another ring at the door. The uncle and lawyer were come together now. It was to make a last offer to Fernando; Mr. Alfred Travis offered to take him up to London the next day, and there to have advice as to the safety of the voyage, in the meantime letting him be baptized, if nothing else would satisfy him, but by some London clergyman--not one of the Bexley set whom the uncle regarded with such aversion.

Fernando drew himself up, and stood, leaning on the end of the sofa. 'Thank you, uncle,' he said, 'I cannot. I am obeying my father now, and I will not leave those to whom he trusted me.'

There followed a volley of abuse of his English obstinacy and Spanish pride and canting conceit, which made Mr. Bruce stand aghast, and Fernando look up with burning cheeks and eyes glowing like hot coals; but with the Indian impassibility he did not speak till Alfred Travis had threatened him not only with his father's displeasure, but with being cast off by both, and left to his English friends' charity.

'My father will not!' said Fernando. 'If he sends for me I will come.' But there his strength suddenly collapsed, and he was forced to sit down and lean back.

'Well, Fernan,' said his uncle, suddenly withdrawing his attempt when he found it vain, 'you seem hardly in marching order, so I'm off by the night train; but if you change your mind in the next week, write to me at Peter Brown's--you know--and I'll run down. I will save you the coming out by yourself. Good-bye.'

Mr. Bruce tarried one moment to aver that he was unprepared for his client's violence, and that he thought the nephew had done quite right.

The door was shut, and Mr. Audley came back holding out his hand, but Fernando did not take it. He was occupied in supporting himself by the furniture from the sofa to the fire-place, where, holding by the mantelpiece with one hand, he took his dice from his pocket with the other, and threw them into the reddest depth. Then he held the hand to Mr. Audley, who wrung it, and said, 'It has been a hard fight, my boy.'

Fernando laid his weary head on his shoulder, and said, 'If my father is not poisoned against me!'

'Do not fear that, Fernando. You are where he left you. You have given up something for the sake of your new Lord and Master; you will have his armour another time.'

Fernando let himself be helped to sit down, and sighed. He was thoroughly worn out, and his victory was not such as to enliven his spirits. He took up the drawing that lay on the table, and gazed on it in a sort of dreamy fascination.

'You have checked him this time,' said Mr. Audley.

'Here or there, I will never bet again,' said Fernan solemnly. 'God help me to keep the resolution! It is the one thing that I care for, and I know I should have begun the first day I was away from you.'

'I think that with those tastes you cannot make too strong a resolution against it,' said Mr. Audley.

Their dinner was brought in, but Fernando had no appetite. He soon returned to his chess-player, and seemed to be playing over the game, but he was too much tired for talk, and soon went to bed; where after a short sleep feverishness set in, bringing something approaching to delirium. The nurse had gone a fortnight previously; but as he was still too helpless to have no one within call, Felix slept on the bed in the corner of the room.

When he came down the opening of the door was greeted by 'Don't let him come! Is Mr. Audley there?'

'Yes, he is not gone.'

Then he knew Felix, but soon began again to talk of the game at chess, evidently mixing up his uncle with the personage with the long feather.

'He has been checked once. I've taken one piece of his. He is gone now. Will he come back after my Baptism? No; I shall go to him.'

This lasted till past midnight, when, as they were deliberating whether to send for Mr. Rugg, he fell soundly asleep, and awoke in the morning depressed, but composed and peaceful; and this state of things continued. The encounter with his uncle, and the deliberate choice, had apparently given some shock to his nerves; and whenever night recurred, there came two or three hours of misery, and apparently of temptation and terror. It took different forms. Sometimes it was half in sleep--the acting over again of one or two horrible scenes that he had partly witnessed in the Southern States, when an emancipator had been hunted down, and the slaves who had listened to him savagely punished. In spite of his Spanish blood, the horror had been ineffaceable; and his imagination connected it with the crowd of terrors that had revealed themselves to his awakened conscience. He seemed to think that if he lost in the awful game of life, he should be handed over to that terrible slave-master; and there were times when Diego's fate, and his own lapses, so fastened on his mind, as to make him despair of ever being allowed to quit that slave-master's dominions; and that again joined with alarm lest his uncle should return and claim him.

Sometimes, likewise, the old wandering life, with the flashes of rollicking mirth and excitement, rather glimpsed at and looked forward to than really tasted, would become so alluring a contrast to the flat and tasteless--nay, as it seemed to him, tedious and toilsome--future sketched out for him; and the restraints and constant watchfulness of a Christian's life appeared so distressing a bondage, that his soul seemed to revolt against it, and he would talk of following his uncle at once to London while yet it was time, and writing to him the next morning. This state was sure to be followed by a passion of remorse, and sheer delirious terror lest he should be given up to the enemy, who seemed now to assume to his fancy the form of his uncle. A great deal was no doubt delirious, and this betrayed the struggles which he had been for weeks fighting out in silence and apparent impassiveness; but it was impossible not to feel that therewith was manifested the wrestling with the Prince of Darkness, ere his subject should escape from his territory, and claim the ransom of his manumission. Mr. Audley--after the second night--would not let Felix remain, but took the watch entirely on himself, and fought the battle with the foe by prayer and psalm. Sleep used to come before morning; and by day Fernando was himself again, very subdued and quiet, and, in fact, having lost a good deal of ground as to health.

Strange to say, the greatest pleasure he had at this time was sitting in the upstairs parlour. The custom had begun in consequence of his nervous shuddering at being left alone lest his uncle should return, and Felix and Geraldine had then proposed taking him to their mother, who was rather interested than annoyed by his presence, and indeed all her gentle motherly instinct was drawn out by his feebleness and lameness; she talked to him kindly and quite rationally, and he was wonderfully impressed and soothed by her tenderness. It was so utterly unlike anything he had ever even seen, that he watched her with a sort of awe; while Cherry worked, read aloud, or drew, and felt proud of being able to fetch what was beyond the capacity of her little errand boy, Bernard.

The children, too, entertained him; he was a little afraid of Bernard's roughness, but delighted in watching him, and he and little Stella were intensely admiring friends. She always knew him, cooed at him, and preferred the gold of his watch-chain to all things in nature or art. Then when Wilmet, Angela, and Lance came home, and family chatter began, the weary anxious brain rested; and even in that room, so sad to most eyes, Fernando began to realise what Christian peace and cheerfulness could be.

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VIII. THE HOME

'Within those walls each fluttering guest Is gently lured to one safe nest; Without, 'tis moaning and unrest.' Keble.

A great delight came to Wilmet and Geraldine the day of the Bishop's visit, no other than Alda's being able to spend a week with them. Miss Pearson spared Wilmet that whole afternoon, that she might go up to meet her at the station, whither she was escorted by a maid going down to Centry.

There she was, in her pretty black silk, with violet trimmings, looking thoroughly the grown young lady, but clinging tight to her twin in an overflow of confused happiness, even while they stood together to get their first glance of the Bishop, who came down by the same train, and was met by Mr. Bevan with the carriage.

'I'm glad it is so nice and warm; it is better for Fernan, and Cherry can go!' said Wilmet, ready for joy about everything.

'Nice and warm! 'Tis much colder than in London,' said Alda, with a shiver. 'Has Cherry kept well this winter?'

'Quite well. She walks much better. And Marilda?'

'Oh, Marilda is always well. Rude health, her mother calls it. What do you think she has sent you, Wilmet? A darling little watch! just like this of mine!'

'O Alda, you should not have let her. It is too much. Fernan wanted to give Lance a watch, but Felix would not let him.'

'Yes, but he is not like Uncle Thomas, and it makes you like me.'

'That we shall never be quite again,' sighed Wilmet.

'Oh! a little setting off, and trimming up! I've brought down lots of things. Aunt Mary said I might. What is this youth like, Wilmet--is he a boy or a young man?'

'I don't know,' said Wilmet; 'he is younger than Felix, if that helps you.'

'Well, Americans are old of their age. I have met some at Mr. Roper's. Oh, and do you know, Mrs. Roper told Aunt Mary that these Travises are quite millionaires, and that this youth's mother was a prodigious Mexican heiress. Aunt Mary wants to ask him to Kensington Palace Gardens, when he comes up to town! I'm glad I am in time for the christening. Doesn't he have godfathers and godmothers?'

'Yes; he would have nobody but Felix and Mr. Audley, and Lady Price chose to be his godmother; indeed, there was nobody else.'

'You could not well be, certainly,' laughed Alda. 'Oh! and I've brought a dress down. I thought some of us might be asked to the Rectory in the evening.'

'My dear Alda, as if such a thing ever happened!'

'Ah! you see I have been so long away as to forget my Lady's manners.'

'Mr. Audley is going, and Fernan was asked, but he is not anything like well enough. So when Mamma and the little ones go to bed, we are to come down and spend the evening with him.'

'Fancy, Wilmet, I have quite been preparing Marilda for her Confirmation. She had hardly been taught anything, and never could have answered the questions if she had not come to me. She is always asking me what Papa said about this and that; and it is quite awkward, she will carry out everything so literally, poor dear girl.'

'She must be very good.'

'Oh! to be sure she is! But just fancy, she keeps a tithe of her pocket-money to give to the Offertory so scrupulously; she would really not buy something she wanted because it would have been just a shilling into her tenth. I'm so glad she is confirmed. I never knew what to do at church before. I couldn't go home by myself, and now a servant always waits for us. Oh! how fast the poor hotel is building again! It will brighten our street a little! Dear me, I did not know how dingy it was!'

Nothing could look dingy where two such fair bright faces were; but Alda's became awe-struck and anxious as she went up to her mother's room. Indeed Mrs. Underwood looked up at her rather confused, and scarcely knowing the fashionable young lady, and it was only when the plumed hat was laid aside, and the two heads laid together, their fair locks mingling, that she knew she had her elder twins again, and stroked their faces with quiet delight.

There was scarcely more than time to kiss the little ones, and contend with Stella's shyness, before first Lance hurried in and then Felix, excused from his work two hours earlier. He could only just run up and dress before he convoyed Geraldine to church, she having the first turn of the chair, helped her to her seat near the Font, and then came back for Fernando, who was under his special charge.

Fernando sat looking very pale, and with the set expression of the mouth that always made Cherry think of Indians at the stake. His little new prayer-book was in his hand, and he was grasping it nervously, but he said nothing, as Felix helped him up and Lance held his crutch for him. It was his first entrance into a place of worship. They had intended to have accustomed him a little to the sights and sounds, but the weather and his ailment had prevented them. He was drawn to the porch, and there Felix partly lifted him out and up the step, while Lance took his hat for him, and as they were both wanted for the choir procession that was to usher the Bishop into church, they had to leave him in his place under Geraldine's protection.

He had not in the least realised the effect of the interior of a church. St. Oswald's was a very grand old building, with a deep chancel a good deal raised, seen along a vista of heavy columns and arched vaults, lighted from the clerestory, and with a magnificent chancel-arch. The season was Lent, and the colouring of the decorations was therefore grave, but all the richer, and the light coming strongly in from the west window immediately over the children's heads, made the contrast of the bright sunlight and of the soft depths of mystery more striking, and, to an eye to which everything ecclesiastical was absolutely new, the effect was almost overwhelming. That solemnity and sanctity of long centuries, the peaceful hush, the grave beauty and grandeur, almost made him afraid to breathe, and Cherry sat by his side with her expressive face composed into the serious but happy look that accorded with the whole scene.

He durst not move or speak. His was a silent passive nature, except when under strong stimulus, and Cherry respected his silence a great deal too much to break upon it by any information. She was half sorry when the noise of steps showed that the congregation were beginning to drop in, chiefly of the other young Confirmation candidates. Then presently Alda came, and whispered to her that Wilmet could not leave Mamma; and presently after, Lady Price bustled in with her daughter, looked severely at Alda under the impression that she was Wilmet very improperly tricked out, and pressed Fernando's hand before going on to her own place. Then came the low swell of the organ, another new sensation to one who had only heard opera music; then the approaching sound of the voices. Geraldine gave him the book open at the processional psalm, and the white-clad choir passed by, one of the first pair of choristers being Lance, singing with all his might, and that merry monkey-face full of a child's beautiful happy reverence. And again could be recognised Felix, Mr. Audley, Mr. Bevan, all whom the poor sick stranger had come to love best, all to his present perception glorified and beautiful. They had told him it would be all faith and no sight, but he seemed to find himself absolutely within that brighter better sphere to which they belonged, to see them walking in it in their white robes, to hear their songs of praise, and to know whence came that atmosphere that they carried about with them, and that he had felt when it was a riddle to him.

And so the early parts of the service passed by him, not so much attended to or understood as filling him with a kind of dreamy rapturous trance, as the echoes of the new home, to which he, with all his heavy sense of past stain and present evil propensity, was gaining admission and adoption. For the first time he was really sensible of the happiness of his choice, and felt the compensation for what he gave up.

When the Second Lesson was ended, and the clergy and the choir, in their surplices, moved down to encircle the Font, it was as if they came to gather him in among them. Felix came and helped him up. He could stand now with one support, and this was his young godfather's right arm, to which he held tightly, but without any nervous convulsiveness--he was too happy for that now--during the prayers that entreated for his being safely gathered into the Ark, and the Gospel of admission into the Kingdom. He had an impulse to loose his clasp and stand alone at the beginning of the vows, but he could not; he had not withdrawn his hand before he was forced again to lean his weight upon the steady arm beside him.

Nothing had been able to persuade Lady Price that she was not to make all the vows as for an infant, but luckily nobody heard her except her husband and the other sponsors, for it was a full, clear, steadfast voice that made reply, 'I renounce them all!' and as the dark deep eyes gazed far away into the west window, and Felix felt the shudder through the whole frame, he knew the force of that renunciation; and how it gave up that one excitement that the lad really cared for. And when that final and carefully-guarded vow of obedience was uttered, the pressure on his arm seemed to show that the moral was felt of that moment's endeavour to stand alone.

The sound of prayer, save in his own chamber, was so entirely new, that no doubt the force of the petitions was infinitely enhanced, and the entreaty for the death of the old Adam had a definite application to those old habits and tastes that at times exerted their force. The right hand was ready and untrembling when the Rector took it; the stream of water glittered as it fell on the awe-struck brow and jetty hair, and the eyes shone out with a deep resolute lustre as 'Ferdinand Audley' was baptized into the Holy Name, and sworn a faithful soldier and servant.

He had begged to be baptized by the English version of his name; the Spanish one had grown up by a sort of accident, and had always been regretted by his father. He had wished much to take the name of Felix, but they were so certain that this would not be approved, that they had persuaded him out of it. He was soon set down again by Geraldine's side; and she put out her hand and squeezed his hard, looking up into his face with tearful eyes of welcome.

When the last sounds of the voluntary had died away, and the congregation had gone, she ventured again to look up at him and say, 'I am so glad!'

'Why did you never tell me it was like this?' he said. 'I should never have hung back one moment. Now nothing can touch me, since I belong to this.'

'Nothing can really,' said Geraldine softly. 'Above all, when it is sealed to us to-morrow.'

Then there came a movement from the vestry, and the Rector and Mr. Audley were seen following the Bishop, who came down to where the two lame children still sat together, and putting his hand upon Ferdinand's head with the hair still wet, gave him his blessing before he spoke further. It was only a word or two of congratulation, but such as to go very deep; and then, seeing that the boy looked not excited, but worn and wearied, he added, 'You are going home to rest. I shall see you to-morrow after the confirmation;' and then he shook hands with him and with Geraldine, asking if she were the little girl of whom he had been told.

'She is very young,' said Mr. Bevan, strongly impressed with the littleness of the figure; 'but she has been a Communicant for more than a year, and she is--a very good child.'

'I can believe so,' said the Bishop, smiling to her. 'I have heard of your father, my dear, and of your brother.'

Cherry coloured rosy red, but was much too shy to speak; and the Rector and Bishop went away, leaving only Mr. Audley.

'Are you very much tired, Fernan?'

'I don't know,' he half smiled.

'I think he is; he is too happy to know it,' said Geraldine. 'Please let him go home first.'

So Mr. Audley helped him out to the chair, where Felix, Alda, and Lance were waiting; and he said, 'Thank you,' and held out his hand, while Lance eagerly shook it, saying, 'Now it is right at last; and here's Alda--isn't she a stunner?'

'I thought it was Wilmet,' said Fernan; and Alda went into church to keep Cherry company, thinking how curiously blind the male sex were not to distinguish between her dress and poor dear Wilmet's.

Mr. Audley was more than satisfied, he was surprised and comforted. He had prepared to meet either disappointment or excitement in his charge; he found neither--only a perfect placid content, as of one who had found his home and was at rest. The boy was too much tired, after his many bad nights and the day's exertion, to say or think much; all he did say was, 'I shall mind nothing now that I know what it is to be one of you.'

Mr. Audley tried to remember that there must be a reaction, but he could not bring himself to fear or to warn, or do anything but enjoy the happiest day of his three years' ministry.

He had to go to the Rectory dinner-party, and leave his neophyte to the tendance of the Underwoods. Felix sat with his friend in a great calm silence, while the rest were taken up by the counter-attraction upstairs, where Alda was unpacking an unrivalled store of presents from herself and Marilda, useful and ornamental, such as seemed a perfect embarras de richesses to the homely, scantily-endowed children. That little gold watch was the prize and wonder of all. It was the first in the family, except that Felix wore his father's, and Alda knew how an elder girl was scorned at school if she had none; but Wilmet, though very happy with hers, smiled, and would not agree to having met with disrespect for want of it. Then there were drawing-books for Cherry, and a knife of endless blades for Lance, and toys for the little ones; and dresses--a suit for Wilmet like Alda's plainest Sunday one, and Alda's last year's silk for Geraldine, and some charming little cashmere pelisses--Aunt Mary's special present to the two babies--things that would lengthen Wilmet's purse for many a day to come; and a writing-case for Felix; and all the absent remembered, too. Uncle Thomas had given Alda a five-pound note to buy presents, and Marilda had sent every one something besides, mostly of such a matter-of-fact useful type that Alda stood and laughed at them. And Mrs. Underwood was pleased with the exhibition, and smiled and admired, only her attention was tired out at last, and she was taken early to her own room.

The elder ones went down to sit round the fire in Mr. Audley's room, where Ferdinand insisted on leaving his sofa to Geraldine, and betaking himself to the easy-chair, where he leant back, content and happy to watch the others through his eye-lashes. Alda was a little on her company manners at the first, but all the others were at perfect ease, as they sat in the dim light. Felix on the floor by Cherry, who delighted in a chance of playing fondling tricks with his hair and fingers; the twins in Mr. Audley's big chair, where they could lean against each other; and Lance cross-legged on the hearth-rug roasting chestnuts, of which a fellow chorister had given him a pocketful, and feeding every one in turn.

Geraldine gave a sigh to the wish that poor dear Edgar were there.

'He is very happy!' said Alda.

'Oh yes, but I wish he had not missed being here to-morrow. I wonder when he will come home.'

'I cannot guess; Aunt Mary wants to go down the Rhine next summer (only she is not quite sure it is not the Rhone), and if so, I suppose he would join us there.'

'It is a whole year since we have set eyes on him,' said Felix.

'But I believe he writes more to Cherry than anybody, does not he?'

'Oh yes, and sends me lovely photographs to copy. Such a beauty of himself! Have you seen it?'

'I should think I had! They have set it up in a little gold frame on the drawing-room table, and everybody stands and says how handsome it is; and Aunt Mary explains all about him till I am tired of hearing it.'

'And Clem?'

'Oh, Clem came to luncheon yesterday. He is very much grown, and looks uncommonly demure, and as much disposed to set everybody to rights as ever.'

But Alda did not enter much more into particulars; she led away the conversation to the sights she had seen in their summer tour; and as she had a good deal of descriptive power, she made her narratives so interesting that time slipped quickly past, and the young company was as much surprised as Mr. Audley was when he came home and found them all there, not yet gone to bed. They were greatly ashamed, and afraid they had done Ferdinand harm, and all were secretly very anxious about the night; but, though the wakeful habit and night feverishness were not at once to be broken through, yet the last impression was the strongest, and the long-drawn aisle, the 'dim religious light,' and the white procession, were now the recurring images, all joyful, all restful, truly as if the bird had escaped out of the snare of the fowler. Real sleep came sooner than usual, and Fernan rose quite equal to the fatigue of the coming day, the Confirmation day, when again Geraldine had to sit beside him--this newly admitted to the universal brotherhood, instead of being beside that dear Edgar of her own, for whom her whole heart craved, as she thought how their preparation had begun together beside her father's chair.

Their place was now as near the choir as possible, and they were brought in as before, very early, so that Fernan gazed with the same eager, unsated eyes into the chancel and at the altar, admitted as he was farther into his true home.

The church was filled with candidates from the villages round as well as from the town, and the Litany preceded the rite which was to seal the young champions ere the strife. The Bishop came down to the two lame children, and laid his hands on the two bent heads, ere he gave his final brief address, exhorting the young people to guard preciously, and preserve by many a faithful Eucharist, that mark which had sealed them to the Day of Redemption, through all this world's long hot trial and conflict.

There was holiday at both schools, and Felix had been spared to take his place in the choir, but Mr. Froggatt could not do without him afterwards, as the presence of so many of the country clergy in the town was sure to fill the reading-room and shop; and he was obliged to hurry off as soon as he came out of church. Now, the Bishop had the evening before asked Lady Price 'whether that son of poor Mr. Underwood's' were present among the numerous smart folk who thronged her drawing-room, to which my lady had replied, 'No; he was a nice, gentlemanly youth certainly, but, considering all things, and how sadly he had lowered himself, she thought it better not. In fact, some might not be so well pleased to meet him.'

The Bishop took the opportunity of trying to learn from the next person he fell in with, namely, Mr. Ryder, how Felix had lowered himself; and received an answer that showed a good deal of the schoolmaster's disappointment, but certainly did not show any sense of Felix's degradation. And what he said was afterwards amplified by Mr. Audley, whom the Bishop took apart, and questioned with much interest upon both Ferdinand Travis and the Underwood family, of whom he had only heard, when, immediately after his appointment, his vote for the orphan school had been solicited for the two boys, and he had been asked to subscribe to the Comment on the Philippians. Mr. Audley felt that he had a sympathizing listener, and was not slow to tell the whole story of the family--what the father had been, what Felix now was, and how his influence and that of little Lancelot had told upon their young inmate. The Bishop listened with emotion, and said, 'I must see that boy! Is the mother in a state in which she would like a call from me?' but there an interruption had come; and when the country clergy came in the morning, Mr. Audley had thought it fittest not to swell the numbers unnecessarily, and had kept himself out of the way, and tried to keep his fellow-curate.

So he had seen no more of the Bishop, until, some little time after he and Fernan had lunched, and were, it must be confessed, making up for their unrestful nights by having both dropped asleep, one on his chair, the other on the sofa, there came a ring to the door, and Lance, who had a strong turn for opening it, found himself face to face with the same tall grey-haired gentleman at whom he had gazed in the rochet and lawn-sleeves. He stood gazing up open-mouthed.

'I think I have seen you in the choir, and heard you too,' said the Bishop, kindly taking Lance's paw, which might have been cleaner had he known what awaited it. 'Mr. Audley lives here, I think.'

Lance was for once without a word to say for himself, though his mouth remained open. All he did was unceremoniously to throw wide Mr. Audley's door, and bolt upstairs, leaving his Lordship to usher himself in, while Mr. Audley started up, and Ferdinand would have done the same, had he been able, before he was forbidden.

There was a kindly talk upon his health and plans, how he was to remain at Bexley till after Easter and his first Communion, and then Mr. Audley would take him up to London to be inspected by a first-rate surgeon before going down to the tutor's. The tutor proved to be an old school-fellow and great friend of the Bishop; and what Fernan heard of him from both the friend and pupil would have much diminished his dread, even if he had not been in full force of the feeling that whatever served to bind him more closely to the new world of blessing within the Church must be good and comfortable.

This visit over, the Bishop asked whether Mrs. Underwood would like to be visited, and Mr. Audley went up to ascertain. She was a woman who never was happy or at rest in an untidy room, or in disordered garments, and all was in as fair order as it could be with the old furniture, that all Wilmet's mending could not preserve from the verge of rags. Her widow's cap and soft shawl were as neat as possible, and so were the little ones in their brown-holland, Theodore sitting at her feet, and Stella on Wilmet's lap, where she was being kept out of the way of the more advanced amusement of a feast of wooden tea-things, carried on in a corner between Angela and Bernard, under Lance's somewhat embarrassing patronage.

Alda sprang up, stared about in consternation at the utter unlikeness to the drawing-room in Kensington Palace Gardens, and exclaimed, 'Oh! if Sibby had only come to take the children out! Take them away, Lance.'

'Sibby will come presently, or I will take them to her,' whispered Wilmet. 'I should like them just to have his blessing.'

'So many,' sighed Alda; but meantime Mr. Audley had seen that all was right at the first coup d'oeil, had bent over Mrs. Underwood, told her that the Bishop wished to call upon her, and asked her leave to bring him up; and she smiled, looked pleased, and said, 'He is very kind. That is for your Papa, my dears. You must talk to him, you know.'

The Bishop came up almost immediately, and the perfect tranquillity and absence of flutter fully showed poor Mrs. Underwood's old high-bred instinct. She was really gratified when he sat down by her, after greeting the three girls, and held out his hands to make friends with the lesser ones, whom their sisters led up, Angela submissive and pretty behaved, Bernard trying to hide his face, and Stella in Wilmet's arms staring to the widest extent of eyes. The sisters had their wish--the fatherless babes received the pastoral blessing; and the Bishop said a few kind words of real sympathy that made Mrs. Underwood look up at him affectionately and say, 'Indeed I have much to be thankful for. My children are very good to me.'

'I am sure they are,' said the Bishop. 'I cannot tell you how much I respect your eldest son.'

The colour rose in the pale face. 'He is a very dear boy,' she said.

'I should like to see him before I go. Is he at home?'

'Lance shall run and call him,' said Alda; but the Bishop had asked where he was, and Wilmet had, not unblushingly, for she was red with pleasure, but shamelessly, answered that he was at Mr. Froggatt's, offering to send Lance in search of him.

'I had rather he would show me the way,' said the Bishop. 'Will you, my boy?'

The way to Mr. Froggatt's was not very long, but it was long enough to overcome Lance's never very large amount of bashfulness; and he had made reply that he went to the Grammar School, and was in the second form, that he liked singing in the choir better than--no, not than anything--anything except--except what? Oh a jolly good snow-balling, or a game at hockey. Did he like the school? Pretty well, on the whole; but he did not suppose he should stay there long, his brother at the Clergy Orphan said there was such a lot of cads, and that he was always grubbing his nose among them; but now, 'do you really think now that cads are always such bad fellows?'

His Lordship was too much diverted to be easily able to speak, but he observed that it depended on what was meant by a cad.

'That's just it!' exclaimed Lance. 'I'm sure some that he calls cads are as good fellows as any going.'

'And what does your eldest brother say?'

'Felix! Oh! he does not mind, as long as one does not get into a real scrape.'

'And then?'

'Oh, then he minds so much that one can't do it, you know.'

'What, does he punish you?'

'N--no--he never licks any of us now--but he is so horridly sorry--and it bothers him so,' said Lance. 'Here's old Froggatt's,' he concluded, stopping at the glass door. 'My eyes! what a sight of parsons!' (Lance had pretty well forgotten whom he was talking to.) 'There, that's Felix--no, no, not that one serving Mr. Burrowes, that's Redstone; Felix is out there, getting out the sermon paper for that fat one, and that's old Froggy himself, bowing away. Shall I go and call Felix? I suppose he will not mind this time.'

'No, thank you, I will go in myself. Good-bye, my little guide, and thank you.'

And Lance, when his hand came out of the Bishop's, found something in it, which proved to be a tiny Prayer-book, and moreover a half-sovereign. He would have looked up and thanked, but the Bishop and that 'fat one' were absorbed in conversation on the step; and when he turned over the leaves of the little blue morocco book, with its inlaid red cross, he found full in his face, in the first page, the words, 'Lancelot Underwood, March 15th, 1855,' and then followed an initial, and a name that utterly defeated Lance's powers, so that perceiving the shop to be far too densely full of parsons for him to have a chance there, he galloped off at full speed to Cherry, who happily could interpret the contracted Latin by the name of the See, and was not quite so much astonished as Lance, though even more gratified.

Meantime, the Bishop had made his way to the bowing Mr. Froggatt, and asked to speak with him in his private room, where he mentioned his kindness to young Underwood, and was answered by a gratified disclaimer of having done anything that was not of great advantage to himself. The good man seemed divided between desire to do justice to Felix and not to stand in his light, and alarm lest he should have to lose an assistant whom he had always known to be above his mark, and who was growing more valuable every month; and he was greatly relieved and delighted when the Bishop only rejoiced at his character of Felix, and complimented the Pursuivant by being glad that a paper of such good principles should be likely to have such a youth on its staff; it had been well for the lad to meet with so good a friend. Mr. Froggatt could not be denied an eulogium on the father, for whose sake he had first noticed the son; and when the Bishop had expressed his sorrow at never having known so bright a light as all described the late Curate to have been, he courteously regretted the interruption on a busy day, but he begged just to see the young man. He had little time himself, 'but if he could be spared to walk up to the station--'

Mr. Froggatt bustled out with great alacrity, and taking the charge of the customer on himself, announced, for the benefit of all who might be within earshot: 'Mr. Underwood, his Lordship wishes to speak with you. He wishes you to walk up to the station with him. You had better go out by the private door.'

Felix was red up to the ears. His eight years' seniority to Lance were eight times eight more shyness and embarrassment, but he could only obey; and at his first greeting his hand was taken--'hoped to have seen you sooner,' the Bishop said; 'but you had always escaped me in the vestry.'

'I had to go to help my sister, my Lord,' said Felix.

'And your friend,' said the Bishop. 'That is a good work that has been done in your house.'

Felix coloured more, not knowing what to say.

'I wish to see you,' continued the Bishop, 'partly to tell you how much I honour you for the step you have taken. I wish there were more who would understand the true uprightness and dutifulness of thinking no shame of any honest employment. I am afraid you do sometimes meet with what may be trying,' he added, no doubt remembering Lady Price's tone.

'I do not care now, not much. I did at first,' said Felix.

'No one whose approval is worth having can consider yours really a loss of position. You are in a profession every one respects, and you seem to have great means of influence likely to be open to you.'

'So my father said, when he consented,' said Felix.

'I shall always regret having just missed knowing your father. Some passages in that book of his struck me greatly. But what I wished to say was to ask whether there is any way in which I can be useful to you in the education of any of the younger ones, or--'

'Thank you, my Lord,' said Felix. 'I think you kindly voted for my brothers last year for the Clergy Orphan school. Only one got in, and if you would vote again for little Lancelot--'

'My droll little companion, who Mr. Audley tells me did so much for that poor young American.'

'Indeed he did,' said Felix. 'I doubt if any of us would have got at him but for Lance, who did not mean anything but good-nature all the time.'

'He is just the boy I want for our Cathedral school.' And then he went on to explain that a great reformation was going on. There was a foundation-school attached to the Cathedral, with exhibitions at the University, to which the Cathedral choristers had the first claim. There had been, of course, a period of decay, but an excellent Precentor had been just appointed, who would act as head master; and the singing-boys would be kept on free of expense after their voices became unavailable, provided that by such time they had passed a certain examination. Such a voice as Lance's was sure to recommend him; and besides, the Bishop said with a smile, he wanted to raise the character of the school, and he thought there was the stuff here that would do so.

Felix could only be thankful and rejoiced; but it was a pang to think of Lance being as entirely separated from home as was Clement; with no regular holidays, and always most needed at his post at the great festivals. There was something in his tone that made the Bishop say, 'You do not like to part with him?'

'No, my Lord; but I am glad it should be so. My father was not happy about--things here, and charged me to get my brothers away when I could.'

'And as to holidays, you are near at hand, and most of the choir are of our own town. I think he may generally be spared for a good term at each holiday time. The organist is very considerate in giving leave of absence, even if he should turn out to have a dangerously good voice for solos. I will let you know when to send him up for examination, which he will pass easily. Good-bye. You must write to me if there is anything for me to do for you. One month more, and your father would have been one of my clergy, remember.'

Felix went back, flushed with gratification, and yet, to a certain degree, with confusion, and not exactly liking the prospect of being interrogated as to what the Bishop had said to him: indeed, he never told the whole of it to any one but Cherry. Somehow, though Wilmet was his counsellor and mainstay, Geraldine was the sharer of all those confidences that came spontaneously out of the full but reserved heart.

Besides, Wilmet was at present in such a trance of enjoyment of her twin sister, that she seemed scarcely able to enter into anything else. She went through her duties as usual, but with an effort to shake off her absorption in the thought of having Alda at home; and every moment she was not in sight of her darling seemed a cruel diminution of her one poor fortnight. Indeed it was tête-à-têtes that her exclusive tenderness craved above all; and she was often disappointed that Alda should be willing to go and visit Fernan Travis when they might have had a quarter of an hour together alone. How much more selfish she must have grown than Alda in this last half year!

Alda's talk was indeed full of interest, and gave a much better notion of her way of life than her letters did. She seemed to have been fully adopted as a daughter of the house, and to enjoy all the same privileges as Marilda; indeed, she had a good deal more credit with all varieties of teachers, since she learnt rapidly and eagerly; and Marilda, while encouraging her successes, without a shade of jealousy, made no attempt to conquer her own clumsiness and tardiness. Even 'Aunt Mary,' as Alda called Mrs. Thomas Underwood, often had recourse to Alda for sympathy in her endeavours to be tasteful, and continually held her up as an example to Marilda.

'And poor dear good woman,' said Alda, 'she has such a respect for Underwood breeding and our education, that I believe I could persuade her into anything by telling her it was what she calls "comifo." Even when she was going to get the boudoir done with apple-green picked out with mauve, enough to set one's teeth on edge, and Marilda would do nothing but laugh, she let me persuade her into a lovely pale sea-green.'

'Is not sea-green too delicate for her?' asked Cherry.

'Why, it was very wicked of Edgar, to be sure, but he said that it was to suit the nymph reining in the porpoises. He made a sketch, and Marilda was delighted with it; she really is the most good-natured creature in the world.'

'She must be!' ejaculated Wilmet; 'but surely she ought not to like laughing at her mother.'

'Oh, everybody laughs at Aunt Mary, and she hardly ever finds it out, and when she does, she does not mind! Even old Mrs. Kedge, her mother, does nothing but laugh at her for trying to be fine. Old Granny is not a bit by way of being a lady, you know; she lives in a little house in the city with one maid, and I believe she rubs her own tables. I am sure she goes about in omnibuses, though she has lots of money; and Marilda is so fond of her, and so like her, only not so clever and shrewd.'

'But why does she live in such a small way?'

'Because she never was used to anything else, and does not like it. She hates grand servants, and never will come to Kensington Palace Gardens; but she really is good-natured. She told Clement to drop in on her whenever he likes, and bring any of his friends; and she always gives them a superb piece of plum-cake, and once she took them to the Tower, and once to the Zoological Gardens, for she thinks that she cannot do enough to make up to them for being bred up to be little monks, with cords and sandals, and everything popish.'

'You don't let her think so?'

'Well, really when she has got a thing into her head nothing will uproot it; and, after all, they do carry things very far there, and Clement goes on so that I don't wonder.'

'Goes on how?'

'Why, just fancy, the other day when Uncle Thomas fetched him in his brougham because I was coming home, there he sat at luncheon and would not eat a scrap of meat.'

'Ah! it was a Wednesday in Lent,' said Cherry.

'Only a Wednesday, you know; and there, with four or five strange people, too. One of them asked if he was a Catholic, and of course Clement looked very wise, and greatly pleased, and said, "Yes, he was;" and that brought down Aunt Mary with her heavy artillery. "Bless me, Clement, you don't say so. Is Mr. Fulmort really gone over?" "Yes," said Clem. (I know he did it on purpose.) "He is gone over to preach at St. Peter's." And then one of the gentlemen asked if Clem meant Mr. Fulmort of St. Matthew's, Whittingtonia, and when he said "Yes, he lived in the clergy house," he began regularly to play him off, asking the most absurd questions about fasts and feasts and vigils and decorations, and Clem answered them all in his prim little self-sufficient way, just as if he thought he was on the high-road to be St. Clement the Martyr, till I was ready to run away.'

'Couldn't you have given him a hint?' asked Wilmet.

'My dear, have you lived twelve years with Clem without knowing that hints are lost on him?'

'Dear Clem, he is a very good steady-hearted little fellow,' said Cherry. 'It was very nice of him.'

'Well, I only hope he'll never come to luncheon again in Lent. There are times and seasons for everything, and certainly not for display! And to make it worse, Marilda is the most literal-minded girl. Fasting was quite a new mind to her, for she never realises what she does not see; and she got Clem into a corner, where I heard him going on, nothing loth, about days of abstinence, out of Mr. Fulmort's last catechizing, I should think; and ended by asking what Cousin Edward did, so that I fully expected that I should find her eating nothing, and that I should be called to account.'

'And what did you tell her then?'

'Oh, you know I could say quite truly that he did not.'

'I don't think that was quite fair,' said Wilmet gravely. 'You know it was only because he really could not.'

'You don't know how glad I was to have an answer that would hinder the horrid commotion we should have had if Marilda had taken to fasting. And, after all, you know, Papa would have said minding her mother was her first duty.'

'Why did not you tell her that?'

'I have, dozens of times; but you know there are mothers and mothers, and nobody can always mind Aunt Mary, good soul! Marilda has just made herself, with her own good rough plain sense. I wish she was a man, she would be a capital merchant like her father; but it is hard to be a great heiress, with nothing she really likes to do. She is always longing to come down to Centry, and tramp about the lanes among the cottages.'

'Oh! I wish they would!'

'I don't think Aunt Mary will ever let them, she hates the country; and though she likes to have a place for the name of the thing, she does not want to live there, especially where there are so many of us; and then, Felix's situation!'

'For shame, Alda!'

'Well, I did not say anything myself. It is only Aunt Mary--it is very foolish of people, but, you see, they will. As to Marilda, I believe she would like to stand behind the counter with him this minute.'

'Marilda is the oddest and best girl I ever heard of!'

'You may say that. And so ignorant she was! She had a great velvet-and-gold Church Service, and hardly guessed there was any Bible or Prayer-Book besides. I am sure Felix cannot have had more work to teach that youth than I have had with Marilda. Such a jumble as she had picked up! She really had only little baby prayers to say, till she saw my book.'

'What a blessing you must be to her!' said Wilmet, fondly looking at her sister.

'Well, I do hope so. You must know she was regularly struck with dear Papa. I am sure he is the first saint in her calendar, and everything is--"What did Cousin Edward say?" And when once she has made up her mind that a thing is right, she will blunder on through fire and water, but she will do it.'

'Then,' said Cherry, 'she ought to try and learn, and not to be awkward because of obedience.'

Alda burst out laughing. 'People can only do what they can. Marilda trying to be graceful would be worse than Marilda floundering her own way. But she really is the best and kindest girl living, and she gets on much better for having me to keep her out of scrapes.'

Wilmet went to bed that night thankful to have Alda's head on the pillow beside her, and most thankful for the tokens that she watched among her brothers and sisters, which showed how much her father's influence was extending beyond his short life.

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