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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Lame Dog's Diary, by S. Macnaughtan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Lame Dog's Diary
+
+Author: S. Macnaughtan
+
+Release Date: February 3, 2011 [EBook #34777]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LAME DOG'S DIARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "But, Hugo dear," she said, "why did you not tell me
+long ago?"]
+
+
+
+
+A LAME DOG'S DIARY
+
+
+S. Macnaughtan
+
+
+
+
+Thomas Nelson and Sons,
+
+London, Edinburgh, and New York
+
+1908
+
+
+
+
+A LAME DOG'S DIARY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Perhaps curiosity has never been more keen, nor mystery more baffling,
+than has been the case during the last few weeks.  There have been "a
+few friends to tea" at almost every house in the village to see if in
+this way any reasonable conclusions can be arrived at, and even
+Palestrina is satisfied with the number of people who have taken the
+trouble to walk up the hill and chat by my sofa in the afternoons.  But
+although each lady who has called has remarked that she is in the
+secret, but at present is not at liberty to say anything about it, we
+are inclined to think that this is vain boasting, or at least selfish
+reticence.
+
+The two Miss Traceys have announced to almost every caller at their
+little cottage during the last two years that they intend to build.
+
+We have all been naturally a good deal impressed by this statement, and
+although it was never plainly said what the structure was to be, we had
+had for a long time a notion of a detached house on the Common.  And
+surely enough the foundation-stone was laid last year by Miss Ruby
+Tracey with some ceremony, and the first turf of the garden was cut by
+Miss Tracey, and only last month the whole of the Fern Cottage
+furniture was removed in a van to Fairview, as the new house is
+called--the handsomer pieces placed upon the outside of the van, and
+the commoner and least creditable of the bedroom furniture within.
+Every one was at his or her window on the day that the Miss Traceys'
+furniture, with the best cabinet and the inlaid card-table duly
+displayed, was driven in state by the driver of the station omnibus
+through the town.  A rumour got abroad that even more beautiful things
+were concealed from view inside the van, and the Miss Traceys satisfied
+their consciences by saying, "We did not spread the rumour, and we
+shall not contradict it."
+
+But the mystery concerns the furniture in quite a secondary sort of
+way, and it is only important as being the means of giving rise to the
+much-discussed rumour in the town.  For mark, the drawing-room
+furniture was taken at once and stored in a spare bedroom, and the
+drawing-room was left unfurnished.  This fact might have remained in
+obscurity, for in winter time, at least, it is not unusual for ladies
+to receive guests in the dining-room with an apology, the drawing-room
+being a cold sitting-room during the frost.  But Mrs. Lovekin, the lady
+who acts as co-hostess at every entertainment in our neighbourhood,
+handing about her friends' cakes and tea, and taking, we are inclined
+to think, too much upon herself, did, in a moment of expansion, offer
+to show the Traceys' house to the Blinds, who happened to call there on
+the day when she was paying her respects to Miss Tracey.  Mrs. Lovekin
+always removes her bonnet and cloak in every house, and this helps the
+suggestion that she is in some sort a hostess everywhere.
+
+Palestrina, who was also calling on the Miss Traceys, gave me a full,
+true, and particular account of the affair the same evening.
+
+"Mind the wet paint," Mrs. Lovekin called from the dining-room window
+to the Miss Blinds as they came in at the gate, "and I'll open the
+door," she remarked, as she sailed out into the passage to greet the
+sisters.  Miss Ruby Tracey would rather have done this politeness
+herself, in order that she might hear the flattering remarks which
+people were wont to make about the hall paper.  It is so well known
+that she and her sister keep three servants that they never have any
+hesitation in going to the door themselves.  Whereas the Miss Blinds,
+who have only one domestic, would seem hardly to know where their front
+door is situated.
+
+"What an elegant paper!" exclaimed Miss Lydia Blind, stopping awestruck
+in the little hall.  Miss Lydia would, one knows, have something kind
+to say if she went to pay a call at a Kaffir hut.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Lovekin in a proprietary sort of way; "it is one of
+Moseley's which Smithson got down in his book of patterns.  The blue
+paint is what they call 'eggshell'--quite a new shade.  Come this way
+and have a cup of tea."
+
+"I am sure it is all very simple," said Miss Tracey, in a disparaging
+manner that showed her good breeding, as they sat down in the
+dining-room.  "How do you like the new carpet, Miss Belinda?"
+
+"Glory, glory, glory!" said Miss Belinda; "glory, glory, glory!"
+
+"Show Miss Lydia the new footstools, Ruby dear," said Miss Tracey; "I
+am sure she would like to see them."  For we all believe--or like to
+believe--that to praise our property must be Miss Lydia's highest
+pleasure.
+
+Mrs. Lovekin seized the opportunity to act as tea-maker to the party.
+She poured cream and sugar into the cups with the remark that there was
+no one in Stowel whose tastes in these respects she did not know, and
+she handed a plate of cake to Miss Belinda, saying,--
+
+"There, my dear, you sit comfortable and eat that."
+
+"Glory, glory, glory!" said Miss Belinda.
+
+The Miss Traceys had tea dispensed to them by the same hand, and
+accepted it with that slight sense of bewilderment which Mrs. Lovekin
+sometimes makes us feel when she looks after us in our own houses; and
+Miss Lydia Blind distributed her thanks equally between her and the
+Miss Traceys.
+
+Nothing was talked of that afternoon but the new house--its sunny
+aspect and its roomy cupboards in particular commanding the heartiest
+commendation.  Presently the ladies were taken to see all over it, with
+the exception of one of the spare bedrooms and the drawing-room.  They
+knew these rooms existed, because Miss Tracey paused at the door of
+each, and said lightly, "This is the drawing-room," and "This is
+another spare bedroom;" and although, as my sister confided to me, they
+would have given much to see the interior of the rooms, they could not
+do so, of course, uninvited.
+
+They paused to admire something at every turn, even saying generously,
+but playfully, that there were many of Miss Tracey's possessions which
+they positively coveted for themselves.  The Miss Traceys smilingly
+repudiated their felicitations, while Mrs. Lovekin accepted them and
+announced the price of everything.  She became quite breathless,
+hurrying upstairs, while she exhibited stair-rods and carpets, and with
+shortened breath apostrophized them as being "real brass" or "the best
+Brussels at five-and-threepence."  No one is vulgar in Stowel, but Mrs.
+Lovekin is, we fear, not genteel.
+
+At the close of the visit, Mrs. Lovekin again ushered the visitors into
+the hall, and opening, "by the merest accident," as she afterwards
+said--without, however, gaining any credence for her statement--opening
+by the merest accident the door of the drawing-room, she peeped in.
+
+The drawing-room was void of furniture.  The wild thought came into
+Mrs. Lovekin's mind--had the Traceys overbuilt themselves, and had the
+furniture, which had been carried so proudly through the town on the
+top of the furniture-van, been sold to pay expenses?  The suggestion
+was immediately put aside.  The Miss Traceys' comfortable means were so
+well known that such an explanation could not be seriously contemplated
+for a moment.  No; putting two and two together, a closed spare bedroom
+and an empty drawing-room, and bringing a woman's instinct to bear upon
+the question, it all pointed to one thing--the Miss Traceys were going
+to give a party, probably an evening party, in honour of the new house,
+and the drawing-room furniture was being stored for safety in the spare
+bedroom until the rout was over.  Doubtless the first rumour of the
+Miss Traceys' party was meanly come by, but it was none the less
+engrossing, all the same.  Miss Lydia hoped that no one would believe
+for a moment that she was in any way connected with the fraudulent
+intrusion that had been made into Miss Tracey's secret, and Miss Tracey
+said,--
+
+"I have known Mary Anne Lovekin for thirty years"--this was
+understating the case, but numbers are not exactly stated as we grow
+older--"but I never would have believed that she could have done such a
+thing."
+
+"Bad butter," said Miss Belinda, shaking her head in an emphatic
+fashion; "bad butter, bad butter!"
+
+"I do not want to judge people," said Miss Tracey; "but there was a
+want of delicacy about opening a closed door which I for one cannot
+forgive."  The Miss Traceys' good-breeding is proverbial in Stowel, and
+it was felt that her uncompromising attitude could not but be excused
+when it was a matter of her most honourable sensibilities having been
+outraged.
+
+"_I_ shall not say what I think," said Miss Ruby.
+
+We often find that when Miss Ruby cannot transcend what her sister has
+said, she has a way of hinting darkly at a possible brilliance of
+utterance which for some reason she refrains from making.
+
+"Bad butter!" said Miss Belinda; "bad, bad butter!"
+
+Many years ago Miss Belinda Blind, who was then a beautiful young
+woman, was thrown from a pony carriage.  The result of the fall was an
+injury to the spine, and she was smitten with a paralytic stroke which
+deprived her of all power of speech.  She was dumb for some years, and
+then two phrases came back to her stammering tongue, "glory," and "bad
+butter."  She understands perfectly what is said to her, but she has no
+means of replying, save in this very limited vocabulary.  And,
+strangely enough, these words can only be made to correspond with Miss
+Belinda's feelings.  However polite her intentions may be, if at heart
+she disapproves she can only utter her two words of opprobrium.  When a
+sermon displeases her she sits in her pew muttering softly, and her
+lips show by their movement the words she is repeating; while a
+particularly good cup of tea will evoke from her the extravagant
+phrase, "Glory, glory, glory!"
+
+"Certainly," I said to Miss Lydia on the day succeeding the famous
+visit to the Traceys, "Mrs. Lovekin's information, if so it may be
+called, has been wrongly come by, and yet so frail is human nature one
+cannot help speculating upon it."
+
+"That is what is so sad," said Miss Lydia; "one almost feels as though
+sharing in Mrs. Lovekin's deceit by dwelling upon her information, and
+yet one's mind seems incapable of even partially forgetting such an
+announcement."
+
+Perhaps some suggestion of what was forming the topic of conversation
+in the town may have reached the Miss Traceys, and hastened their
+disclosure of the mystery.  For very shortly afterwards, one morning
+when a flood of April sunshine had called us out of doors to wander on
+the damp paths of the garden, and watch bursting buds and listen to the
+song of birds in a very rural and delightful fashion, we were informed
+by a servant who tripped out in a white cap and apron, quite dazzling
+in the sunshine, that the Miss Traceys were within.
+
+I appealed to my sister to furnish me with a means of escape.  But she
+replied: "I am afraid they have seen you.  Besides, you know I like you
+to see people."  We went indoors, and Miss Ruby apologized for the
+untimely hour at which she and her sister had come, but explained it by
+saying, "We wanted to find you alone."  And then we knew that the
+mystery was about to be solved.
+
+"You are the first to hear about it," said Miss Tracey in a manner
+which was distinctly flattering.  The Miss Traceys sit very erect on
+their chairs, and when they come to call I always apologize for having
+my leg up on the sofa.
+
+"The fact is," Miss Tracey went on, "that we knew that we could rely
+upon your good sense and judgment in a matter which is exercising us
+very seriously at present."
+
+"It is a delicate subject, of course," said Miss Ruby, "but one which
+we feel certain we may confide to you."
+
+"We always look upon Mr. Hugo as a man of the world," said Miss Tracey,
+"although he is such an invalid, and we rely upon the sound judgment of
+you both."
+
+Well, to state the subject without further preamble--but of course it
+must be understood that everything spoken this morning was to be in
+strict confidence--would we consider that they, the Miss Traceys, were
+sufficiently chaperoned if their brother the Vicar were present at the
+dance, and promised not to leave until the last gentleman had quitted
+the house?
+
+I do not like to overstate a lady's age, and it is with the utmost
+diffidence that I suggest that Miss Ruby Tracey, the younger of the two
+sisters, may be on the other side of forty.
+
+"You see, we have not only our own good name to consider," said Miss
+Tracey, "but the memory of our dear and ever-respected father must, we
+feel, be our guide in this matter, and we cannot decide how he would
+have wished us to act.  If our brother were married it would simplify
+matters very much."
+
+"You would have had your invitation before now," said Miss Ruby, "if we
+had been able to come to a decision, but without advice we felt that
+was impossible.  I am sure," she went on, giving her mantle a little
+nervous composing touch, and glancing aside as though hardly liking to
+face any eye directly--"I am sure the things one hears of unmarried
+women doing nowadays ... but of course one would not like to be classed
+with that sort of person."
+
+Palestrina was the first of us who spoke.
+
+"I think," she said gravely, "that as you are so well known here,
+nothing could be said."
+
+"You really think so?" said Miss Ruby.
+
+But Miss Tracey still demurred.  She said: "But it is the fact of our
+being so well known here that really constitutes my chief uneasiness.
+We often feel," she added with a sigh, "that in another place we could
+have more liberty."
+
+"I assure you," said Miss Ruby, in a tone of playful confession, "that
+when we go to visit our cousins in London we are really quite
+shockingly frivolous.  I do not know what it is about London; one
+always seems to throw off all restraint."
+
+"I think you are giving a wrong impression, dear," said Miss Tracey.
+"There was nothing in the whole of our conduct in London which would
+not bear repetition in Stowel.  Only, in a place like this, one feels
+one must often explain one's actions, lest they should give rise to
+misrepresentations; whereas in London, although behaving, I hope, in a
+manner just as circumspect, one feels that no apology or explanation is
+needed."
+
+"There is a sort of cheerful privacy about London," said the other
+sister, "which I find it hard to explain, but which is nevertheless
+enjoyable."
+
+To say that there is a dull publicity about the country, was too
+obvious a retort.
+
+"I think we went out every evening when we were in West Kensington,"
+said Miss Tracey.
+
+"Counting church in the evening," said Miss Ruby.
+
+"Still, those evening services in London almost count as going out,"
+said Miss Tracey; "I mean, they are so lively.  I often blame myself
+for not being able to look upon them more in the light of a religious
+exercise.  I find it as difficult to worship in a strange pew as to
+sleep comfortably in a strange bed."
+
+The Miss Traceys' morning call lasted until one o'clock, and even then,
+as they themselves said, rising and shaking out their poplin skirts,
+there was much left undiscussed which they would still have liked to
+talk over with us.  The ball supper, as they called it, was to be
+cooked at home, and to consist of nothing which could not be "eaten in
+the hand."
+
+Claret-cup was, to use Miss Tracey's own figure of speech, to be
+"flowing" the whole evening, both in the dining-room with the
+sandwiches and cakes, and on a tray placed in a recess behind the hall
+door.
+
+"Gentlemen always seem so thirsty," said Miss Tracey, making the remark
+as though speaking of some animal of strange habits which she had
+considered with the bars of its cage securely fixed between herself and
+it at the Zoo.
+
+"We have bought six bottles of Essence of Claret-cup," said the younger
+sister, "which we have seen very highly recommended in advertisements;
+and although it says that three tablespoonfuls will make a quart of the
+cup, we thought of putting four, and so having it good."
+
+"As regards the music," went on Miss Tracey, "we have come, I think, to
+a very happy decision.  A friend of ours knows a blind man who plays
+the piano for dances, and by employing him we feel that we shall be
+giving remunerative work to a very deserving person, as well as
+ensuring for ourselves a really choice selection of the most
+fashionable waltzes.  Ruby pronounces the floor perfect," said Miss
+Tracey, glancing admiringly at her younger sister's still neat figure
+and nimble feet; "she has been practising upon it several times----"
+
+"With the blinds down, dear," amended Miss Ruby, simpering a little.
+"We understand," she continued, "that some chalk sprinkled over the
+boards before dancing begins is beneficial.  You should have known
+Stowel in the old days, when there was a county ball every winter at
+the Three Jolly Postboys--such a name!" continued Miss Ruby, who was in
+that curiously excited state when smiles and even giggles come easily.
+
+"Now remember," said Miss Tracey to Palestrina, as she took leave of
+her, "you must come and help with the decorations on the morning of the
+dance.  You can rest in the afternoon, so as to look your best and
+rosiest in the evening."
+
+In Stowel it is ingenuously admitted that a young lady should try and
+look her best when gentlemen are to be present, and rosy cheeks are
+still in vogue.
+
+The Miss Traceys' drawing-room is not a very large room, even when
+empty of furniture, but it certainly had a most festive appearance when
+we drove up to the famous house-warming.  Every curtain was looped with
+evergreens, and every fireplace was piled with ivy, while two large
+flags, which were referred to several times as "a display of bunting,"
+festooned the little staircase.  Several friends in the village had
+lent their white-capped maids for the occasion, and these ran against
+each other in the little linoleum passage in a state of great
+excitement, and called each other "dear" in an exuberance of affection
+which relieved their fluttered feelings.
+
+A palm had been ordered from London and placed triumphantly in a
+corner--the palm had been kept as a surprise for us all.  In the course
+of the evening it was quite a common thing to hear some girl ask her
+partner if he had seen The Palm; and if the reply was in the negative,
+the couple made a journey to the hall to look at it.
+
+And here I must note a curious trait in the conversation prevalent in
+our select circle at Stowel.  We all speak in capitals.  The definite
+article is generally preferred to the "a" or "an" which points out a
+common noun; and so infectious is the habit, that when writing, for
+instance, of the Jamiesons, I find myself referring to The Family, with
+a capital, quite in a royal way, so perspicuously are capital letters
+suggested by their manner of speech.  In the same way, the Taylors'
+uncle is never referred to by any of us except as The Uncle, and I feel
+sure that I should be doing the Traceys' plant an injustice if I did
+not write it down The Palm.
+
+This, however, is a digression.
+
+The calmness of the Miss Traceys was almost overdone.  They stood at
+the door of their drawing-room, each holding a small bouquet in her
+hand, and they greeted their guests as though nothing could be more
+natural than to give a dance, or to stand beneath a doorway draped with
+white lace curtains, and with a background of dissipated-looking
+polished boards and evergreens.  The elder Miss Tracey, who is tall,
+was statuesque and dignified; the younger lady was conversational and
+natural almost to the point of artificiality--so determined was Miss
+Ruby to repudiate any hint of arrogance this evening.  And it may be
+said of both sisters that they were strikingly well-bred and
+unembarrassed.  Those who had seen them in all the flutter of
+preparations during the day--washing china and glass, issuing packets
+of candles from their store cupboard below the stairs, and jingling
+large bunches of keys--could admire these outward symbols of ease, and
+appreciate the self-restraint that they involved.
+
+I do not remember before, at any dance, seeing so many old young
+ladies, or so few and such very juvenile young men.  The elderly young
+ladies smiled the whole time, while their boy partners looked
+preternaturally grave and solemn.  They appeared to be shyly conscious
+of their shirt collars, and these, I fancy, must have been made after
+some exaggerated pattern which I cannot now recall; I only remember
+that they appeared to be uncomfortably high and somewhat conspicuous,
+and that they gave one the idea of being the wearers' first high
+collars.
+
+The Vicar, who had promised to come at eight o'clock so that there
+should be no mistake about his being in the house from first to last of
+the dance, and who had been sent for in a panic at a quarter past
+eight, acted conscientiously throughout the entire entertainment.  He
+began by inviting Mrs. Fielden to dance, and afterwards he asked every
+lady in turn according to her rank, and I do not think that during the
+entire evening his feet can have failed to respond to a single bar of
+the music.  The blind musician was a little late in arriving, and we
+all sat round the drawing-room with our backs to the new blue wallpaper
+and longed for home.  No one dared to offer to play a waltz, in case it
+should be considered an affront at a party where etiquette was so
+conspicuous, and where the peculiar Stowel air of mystery pervaded
+everything.
+
+The Jamiesons arrived, a party of nine, in the station omnibus, and
+chatted in the hearty, unaffected manner peculiar to themselves, waving
+little fans to and fro in the chilly air of the new drawing-room, and
+putting an end to the solemn silence which had distinguished the first
+half-hour of the party.  Each of the sisters wore a black dress
+relieved by a touch of colour, and carried a fan.  Their bright eyes
+shone benignly behind their several pairs of pince-nez; and as they
+shook hands with an air of delight with every single person in the room
+when they entered, their arrival caused quite a pleasant stir.
+
+Mrs. Lovekin had already, in her character of co-hostess, begun to
+distribute the Essence of Claret-cup that, diluted with water, formed
+the staple beverage of the evening and was placed on a small table
+behind the hall-door.  There was rather a curious sediment left at the
+bottom of the glasses, and the flavour of cucumber suggested vaguely to
+one that the refreshment might be claret-cup.  Very young men in split
+white kid gloves drank a good deal of it.
+
+At last the blind musician was led solemnly across the room, and took
+up his position at the piano.  He always left off playing before a
+figure of a quadrille or lancers was finished, and then the dancers
+clapped their hands to make him continue, and the elderly young ladies
+smiled more than ever.  At the second or third waltz my sister was in
+the proud position of being claimed in turn by the Vicar as his
+partner; and the position, besides being prominent, was such an
+enviable one that Palestrina, who is not more given to humility than
+other good-looking young women of her age, was carried away by popular
+feeling so far as to remark in a tone of gratitude that this was very
+kind of him.
+
+He replied, "I have made up my mind to sacrifice myself for the night;"
+and one realized that a lofty position and a prominent place in the
+world may carry with them sufficient humiliations to keep one meek.
+
+The conscientious Vicar did not allow his partner to sit down once
+throughout the entire waltz, and I think the blind musician played at
+greater length than usual.  I began to wonder if her partner regarded
+my excellent Palestrina as a sort of Sandow exerciser, and whether he
+was trying to get some healthy gymnastics, if not amusement, out of
+their dance together.
+
+"There!" he said at last, placing her on a chair beside me as a
+fulfilled duty; and feeling that she was expected to say "Thank you,"
+Palestrina meekly said it.
+
+"I have only danced once in the last twenty years," said the Vicar,
+"and that was with some choir boys."  And the next moment the blind man
+began to play again, and he was footing it with conscientious energy
+with Miss Lydia Blind.
+
+Young ladies who had sat long with their empty programmes in their
+hands now began to dance with each other with an air of overdone
+merriment, protesting that they did not know how to act gentleman, but
+declaring with emphasis that it was just as amusing to dance with a
+girl-friend as with a man.
+
+The music, as usual, failed before the end of each figure of the dance,
+and the curate, who wore a pair of very smart shoe-buckles, remarked to
+me that the lancers was a dance that created much diversion, and I
+replied that they were too amusing for anything.
+
+The Jamiesons' youngest brother, who is in a shipping-office in London,
+had come down to Stowel especially for this occasion.  Once, some years
+ago, Kennie, as he is called, made a voyage in one of the shipping
+company's large steamers to South America.  He landed at Buenos Ayres
+armed to the teeth, and walked about the pavement of that
+highly-civilized town, with its wooden pavements and plate-glass shop
+windows, in a sombrero and poncho, and with terrible weapons stuck in
+his belt.  At the end of a week he returned in the same ship in which
+he had made the outward voyage, and since then he has had tales to tell
+of those wild regions with which any of the stories in the _Boys' Own
+Paper_ are tame in comparison.  In his dress and general appearance he
+even now suggests a pirate king.  His tales of adventure are always
+accompanied by explanatory gestures and demonstrations, and it is not
+unusual to see Kennie stand up in the midst of an admiring circle of
+friends and make some fierce sabre-cuts in the air.  He was dressed
+with a red cummerbund round his waist, and he drew attention to it by
+an apology to every one of his partners for having it on.  "One gets
+into the habit of dressing like this out there," he said in a tone of
+excuse.  The Pirate Boy was in great demand at the dance.
+
+Pretty Mrs. Fielden, who had driven over from Stanby, beautifully
+dressed as usual, and slightly amused, ordered her carriage early, and
+had merely come to oblige those quaint old dears, the Miss Traceys.
+
+Even at the house-warming Mrs. Fielden would have considered it quite
+impossible to sit out a dance.  She brought an elderly Colonel with
+her, and she conducted him into a corner behind The Palm, and talked to
+him there till it was her turn to dance with the Vicar.  Had it not
+been Mrs. Fielden, whose position placed her above criticism, the
+breath of envy might have whispered that it was hardly fair that one
+couple should occupy the favourite sitting-out place--two drawing-room
+chairs beneath The Palm--to the exclusion of others.  But Mrs. Fielden
+being whom she was, the young ladies of Stowel were content to pass and
+repass the coveted chairs and to whisper admiringly, "How exquisite she
+is looking to-night!"
+
+"Is there anything of me left?" she said to me, looking cool and
+unruffled when her dance with the Vicar was over.  She had only made
+one short turn of the room with him, and her beautiful dress and her
+hair were quite undisturbed.
+
+"You haven't danced half so conscientiously as his other partners
+have," I said.
+
+"I wanted to talk about the parish," said Mrs. Fielden, "so I stopped.
+I think I should like to go and get cool somewhere."
+
+"I will take you to sit under The Palm again, as Colonel Jardine did,"
+I replied, "and you shall laugh at all the broad backs and flat feet of
+our country neighbours, and hear everybody say as they pass how
+beautiful you are."
+
+Mrs. Fielden turned her head towards me as if to speak, and I had a
+sudden vivid conviction that she would have told me I was rude had I
+not been a cripple with one leg.
+
+We sat under The Palm.  Mrs. Fielden never rushes into a conversation.
+Presently she said,--
+
+"Why do you come to this sort of thing?  It can't amuse you."
+
+"You told me the other day," I said, "that I ought to cultivate a small
+mind and small interests."
+
+"Did I?" said Mrs. Fielden lightly.  "If I think one thing one day, I
+generally think quite differently a day or two after.  To-night, for
+instance, I think it is a mistake for you to lean against the Miss
+Traceys' new blue walls and watch us dance."
+
+"I'm not sure that it isn't better than sitting at home and reading how
+well my old regiment is doing in South Africa.  Besides, you know, I am
+writing a diary."
+
+"Are you?" said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"You advised it," I said.
+
+"Did I?"
+
+When Mrs. Fielden is provoking she always looks ten times prettier than
+she does at other times.
+
+"A good many people in this little place," I said, "have made up their
+minds to 'do the work that's nearest' and to help 'a lame dog over
+stiles.'  I think I should be rather a brute if I didn't respond to
+their good intentions."
+
+"I don't think they need invent stiles, though!" said Mrs. Fielden
+quickly; "wood-carving, and beating brass, and playing the zither----"
+
+"I do not play the zither," I said.
+
+"--are not stiles.  They are making a sort of obstacle race of your
+life."
+
+"Since I have begun to write the diary," I said, "I've been able to
+excuse myself attempting these things, even when tools are kindly
+brought to me.  And, so far, no one has so absolutely forgotten that
+there is a lingering spark of manhood in me as to suggest that I should
+crochet or do cross-stitch."
+
+"You know I am going to help to write the diary," said Mrs. Fielden,
+"only I'm afraid I shall have to go to all their tea-parties, shan't I,
+to get copy?"
+
+"You will certainly have to go," I said.
+
+"I'm dreadfully bored to-night; aren't you?" she said confidentially,
+and in a certain radiant fashion as distant as the Poles from boredom.
+"No one can really enjoy this sort of thing, do you think?  It's like
+being poor, or anything disagreeable of that sort.  People think they
+ought to pretend to like it, but they don't."
+
+"I wish I could entertain you better," I said sulkily; "but I'm afraid
+I never was the least bit amusing."
+
+Mrs. Fielden relapsed into one of her odd little silences, and I
+determined I would not ask her what she was thinking about.
+
+Presently Colonel Jardine joined us, and she said to him: "Please see
+if you can get my carriage; it must be five o'clock in the morning at
+least."  And the next moment I was made to feel the egotism of
+imagining I had been punished, when she bade me a charming
+"good-night."  She smiled congratulations on her hostesses on the
+success of the party, and pleaded the long drive to Stanby as an excuse
+for leaving early.  The Colonel wrapped her in a long, beautiful cloak
+of some pale coloured velvet and fur--a sumptuous garment at which
+young ladies in shawls looked admiringly--and Mrs. Fielden slipped it
+on negligently, and got into her brougham.
+
+"Oh, how tired I am!" she said.
+
+"It was pretty deadly," said the Colonel.  "Did you taste the
+claret-cup?" he added, making a grimace in the dark.
+
+"Oh, I found it excellent," said Mrs. Fielden quickly.
+
+Margaret Jamieson now took her place at the piano, to enable the blind
+man to go and have some supper; but, having had it, he slept so
+peacefully that no one could bear to disturb him, so between them the
+young ladies shared his duties till the close of the evening.
+
+Palestrina had suggested, as a little occupation for me, that I should
+write out programmes for the dance, and I had done so.  Surely
+programmes were never so little needed before!  Every grown man had
+left the assembly long before twelve o'clock struck, the feebleness of
+the excuses for departing thus early being only equalled by the gravity
+with which they were made.  Even the lawyer, who we thought would have
+remained faithful to the end, pleaded that since he ricked his knee he
+is obliged to have plenty of rest.  The Pirate Boy had had some bitter
+words with the lawyer at a previous stage in the evening about the way
+in which the lancers should be danced, and had muttered darkly, "I
+won't make a disturbance in a lady's house, but I have seen a fellow
+called out for less."  He considered that the lawyer was running away,
+unable to bear his cold, keen eye upon him during the next lancers, and
+he watched him depart, standing at the head of the tiny staircase,
+beneath the display of bunting, with his arms folded in a Napoleonic
+attitude.
+
+All good things come to an end, and even the Vicar of Stowel must have
+felt that there are limits to the most conscientious energy.  And
+girls, dancing with each other, learn perhaps that the merriment caused
+by acting as a man is not altogether lasting; while elderly young
+ladies, although agreed in smiling to the very end, must be aware how
+fixed in expression such a smile may become towards the end of a long
+evening.
+
+Good-nights were said, and carriages were called up with a good deal of
+unnecessary shouting, while the Pirate Boy insisted upon going to the
+heads of the least restive horses and soothing them in a way which he
+said he had learned from those Gaucho fellows out there.
+
+I have never been able to tell what the Miss Traceys thought about
+their dance.  If they were disappointed, the world was not allowed to
+probe that tender spot.  Possibly they were satisfied with its success;
+the proprietary instinct of admiration applies to entertainments as
+well as to tangible possessions.  But that satisfaction, if it existed,
+was modestly veiled--the house-warming was less discussed by them than
+by any one else.  Miss Ruby spoke rather wistfully one day about simple
+pleasures being the best and safest after all, and she alluded with a
+sigh to the time which must come some day when she would be no longer
+young.  Miss Tracey drew herself up and said: "A woman is only as old
+as she looks, my dear," and glanced admiringly at her sister.
+
+The diluted Essence of Claret-cup was bottled, and formed a nice light
+luncheon wine at the Miss Tracey's for many weeks afterwards.  The
+furniture was brought down from the spare bedroom by the maids, who
+walked the heavier pieces in front of them with a curious tip-toeing
+movement of the castors of the several easy-chairs.  The art tiles in
+the grate were cleared of their faded burden of evergreens, and The
+Palm was carried into the bay-window, where it could be seen from the
+road.
+
+I drove over to see Mrs. Fielden and to ask her if she thought I had
+been a sulky brute at the dance.
+
+"Were you?" said Mrs. Fielden, lifting her pretty dark eyebrows; "I
+forget."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Palestrina and I live in the country, and whenever we are dull or sad,
+like the sailors in Mr. Gilbert's poem, we decide that our
+neighbourhood is too deadly uninteresting, and then we go and see the
+Jamiesons.  They are our nearest neighbours, as they are also amongst
+our greatest friends, and the walk to their house is a distance that I
+am able to manage.  I believe that our visits to the Jamiesons are most
+often determined by the state of the weather.  If we have passed a long
+wet day indoors I feel that it is going to be a Jamieson day, and I
+know that my sister will say to me after tea, "Suppose we go over and
+see the Jamiesons;" and she generally adds that it is much better than
+settling down for the evening at five o'clock in the afternoon.
+
+I do not think that Palestrina was so sociable a young woman, nor did
+she see so much of her neighbours, before I came home an invalid from
+South Africa--I got hit in the legs at Magersfontein, and had the left
+one taken off in the hospital at Wynberg--but she believes, no doubt
+rightly, that the variety that one gets by seeing one's fellow-men is
+good for a poor lame dog who lies on a sofa by the fire the greater
+part of the day, wishing he could grow another leg or feel fit again.
+
+Acting upon this unalterable conviction of my sister, we drive about in
+the afternoon and see people, and they come and see me and suggest
+occupations for me.  In Lent I had a more than usual number of callers,
+which says much for the piety of the place, as well as for the goodness
+of heart of its inhabitants.
+
+There is a slight coolness between what is known as the "County" and
+the Jamiesons, and their name is never mentioned without the
+accompanying piece of information, "You know, old Jamieson married his
+cook!"  To be more exact, Mrs. Jamieson was a small farmer's daughter,
+and Captain Jamieson fell in love with her when, having left the army,
+he went to learn practical farming at old Higgins's, and he loved her
+faithfully to the day of his death.  She is a stout, elderly woman who
+speaks very little, but upon whom an immense amount of affection seems
+to be lavished by her family of five daughters and two sons.  And it
+has sometimes seemed to my sister and me that her good qualities are of
+a lasting and passive sort, which exist in large measure in the hearts
+of those who bestow this boundless affection.  Mrs. Jamieson's form of
+introducing herself to any one she meets consists in giving an account
+of the last illness and death of her husband.  There is hardly a
+poultice which was placed upon that poor man which her friends have not
+heard about.  And when she has finished, in her flat, sad voice, giving
+every detail of his last disorder, Mrs. Jamieson's conversation is at
+an end.  She has learned, no doubt unconsciously, to gauge the
+characters of new acquaintances by the degree of interest which they
+evince in Captain Jamieson's demise.  It is Mrs. Jamieson's test of
+their true worth.
+
+Of the other sorrow which saddened a nature that perhaps was never very
+gay, Mrs. Jamieson rarely speaks.  Possibly because she thinks of it
+more than of anything else in the world.  Among her eight children
+there was only one who appeared to his mother to combine all perfection
+in himself.  He was killed by an accident in his engineering works
+seven years ago, and although his friends will, perhaps, only remember
+him as a stout young fellow who sang sea-songs with a distended chest,
+his mother buried her heart with him in his grave, and even the voice
+of strangers is lowered as they say, "She lost a son once."
+
+The late Captain Jamieson, a kindly, shrewd man and a Scotchman withal,
+was agent to Mrs. Fielden, widow of the late member for Stanby, and
+when he died his income perished with him, and The Family of
+Jamieson--a large one, as has been told--were thankful enough to
+subsist on their mother's inheritance of some four or five hundred a
+year, bequeathed to her by the member of the non-illustrious house of
+Higgins, late farmer deceased.  It is a hospitable house, for all its
+narrow means, and there live not, I believe, a warmer-hearted or more
+generous family than these good Jamiesons.  The girls are energetic,
+bright, and honest; their slender purses are at the disposal of every
+scoundrel in the parish; and their time, as well as their boundless
+energy, is devoted to the relief of suffering or to the betterment of
+mankind.
+
+Mrs. Fielden is of the opinion that nothing gives one a more perfect
+feeling of rest than going to Belmont, as the Jamiesons' little house
+is called, and watching them work.  She calls it the "Rest Cure."
+Every one of the five sisters, except Maud, who is the beauty of the
+family, wears spectacles, and behind these their bright, intelligent
+small eyes glint with kindness and brisk energy.  The worst feature of
+this excellent family is their habit of all talking at the same time,
+in a certain emphatic fashion which renders it difficult to catch what
+each individual is saying, and this is especially the case when three
+of the sisters are driving sewing-machines simultaneously.  They have a
+genius for buying remnants of woollen goods at a small price, and
+converting them into garments for the poor; and their first question
+often is, as they hold a piece of flannel or serge triumphantly aloft,
+"What do you think I gave for that?"  Palestrina always names at least
+twice the sum that has purchased the goods, and has thereby gained a
+character for being dreadfully extravagant but sympathetic.
+
+"I do not believe," I said to Palestrina the other day, "that these
+good Jamiesons have a thought beyond making other people happy."
+
+"That and getting married are the sole objects of their existence,"
+said Palestrina.
+
+"It is very odd," I said, "that women so devoid of what might be called
+sentiment are yet so bent upon this very thing."
+
+"Eliza told me to-day," said Palestrina, "that as Kate has not
+mentioned one single man in her letters home, they cannot help thinking
+that there is something in it."
+
+The Jamiesons have the same vigorous, energetic ideas about matrimony
+that they have about everything else, and almost their sole grievance,
+naïvely expressed, is that Maud, "who gets them all"--meaning, I
+believe, offers of marriage--is the only one of the family who is
+unable to make up her mind clearly on this momentous question.
+
+"We should not mind," say the conclave of sisters during one of the
+numerous family discussions on this subject, "even if she does get all
+the admirers--for of course she is the pretty one--if only she would
+accept one of them.  But she always gets undecided and silly as soon as
+they come to the point."
+
+It should be observed in passing that the different stages of
+development in love affairs are shrewdly noted and commented upon by
+the Jamiesons.  The first evidence of a man's preference is that he "is
+struck;" and the second, when he begins to visit at the house, is known
+as "hovering."  An inquiry after Maud's health will sometimes elicit
+the unexpected reply that another admirer is hovering at present.  The
+third stage is reached when the lover is said to be "dangling;" and the
+final triumph, when Maud has received a proposal, is noted as having
+"come to the point."
+
+If Maud's triumphs are watched with small sighs of envy by her sisters,
+they are a source of nothing but gratification to them to retail to the
+outside world.  There is a strict account kept of Maud's "conquests" in
+the letters sent to relatives, and the evening's post will sometimes
+contain the startling announcement that Maud has had a fourth in one
+year.
+
+"Of course, you know how fond we all are of each other," said Eliza
+Jamieson to me one day with one of those unexpected confidences which
+the effeminacy of sickness seems to warrant, if not actually to invite,
+"but we can't help thinking that, humanly speaking, we should all have
+a better chance if only Maud would marry.  No one would wish her to
+marry without love, but we fear she is looking for perfection, and
+_that_ she will never get; and it was really absurd of her to be so
+upset when she discovered, after nearly getting engaged to Mr. Reddy,
+that he wore a wig.  After all, a man may be a good Christian in spite
+of having no hair."
+
+"That is undoubtedly a fact," I said warmly.
+
+"And Mr. Reddy had excellent prospects," said Eliza, "although perhaps
+nothing very tangible at present.  Then there was Albert Gore, to whom,
+one must admit, Maud gave every encouragement, and we had begun to
+think it quite hopeful; but just at the end she discovered that she
+could not care for any one called Albert, which was too silly."
+
+"She might have called him Bertie," I suggested.
+
+"Yes," said Eliza eagerly; "and you see, none of us hope or expect to
+marry a man who has not some of these little drawbacks, so I really do
+not see why Maud should expect it."
+
+Five matrimonial alliances in one house are, perhaps, not easily
+arranged in a quiet country neighbourhood, yet there is always a
+hopeful tone about these family discussions, and it is very common to
+hear the Miss Jamiesons relate at length what they intend to do when
+they are married.
+
+And there is yet another maiden to be arranged for in the little house;
+Mettie is the Jamiesons' cousin who lives with them, and I believe that
+what appeals to me most strongly in this unknown provincial family is
+their kindness to the little shrunken, tiresome cousin who shares their
+home.  Mettie is like some strange little bright bird, utterly devoid
+of intelligence, and yet with the alertness of a sparrow.  Her beady
+eyes are a-twinkle in a restless sort of way all day long, and her
+large thin nose has always the appearance of having the skin stretched
+unpleasantly tightly across it.  The good Jamiesons never seem to be
+ruffled by her presence among them, and this forbearance certainly
+commands one's respect.  Mettie travesties the Jamiesons in every
+particular.  She has adopted their matrimonial views with interest, and
+she utters little platitudes upon the subject with quite a surprising
+air of sapience.  One avoids being left alone with Mettie whenever it
+is possible to do so, for, gentle creature though she is, her remarks
+are so singularly devoid of interest that one is often puzzled to
+understand why they are made.  Yet I see one or other of the Jamiesons
+walk to the village with her every day--her little steps pattering
+beside their giant strides, while the bird-like tongue chirps gaily all
+the way.
+
+Every one in our little neighbourhood walks into the village every day;
+it is our daily dissipation; and frivolous persons have been known to
+go twice or three times.  On days when Palestrina thinks that I am
+getting moped she steals the contents of my tobacco-jar, and then says,
+without blushing, that she has discovered that my tobacco is all
+finished, and that we had better walk into the village together and get
+some more.  When I am in a grumpy mood, I reply: "It's all right, thank
+you; I have plenty upstairs."  But it generally ends in my taking the
+walk with my sister.
+
+Our house is pleasantly situated where, by peeping through a tangle of
+shrubs and trees, we can see the lazy traffic of the highroad that
+leads to the village.  Strangers pause outside the screen of evergreens
+sometimes and peep between the branches to see the quaint gables of the
+old house.  Its walls have turned to a soft yellow colour with old age,
+and its beams are of oak, gray with exposure to the storms of many
+winters.
+
+"This old hall of yours is much too dark," Mrs. Fielden said, when she
+came to call the other day muffled up in velvet and fur.  She lighted
+the dull afternoon by something that is radiant and holiday-like about
+her, and left us envying her for being so pretty and so young and gay.
+"Oh, I know," she said in her whimsical way, "that it is Jacobean and
+early Tudor and all sorts of delightful things, but it isn't very
+cheerful, you know.  I'm so glad it is near the road; I think if I
+built a house I should like it to be in Mansion House Square, or inside
+a railway station.  Don't you love spending a night at a station hotel?
+I always ask for a room overlooking the platform, for I like the
+feeling of having the trains running past me all night.  I love your
+house really," she said, "only I'm afraid it preaches peace and
+resignation and all those things which I consider so wrong."
+
+Since I have been laid up I have been recommended to carve wood, to
+beat brass, to stuff sofa-cushions, and to play the zither; but these
+things do not amuse me much.  It was Mrs. Fielden who suggested that I
+should write a diary.
+
+"You must grumble," she said, raising her pretty eyebrows in the
+affected way she has.  "It wouldn't be human if you didn't; so why not
+write a diary, and have a real good grumble on paper every night before
+you go to bed.  Of course, if I were in your place I should grumble all
+day instead, and go to sleep at night.  But I'm not the least bit a
+resigned person.  If anything hurts me I scream at once; and if there
+is anything I don't like doing I leave it alone.  Palestrina," she said
+to my sister, "don't let him be patient; it's so bad for him."
+
+Palestrina smiled, and said she was afraid it was very dull for me
+sometimes.
+
+"But if one is impatient enough, one can't be dull," said Mrs. Fielden.
+"It's like being cross----"
+
+"I am constitutionally dull," I said.  "I used to be known as the
+dullest man in my regiment."
+
+"You studied philosophy, didn't you?" said Mrs. Fielden.  "That must be
+so depressing."
+
+I was much struck by this suggestion.  "I dare say you are quite
+right," I said, "although I had not seen it in that light before.  But
+I'm afraid it has not made me very patient, nor given me a great mind."
+
+"Of course, what you want just now," said Mrs. Fielden gravely, "is a
+little mind.  You must lie here on your sofa, and take a vivid interest
+in what all the old ladies say when they come to call on Palestrina.
+And you must know the price of Mrs. Taylor's last new hat, and how much
+the Traceys spend on their washing-bill, and you must put it all down
+in your diary.  I'll come over and help you sometimes, and write all
+the wicked bits for you, only I'm afraid no one ever is wicked down
+here.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, holding out the smallest, prettiest, most
+useless-looking little hand in the world.  "And please," she added
+earnestly, "get all this oak painted white, and hang some nice muslin
+curtains in the windows."
+
+Kindly folk in Stowel are always ingenuously surprised at any one's
+caring to live in the country; and although it is but a mile from here
+to the vestry hall, and much less by the fields, they often question us
+whether we do not feel lonely at night-time, and they are of the
+opinion that we should be better in "town."  They frequently speak of
+going into the country for change of air, or on Bank Holidays; but
+considering that the last house in the village--and, like the City of
+Zoar, it is but a little one--is built amongst fields, it might be
+imagined that these rural retreats could readily be found without the
+trouble of hiring the four-wheeled dog-cart from the inn, or of taking
+a journey by train.  Yet an expedition into the country is often talked
+of as being a change, and friends and relations living outside the town
+are considered a little bit behindhand in their views of
+things--"old-feshioned" they call it in Stowel--and these country
+cousins are visited with just a touch of kindly condescension by the
+dwellers in a flower-bordered, tree-shadowed High Street.
+
+One is brought rather quaintly into immediate correspondence with the
+domestic concerns of every one in Stowel, and Palestrina has been
+coaching me in the etiquette of the place.  It is hardly correct to do
+any shopping at dinner-time, when the lady of the house, busy feeding
+her family, has to be called from the inner parlour, where that family
+may all be distinctly seen from the shop.  Driving or walking through
+Stowel at the hour thus consecrated by universal consent to gastronomy,
+one might almost imagine it to be a deserted village.  Even the dogs
+have gone inside to get a bone; and one says, as one walks down the
+empty streets, "Stowel dines."
+
+When a shop is closed on Thursday, which is early-closing day, one can
+generally "be obliged" by ringing at the house-bell, and, under conduct
+of the master of the place, may enter the darkened shop by the side
+door, and be accommodated with the purchase that one requires.  For the
+old custom still holds of living--where it seems most natural for a
+merchant to live--in the place where he does his business.  There is a
+pleasurable feeling of excitement even in the purchase of a pot of
+Aspinall's enamel behind closed shutters, and this is mingled with a
+feeling of solemnity and privilege, which I can only compare, in its
+mixed effect upon me, to going behind the scenes of a theatre, or being
+permitted to enter the vestry of a church.
+
+Any purchases except those which may be called necessaries are seldom
+indulged in in our little town.  A shop which contains anything but
+dress and provisions has few customers, and its merchandise becomes
+household fixtures.  I called at the furniture shop the other day; the
+place looked bare and unfamiliar to me, but I did not realize what was
+amiss until my sister exclaimed, "Where is the sofa?"  The sofa had
+been for sale for fifteen years, and had at last been purchased.  There
+are other things in the shop which I think must have been there much
+longer, and I believe their owner would part with them with regret,
+even were a very fair profit to be obtained for them.  Palestrina tells
+me she ordered some fish the other day, and was met with the objection
+that "I fear that piece will be too big for your fish-kettle, ma'am,"
+although she had never suspected that the size of her fish-kettle was a
+matter known to the outside world.
+
+And yet Stowel prides itself more upon its reserve than upon anything
+else, except perhaps its gentility.  There is a distinct air of mystery
+over any and every one of the smallest affairs of daily life in the
+little place, and I hardly think that our neighbours would really enjoy
+anything if it were "spoken about" before the proper time.  There is
+something of secrecy in the very air of the town.  No one, I am told,
+has ever been known to mention, even casually, what he or she intends
+to have for dinner; and the butcher has been warned against calling
+across the shop to the lady at the desk, "Two pounds of rumpsteak for
+Miss Tracey," or, "One sirloin, twelve two, for the Hall."  Mr.
+Tomsett, who was the first butcher to introduce New Zealand mutton to
+the inhabitants of Stowel, lost his custom by this vulgar habit of
+assorting his joints in public.  And Miss Tracey, who knew him best (he
+was still something of a stranger, having been in Stowel only five
+years), warned him that that was not the sort of thing we were
+accustomed to.  "If you must make our private concerns public in this
+way," she said, "at least it cannot be necessary to mention in what
+country the mutton was raised."
+
+It is even considered a little indelicate to remain in the post-office
+when a telegram is being handed in.  And parcels addressed and laid on
+the counter at the grocer's, although provocative of interest, are not
+even glanced at by the best people.
+
+On the authority of my sister, I learn that when the ladies of Stowel
+do a little dusting in the morning the front blinds are pulled down.
+And keen though the speculation may be as to the extent of our
+neighbours' incomes, the subject is, of course, a forbidden one.  Poor
+though some of these neighbours are, a very kindly charity prevails in
+the little town.  When the elder Miss Blind was ill--as she very often
+is, poor thing!--it might seem a matter of coincidence to the
+uninitiated that during that week every one of her friends happened to
+make a little strong soup, a portion of which was sent to the
+invalid--just in case she might fancy it; while the Miss Traceys, who,
+as all the world knew, had inherited a little wine from their father,
+the late Vicar of the parish, sent their solitary remaining bottle of
+champagne, with their compliments, to Miss Belinda.  The champagne
+proved flat after many a year of storage in the lower cupboard of Miss
+Tracey's pantry, but the two sisters to whom it was sent, not being
+familiar with the wine, did not detect its faults, and they left the
+green bottle with the gilt neck casually standing about for weeks
+afterwards, from an innocent desire to impress their neighbours with
+its magnificence.
+
+Palestrina, with the good intention, I believe, of providing me with
+what she calls an object for a walk, asked me to call and inquire for
+Miss Blind on the day that the bottle of champagne was drawn and
+sampled.  Miss Lydia was in the sick-room, and Mrs. Lovekin, who had
+called to inquire, was sitting in the little parlour when I entered.
+"How do you do?" she said.  "I suppose you have heard about Belinda and
+the champagne?"
+
+The reproachful note in Mrs. Lovekin's voice, which seemed to tax the
+invalid with ingratitude, subtly conveyed the impression that the flat
+champagne had not agreed with poor Miss Belinda.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+It is a subject of burning curiosity with every woman in Stowel to know
+whether it is a fact that the Taylors have taken to having late dinner
+instead of supper since Mrs. Taylor's uncle was made a K.C.B.  There
+was something in a remark made by Miss Frances Taylor which distinctly
+suggested that such a change had been effected, but Stowel, on the
+whole, is inclined to discredit the rumour.  A portrait of the General
+has been made in London, from a photograph in uniform which Mrs. Taylor
+has of him, and it has been framed, regardless of expense, by the
+photographer in the High Street.  Mr. Taylor at one time had thought of
+having the whole thing done in London, but it had been decided by an
+overwhelming majority that it would be only fair to give the commission
+to provide the frame to some one in our own town; and Mr. and Mrs.
+Taylor have granted a permission, which amounts to a command, that the
+portrait of "Sir John" shall be placed in the window for a week before
+it is sent home, so that Stowel may see it--for the Taylors, it should
+be remembered, do not receive every one at their own house.
+
+To-day I met the younger Miss Blind--Miss Lydia, she is generally
+called--at the window of the photographer's, to which she had made a
+pilgrimage, as we all intended to do, to see the famous picture.
+Probably she had stood there for some time, for she turned nervously
+towards me, and said in a tone of apology and with something of an
+effort in her speech, "I used to know him."
+
+"Ah!" I replied.  "I suppose he has often been down to stay with the
+Taylors?"
+
+"He has not been once in twenty years," said Lydia.  I was thinking of
+other things, and I do not know why it suddenly struck me that there
+was a tone of regret, even of hopelessness, in Miss Lydia's voice, and
+that she spoke as one speaks, perhaps, when one has waited long for
+something.
+
+Lydia Blind is a tall woman with a slight, stooping figure.  Sometimes
+I have wondered if it is only her sister's constant ill-health that has
+made Miss Lydia stoop a little.  There is something delicately precise
+about her, if so gentle a woman can fitly be described as precise.
+Perhaps her voice explains her best, as a woman's voice will often do;
+it is low and of a very charming quality, although broken now and then
+by asthma.  Each word has its proper spacing, and does not intrude upon
+the next; each vowel possesses the rare characteristic of its proper
+sound.  I have never heard her use an out-of-the-way expression; but
+her simple way of speaking has an old-fashioned gracefulness about it,
+and her manner, with all its simplicity, is dignified by reason of its
+perfect sincerity.  Her eyes are large and gray, and set somewhat far
+apart; her hair is worn in a fringe so demure and smooth, so primly
+curled, that it has the appearance of plainly-brushed hair.  It is Mrs.
+Fielden who says that no good woman can do her hair properly, and she
+wonders if St. Paul's recommendations as to plain braids has for ever
+stamped the hairdresser's profession as a dangerous art.
+
+To-day when I met Lydia it struck me suddenly to wonder how old she is.
+Perhaps something in the insolent youthfulness of the springtime
+suggested the thought, or it may have been because Miss Lydia looked
+tired.
+
+When one meets a friend in Stowel High Street, it is considered very
+cold behaviour merely to bow to her.  Not only do we stop and chat for
+a few minutes, but it is the friendly fashion of the place for ladies
+to say to each other, "Which way are you going?" and to accompany their
+friend a little way along the sunny, uneven pavement, while offers to
+come in and rest are generally given and accepted at the end of the
+promenade.  Of course it is quite unusual for gentlemen to be detained
+in this way, and I am sure it cost Miss Lydia an effort to suggest to
+me that I should come in and sit down for a little while, and that she
+only did so because I seemed tired.  Also I think that a man with a
+crutch and with but one leg--and that one not very sound--is not
+considered such a source of danger to ladies living alone as a strong
+and hale man is supposed to be.  We stopped at the little green gate in
+the village street, with its red flagged pathway beyond, bordered with
+spring flowers--wall-flowers, early blooming in this warm and sheltered
+corner, forget-me-nots and primroses, while a brave yellow jasmine
+starred with golden flowers covered the walls of the cottage.  I asked
+after her sister's health, and Miss Lydia begged me to come in and rest
+for a few minutes; which I did, for I was horribly tired.  But this was
+one of Miss Belinda's bad days, and her sister, who watches every
+variation in colour in the hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes of the
+invalid, saw that she was unable to speak, and motioned me out of the
+room.  She showed me into her own little sanctum, and gave me a
+cushioned chair by the window, and said: "Do wait for a few minutes and
+rest.  I can see that my sister wants to say something to me, but she
+is always more than usually inarticulate when she is in one of these
+nervous states."
+
+I have been thinking a good deal about old maids lately--one has time
+to think about all manner of subjects when one is lying down most of
+the day.  Mrs. Fielden is of opinion that an old maid may have an
+exaggerated sense of humour.  To my mind her danger may be that she is
+always rather pathetically satisfied with everything.  She prefers the
+front seat of a carriage and the back seat of a dog-cart, and the leg
+of a chicken and a tiny bedroom.  Doubtless this is a form of
+self-respect.  This suitability of tastes on the part of an old maid
+enables her to say, as she does with almost suspicious frequency, that
+she gets dreadfully spoiled wherever she goes.  Adaptability to
+environment is the first law of existence, and yet there may have been
+times, even in the life of an old maid, when she has yearned for the
+wing of a chicken.
+
+The little room into which Miss Lydia ushered me was plainly furnished,
+but Miss Lydia says that she is always getting something pretty given
+to her to add to her treasures.  Her room is, indeed, rather suggestive
+of a stationer's shop window, where a card with "Fancy goods in great
+variety" is placed.  It would not be unkind to hint of some of the
+articles on the table and on the wall-brackets that they must have been
+purchased more as a kindly remembrance at Christmas-time or on
+birthdays than from any apparent usefulness to the recipient.  There
+are three twine-cases from which the scissors have long since been
+abstracted by unknown dishonest persons; and there are four ornamental
+thermometers, each showing its own fixed and unalterable idea
+respecting the temperature of the room.  A large number of unframed
+sketches which children have given her are fastened to the wall by
+pins, or hung on tacks whose uncertain hold bespeaks a feminine hand on
+the hammer.  There are several calendars, and there is quite an
+uncountable collection of photograph frames, which fall over unless
+they are propped against something.  Most of the photographs are old
+and faded, and they are nearly all of babies.  Babies clothed and
+unclothed; babies with bare feet and little nightshirts on; babies
+sucking their thumbs; babies lying prone on fur carriage-rugs; babies
+riding on their mammas' backs, or sitting on their mammas' knees;
+babies crowing or crying.  No one who has a baby ever fails to send
+this maiden lady a photograph of it.
+
+Miss Lydia settled me with some cushions in my chair, and shut the
+doorway leading to her bedroom beyond, where I caught sight of a
+painted iron bedstead, and a small indiarubber hot-water bottle hanging
+from one of its knobs.  It is Miss Lydia's most cherished possession,
+and she generally speaks of it reverently as "the comfort of my life."
+
+Poor Miss Lydia!  Hers must be, I think, a lonely life, sacrificed
+patiently to an invalid and almost inarticulate sister, and yet it is
+the very solitude of this little chamber which is one of the few
+privileges to which she lays claim.  It is to this little room, with
+its humble furnishings, that all her troubles are taken, and it is here
+by the window that she can sit with folded hands and think perhaps of
+something in life which surely poor Lydia has missed.  It is here she
+prays for those whose sins weigh far more heavily upon her than they do
+upon themselves, and it is here that she can pause and question with
+gentle faith the perplexities of life.
+
+Miss Lydia tells my sister that she makes a thorough examination of her
+room every night before she goes to bed, to see if there is a burglar
+concealed anywhere.  The movable property in the tiny house is probably
+not worth many pounds, as a pawnbroker appraises things, and it would
+be a hardened thief that could deprive the sisters of their small
+possessions; but the dread remains--the dread of burglars and the dread
+of mice.  Were it not for the look of the thing, she would almost
+rather discover a burglar than a mouse--"for at least burglars are
+human," she explains, "and one might be able to reason with them or
+pray for them, but who shall control the goings of a mouse?"
+
+Sometimes these fears become quite a terror to Lydia Blind, and she
+once said that she felt so defenceless that she thought it would be a
+great comfort to have a male defender to protect her.
+
+It is the only unmaidenly remark she ever made, and it makes her blush
+in the dark when she thinks of it.  She believes every one remembers it
+with as vivid a distinctness as she does, and she trembles to think
+what sort of construction may have been put upon her words by
+ill-natured or thoughtless persons.  It is a real trouble to her; but
+then all her troubles are real, and so are her bitter repentances over
+perfectly imaginary sins.  But she has her little room and her faded
+photographs--life has its consolations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Kate Jamieson, who is the independent member of The Family, and has
+been in a situation for some years as companion to a lady at Bath, has
+written home what she calls a "joint-letter" to apprise the whole of
+her family at one and the same time that she is engaged to be married.
+The excitement which this letter produced in the little household is
+hardly possible to describe.  The news arrived when the Jamiesons were
+at breakfast.  Perhaps I should mention, before going any further, that
+the Jamiesons' only extravagance is to take in three daily papers.  One
+is an evening paper, which arrives at breakfast-time, and the other two
+are morning publications, which arrive at the same hour.  It is
+customary for the members of this family each to read his own
+particular paper aloud during the entire meal, the rest of the party
+read their letters to each other, and there are still left several
+voices to demand what you will have for breakfast, to inquire how you
+have slept, and to comment upon the weather.  So that from half-past
+eight until nine a cross-fire of conversation is going on all the
+time....
+
+"I see Hearne has scored sixty-eight at cricket, not out.  That's not
+bad, you know.  Kent ought to be looking up.  The Australians are doing
+well.  Yorkshire might do better.  Extraordinary!  Here's this chap who
+promised so well bowled for a duck!"  This from the eldest son of the
+House of Jamieson; while at precisely the same moment may be heard the
+voice of Maud: "I must say I am rather astonished at the way boleros
+have remained in.  This is one of the prettiest designs I have seen
+this year.  How soon one gets accustomed to small sleeves.  Well, I
+cannot say I like these Chesterfield fronts."
+
+Mrs. Jamieson is meanwhile reading aloud the columns of births, deaths,
+and marriages from beginning to end.  Her limited acquaintance with the
+outside world might seem to preclude her from any vivid interest in
+those who must necessarily only be names to her, yet she finds
+subject-matter for comment through the entire perusal of the column.
+Needless to say, Mrs. Jamieson inclines to regard only the sadder
+aspects of these natural occurrences, and her comments thereupon are
+full of a sort of resigned melancholy.  From her corner of the table
+may be heard the plaintive words: "Here's a young fellow of twenty-four
+taken," or, "Fourscore years, well, well, and then passed away!"  While
+the happier news of birth provokes her to hark back to an announcement
+of a similar nature in the family, perhaps only a year ago, and to talk
+of the responsibilities and the expense that the poor young couple will
+have to undergo.  Mettie, who spends the greater part of every day
+writing letters, and whose chief joy in life is to receive them, reads
+the whole of her correspondence aloud from beginning to end; while
+Margaret Jamieson, behind the teapot, is letting off rapid volleys of
+questions respecting individual tastes about cream and sugar, and the
+Pirate Boy offers ham-and-eggs or sausages in a deep stentorian bass.
+
+In the midst of this confusion of noise, when only a Jamieson, whose
+ear is curiously trained to it, can possibly hear what is being said,
+Mrs. Jamieson bursts into tears and, in the strong Kentish dialect of
+her youth, exclaims: "Here's our Kate going to be married!"
+
+After the first burst of delighted surprise, there is a family feeling
+of apology towards Maud.  That Kate should marry first is surely a
+little disloyal to the beauty of Belmont, and Mrs. Jamieson goes so far
+as to say: "Never mind, Maud; it will be your turn next."
+
+After that, they all, singly and severally, recall their
+previously-expressed opinion that they knew something was up, and that
+certainly Kate could not have given them a more pleasant or more
+unexpected surprise.
+
+The letter is then read aloud, and it is so long that one is glad to
+think that the absent Kate did not attempt to duplicate it, but
+contented herself with the Pauline method of one general epistle.  With
+the Jamieson characteristic of telling everything exhaustively, Kate
+writes:--
+
+
+"Mr. Ward is not at all bad-looking; a little hesitating in his manner,
+and inclined to be untidy--you see, I am telling you everything quite
+candidly--but of course I can remedy all these defects when we are
+married.  He has a short brown moustache, and rather a conical-shaped
+head."  (This is a fault that one feels Kate will not be able to
+remedy, even when she has married him.)  "He looks clever, though I do
+not think he is, very; he is well-connected, but does not know all his
+best relations.  Poor, but with generous instincts"--one feels as
+though a chiromancist were reading a client's palm--"well-read, but
+without power of conveying intelligence to others; hair rather thin,
+and (I am afraid) false teeth; very religious, but I consider this in
+him more temperament than anything else.  He has had a hard life, and
+not always enough to eat, until his uncle died; but now he could be
+quite independent if he liked, but he prefers the position which a
+Government appointment gives him.
+
+"I hope to bring him down to stay when I return; please let him have
+the south bedroom, as that is the warmest, and I do not think James is
+very strong.  I should like him to have a fire at night--I can arrange
+that with mother, as I feel quite well off now.  We are to be married
+in July, and I am giving up my post here at once, so as to see
+something of you all before I go away."
+
+
+At this point the letter referred once more to Mr. Ward's personal
+appearance, and the description was of so great length that when
+Margaret Jamieson, who had run all the way from her home to ours to
+give it to us to read, asked me breathlessly what I thought about it, I
+determined to leave unread the remaining paragraphs, and to judge for
+myself of the bridegroom when he should come to Belmont and we should
+be invited to meet him.
+
+"There is one thing," said Mrs. Jamieson when, at the request of The
+Family, Palestrina went to sit with her one afternoon a few weeks
+later, to support her through the trying ordeal of waiting for Kate and
+"James," as he is now familiarly called, to arrive; "the girls have
+nothing to be ashamed of in their home."  She looked with a certain
+amount of pardonable pride at the clean white curtains, and we gathered
+that we were meant to comment upon their early appearance.  The white
+curtains, Palestrina says, are not usually put up at Belmont until the
+first week in May.
+
+"They look very handsome," I said.  It was a Jamieson afternoon--very
+wet, but clearing up about sundown, and Palestrina had suggested my
+escorting her as far as Belmont.  But the rain came down in torrents
+again when I would have started to return home, and the good Jamiesons
+begged me to stay, to avoid the chance of a chill, and to meet James.
+
+"It is the first break in the family," said Mrs. Jamieson tearfully,
+"since poor Robert died.  But, as James says, he hopes I am gaining a
+son and not losing a daughter."  From which I gathered that James was a
+gentleman given to uttering rather a stale form of platitude.
+
+All were waiting in a state of great trepidation the arrival of the
+engaged couple, and it was quite hopeless to avoid the encounter, for
+the rain descended in sheets outside, and preparations for supper
+seemed to be going on in the dining-room at Belmont.  It was decided,
+by universal consent, that only Mrs. Jamieson and Palestrina and I
+should be in the drawing-room at the moment when they should enter.
+The presence of strangers, it was thought, would make it easier for
+James at the meeting where all were kinsfolk except himself.  With
+their usual consideration The Family decided that the rest of their
+large number should afterwards drop in casually, two by two, and be
+introduced to the new brother-in-law without ceremony.  Mrs. Jamieson,
+who had not left the house that day, nor for many days previously,
+having been absorbed in preparations for the expected guest, was
+dressed in a bonnet and her favourite jacket with the storm-collar,
+which, as she explained to my sister, took away from the roundness of
+her face and gave her confidence.
+
+Her habitual shyness, added to her fears of the unknown in the shape of
+the future son-in-law, had wrought her into a sort of rigid state in
+which conversation seemed impossible, and although we did our best to
+divert her attention I am doubtful if she heard a word we said.
+
+"They should be here soon," I remarked presently.
+
+Mrs. Jamieson, following some line of thought of her own, remarked that
+the first marriage in a family was almost like a death; and to this
+mournful analogy I gave assent.
+
+"Kate says he is quite a gentleman," hazarded Mrs. Jamieson, still
+rigid, and now white with anxiety and shyness.
+
+I found myself replying, without overdone brilliance, that that seemed
+a good thing.
+
+The sands of Mrs. Jamieson's courage were running very low.  "I hope he
+is not one of your grandees," she said apprehensively; "I would not
+like to think of Kate not being up to him.  But their father was a
+gentleman--the most perfect gentleman I ever knew, and I have always
+that to think of.  Still, a gentlemanly man is all I want for any of my
+girls, with no difference between the two families."
+
+Sometimes in this way Mrs. Jamieson gives one an unexpected insight
+into the difficulties of her life, and one feels that even her
+admiration for her daughters may be tinged with a slight feeling of
+being their inferior.  I have heard her say, making use of a French
+expression such as she hazards so courageously, that there is something
+of the "_grawn dam_ about Maud;" and perhaps the loyal admiration thus
+expressed may have been mingled with another sensation not so
+pleasurable to the farmer's daughter.
+
+I endeavoured to follow the intricacies of her train of thought, but
+the station omnibus had stopped at the gate, and the moment of supreme
+excitement had arrived.
+
+Kate entered first.  This was probably the crowning moment of her life.
+She came in with a little air of assurance that already suggested the
+married woman, and having kissed her mother she said in a proprietary
+sort of way: "This is Mr. Ward, mamma."
+
+Mr. Ward had a curious way of walking on his toes; he came into the
+room as though tip-toeing across some muddy crossing on a wet day, and
+shook hands with a degree of nervousness that made even Mrs. Jamieson
+appear bold.  One can hardly be surprised at Kate for having mentioned
+that he has a conical-shaped head, for it is of the most strange
+pear-shape, and the sparse hair hangs from a ridge behind like a
+fringe.  He sat down and locked his knees firmly together, with his
+clasped hands tightly wedged between them, while Kate made inquiries
+about the rest of the family, and I plunged heavily into remarks about
+the weather and the state of the roads.  It was a great relief when two
+of the sisters entered, in their best silk blouses, even although they
+repeated exactly what I had said a moment before about the weather and
+the mud.  Five minutes later, according to preconceived arrangement,
+two other sisters came in and were kissed by Kate, and introduced by
+her to James.  We had unconsciously taken up our position in two
+straight lines facing James, and it is no exaggeration to say that by
+this time shyness was causing great beads of perspiration to stand out
+on poor James's pear-shaped head.  "Surely they will spare him any more
+introductions before supper," I thought; but the door had again opened,
+and Mettie and the Pirate Boy entered, and some unhappy chance was
+causing these last comers to comment upon the weather and the state of
+the roads, and to extend the line of chairs now facing James.  We began
+to make feverish little remarks to each other, as though we were all
+strangers, and Palestrina asked Eliza if she were fond of dancing.
+George Jamieson, the eldest brother, was the last to enter the room,
+and Kate said: "George, I am sure James would like to unpack before
+supper;" and the unhappy James tip-toed out between the two lines of
+chairs, with his eyes fixed upon the carpet.
+
+"_Well?_" said Kate.  And as The Family was The Family of Jamieson,
+that of course was a signal for each member of it to say the kindest
+thing that could possibly be said for the new arrival.  Margaret found
+that he had kind eyes.  And Eliza said: "Not intellectual, but a good
+man."  Eliza, it must be remarked in passing, is the intellectual
+sister, with a passion for accurate information, and for looking up
+facts in the "Encyclopedia Britannica."  Maud found that even his
+shyness was in his favour, and disliked men who made themselves at home
+at once.  Mettie remarked that marriage was a great risk.  This is one
+of poor little Mettie's platitudes, which she makes with faithful
+regularity upon all occasions.  The Pirate Boy preferred, perhaps, a
+more robust development, and throwing out his own chest, he beat it
+with a good deal of violence, and said he would like to put on the
+gloves with Mr. Ward.  Mrs. Jamieson could be got to say nothing but
+"Poor fellow, poor fellow!" at intervals.  But Gracie, the youngest
+daughter, remarked that she was sure that they would all get to like
+him immensely in time.
+
+Kate looked grateful, and spoke with her usual fine common sense.
+"What I say is," she remarked, "that of course no one sees James's
+faults more clearly than I do, but then I don't see why any of us
+should expect perfection.  We haven't much to offer: I am sure I have
+neither looks, nor money, nor anything.  And, after all, it's nice to
+think of one of us getting married--and I was no bother about it," said
+the independent Kate.  "I mean, The Family had not to help, or chaperon
+me, or ask James down to stay."
+
+The sisters assented to this in a very hearty, congratulatory sort of
+way; and then, as the rain had ceased, I took my leave, but Palestrina
+was persuaded to stay and have supper.  Kennie offered, in a doughty
+fashion, to see me home.  The boy's kindness of heart constitutes him
+my defender upon many occasions, and he always looks disappointed if I
+do not take his arm.  I do not think that the peaceful country road in
+the waning twilight could be considered a dangerous one, even to a
+cripple like myself; but Kennie, armed with a large stick and wearing a
+curious felt hat turned up at one side, appeared a most truculent
+defender, and regarded with suspicion all the pedestrians whom we met.
+Did but a country cart pass us, Kennie made a movement to ward off the
+danger of a collision with his arm.  There is something in my helpless
+condition which, quite unconsciously I believe, produces a very
+valorous frame of mind in the Pirate, and he beguiled the whole of the
+way home with stories of his own prowess, and of the hair-breadth
+escapes which he had had.
+
+"I only once," he said, "had to take a human life in self-defence.
+Curiously enough"--Kennie's voice deepened, and he spoke with the air
+of a man who will spare a weak fellow-mortal all he can in the telling
+of his tale, and he enunciated all his words with a measured calm which
+was very impressive--"curiously enough, it was on the Thames
+Embankment!"  Kennie cleared his throat, and dropping the deep bass
+voice of reminiscence, he began the history in a high-pitched tone of
+narrative.  "I was walking home alone one night from the City, when a
+very strange, low fellow accosted me, and asked me for some money.  The
+man's destitute appearance appealed to me, and unfortunately I gave him
+threepence.  I suppose the action was about as dangerous a thing as I
+could have done.  It showed that I had money, and I was practically
+defenceless while feeling in my pockets.  The Embankment at that time
+of the evening was almost deserted; I could see the shipping in the
+river and the lights, and even passing cabs, but I was strangely alone,
+and still the man followed me.  At last, in desperation, I raised my
+stick to drive him from me, and the next moment he had grappled with
+me!  Instantly my blood was up!"  The Pirate Boy stood still in the
+middle of the highroad, and went through a series of very forcible
+pantomimic gestures, and with awful facial contortions, indicative of
+violent exertion, he raised some imaginary object above his head and
+flung it from him.  "The next moment," said Kennie, "I heard a splash.
+I had vanquished the man, and flung him far from me, straight from the
+Thames Embankment into the river."
+
+I was prepared to make an exclamation, but was prevented by Kennie, who
+said in a dramatic sort of way, "Wait!" and went on with his story.
+"My instinct was to plunge after him, but I heard no sound, no cry, and
+from that day to this that struggle by the water's edge remains as one
+of the most vivid experiences of my life--in England, at least.  But
+the man's end remains a mystery: I can tell you nothing more of him."
+
+"I think I would have fished the poor wretch out," I said, and moved
+onwards on our walk, our pause in the public highway having lasted a
+considerable time.
+
+"One learns rough justice out there," said Kennie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Miss Taylor was really responsible for the formation of the Stowel
+Reading Society, but Eliza Jamieson was her staunch supporter.  Eliza
+drew the line at poetry and metaphysics, "Neither of which," she said,
+"I consider an exact science."
+
+Miss Taylor said: "But it is not a scientific course that I propose; it
+is English literature in its fullest sense.  I do think that Stowel is
+getting behind the rest of the world in its knowledge of the best
+literature, and I am sure that if a Reading Society were founded The
+Uncle would be pleased to choose books and send them to us from London."
+
+To no one, perhaps, is the specializing definite article felt to be
+more appropriate than to Sir John.  It seems to distinguish him from
+ordinary human beings; and it is felt to be indicative of a
+considerable amount of good taste and good feeling on the part of the
+Taylors to drop the General's title when conversing with their intimate
+friends, and to refer to him merely as "The Uncle."  When we call upon
+the Taylors we always ask how The Uncle is.
+
+Eliza Jamieson became the Society's secretary and treasurer in one, and
+she it was who in her neat hand transcribed the letter, which all had
+helped to compose, to ask The Uncle what works in English literature it
+would be advisable for the Reading Society to get.  His reply was read
+aloud at one of the first meetings, and each eulogized it in turn as
+being "courtly," "gentlemanly," "manly," and "concise."  It could not
+but be felt, however, that as a guide to a choice of literature the
+letter was disappointing:--
+
+
+"DEAR MADAM" (it ran),
+
+"I much regret that I am unable to help you in any way about your
+books.  I read very little myself, except the newspapers, though I
+occasionally take a dip into one of my old favourites by Charles Lever.
+I think a cookery-book is the most useful reading for a young lady, and
+she would be best employed studying that, and not filling her head with
+nonsense.  This is the advice of a very old fellow, who remembers many
+charming girls years ago who knew nothing about advanced culture...."
+
+
+It was a distinct salve to the Society's feelings to note that the
+letter was written on paper stamped with the address of a military
+club, and instead of copying it, and making an entry of it in the
+minutes of the Reading Society, it was pasted into the notebook, as it
+was thought the autograph and the crest were "interesting."
+
+Since the foundation of the Reading Society there has followed a period
+during which the young ladies of Stowel have written essays, and have
+met in each other's drawing-rooms to read poetry aloud, to their own
+individual satisfaction and to the torture of other ears.
+
+Mrs. Fielden did not join the Society, her plea being that poetry is
+merely prose with the stops in the wrong places, and therefore very
+fatiguing to read, and very obscure in its meaning.  But Eliza has worn
+us out with books of reference, and we have become so learned and so
+full of culture that it is impossible to say where it will all end.  My
+own library has been ransacked for books--I think it is the fact of my
+having a library that has made our house a sort of centre for the
+Reading Society.  We criticize freely all contemporary literature, and
+base our preference for any book upon its "vigorous Saxon style."
+
+Eliza has written two reviews for the local newspaper, pointing out
+some mistakes in grammar in one of the greatest novels of the day, and
+this naturally makes us feel very proud of Eliza.  Those of us who
+plead for an easy flowing style consider that she has an almost
+hypersensitive ear for errors in the use of the English accidence.  A
+split infinitive has heretofore hardly arrested our attention; now we
+shudder at its use: while the misuse of the word to "aggravate," which
+up to the present we believed in all simplicity to mean to "annoy,"
+causes the gravest offence when employed in the wrong sense.  Books
+from the circulating library have been known to be treated almost like
+proof-sheets, and corrections are jotted down in pencil on the margin
+of the leaves.  Even the notes which ladies send to each other are
+subject to revision at the hands of the recipient.  Ordinary
+conversation is now hardly known in Stowel, and tea-parties take the
+form of discussions.  The spring weather is so warm that I generally
+have my long chair taken on to the lawn in the afternoons, and tea is
+sometimes brought out there when the meetings of the Reading Society
+are over.  But tea, and even pound-cake, are thrown away upon young
+ladies who partake of it absently, and to whom all things material and
+mundane--these words are often used--must now be offered with a feeling
+of apology.
+
+Major Jacobs rode over to see me this afternoon, and we had not long
+enjoyed the repose of deckchairs and cigarettes under the medlar-tree,
+and the songs of birds which have begun nesting very early this year,
+and the quiet rumbling of heavy wagons that pass sometimes in the
+highroad beyond the garden, when the Reading Society in a body joined
+us from the house, and I heard my sister give directions for tea to be
+brought out on to the lawn.  The other day I heard Palestrina tell a
+friend of hers that she nearly always contrived to have some one to
+tea, or to sit with Hugo in the afternoon, and my sister's satisfaction
+increases in direct proportion to the number of people who come.
+
+We had hardly finished tea when Frances Taylor said suddenly, yet with
+the manner of one who has risen to make a speech on a platform, "Was
+Coleridge a genius or a crank?"
+
+Eliza, assuming the deep frown of learning which is quite common
+amongst us nowadays, was upon her in a moment, and said emphatically,
+"How would you define a genius?"  The Socratic habit of asking for a
+definition is one that is always adopted during our discussions, and it
+is generally demanded in the tone of voice in which one says "check"
+when playing chess.  Frances Taylor was quite ready for Eliza, and
+said, "Genius, I think, is like some star----"
+
+"Analogy is not argument!"  Eliza pounced upon her in the voice that
+said, "I take your pawn."
+
+It will be noticed, I fear, that in Stowel we are not altogether
+original in our arguments--many of them can be traced, alas! to the
+"Encyclopædia Britannica," and they are not often the outcome of
+original thought.
+
+Frances Taylor's king was once more in check, and she became a little
+nervous and irritable.  "I do not think we need go into definitions,"
+she said; but Eliza had gone indoors to "look it up."  She returned
+presently with a dictionary, walking across the lawn towards us with
+its pages held close to her near-sighted eyes.  "A genius," she began,
+and then she glanced disparagingly at the title of the book, and said,
+"according to Webster, that is--but I do not know if we ought to accept
+him as a final authority--is explained as being 'a peculiar structure
+of mind which is given by Nature to an individual which qualifies him
+for a particular employment; a strength of mind, uncommon powers of
+intellect, particularly the power of invention.'  A crank," she went
+on, "in its modern meaning, seems hardly to have been known to the
+writer of this dictionary; the word is rendered literally, as meaning
+'a bend or turn.'"
+
+"Then I submit," said Miss Taylor, "that Coleridge was a genius."
+
+Miss Tracey said in a very sprightly manner--she often astonished us by
+showing a subtle turn of mind, and a graceful aptitude for epigram
+which, it was believed, could only have found its proper field in those
+salons which are now, alas! things of the past--"Let us write him down
+a genius _and_ a crank!  The two"--she advanced her daring view
+bravely--"the two are often allied."  She had a volume of Coleridge on
+her bookshelves, and prided herself upon her appreciation--unusual in a
+woman--of the "Ancient Mariner."
+
+"A genius in italics, and a crank followed by a mark of interrogation!"
+said Eliza in a brilliant fashion; and Miss Taylor, not to be beaten in
+a matter of intellect, said at once, "Did Bacon write Shakespeare's
+plays?"
+
+Mrs. Gallup and Mr. Lee were quoted extensively.
+
+Miss Taylor could only suggest, with a good deal of quiet dignity, that
+she could write to The Uncle and find out who is right.  This of course
+closes the controversy for the present.
+
+George Jamieson, who goes to town every day, gains advanced views from
+the magazines which he reads during his dinner-hour in the City, and he
+is a great assistance to the Reading Society.  I contribute the use of
+my library, and I have heard the members of the Reading Society say
+that "women are the true leaders of the present movement, and already
+their influence is being felt by the male mind."
+
+George brought with him the current number of the Nineteenth Century
+when he came home last Friday, instead of Pearson's or the Strand, and
+already there are whispers of a Magazine Club in Stowel.  Miss Frances
+Taylor received nothing but books on her last birthday, and Palestrina
+told me a pathetic little story of how Gracie Jamieson went without a
+pair of shoes to buy a copy of Browning.  Perhaps the climax of culture
+and learning was felt only to have been reached when Eliza introduced
+the expression "Hypothesis of Purpose" into an ordinary conversation at
+the conclusion of one of the meetings of the Reading Society.
+
+After this, as Palestrina remarked, it was quite refreshing to hear
+that the curate's wife had got a new baby.  It was born on Sunday, and
+the anxious father spent his days bicycling wildly to and fro between
+his own house and the church, hopelessly confusing his reading of the
+service, and then flying back to inquire about his wife's health.  Led
+by him we prayed successively for fine weather and for rain, while the
+Sunday-school teachers' meeting was announced for 2 a.m. on the
+following Saturday, and the Coal Club notices were inextricably
+confused with the banns of marriage.  After each service the distracted
+little man would leap on his bicycle again, and, scattering the
+departing congregation with his bicycle bell, he was off down the hill
+to his house.  His perturbation was nothing compared with the confusion
+at home, where, so far as I could make out, the bewildered household
+did nothing but run up and down stairs, and madly offer each other cups
+of tea.
+
+My sister's kind heart suggested that we should have Peggy, the eldest
+child, to stay with us until her mother should be better.  Is it
+necessary to mention the fact that Palestrina is fat and very pretty,
+and that she spoils me dreadfully?  Do I want a book, I generally find
+that Palestrina has written for it, almost before I had realized that
+life was a wilderness without it.  I have never known her out of
+temper, nor anything else but placid and serene.  And she has a low,
+gurgling laugh, and a certain way of saying, "Oh, that will be very
+nice!" to any proposal that one makes, which one must admit makes her a
+very charming and a very easy person to live with.  She is fond of
+children, and she announced to Peggy with a beaming smile this morning
+that she had a new little brother.
+
+Peggy went on quietly with her breakfast for some time without making
+any remark; then she gave a little sigh, and said: "Mamma thought she
+had enough children already, but I suppose God thought otherwise."
+
+Peggy has been in low spirits all day, and closely following some line
+of reasoning of her own she has flatly refused to say her prayers at
+bedtime.
+
+
+Mrs. Fielden rode over to see us this morning, in her dark habit and
+the neat boots which she loves to tap with her riding-crop.  She came
+into the dim hall like the embodiment of Spring or of Life, and sat
+down in her oddly-shaped habit as though she were at home and in no
+hurry to go off anywhere else.  This gives a feeling of repose to a
+sick man.  One knew that she would probably stop to luncheon, and that
+one would not have to say to her half a dozen times in the morning,
+"Please don't go."
+
+Presently Margaret Jamieson, who had been doing the whole work of the
+curate's household during the late trying time, came with the baby in
+her arms to show him to Palestrina.  Her manner had a charming air of
+matronliness about it, and she threw back the fretted silk of the veil
+that covered the face of the little creature in her arms with an air of
+pride that was rather pretty to see.  But Eliza, who had raced over to
+our house in the usual Jamieson headlong fashion, to say something to
+us on the subject of textual criticism, looked severely at the infant
+through her glasses, and remarked that she had no sympathy whatever
+with that sort of thing.  Margaret hugged the baby closer to her, and
+Mettie, who had pattered over to see us with her cousin Eliza, remarked
+that children and their upbringing were doubtless among the great risks
+of matrimony.
+
+"I am sure," said Eliza, "when one sees how happy Kate is with James,
+it makes one feel that marriage is not so very great a risk after all."
+
+That there should be an element of sarcasm in this remark did not even
+suggest itself to Eliza.
+
+"We should all be thankful," piped forth Mettie, who is always ready to
+talk, "that it has turned out so well.  Kate's courage and independence
+of mind seem exactly suited to Mr. Ward.  But that is what I think
+about us all at Belmont; our characteristics are so different that any
+gentleman coming amongst us might find something to attract him in one,
+if not in the others.  Margaret is our home-bird, and Eliza is so
+cultured, and Kate----"
+
+The two Miss Jamiesons were looking very uncomfortable, and Margaret
+said, "O Mettie, dear!" while Mrs. Fielden made an excuse for walking
+over to the piano.  There was a piece of music open upon it.  "Do sing
+it," she said to Palestrina.
+
+
+THE GAY TOM-TIT.
+
+  "A tom-tit lived in a tip-top tree,
+  And a mad little, bad little bird was he.
+      He'd bachelor tastes, but then--oh dear!
+      He'd a gay little way with the girls, I fear!
+
+  "Now, a Jenny wren lived on a branch below,
+  And it's plain she was vain as ladies go,
+      For she pinched her waist and she rouged a bit.
+      With a sigh for the eye of that gay tom-tit.
+          She sighed, 'Oh my!'
+          She sighed, 'Ah me!'
+  While the tom-tit sat on his tip-top tree-tree-tree.
+          And she piped her eye
+          A bit-bit-bit
+  For the love of that gay tom-tit-tit-tit.
+
+  "She saw that her rouge did not attract,
+  So she tried to decide how next to act:
+      She donned a stiff collar and fancy shirt,
+      And she wore, what is more, a divided skirt.
+  Then she bought cigarettes and a big latch-key,
+  And she said, 'He'll be bound to notice me!'
+      But she found her plan did not work one bit,
+      For he sneered, as I feared, did that gay tom-tit.
+          He sneered, 'Oh my!'
+          He sneered, 'Oh lor!
+  What on earth has she done that for-for-for?'
+          And he winked his eye
+          A bit-bit-bit,
+  That giddy and gay tom-tit-tit-tit.
+
+  "'Alas! no more,' said the poor young wren,
+  'Will I ape the shape of heartless men!'
+      So she flung cigarettes and big latch-key
+      With a flop from the top of the great green tree.
+  And she wouldn't use rouge or pinch her waist,
+  But she dressed to the best of a simple taste;
+      Then she learned to cook and sew and knit--
+      'What a pearl of a girl!' said the gay tom-tit.
+          Said he, 'Good day!'
+          Said she, 'How do?'
+  They were very soon friends, these two-two-two.
+          And I'm bound to say
+          In a bit-bit-bit
+  She married that gay tom-tit-tit-tit."
+
+
+Thus sang Palestrina.
+
+"Ethically considered, my dear Palestrina," said Eliza, "that song is
+distinctly unmoral."
+
+"Don't let us consider it ethically," said Palestrina tranquilly; and
+she went over and sat in the corner of the sofa with several pillows at
+her back.
+
+"Ethically considered," repeated Eliza, "that song, if one pursues its
+teaching to a logical conclusion, can only mean that all female social
+development is impossible, and that the whole reason for a woman's
+existence is that she may gratify man."
+
+"They are really not worth it," murmured Mrs. Fielden, who was in a
+frivolous mood.
+
+"And mark you," said Eliza, in quite the best of the Reading Society
+manner: "it does not suggest that that gratification may be inspired
+either by our beauty or by our intellect; indeed, it proves that such
+powers are worthless to inspire it.  It postulates the
+hypothesis"--Eliza is really splendid--"that man is a brute whose
+appreciation can only be secured by ministering to his desire for food
+and suitable clothing, and that woman's whole business is to render
+this creature complacent."
+
+"Don't you think things are much pleasanter when people _are_
+complacent?" said my sister easily.
+
+Eliza fixed her with strong, dark eyes.  "Were I describing you in a
+book," she said--one feels as though Eliza will write a book, probably
+a clever one, some day--"I should describe you as a typical woman, and
+therefore a pudding.  A dear, tepid pudding, with a pink sauce over it.
+Very sweet, no doubt, but squashy--decidedly squashy.  Some day," said
+Eliza triumphantly, "you will be squashed into mere pulp, and you will
+not like that."
+
+This did not seem to be a likely end for Palestrina.  Eliza continued:
+"Who will deny that men are selfish?"
+
+"But they are also useful," said Mrs. Fielden in an ingenuous way.
+"They open doors for one, don't you know, and give one the front row
+when there is anything to be seen, even when one wears a big hat; and
+they see one into one's carriage--oh! and lots of other useful little
+things of that sort."
+
+"Admitted," said Eliza, "that women have certain privileges--have they
+any Rights?"
+
+Mrs. Fielden admitted that they had not.  "But," she said, "I don't
+really think that that is important.  The men whom one knows are always
+nice to one, and I don't think it matters much what the others are."
+
+"Rank individualism," said Eliza.  And she said it without a moment's
+hesitation, which gave us a very high opinion indeed of her powers of
+speech.  "It is the fashion to say that each woman has only one man to
+manage, and she must be a very stupid woman if she cannot manage him;
+but there are thousands of women who, being weaker morally and
+physically than their particular man, can do nothing with him, and it
+is not fair to leave their wrongs unredressed because you are
+comfortable and happy."
+
+"Still, you know," said Mrs. Fielden thoughtfully, "one cannot help
+wishing that they could get what they want without involving us in the
+question.  You see, if they got their rights we should probably get
+ours too, and then I'm afraid we should lose our privileges."
+
+"You are like the man," said I, "who could do quite well without the
+necessaries of life, but he could not do without its luxuries."
+
+"What a nice man it must have been who said that!" exclaimed Mrs.
+Fielden.  "It would be quite easy to do without meat on one's table,
+but it would be impossible to dine without flowers and dessert."
+
+It must be admitted that Eliza had the last word in the argument after
+all.
+
+"Just so," she said; "and all life shows just this--that a woman has,
+with her usual perverseness, chosen a diet of flowers and dessert with
+intervals of starvation, instead of wholesome meat and pudding."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+"We shall have to ask the engaged couple to dinner," I said to
+Palestrina one morning a few days later.  "And I suppose one or two
+more of the rest of The Family would like to be asked at the same time."
+
+"I never know in what quantities one ought to ask the Jamiesons," said
+my sister, "nor how to make a proper selection.  It seems invidious to
+suggest that Kate and Eliza and Margaret should come, and not Maud and
+Gracie; and yet what is one to do?  The last time that you were away
+from home I wrote and said, 'Will a few of you come?'  And Mrs.
+Jamieson, the Pirate Boy, and four sisters came."
+
+"One feels sure," I replied, "that the Jamiesons thought that was quite
+a modest number to take advantage of your invitation.  One knows that
+had they been inviting some girls from a boarding-school they would
+have included the entire number of pupils."
+
+Palestrina protested that as the meal to which our friends were to come
+was dinner, it would be only reasonable to invite the same number of
+ladies and gentlemen; and to this I assented.  She suggested asking the
+Darcey-Jacobs, whom we had not seen for a long time.
+
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is a woman who always affords one considerable
+inward amusement, being herself, I believe, more conspicuously devoid
+of humour than any one else I have ever met.  Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs has
+never been known to see a joke.  That she herself should appear to any
+one in a humorous light would, I know, appear an inconceivable
+contingency to her.  She has a high Roman nose, and rather faded yellow
+hair, which was her principal claim to beauty when a girl.  It is even
+now thick and long, and is always worn in a sort of majestic coronet on
+the top of her head.  Her manner is somewhat formidable and emphatic,
+and the alarm which this engenders in timid or diffident persons is
+increased by the habit she has of accentuating many of her remarks by a
+playful but really somewhat severe rap over the knuckles of the person
+she is addressing, with her fan or lorgnettes.  She dresses handsomely
+in expensive materials somewhat gaudy in colour, and she has an erect
+carriage, of which she is very proud.  Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs has a good
+deal to say on the subject of the feeble-mindedness of the male sex,
+and when something has been proved impossible of attainment by them she
+always says, "A woman could have done it in five minutes."
+
+At the time of her marriage, Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs (Miss Foljambe she was
+then) was a dowerless girl with two admirers, Major Jacobs and Mr.
+Morgan.  Not being, it would seem, a young lady of very deep
+affections, her choice of a husband was decided entirely by the extent
+of the worldly prospects he could offer, and the Major, being the
+better match of the two, was accepted.  But how cruel are the tricks
+that fate will sometimes play!  Not long after her marriage Mr. Morgan
+not only inherited a large fortune, but shortly afterwards left this
+world for a better, and Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is in the habit of
+remarking, with a good deal of feeling, "If I had only chosen the other
+I might have been a happy widow now!"
+
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs lives in our quiet country neighbourhood during the
+greater part of the year, on the distinct understanding that she
+loathes every hour of it.  When she goes abroad or to London she talks
+quite cheerfully of having had one breath of life.  So fraught with
+happy successes are these pilgrimages in her brocaded satin gowns into
+the outer world that she often says that were she but free she might
+have the world at her feet to-morrow.  And she has been known to refer
+to the Major, still in the tone of cheerful resignation and with her
+emphasizing tap of the fan, as "a dead weight round her neck."
+
+The Major himself is a guileless person, whose very simplicity causes
+his wife more exquisite suffering than even a husband of keen,
+vindictive temper could inflict.
+
+Does Mrs. Jacobs give a dinner-party, it is not unusual for the master
+of the house to remark in a congratulatory tone from his end of the
+table, "What has Mullens been doing to the silver, my dear? it looks
+unusually bright;" while his greeting to his friends as they arrive at
+his house, though distinctly cordial, often takes the form of a hearty
+"I had no idea that we were going to see you to-night."  As Mrs.
+Darcey-Jacobs always sends some kind message from the Major in her
+notes of invitation, this of course is most disconcerting, both for her
+and for her guests.  This year when they were in Italy a friend of ours
+in the same hotel overheard a lady ask the Major if he were related to
+the Darceys of Mugthorpe.  "I really can't tell you," said the Major;
+"the Darcey was my wife's idea."
+
+"Four Jamiesons," I said, "and the Darcey-Jacobs, and our two selves.
+Isn't it humiliating to think that we have invariably to invite the
+same two men to balance our numbers at a dinner-party?  I can't help
+remarking that Anthony Crawshay and Ellicomb are present at every
+dinner-party in this neighbourhood, as surely as soup is on the table."
+
+"We might ask Mrs. Fielden," said Palestrina; "she is sure to have some
+colonels with her.  Besides, I love Mrs. Fielden, though people say she
+is a flirt.  I think most men are in love with her; some propose to
+her, and some do not, but they all love her."
+
+"Even when she refuses to marry them?"
+
+"I have heard Mrs. Fielden say that an offer of marriage should be
+refused artistically," said Palestrina.  "She says young girls hardly
+ever do it properly, and that they are brusque and brutal.  I suppose
+she herself has some charming way of her own of refusing men which does
+not hurt their feelings.  I believe," said Palestrina, "that she would
+marry Sir Anthony Crawshay if he could play Bridge."
+
+"Anthony is an excellent fellow," I said.
+
+Mr. Ellicomb is a young man of High Church principles and artistic
+tastes who has taken an old Tudor farmhouse in the neighbourhood, and
+has furnished it very well.  He waxes eloquent on the monstrous
+inelegance of modern dress, and the decadence of Japanese art, and he
+says he would rather sit in the dark than burn gas in his house, and he
+dusts his own blue china himself.  In his house it is a sign of art to
+divert anything from its proper use, and to use it for another purpose
+than that for which it was originally intended.  Poor Ellicomb uses a
+cabbage-strainer as a fern-pot, a drain-tile for an umbrella-stand, his
+mother's old lace veils as antimacassars, bed-posts as palm-stands, a
+linen press as a book-case, and a brass spittoon for growing lilies.
+It is almost like playing at guessing riddles to go over his house with
+him, and to try and discover for what purpose some of his things were
+originally created.  Their conversion to another use is, I am sure, a
+very high form of art.
+
+"There are the Jamiesons," said my sister, as we sat in the hall ready
+to receive our guests.
+
+It does not require any occult power to sit indoors and to be able to
+distinguish the Jamiesons' carriage-wheels from those of the other
+arrivals, for the Jamiesons have, as usual, employed the "six-fifty"
+bus on its return journey from the station to set them down at our
+gate.  It is quite a subject of interest with our neighbours to find
+themselves fellow-passengers with the young ladies, in their black
+skirts and their more dressy style of bodice concealed beneath tweed
+capes.  And it generally gets about in Stowel circles before the
+evening is over, or certainly soon after the morning shopping has
+begun, that the Miss Jamiesons have been dining at such or such a
+house.  Even the bus conductor has a sympathetic way of handing the
+young ladies into his conveyance when they are going out to dinner, and
+he fetches a wisp of straw and wipes down the step if the night is wet.
+
+Mr. Ward piloted the independent Kate up the short carriage-drive with
+quite an affectionate air of solicitude, frequently inquiring of her if
+she did not feel her feet a little damp; and Kate answered cheerfully
+and kindly, feeling, no doubt, that this sort of fussing was one of the
+drawbacks of prospective matrimony, but that it was only right to
+accept the little attentions in the spirit in which they were made.
+The Pirate Boy, who followed with his sister Maud, begged her to take
+his arm in a burly fashion, and fell a little distance behind.  The
+Pirate Boy thinks that it is etiquette to place himself at a distance
+from any engaged couple, even during the shortest walk.  He does so
+even when he makes the untoward third in a party.  On these occasions
+he falls behind and puts on an air of abstraction a little overdone.
+The Jacobs arrived next, and then Anthony Crawshay, who drove over in
+his high dog-cart, with its flashing lamps and glittering wheels--a
+very good light-running cart it is; Anthony and I used often to drive
+in it together--and Ellicomb arrived in a brougham, in which we have a
+shrewd suspicion that there is a foot-warmer.
+
+Maud began to flirt with Mr. Ellicomb directly.  I have never known her
+to be for long in the society of a gentleman without doing so, and her
+sisters are wont to say of Maud that she certainly has her
+opportunities, while the criticism of an unprejudiced observer might be
+that she certainly makes them.  Mr. Ellicomb, it is believed, has
+written an article in one of the magazines on the reformation of men's
+clothing, and it is hoped he will become a member of the Reading
+Society.  He ate very little at dinner, and talked in a low, cultured
+voice about Church matters the whole of the evening, and uttered some
+very decided views upon the subject of the celibacy of the clergy.
+
+"I must say," said Major Jacobs, "that I also approve of celibacy in
+the Church, and I may say in the army and in the navy.  If I had my
+life to live over again----"
+
+"William!" said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs in an awful voice.
+
+William was about to retreat precipitately from his position, but
+catching sight perhaps of a sympathetic eye turned upon him from that
+good comrade of his, Anthony Crawshay, he blundered on,--
+
+"If Confession, now, became more general in the English Church," he
+said, "secrets confided to the clergy could hardly be kept inviolate.
+A clergyman's wife might almost--well, not to put too fine a point on
+it--wring from him by force the secret that had been committed to him."
+
+"I hope so, indeed," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs.
+
+"The Anglican Church," said Mr. Ellicomb, "recognizes that difficulty,
+and has met it in the persons of the Fathers of the Church."
+
+Maud Jamieson raised soft eyes to his, and said that a woman might be a
+help and a comfort to a man.
+
+Mr. Ellicomb seemed disposed to admit that it might be so.  "I have
+been in retreat at Cowley for some weeks," he said, "and the cooking
+was certainly monstrous, and, would you believe it, they did not allow
+one to bring one's own servant with one."  There is nothing monkish
+about Ellicomb, nor is his asceticism overdone.
+
+"I have been reading a book on sects and heresies," said Mrs. Fielden,
+"and I find I belong to them all."
+
+Mr. Ellicomb interposed eagerly by saying, "If I had to state my own
+convictions exactly, I should certainly say that I was a Manichæan,
+with just a touch of Sabellianism."
+
+"I think," said Mrs. Fielden gravely, "that I am a Rosicrucian heretic."
+
+Mr. Ellicomb was interested and delighted.  "I know," he said, "that
+many people would think that I had not exactly stated my position.  For
+instance, a lady to whom I described my symptoms the other day, told me
+at once that I was a Buddhist by nature and an Antinomian by education,
+and I felt that in part she was right."
+
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs here interposed, and gave it as her opinion
+emphatically that man was a contemptible creature whatever his beliefs
+might be, and that he required a woman to look after him.  "To look
+after him," she repeated, in a tone that said as plainly as possible,
+"to keep him in order," and she tapped Mr. Ellicomb sharply on the
+knuckles.
+
+The Pirate Boy had some brave notions about what he called The Sex, and
+here plunged into a long description of how he had rescued a fair
+creature out of the hands of cut-throats out there, and he illustrated
+his action of saving the fair one by holding an imaginary six-shooter
+to Palestrina's head in a very alarming way.  He talked of man as The
+Protector, and thrust his hand into his cummerbund--the action, I
+suppose, being intended to show that the six-shooter had been
+replaced--and glanced round the table with an air of defiance.  "There
+is not a man," he remarked, "I don't care who he is, if he fail in
+respect to a woman when I am present, that shall not get a decanter
+hurled straight at his head--straight at his head.  I have said it!"
+He laid his hand impetuously upon one of two heavy cut-glass bottles
+that had been placed in front of me, and one trembled for the safety of
+one's guests.  "I remember," he said, "in one of those gambling-hells
+in the Far West, where there was about as unruly a set of fellows and
+cut-throats as ever I came across----"  The rest of the story was so
+evidently culled from the last number of the _Strand Magazine_ that it
+hardly seemed rude of Palestrina to interrupt it by bowing to Mrs.
+Fielden, and suggesting that they should adjourn.  Maud Jamieson drew
+my sister aside as they stood grouped round the fire-place in the hall
+drinking their coffee, and thanked her for introducing Mr. Ellicomb to
+her.  "He is perfectly charming," she said.  But Maud's sisters have
+confided to us that this is her invariable conclusion about the last
+man she has met, and it is intended as a sort of previndication of
+herself.  Maud, it seems, intends to flirt with every one she sees, but
+if she pretends that her affections are really touched there can be no
+upbraidings on the part of The Family.
+
+Kate Jamieson sat on the sofa, and twisted her engagement ring
+complacently round her finger.  She thought that Mr. Ward had carried
+himself very well this evening.  His quietness throughout the dinner
+compared favourably with the conversation of other guests.  Kate said
+once to Palestrina: "He is a man that I shall feel the utmost
+confidence in taking about with me everywhere."  And the remark
+conveyed the suggestion that Mr. Ward would always be an appendage to
+Kate Jamieson.
+
+Anthony Crawshay is a very good fellow indeed.  The most advanced and
+cultured young lady will never get him to talk about metaphysics in the
+crush of a ballroom, nor to concern himself about the inartistic shape
+of the clothes we wear nowadays.  "If I didn't like them, I shouldn't
+wear them," says Anthony.  He is a short, spare man, with a voice
+somewhat out of proportion to his size, and the best cross-country
+rider in the county.  The habit he has of shouting all his remarks
+seems rather pleasantly in accordance with his honest nature.  Anthony
+very seldom speaks of any one of whom he has not a good word to say;
+but if he does mention any one whom he dislikes, he does so in a very
+hearty manner, which is almost as good as many other people's praise.
+He is as obstinate, as straightforward, and as good a fellow as a
+country neighbour ought to be.  "We have been hunting a May fox, by
+Gad, Hugo," said Anthony, and he began to tell me about the run--a
+thing I can hardly get any one to do nowadays.
+
+The Pirate Boy, upon whom the word "horse" had a rousing effect,
+condemned the whole breed of English horses in one short speech.  "I
+assure you," he said, getting up and sawing the air with his hand,
+"there are some of those wild mustangs out there which would knock
+spots out of any horses in your stables."
+
+Thus challenged, Anthony, who was standing on the hearthrug, turned,
+and stooping towards me asked, in what he intended to be a whisper, who
+the young fellow was, and shouted abroad, "Rum chap that, very rum
+chap!"
+
+By-and-by Maud Jamieson went to the piano and began to sing ballads to
+Mr. Ellicomb; and we have an inward conviction--Palestrina and I--that
+this evening's report to the Jamieson family will be that Mr. Ellicomb
+is "struck."  Major Jacobs considers himself musical because he likes
+hearing the words of a song distinctly pronounced.  He was charmed with
+Maud's singing, and Kate encouraged the girl in a little matronly way
+which she has lately assumed.  She called forth Maud's best efforts by
+saying, "What was the pretty Irish song you sang the other night?" or
+"You haven't given us 'We'd better bide a wee' yet, dear."  Maud
+responded with several ballads, and wished she had some of Lord Henry
+Somerset's songs with her, Mr. Ellicomb having expressed a fondness for
+them.  An opportunity was thus given for suggesting a call at
+Belmont--Maud knows mamma will be delighted--she wished Kennie were
+better at that sort of thing; the invitation to come in some afternoon
+might perhaps have come more properly from a brother.
+
+It was very gratifying to find that Mr. Ward, fortified by dinner,
+became more courageous than I have ever known him to be before.  He
+tip-toed almost boldly across the room, and sitting down beside my
+sister began to make a series of deliberate remarks to her, mostly in
+the form of interrogation: "Do you care for Scotch songs?"  "Have you
+ever been in Ireland?"  "Do you know Wales at all?"  And to these
+important questions Palestrina made suitable replies.  "That is _most_
+interesting," I heard her say from time to time, using the formula of
+those who are bored to the extent of complete absence of mind.
+
+Mrs. Fielden crossed the room suddenly with a shimmer of silken skirts.
+In spite of her frivolity she has a way of making herself necessary to
+every party to which she goes.  There used to be an old saying long ago
+in Scotland that wherever The Macgregor sat was the head of the table.
+Mrs. Fielden is always the centre of every party, although she has a
+childish habit, which in another woman might be ascribed to shyness, of
+taking the least conspicuous seat in the room.  Consequently, when she
+dispersed the little group that was standing or sitting about her,
+applauding everything she said, and came across the room in pink satin
+and roses and diamonds, and sat down beside my sofa, the action had
+something regal about it, as though she had left a throne and come to
+speak to me.
+
+"I am going to teach you to play Bridge," she said.
+
+"That is most kind of you."
+
+"I am going to carry you off to Stanby next week to give you lessons,"
+she went on.
+
+I have a strong conviction that if Mrs. Fielden were to give a beggar a
+halfpenny he would probably stoop down and kiss the edge of her skirt,
+or do something equally unconventional and self-abasing.  She might, as
+a great favour, give a courtier who had risked his life for her, her
+hand to kiss.  When she smiles men become foolish about her.
+
+"It is very kind of you to want us," I said.
+
+"I want Bridge," said Mrs. Fielden, and, as usual when she is going to
+be provoking, she looked prettier than ever, and began to smile.
+
+"Any one will do to make up a rubber, I suppose?" I said.
+
+"Oh yes, any one," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"Consequently, my sister and I need not feel particularly distinguished
+by being asked," I continued.
+
+"I am so glad Palestrina is coming," said Mrs. Fielden, "because
+several men have written to tell me they are coming to stay, just when
+my sisters-in-law are leaving, and I suppose I oughtn't to entertain a
+houseful of men alone, ought I?"
+
+Mrs. Fielden does exactly as she pleases upon all occasions, but this
+does not prevent her from pretending to have acute attacks of propriety
+sometimes.
+
+"We will play Bridge and chaperon you with pleasure," I said.
+
+"I thought of drowning myself yesterday," said Mrs. Fielden, "because
+it rained all day, and I had no one to amuse me, and then I thought I
+would ask you to come over and play Bridge instead.  When I am bored I
+never can make up my mind whether I shall commit suicide, or go into a
+convent, or get married.  Which do you advise?"
+
+"I should advise you to marry," I said.  "As far as I can gather, a
+great source of discord and danger in our neighbourhood would be
+removed if you did so."
+
+Mrs. Fielden said with her eyes, "Hugo, you are very cross."  But being
+the most good-natured woman in the world, and sharing that forbearance
+which most people extend to an invalid, she smiled instead.
+
+"Why do you stay here when you are feeling so tired?" she said to me
+presently.
+
+"Because," I replied, "my sister lies awake half the night and thinks I
+am going to die, if I show any signs of fatigue, or go to bed early.
+Besides, for us, you know, this is quite an exciting evening.  We have
+thought about our dinner-party for days past."
+
+"If you were nice," said Mrs. Fielden after a pause, "you would ask me
+to come into your library and smoke."
+
+"Do you smoke?"
+
+"No," said Mrs. Fielden, "I don't."
+
+"I'm glad you don't," I said.
+
+"For years," said Mrs. Fielden, "I tried to think it was wrong, and
+then I quite enjoyed smoking; but there is a certain effort involved in
+trying to raise an innocent occupation to the level of a crime."
+
+"It is a very unfeminine habit," I said; partly because I was in a
+contradictious mood, and partly because I wanted to snub Mrs. Fielden
+for being so beautiful and young and charming.
+
+"The last man," said Mrs. Fielden gravely, "who made that remark died
+shortly afterwards."
+
+She was gathering up my cushions and pillows as she spoke, and she
+turned to my sister as she crossed the hall, and said, "We are going to
+study philosophy in the library."
+
+The library was lit by a single lamp, and the fire burned low in the
+grate; but the room was illumined suddenly by a pink dress and roses
+and diamonds, and Mrs. Fielden was arranging cushions, in the very
+skilful way she has, on my sofa by the fire.  She handed me my
+cigarette-box and matches, and spread a rug over my leg.  For some
+occult reason the rustling pink dress only whispered softly over the
+carpet now, like a woman's hushed voice in a sick-room, and Mrs.
+Fielden, by the simple act of drawing up a chair to the fire and
+sitting in it, took the head of the table again, and became the centre
+of the room.
+
+"May I really smoke," I asked, "after being such a brute as to say you
+mustn't?"
+
+"I look upon smoking as a purely feminine habit, like drinking tea, or
+having headaches, or anything of that sort," said Mrs. Fielden.  "It
+was simply because it was so expensive that men took to it in the first
+place.  Ethics should not be based upon accident, should it?"
+
+I handed Mrs. Fielden my cigarette-box.
+
+"If you are quite sure you disapprove, I will have one," she said.
+
+From the hall came the sound of Maud's singing.  Her voice is not of
+great compass, nor very strong, but it is clear and fresh, with a
+tuneful cadence in it.
+
+"You spend nearly all your days here?" said Mrs. Fielden, looking round
+the room.
+
+"Until the afternoon," I said; "and then Palestrina and I go for a
+little walk, and at tea-time I go to the hall sofa, and she asks people
+to come up and sit with me."
+
+"I am glad you like books," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"But really," I said, "the good folks in Stowel are all extraordinarily
+kind to me, and some of the Jamiesons are up nearly every day."
+
+"I like the Jamiesons," said Mrs. Fielden; "they are so intelligent.
+Have you ever noticed that their watches all keep exact time, and that
+they tell you the hour to the very second?  And they always know what
+day of the month it is, and when Easter falls, and how much stuff it
+takes to make a blouse."
+
+"You wrong Eliza Jamieson," I said; "she studies philosophy."
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Fielden eagerly, "I forgot to tell you, I have begun to
+study philosophy.  I began last week.  Will you lend me some books,
+please?  I want to be very wise and learned."
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"I think," said Mrs. Fielden, "that it might be nice if people did not
+always call one frivolous; and that if I studied philosophy----"
+
+"I shall not lend you any books," I said.
+
+"That is rather disobliging of you."
+
+"Because," I said, "our lives should always show a perfect equation.
+If you are a frivolous person you should behave frivolously."
+
+"You mean _as_ I am a frivolous person," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"As you are a frivolous person," I repeated.
+
+"And after all," said Mrs. Fielden with a contemplative air, "how silly
+philosophy is!  I asked somebody the other day the meaning of a
+syllogism, and really I don't think I ever heard anything quite so
+foolish."
+
+"It is quite beneath your notice," I said.
+
+"I did think of asking you if I might come over sometimes and read
+these musty volumes of yours."
+
+"You would probably find them as uninteresting as I am," I said.
+
+Mrs. Fielden looked as if she thought that might be possible, and did
+not press the matter.
+
+I dislike being disloyal to my books, for they are such good friends of
+mine.  But a great wish came to me then to get up and do something,
+instead of for ever reading the doings and the thoughts of other
+people.  I thought how much I should like to live again, and just for
+once sleep on the veldt with the stars overhead, or longed that I could
+get astride of a horse, and follow a burst of the hounds over the wet
+fields in England.  And so thinking I turned on the sofa and said
+petulantly, "I wish Maud Jamieson would not sing that song."
+
+"Oh, that we two were maying," she sang, in the song that tells of love
+and separation, and the longings and heartbreaks which it is much
+better not to speak about, and the things which we want and cannot have.
+
+"I hate yearners," I said.  "Why can't she sing something cheerful?"
+
+Mrs. Fielden rose from her chair by the fire and crossed the hearthrug,
+and came and sat down on my sofa.  She took my hand in hers and said:
+"Poor boy! is it very hard sometimes?"
+
+
+"Of course," said Palestrina, as we went upstairs to bed after our
+guests had departed, "you are sure to feel tired.  The little party has
+been too much for you, I'm afraid.  It was very tiresome for you having
+to leave us all."
+
+"I felt rather a crock after dinner," I said, "and I think the hall
+gets hot in the evening."
+
+"I wish I could make you better," said Palestrina affectionately; "it
+is horrid for you being ill."
+
+"Every one," I said, "makes far too much fuss about health.  Why, ten
+officers of our regiment are buried in South Africa.  I suppose half
+the pensioners in Chelsea Hospital have had wounds as bad as mine, and
+a cripple more or less in the world does not matter very much.  Women
+are kind enough to pity me.  They even confide their troubles to me
+sometimes, because I am a poor thing lying on a sofa.  I am really
+quite happy hobbling about with you, Palestrina; and when I am older, I
+shall probably take an interest in the garden.  There is a proper and
+philosophical attitude of mind in respect of these things."
+
+"O Hugo," said Palestrina, "I always know you are not happy when you
+begin to be philosophical."
+
+"Life is very easily explained without the assistance of philosophy
+when everything goes all right," I replied.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Have I ever mentioned that Palestrina is engaged to be married?  If I
+have not done so, it is because it seems an obvious fact that all
+Palestrinas are engaged to be married.  Her _fiancé_, who is called
+Thomas, is stationed with his regiment in Ireland.  A few weeks ago he
+sent her, as a token of his affection, a yellow dog with long hair.
+Palestrina does not like dogs, but she is trying to love Down-Jock for
+Thomas's sake.  She says his name is Jock.  The dog is a curious
+creature, with a passion for hurling himself at those who wear clean
+flannel trousers or light skirts.  Thomas says he is full of
+intelligence.  He appears to be quite a young animal, but he can affect
+the airs of extreme old age, sleeping in a basket a great part of the
+day, or standing on the doorstep to bark at visitors in an asthmatical
+manner, as though he would say, "I am too old and too feeble to give
+chase, but while I am alive this house shall not lack a defender."  At
+other times he is wildly juvenile, and rolls himself over and over in
+an exuberance of youthful fun.  This is chiefly on Sundays, when (his
+best joke) he pretends he wants to come to church with us.  Sunday is
+Down-Jock's happiest day in all the week.  No Christian in the land
+loves it more than he does.  He begins his religious exercises early in
+the morning by barking outside the doors of all those people who have
+determined to take an extra half-hour's rest, and he continues barking
+without ceasing until the sleeper awakes and gets out of bed to open
+the door for him.  He bustles in and wags his tail cheerfully, saying
+as plainly as a dog can say it, "I am an early riser, you see--and a
+teetotaler," he adds, trotting across the room to the water-jug, and
+lapping full red tonguefuls of its contents.  Then he stands in the
+middle of the room and barks at you; runs to the door and barks at it;
+barks at the servants as they go downstairs, promising--the little
+tell-tale!--that their lateness shall be reported in the proper
+quarter.  Finally, he climbs on to the bed, and goes to sleep upon your
+feet.
+
+During breakfast he is attentive to every one, and sits on the skirts
+of those ladies who most dislike dogs, and pulls them down
+uncomfortably from the waist.  He watches every mouthful of food that
+is eaten, and grudges it to the eater; and his eyes are saying all the
+time, "How can you be so greedy?"  After breakfast his most boisterous
+juvenile mood begins.  He jumps on every one, or rolls himself over and
+over under every one's feet.  He wags his tail, barks in a piercing
+manner--the bark of the gay young dog--and madly rushes after imaginary
+rats.  All gloves and shoes become his playthings, and he frolics
+blithely with the hat-brush.
+
+On weekdays he pleads old age as an excuse, and refuses to come
+anywhere with us; but on the Sabbath morning who so ready as Down-Jock
+to take his walks abroad?  He flies after us to the gate, his long hair
+streaming in the wind, and his short legs racing like a clockwork dog.
+
+Palestrina says: "Oh dear, what shall we do?  Down-Jock! down, sir!
+Oh, he has spoilt my dress!  Good doggie, mustn't go to church!  Go
+home! go home!  Oh, Jock, do get down!--Look, he is following us still,
+and the church door is always open; he is sure to come in in the middle
+of the service, and trot up to us in our pew.  Do you think Thomas
+would mind if I were to look as if he didn't belong to us?"
+
+Jock flies back with an old bone in his mouth and deposits it at
+Palestrina's feet, dares her to touch it, and makes flying snatches at
+her shoes when she kicks the treasure aside.
+
+"I must take him back," says Palestrina.  "It will make me late of
+course, but I must go and shut him up."
+
+"He won't follow you," I say.  "He is quite determined to go to church."
+
+Palestrina lifts the heavy beast in her arms, and in an exuberance of
+joy Down-Jock makes a doormat of her dress, and rubs his paws
+affectionately against it and licks her hand.
+
+Of course he escapes presently and runs after us; that is his best and
+most killing joke.  Inwardly one feels he is in a state of
+hardly-suppressed laughter as he tears down the road again, barking
+with glee.  And then he gets a sober fit, walks demurely in front of us
+in the narrow field-path, changes his mind suddenly about going to
+church, stops dead short, and trips us up; thinks after all he ought to
+go to the morning service as an example to the servants; toddles on
+again, and stops to say (with the air of extreme old age again assumed)
+that, after all, he is not up to the exertion, and would have to sit
+down at the Psalms, so perhaps it really would be better to stay
+quietly at home.  Another stop.  A rapid toilet performed by scratching
+his head with his hind-leg, "just in case I meet any one coming out of
+church whom I know;" and then Down-Jock meets a boy friend strolling
+off to the fields, and running up to him, says: "One must conform to
+conventionalities, but between you and me I never had the remotest
+intention of going to church."
+
+Down-Jock, in his moments of most restless activity, always reminds me
+of a servant of ours who has occasional fits of the most intense
+energy.  It begins quite early in the morning, when she gets up some
+hours before her usual time, and gives a sort of surprise party to the
+rest of the household.  These parties take place two or three times a
+year, and we do not get over them for weeks afterwards.  Every room in
+the house is visited in turn, and delinquencies of a twelvemonth are
+laid bare.  During the morning cupboards are turned out in a
+magisterial sort of way, and dusty corners are triumphantly displayed.
+The most cherished rubbish is freely consigned to the waste-paper
+baskets, and collections of all sorts are contemptuously swept away.
+We hastily gather up books and precious oddments, and hurry off with
+them to my den, where we take refuge till the whirlwind is past.
+Curtains and tablecloths are shaken with a sort of vindictive energy at
+the back-door; all windows are flung open, and rugs are rolled up,
+making a sort of obstacle race in every passage and room.  Down-Jock,
+who never recognizes a superior in any one, is the only member of the
+party who is not rendered an abject coward.  He unrolls rugs, and runs
+away with dusters, and snaps at the heels of the housemaid in a way
+that provokes one's wonder at his temerity.  My sister and I, having
+locked away our most cherished possessions, generally contrive to be
+out of the house as much as possible on one of these tempestuous days.
+And following the line of reasoning, not of the highest order, which
+suggests that if one cannot be happy one had better try and be good,
+Palestrina always visits her old women at the workhouse on these days.
+
+"I wish," she said to me, "that you would walk into the village and
+meet me on my way home.  I don't think anybody is coming up to see you
+this afternoon, and the house is so uncomfortable when Janet is in one
+of her whirlwind moods.  Come as far as the corner, and go in and sit
+down at old Pettifer's if you get tired."
+
+"Shadrach Pettifer tells me," I said, "that his affection for you is
+based on the fact that you are so like his poor old mother.  Perhaps
+while I am waiting at his cottage he may give me further interesting
+facts about you."
+
+Shadey is an old man with a bent back and curious bright eyes that
+gleam under a heavy thatch of eyebrow.  His wife is the very thinnest
+old woman that I have ever seen; her cheeks have fallen in and are so
+very wrinkled that they always remind me of a toy balloon that a child
+has pricked with a pin.  She is always ill and never complaining.  Any
+expression of sympathy seems foreign to her comprehension, and the
+"Poor thing!" or "I am so sorry," so eagerly accepted by more fortunate
+folk, is received by her with a certain air of independence.  Last
+winter Mrs. Pettifer was dangerously ill with internal gout, but
+expressions of condolence were always met with the rather curious
+reply, "Well, you see, sir, we must have something to bring us to our
+end."  There is a whole world of philosophy in this.
+
+To-day the old couple spent the time while I waited for Palestrina in
+their cottage in describing to me the last days in the life of their
+tortoise, an old friend, and an animal of evidently strange and unusual
+qualities.  Towards the close of its life it was, on the testimony of
+the Pettifers, taken with screaming fits, and, it even had to be held
+down "when the high-strikes was wuss."  Later it used to run round and
+round as never was.  And at last Shadey determined to release it from
+this earthly tabernacle.  He asked his friend Bridgeman, Anthony
+Crawshay's head-keeper, to come round some evening and administer
+poison to the unfortunate beast, and the effect of the dose was as
+strange as it was unexpected.  The poison was the first thing for weeks
+that poor Toots the tortoise had seemed to enjoy.  It seemed, to quote
+again from the testimony of those most intimately acquainted with the
+animal, to "put new life into Toots," and the more poison that was
+administered the livelier did he become, "until he was that gay it
+seemed as if he would ha' laughed at yer!"  Finally, I understood that
+when poison sufficient to kill two cart-horses had been given, the
+afflicted animal yielded to treatment, and its shell now adorns the
+kitchen dresser.
+
+We returned home to find the house smelling of furniture polish, and
+permeated with a certain cold primness which succeeds a tidying-up, and
+which can only be dispelled by a glowing fire.  One by one things were
+brought back to the hall, and we felt like snails creeping out in the
+evening after a day of rain.  Banished property strewed the tables
+again, and Palestrina opened the piano and spread it with music.  It
+was an act of defiance, but comfortable nevertheless, to collect the
+cushions which had been dotted primly about in clean muslin covers, and
+to pile them all on to the sofa before the fire.  But Down-Jock, who
+always goes one better than any one else, contributed still more
+completely to the systematized disorganization of the house.  He gaily
+wiped his muddy feet on clean paint, and tore blithely round after
+imaginary rats wherever order reigned.  Finally, in an exuberance of
+joy, he made a hearty supper of Palestrina's manuscript book of music,
+and barked with glee.
+
+And yet some people say that dogs are not intelligent!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The Uncle, Sir John, is coming to stay at the Taylors', and the town is
+in something of a flutter over this event.  It was hoped that the
+Taylors would give a tea-party in honour of their guest, but there is a
+shrewd notion abroad that no one will be allowed to see very much of
+him except at a distance.  The Taylors had hoped that there would be
+some occasion during his visit on which The Uncle might speak in
+public, and Mr. Taylor has tried, half jestingly, to induce his brother
+townsfolk to arrange what he calls "something in the political line"
+while the august relative is staying with him.  I think we owe it to
+the fact that the political meeting was found to be an impossibility
+that we were asked to tea at the Taylors'.
+
+Invitations, instead of taking the form of a friendly note, after the
+pattern of Stowel invitations in general, were conveyed on one of Mrs.
+Taylor's visiting cards, with "At home, Thursday the 17th, four to
+seven," upon it.  "A little abrupt," ladies of Stowel were inclined to
+think, but of course the Taylors are people of some importance in the
+place.  No one quite knew how to answer the invitation, and a good many
+friendly little visits were paid on the afternoon on which it arrived,
+and the mysterious card was produced from a bag or purse, with the
+smiling apology, "I am sure fashions change so quickly that one hardly
+knows how to keep up with them."  And then ideas were exchanged as to
+the reply suitable to such a form of invitation.  Miss Tracey said that
+she always thought that an invitation was accepted in as nearly as
+possible the same manner in which it was given, and she announced that
+she and her sister meant to return one of their own visiting-cards to
+Mrs. Taylor, with the day and the hour named upon it, and "With
+pleasure" written underneath.  This was considered suitable, for the
+most part; but those who still had doubts upon the subject made
+elaborate efforts to meet Mrs. Taylor during the morning's shopping,
+and to say to her in a friendly way, "We are coming, of course, on
+Thursday.  Will you excuse our writing a note, at this busy time?"
+
+The Miss Blinds always send their thanks for a "polite invitation" in
+the old style, but on this occasion Miss Lydia was obliged to offer
+regrets as well as thanks, as she had not been very well lately.  She,
+I suppose, was the only person in Stowel who did not accept Mrs.
+Taylor's invitation.  Two parties are, of course, never given on the
+same day, and it would be considered eccentric to prefer staying at
+home to going out.
+
+"I am sorry Miss Lydia cannot come," said Mr. Taylor, when the notes of
+acceptance were being opened at breakfast-time; "after all, it is not
+every day that people have a chance of meeting so distinguished a man
+as the General."
+
+"Miss Lydia was never intrusive," said Mrs. Taylor.
+
+Mrs. Lovekin was one of those who avoided the difficulty raised by Mrs.
+Taylor's unusual form of invitation by meeting her accidentally in the
+baker's shop, where an assortment of cakes was being ordered for the
+tea-party, and signifying her intention of coming to tea.  "No need to
+write, I suppose," said Mrs. Lovekin lightly, "as I have met you?"
+Both Mrs. Taylor and the baker's wife thought it would have been in
+better taste if Mrs. Lovekin had then withdrawn, instead of remaining
+in the shop and hearing what was ordered.
+
+Mrs. Taylor had made up her mind at an early stage in the proceedings
+that she would be very firm indeed about the matter of dispensing tea
+herself in her own house.  She would appropriate one teapot, and her
+daughter should have the other, and not even to shake hands with a
+late-arriving guest would they run the risk of letting this badge of
+office fall into the hands of the co-hostess.
+
+"And if," said Mrs. Taylor, "I find that she is appropriating The Uncle
+too much, I shall not hesitate to remove him, on the plea of
+introducing him to some other and more important guests."
+
+It was in church on Sunday that we were first allowed to see The Uncle,
+and this is only following the usual custom in Stowel.  Church on
+Sunday is, as it were, the public life of the town.  After a death it
+is customary to wait until the family has appeared in church to pay
+visits of condolence--not so much to avoid intrusiveness in the first
+hour of grief as from a feeling that perhaps the crape mourning will
+not have arrived.  In the same way, if any one moves into a new
+house--a very unusual proceeding--we are made aware that the carpets
+are all down, and the drawing-room curtains are hung, when the new
+arrivals are seen in their pew on Sunday.  This, also, is accepted as a
+token that calling may now begin.  Mrs. Taylor said afterwards, in
+describing that first Sunday when The Uncle appeared in Stowel Church,
+that her heart beat so painfully at the door that she thought she would
+have been obliged to turn back.  It was a triumphal progress that the
+party of four made up the centre aisle to their pew, but the inward
+excitement of the Taylors rendered a natural deportment difficult.
+Neither Mrs. Taylor nor her daughter joined in the hymns or the
+responses that Sunday morning.  It is doubtful whether they heard a
+word of the service.
+
+Sir John is a very military-looking person, with white whiskers and a
+bald pink head.  He sat between Mrs. and Miss Taylor, who supplied him
+with hymn and prayer books in as natural a manner as they found it
+possible to assume; and Mr. Taylor sat at the end of the pew with a
+genial expression on his face, and a look of tempered pride, due no
+doubt to the fact that the General was "one of my wife's people," and
+not a blood relation of his own.
+
+It was a disappointment to Mr. Taylor that his own sister, Mrs.
+Macdonald--widow of a Scotch gentleman, whom the Taylors always talk of
+as "The Laird"--was not able to come to this family gathering.  But
+Mrs. Macdonald pleaded spring-cleaning as an insuperable objection to
+leaving home at present.
+
+As Miss Taylor, Mrs. Macdonald used to be one of Stowel's central
+figures, for she was a lady of considerable means and an indefatigable
+housekeeper; and Mr. Macdonald was considered to have done well when he
+took her as his bride to the North.
+
+The Sunday on which the Taylors appeared in church with The Uncle was
+curiously hot for the time of year.  It was very stuffy in church, and
+Miss Lydia had a slight fainting attack, and had to leave before the
+service was over.  Following the accepted custom in Stowel, my sister
+called the next day to ask how she did.  But indisposition, usually a
+matter of solemn pleasure with us, was overshadowed and shorn of its
+interest by the presence of The Uncle amongst us.  Even the Vicar
+looked keenly at him from the pulpit before his sermon began, but no
+one except Mrs. Lovekin was forward enough to address the august party
+as they left the church.  Mrs. Lovekin, who always affirmed that she
+saw no difference in rank, was the very first person in Stowel to shake
+hands with The Uncle.  She overtook the Taylors before they had even
+reached the gate of the churchyard, and was perforce introduced to
+their relative, "who," Mrs. Taylor said afterwards, "was almost more
+cordial than she could have wished him to be; but of course his manners
+were always perfect."  What annoyed every one a little in the days that
+followed was that Mrs. Lovekin constantly referred to the General as if
+he had been an old friend; whereas of course it was well known in what
+an intrusive way her precedence had been gained.  During the week,
+however, we all had an opportunity of seeing Sir John, for he was
+marched in triumph up and down the village street regularly twice a
+day.  Miss Taylor even condescended to subterfuge in the matter.  For
+having taken The Uncle as far as the baker's at the end of the town,
+with a view to continuing the walk into the country at The Uncle's
+request, she pretended to have forgotten something at the draper's, and
+marched him down the street again, in the proud knowledge that all
+eyes, whether from pedestrians or from the interior of shops and houses
+in the High Street, were turned upon her.  The tobacconist from whom
+The Uncle bought some tobacco gave Miss Taylor quite a sympathetic look
+as he said, "Allow me to send it for you, Sir John."  And Miss Taylor
+said, "Do allow him to send it, uncle!  I am sure that you ought not to
+carry parcels for yourself."
+
+On Thursday, when we went to the party, we saw at once that the Taylors
+meant to make no snobbish distinction between their guests, but that
+each and every one of them was to be introduced to The Uncle.
+
+"I am no good at this sort of thing, Mary," The Uncle said before the
+party began, "and I think I will walk over and see Willie Jacobs, and
+spend the afternoon with him."  Mrs. Taylor turned pale at the
+suggestion.  "It will ruin it!" she said.  "I shall feel as if I had
+been acting on false pretences."  And though the General remained, as
+he was requested to do, he showed a most irritating tendency to slip
+away, and sometimes he was not to be found at the most critical
+moments.  Mrs. Taylor stationed him close to herself in the
+drawing-room where she received her guests.  But at the very moment
+when she turned round to effect an introduction between him and some
+particular friend, it was discovered that the General had slipped off
+to the smoking-room or the tea-room, or was wandering aimlessly about
+the garden, looking at the flower-beds.
+
+Altogether, that most successful afternoon (and the Taylors really did
+feel that it had been a success from the very highest point of view)
+had still some drawbacks to it, which they regret, and always will
+regret.  For instance, when Miss Taylor had been dispatched into what
+the Taylors call the "grounds" to see "what The Uncle is doing"
+(playfully), "and tell him to come and make himself agreeable," she had
+hardly departed to fulfil her mother's request when Mrs. Lovekin bore
+down upon the teapot, poured out several of the most distinguished cups
+of tea, and handed round macaroons as though they were her own.  Last
+of all, as the party was breaking up, and Mrs. Lovekin's vicarious
+hospitality was therefore at an end, she was actually heard inviting
+The Uncle to come and call upon her.  Even the Miss Blinds, on being
+told of the incident, admitted that this behaviour on Mrs. Lovekin's
+part could not be called anything but forward.  Miss Lydia could only
+say, in a sort of sweet distress, "Perhaps she did not mean it;" but
+Miss Blind shook her head vigorously, and said, "Bad butter, bad
+butter, bad butter!"
+
+Margaret Jamieson had, of course, been helping to prepare the party,
+for Margaret Jamieson always helps wherever there is anything to be
+done.  And Eliza, we thought, made a deep impression upon The Uncle by
+her knowledge of literature, and the perfectly easy and natural way in
+which, without a moment's preparation, she alluded to the "atomic
+theory."
+
+"Ah! you are one of the Reading Society young ladies that I heard
+about," said he.  "Sorry I couldn't do more for you in the way of
+books, but that's not in my line at all, you know.  I was educated at a
+Grammar School, and I never had the advantages that you young people
+have nowadays."  (Mrs. Taylor thought this statement unnecessary, but
+reflected that great men often make allusions of this sort.)  "However,
+if I ever can be of any use to you--getting you an order for reading at
+the British Museum, or anything of that sort--I hope you will let me
+know."
+
+For one brief day the Jamiesons were inclined to tease Eliza about
+having made a conquest, but the Taylors would not have any nonsense of
+that sort for a moment.  It made Mrs. Taylor quite nervous to think of
+such a thing, and she remarked that that was the worst of having
+distinguished people to stop with one; there was always somebody
+running after them.  Eliza Jamieson, we noticed, was treated with
+marked coldness by the Taylors for some time afterwards, and Miss
+Taylor recollected darkly that it was Eliza's suggestion, in the first
+instance, that The Uncle should be consulted on the choice of books for
+the Reading Society.  "She may," said Miss Taylor, "have had an eye on
+him from the first."
+
+A purely visionary affair of this sort, however, could not be
+considered satisfactory or exciting, even by the Jamiesons; and the
+Taylors' suspicions and anxieties were put on one side for the time
+being--ousted from their place, as it were--by the very distinct and
+exciting rumours which have reached us about Maud.  Maud has been
+staying with friends at Hampstead, and has written home in a certain
+veiled way which is very provoking, but which, nevertheless, gives the
+impression that another man has come to the point, and has proposed to
+Maud Jamieson.  Maud seems out of spirits, and has written to say that
+she is returning; and this makes the sisters think that she must have
+accepted her present suitor, and is coming home to shed a few natural
+tears.  Eliza, who walked over to tell us the news, voiced The Family's
+opinion when she said: "We have quite made up our minds that if Maud
+has said 'Yes,' she is to stick to it this time.  She is always in a
+panic directly she has accepted any one, but we know that it would be
+the same whoever it was: and doubtless, unless we are firm, she will
+treat this admirer just as she treated Mr. Reddy and Albert Gore and
+the others.  Mamma says that she will not have Maud coerced, and I am
+sure no one wants to coerce her; but why should she always get to a
+certain point, and then begin to have doubts?  It is so
+unbusiness-like."
+
+The very next day Maud Jamieson came to tea.  She looked well dressed,
+as usual, and had some pretty spring finery about her--yellow mimosa
+wreathing a broad hat, and some yellow ribbons about her tasteful
+dress--but her pretty face looked very white, and she fidgeted
+nervously for half an hour, and then told me I was so sympathetic she
+would like to ask me something.
+
+"I dare say," she said, "that you have heard something about Mr. Evans
+from The Family?"
+
+I admitted that I had, and then there was a very long pause.
+
+"How is one to know," said Maud, "when it is the real thing?"
+
+Another pause.  I wished with all my heart that I could have been more
+helpful to this young lady in such evident distress of mind; but the
+intricacies of Maud's thoughts are most difficult to follow, and I
+thought it better to wait until she had given me her entire confidence.
+
+"Little things," said Maud, "might annoy one so much if one had always
+to live with a man.  For instance, I do not think I could ever truly
+love a man who sniffs."
+
+"Our friend Mrs. Fielden says," I remarked, "that a man generally
+proposes when he has a cold in his head.  But I pointed out to her that
+these statistics do her no credit."
+
+"Mr. Evans doesn't sniff," said Maud.  "I was only citing that as an
+example of what one might find very trying in a companion for life."
+
+I assented, and could only suggest hopefully the usual Jamieson remedy
+that such a defect might be cured after marriage.
+
+"But men are so obstinate about some things," said Maud.  "For
+instance, suppose a man were well off and of really excellent
+character, do you think it would matter much if he wore a white
+watered-silk waistcoat in the evening?  Would it, for instance, appear
+an insuperable objection to most minds?"
+
+I replied that doubtless it was a serious fault, but that I did not
+consider it an incurable one; and I further remarked, with what I hoped
+showed a broad and liberal way of looking at things, that all men had
+their idiosyncrasies.  Maud admitted this, and seemed cheered by the
+reflection; but she pushed the matter further, and said she would like
+to know what sort of a man I should presume any one to be who wore a
+white watered-silk waistcoat.
+
+"If you care for Mr. Evans--" I began, and regretted that one's
+articulate expression is sometimes behindhand in the matter of
+conveying the comprehensiveness of the inner working of one's mind----
+
+"I am afraid I care for some one else," said Maud, bursting into tears.
+
+"Let me see you home," I said, unable to think of any but this very
+doubtful method of consolation; still, it seemed unkind to let her go
+home alone when she had been crying.
+
+On the threshold of the Jamiesons' house several of The Family were
+waiting for us, and they drew me into the drawing-room, while by tacit
+consent it seemed to be understood that Maud should not join in the
+conclave, but should go straight upstairs and take off her hat.
+
+"Have you persuaded her?" said Eliza.
+
+"I hope you have put a little common sense into her," said Kate.
+
+James was admitted to family discussions now, and here remarked that he
+believed that all girls were happier married.
+
+"Though, of course," said Mettie, "it is a great risk."
+
+"Did she tell you," asked Gracie, "that she cares for some one else?"
+
+I admitted that Maud had said something of the sort.  And her family
+exclaimed triumphantly that this was always Maud's plea for releasing
+herself from an engagement as soon as that engagement had been made.
+
+Mrs. Jamieson remarked that she would not like any of the girls to feel
+that they were not welcome at home, and all her affectionate daughters
+kissed her in turn, or patted her hand, and said that they knew that
+such a thought as wanting to get rid of one of them would never enter
+her head.
+
+Mrs. Jamieson here left the room to seek her banished daughter and to
+administer comfort, and the members of The Family conclave said that
+they hoped that Mrs. Jamieson did not think that they had been unkind.
+
+"If it had not happened so often!" sighed Eliza.  "However, as we do
+not know Mr. Evans, he can't ask to come down and stay with us, as Mr.
+Reddy did, so as to have an opportunity of pressing his suit."
+
+"He cried so much one afternoon," said Kate, turning in an explanatory
+sort of way to Mr. Ward, "that I really thought I should have to send
+for mamma."  James looked sympathetic, and Gracie added: "We all really
+felt quite relieved when he got engaged to some one else three weeks
+afterwards, and we hear that they are most happy, and have got a dear
+little baby."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Mrs. Fielden's motor car is still a matter of absorbing interest to the
+inhabitants of Stowel.  When it breaks down, as it frequently does,
+there is always a crowd round it immediately.  Our friends and
+neighbours in the town have an ingenuous respect for anything that
+costs a great deal of money, and they are quite congratulatory to any
+one who has been for a drive with Mrs. Fielden, and they talk about the
+motor and its owner, and who has seen it, and who has not, over their
+afternoon tea.
+
+The motor car is a noisy, evil-smelling vehicle of somewhat rowdy
+appearance, which leaves a trail behind it as of a smoking lamp.  It
+drew up at our door to-day, and kicked and snorted impatiently until we
+were ready to get into it.  The next moment, with a final angry snort
+and plunge, it started down the drive and whizzed through the village
+and up the hill on the other side without pausing to take breath.
+
+"The worst of a motor car is," said Mrs. Fielden, "that one gets
+through everything so quickly.  In London I get my shopping done in
+about a quarter of an hour, and then I take a turn round Regent's Park,
+and I find I have put away about ten minutes, so I fly down to
+Richmond, and even then it is too early to go to tea anywhere.  Talking
+of tea--isn't everybody very hungry?  I am really ravenous--and that is
+the motor car's fault, too.  Because one has learned to want one's
+meals by the amount of business one has got through, and when one has
+done a whole afternoon's work in three-quarters of an hour, one is
+dying for tea, just as if it were five o'clock."
+
+"I have always been ravenous since I was in South Africa," said one of
+Mrs. Fielden's colonels, who had driven over in the motor car to take
+care of her and to bring us back.  "I don't know when I shall satisfy
+the pangs of hunger which I acquired on the veldt."
+
+"I think I shall call on Mr. Ellicomb," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I believe
+he has excellent afternoon teas, and he is making me an enamel box
+which I should like to see."
+
+Ellicomb said once or twice, as we sat in his picturesque house with
+its blue china and old brass work, that he only wished we had given him
+warning that we were coming.  We found him with an apron on, working at
+his enamels; and when he had displayed this work to us, he showed us
+his bookbinding, and his fretwork-carving, and his type-writing
+machine.  Afterwards we had tea, which Ellicomb poured very deftly into
+his blue cups, having first warmed the teapot and the cups, and flicked
+away one or two imaginary specks of dirt from the plates with what
+appeared to be a small lace-trimmed dinner-napkin.
+
+Mrs. Fielden began to admire his majolica ware, of which she knows
+nothing whatever, and Ellicomb took her for a tour round his rooms, and
+asked her to guess the original uses of his drain-tiles and spittoons
+and copper ham-pots.  Afterwards we were taken into a very small
+conservatory adjoining his house, where every plant was displayed to us
+in turn; and we were subsequently shown his coal-cellar and his larder
+and his ash-pit before we were allowed to return to the house.
+
+Ellicomb smiles more often than any other man I know, and he had only
+one epithet to apply to his house.  "It's so cosy," he said.  "Isn't it
+cosy?"  "I do think it's a cosy little place."
+
+Mrs. Fielden was charmed with everything, and deprecated the idea that
+she might consider the little house very small after Stanby.
+
+"I always think," she said, "that I should much prefer to live in a
+place like this, and then the people who come to see one really would
+pay one a little attention, instead of talking of nothing but the
+house."
+
+The Colonel laughed and apologized.
+
+"Oh, I know I'm not half good enough for Stanby," said Mrs. Fielden,
+smiling.  "But I really can't help it!  I was brought up in a house
+with hot and cold water upstairs, and white paint, and I suppose I
+never can really appreciate anything else."
+
+The dignity of Mrs. Fielden's surroundings has never affected her in
+the very smallest degree, and I do not believe that the traditions of
+the house interest her in the very least.  I am quite aware that she
+asked me to write out the history of Lady Hylda, for instance, simply
+because it is part of her charm always to ask one to do something for
+her.  It is the fashion to wait upon Mrs. Fielden's behests, and it
+would appear almost an unkindness to her many men friends if she did
+not give them some commission to do when they go up to town.  Her
+manner of thanking one for a service is almost as pretty as her manner
+of asking for it, and I am really not surprised that she is the most
+popular woman in the country-side.
+
+Mr. Ellicomb said ecstatically that the dim twilight at Stanby was one
+of the most impressive things he knew; and he added, with a shudder,
+that he always expected to see ghosts there.
+
+Mrs. Fielden does not believe in ghosts except on those occasions when
+she has some one very charming to defend her, and she spends her
+evenings in a cheerful white boudoir in the modern part of the house.
+
+Having admired all the majolica plates in the house, and having
+completely bewildered her host by showing an interest in him and his
+possessions one minute, and complete indifference the next, Mrs.
+Fielden fell into one of those little silences which are so
+characteristic of her.  Her silence is one of the most provoking things
+about her.  She has been witty and amusing the moment before, and then
+relapses into silence in the most natural manner possible, and her face
+takes a certain wistful look, and a man wonders how he can comfort her
+or whether he has offended her.
+
+"I think we ought to go now," she said, coming out of this wistful
+reverie like a child awaking from sleep.  "Is every one ready?"
+
+We got into the motor car again, and sped onwards along the smooth
+white road.  Every turn made a picture which I suppose an artist would
+love to paint.  There were red-roofed cottages smothered in orchards of
+plum blossom, and simple palings set across gaps in the hedges, with
+gardens beyond filled with spring flowers.  Now a labourer, gray-coated
+and bent with age, passed by like a flash, as he tramped slowly
+homewards from his work; and some school children, loitering to pick
+primroses under a hedge, dropped their slates and satchels in the
+ditch, and called to each other to take care, while they clung together
+and shouted "Hurrah!" as we passed.
+
+The park gates of Stanby are lion guarded and of stone, and then a long
+carriage-drive takes one up to the house.  The park round the old gray
+pile was starred with primroses, and ghost-like little lambs were
+capering noiselessly in the fields.  The scent of wallflowers was blown
+to us from a great brown ribbon of them round the walls of the
+lodgekeeper's house as we swung through the gates.  The sheep in the
+park, bleating to their young, drew away from the palings where they
+had been rubbing their woolly sides, and made off to the farther corner
+of the field, and Mrs. Fielden's gray pony in the paddock tossed his
+heels in a vindictive fashion at us from a distance of fifty yards or
+more.  And the motor car drew up with a jerk at the great doors of the
+house.
+
+Stanby is not quite so large now as it originally was, immense though
+the house undoubtedly is, and only some ruins on the north side show
+where the chapel used to stand.  A mound within the ruin's walls marks
+the resting-place of Hylda--Hylda, whose history I wrote out at the
+request of Mrs. Fielden, and sent to her; but I don't suppose she has
+ever read it.
+
+The evening of our arrival at Stanby it pleased Mrs. Fielden to put on
+an old-fashioned dress of stiffest brocade, which she had found in some
+old chest in the house.  She wore a high comb of pearls in her dark
+hair, and she looked a very regal and beautiful figure in the great
+dining-hall and drawing-rooms of her house.  She did not play Bridge,
+as the others did, but sat on a carved high-backed chair near my sofa,
+and told me many of the old stories of the house, and asked me to write
+down some of them for her.
+
+"I sent you the story of Hylda more than a week ago," I said, "and I
+don't suppose you ever read it."
+
+"I did read it," said Mrs. Fielden gently, "and I liked it very much."
+
+She had put on an unapproachable mood with her beautiful stiff brocade
+gown, and the gentleness of her voice seemed to heighten rather than to
+lessen her royalty.  The radiance and the holiday air, which are Mrs.
+Fielden's by divine right, were not dimmed to-night so much as
+transformed.  There was a subtle aromatic scent of dried rose-leaves
+clinging to the old brocade dress, and about herself a sort of
+fragrance of old-world dignity and beauty.  The pearl comb in her hair
+made her look taller than usual.
+
+A deerhound got up from his place by the fire and came and laid his
+head on her lap, and some footmen in old-fashioned bright blue liveries
+came in to arrange the card-tables and hand round coffee.  Everything
+was stately and magnificent in the house.
+
+"And you pretend," I said, "that you do nothing; yet probably the whole
+ordering of this house devolves upon you."
+
+"I am quite a domestic person sometimes," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"It is rather bewildering," I said, "to find that you are everything in
+turn."
+
+And the next morning she wore a short blue skirt, with a silver belt
+round her waist, and spent the morning punting on the lake with Anthony
+Crawshay.
+
+"I hope I look after you all properly," she said at lunch-time, in a
+certain charming deprecating way she has of speaking sometimes.  "There
+really are punts, and horses, and motor cars, and things, if you want
+them.  Will you all order what you like?"
+
+Each man at the table then offered to take Mrs. Fielden for a ride, or
+a drive, or a row, and not one of them could be quite sure that she had
+refused to go with him.
+
+"I want to go for a turn in the garden and talk about books," she said
+to me as we left the dining-room.  And then I found that I was sitting
+in her boudoir having coffee with her, and that every one else was
+excluded from the room--how it was done I have not the slightest
+idea--and that by-and-by we left it by the open French windows, and
+were strolling in the garden in the spring sunshine.  The garden, with
+its high walls, is sheltered from every wind that blows, and there are
+wide garden-seats in it painted white, and every border was bright with
+early spring flowers.
+
+"I call this my Grove of Academe," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I think it has a nice classical sound; and it is here I come
+with my friends and discuss metaphysics."
+
+"It seems to me you have a great many friends," I said.
+
+"I was thinking," said Mrs. Fielden thoughtfully, "of adding another to
+their number."
+
+"I have a constitutional dislike to worshipping in crowded temples," I
+said.
+
+Mrs. Fielden became silent.
+
+It would be forging a sword against themselves did men allow women to
+know what a powerful weapon silence is.  A soft answer turneth away
+wrath, but a woman's silence makes a man's heart cry out: "My dear, did
+I hurt you?  Forgive me!"
+
+At the end of five minutes or so of silence Mrs. Fielden turned towards
+me and smiled, and the garden seemed to be filled with her.  There was
+no room for anything else but herself and that bewildering smile she
+gave me.
+
+"How is the diary getting on?" she said.
+
+"The diary," I answered, "continues to record our godly, righteous, and
+sober life----"
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Fielden quickly, "don't you think it is possible to be
+too good sometimes?  That is really what I wanted to say to you--I
+brought you into the garden to ask you that."
+
+"It is an interesting suggestion," I remarked, "and I think we ought to
+give it to Eliza Jamieson for one of her discussions."
+
+"I do not wish to discuss it with Eliza Jamieson," said Mrs. Fielden,
+"but with you.  You know there really is a great danger in becoming too
+good; for although I do not think that you would grow wings, or hear
+passing bells, or anything of that sort, still you might become a
+little dull, might you not?"
+
+"I don't think it would be possible to become duller than I am," I
+replied.  "You have more than once told me that I am not amusing.  So
+long as my sister is not aware of the fact, I do not in the least mind
+admitting that I find every day most horribly tedious.  I suppose I
+shall get accustomed to it in time, but I don't enjoy being an invalid."
+
+"You have watched the Jamiesons making flannel petticoats for the
+poor," went on Mrs. Fielden, "and you have had the Curate to tea, and
+you have been to the Taylors' party, and if it does not kill you, I am
+sure you will become like people in those books which one gives as
+prizes to choir-boys."
+
+"One so often mistakes monotony for virtue," I said.  "I believe I was
+beginning to think that there was almost a merit in getting accustomed
+to a sofa and a crutch."
+
+"Oh, but it is a sin!" exclaimed Mrs. Fielden.  "It is a sin to get
+accustomed to anything that is disagreeable.  But that is what comes of
+studying philosophy!"
+
+"I suppose reasoning is always bad," I said humbly.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Fielden; "and it is so unnatural, too."
+
+"I heard a man say the other day," I said, "that solitude is always
+sententious.  And he pointed out that foreigners, who are never alone,
+base their ethics upon conduct; but that English people, who simply do
+not understand the life of the boulevards and cafés and family
+affection, sit apart in the solitude of their garrets or studies, and
+decide that the right or the wrong of a thing consists in what they
+think about it."
+
+Then I recollected that this garden was the Grove of Academe, and that
+it was here that Mrs. Fielden discussed metaphysics with all her
+friends.  "What cure do you propose?" I said shortly.
+
+"Why not go to London for a little while and enjoy yourselves?" said
+Mrs. Fielden.  "Put off the conventionalities of Stowel, as the Miss
+Traceys do, and do something amusing and gay."
+
+"Did you ever hear of the man in the Bastille," I said, "who had been
+in prison so long that when he was offered his freedom he elected to
+remain where he was?"
+
+"But you must break out of the Bastille long before it comes to that!"
+said Mrs. Fielden.  "Couldn't you do something exciting?  I am sure
+nothing else will restore your moral tone."
+
+"How is it to be done?" I asked.  "We must recognize the limitations of
+our environment."
+
+"You are going to be philosophical," said Mrs. Fielden; "you are going
+to quote Protagoras, or Pythagoras, or Plato, which will not convince
+me in the least.  Philosophy tries to make people believe that things
+are exactly the reverse of what they are.  I don't think that alters
+the sum total of things very much.  Because, by the time that you have
+proved that all agreeable things are disagreeable, and all unpleasant
+things are pleasant, you are in exactly the same position as you were
+before.  I dare say it fills up people's time to turn everything upside
+down and stand everything on its head, but it is not amusing."
+
+"What do you want me to do?" I asked.
+
+"Couldn't you enjoy yourselves a little?" said Mrs. Fielden, putting on
+her wistful voice.
+
+"As we are in the Grove of Academe, let me point out that the pursuit
+of pleasure for its own sake was one of the corrupt forms of a decadent
+epicureanism," I said sternly.
+
+"I am quite sure it was," said Mrs. Fielden, smiling; "but we were
+talking about your visit to London, were we not?"
+
+And so I knew that the thing was settled, and I thought it very odd
+that Palestrina and I had not thought of the plan before.
+
+"As it is getting cold," said Mrs. Fielden, "I am going to be a
+peripatetic philosopher," and she rose from the seat where we were
+sitting and gave me her hand to help me up, for I am still awkward with
+my crutch, and then let me lean on her arm as we walked up and down the
+broad gravel pathway.
+
+"Don't you think," she began, "that it is a great waste of opportunity
+not to be wild and wicked sometimes, when one is very good?"
+
+"I am afraid I do not quite follow you."
+
+"What I mean is, what is the good of filling up years of curates and
+Taylors and flannel petticoats, unless you are going to kick them all
+over some day, and have a good time.  You see, if you and Palestrina
+were not so good you would always have to pretend to be tremendously
+circumspect.  But it seems such waste of goodness not to be bad
+sometimes."
+
+"Your argument being," I said, "that an honest man may sometimes steal
+a horse?"
+
+"Yes, that is what I mean," said Mrs. Fielden delightedly.
+
+"A dangerous doctrine, and one----"
+
+"Not Plato, please," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+... It ended in our taking a flat in London for some weeks.  It was a
+small dwelling, with an over-dressed little drawing-room, and a red
+dining-room, and a roomy cupboard for a smoking-room.
+
+"Remember, Palestrina," I said to my sister when we settled down, "that
+we are under strict orders to live a very rapid and go-ahead life while
+we are in London.  Can you suggest anything very rowdy that a crippled
+man with a crutch and a tendency to chills and malaria might undertake?"
+
+"We might give a supper-party," said Palestrina brilliantly, "and have
+long-stemmed champagne-glasses, and perhaps cook something in a
+chafing-dish.  I was reading a novel the other day in which the bad
+characters did this.  I made a note of it at the time, meaning to ask
+you why it should be fast to cook things in a chafing-dish or to have
+long-stemmed champagne-glasses?"
+
+When the evening came Mrs. Fielden dined with us, and she and
+Palestrina employed themselves after dinner in rehearsing how they
+should behave.  My sister said in her low, gurgling voice: "I think I
+shall sit on the sofa with my arms spread out on the cushions on either
+side of me, and I shall thump them sometimes, as the adventuress in a
+play does."
+
+"Or you might be singing at the piano," said Mrs. Fielden, "and then
+when the door opens you could toss the music aside and sail across the
+room, and give your left hand to whoever comes in first, and say, 'What
+a bore! you have come!' or something rude of that sort."
+
+Mrs. Fielden's spirit of fun inspired my quiet sister to-night, and the
+two women, began masquerading in a way that was sufficiently amusing to
+a sick man lying on a sofa.
+
+"Or you might continue playing the piano," Mrs. Fielden went on, "after
+any one has been announced.  I notice that that is very often done,
+especially in books written by the hero himself in the first person.
+'She did not leave the piano as I entered, but continued playing
+softly, her white hands gliding dreamily over the keys.'"
+
+"I shall do my best," Palestrina answered; "and I thought of calling
+all our guests by their Christian names, if only I could recollect what
+they are."
+
+"Nicknames would be better," said Mrs. Fielden.  "We ought to have
+found out, I think, something about this matter before the night of the
+party."
+
+"What shall we do till they arrive?" said Palestrina.
+
+"We must read newspapers and periodicals," Mrs. Fielden replied, "and
+then fling them down on the carpet.  There is something about seeing
+newspapers on a carpet which is certainly untidy, but has a distinctly
+Bacchanalian touch about it."
+
+"I wish I had a red tea-gown," sighed my sister.
+
+"Or a white one trimmed with some costly furs," said Mrs. Fielden.
+"Almost any tea-gown would do."
+
+"One thing I will have!" she exclaimed, starting in an energetic manner
+to her feet.  "I'll turn all the lamps low, and cover them with
+pink-paper shades.  Where is the crinkly paper and some ribbon?"
+
+After that we sat in a rose twilight so dim that we couldn't even read
+the evening newspaper.
+
+"I don't think they need have come quite so early," I said, as the
+first ring was heard at the door-bell.
+
+Mrs. Fielden had insisted upon it that one actress at least should be
+asked.  "What is a supper-party without an actress?" she had said.  And
+Mrs. Travers at present acting in Mr. Pinero's new play, was the first
+to arrive.
+
+"I wonder if you know any of our friends who are coming to-night?" said
+Palestrina.  "We expect Squash Bosanquet and Dickie Fenwick."
+Palestrina then broke down, because we had no idea if these two men had
+ever answered to these names in their lives.  Also she blushed, which
+spoilt it all, and Mrs. Fielden began to smile.
+
+Mrs. Travers came to the party in a very simple black evening gown, and
+Bosanquet and Charles Fenwick came almost immediately afterwards.
+Anthony Crawshay was amongst the friends whom we had invited, because,
+Palestrina said, as we did not seem to know many fast people, we had
+better have some one who was sporting.  There was an artist whom we
+considered Bohemian because he wore his hair long, but he disappointed
+us by coming in goloshes.
+
+Altogether we were eight at supper.  There was an attractive menu, and
+the long-stemmed champagne-glasses were felt to be a distinct challenge
+to quiet behaviour.
+
+Palestrina thought that if she were going to be really fast she had
+better talk about divorce, and I heard her ask Anthony in a diffident
+whisper if he had read any divorce cases lately.  Anthony looked
+startled, and in his loud voice exclaimed, "Egad!  I hope _you_
+haven't!"  Palestrina coloured with confusion, and I frowned heavily at
+her, which made it worse.
+
+Mrs. Travers seemed to have taken it into her head that Palestrina was
+philanthropic, and she talked a great deal about factory girls, and
+Bosanquet talked about methylated ether.  What it was that provoked his
+remarks on this subject I cannot now recall, nor why he discussed it
+without intermission almost throughout the entire evening, but I have a
+distinct recollection of hearing him dinning out the phrase "methylated
+ether."
+
+It was, I think, the dullest party that even Palestrina and I have ever
+given, and I blame Mrs. Fielden for this.  Mrs. Fielden refused to be
+the centre of the room.  She became an onlooker at the party which she
+had planned, and she smiled affectionately at us both, and watched, I
+think, to see how the party would go off.
+
+The long-stemmed champagne-glasses were hardly used.  Several people
+said to me jocosely, "How is South Africa?" and to this I could think
+of no more suitable reply than, "It's all right."  We longed for even
+the Pirate Boy to make a little disturbance.  Palestrina whispered to
+me that she thought I might throw a piece of bread at some one, or do
+something.  But the action she suggested seemed to me to be in too
+daring contrast to the general tone of the evening; and really, as I
+murmured back to her, there seemed to be very little point in throwing
+my bread at a guest who had done me no harm.
+
+"I wish," she said to me when we returned to the drawing-room, "that I
+knew some daring little French songs.  In books the girl always sings
+daring little French songs, and afterwards every one begins to be
+vulgar and delightful, like those people in 'The Christian.'  I think
+I'll light a cigarette."  She did so, and choked a little, and then
+wondered if Thomas would like her to smoke, and threw the cigarette
+into the fire.  The Bohemian, who had travelled considerably, asked for
+a map, and told us of his last year's journeyings, tracing out the
+route of them for us on the map with a pin.
+
+And Mrs. Fielden was smiling all the time.
+
+"I suppose," I said to my sister when the last guest had departed, and
+we sat together in the pink light of the drawing-room before going to
+bed--"I suppose we carry about with us an atmosphere of slowness which
+it is impossible to penetrate.  You are engaged to Thomas, and I am an
+invalid----"
+
+"But in books," said Palestrina wistfully, "men talk about all sorts of
+things to girls whether they happen to be engaged or not, and they ask
+them to go to see galleries with them next day, or squeeze their hands.
+Of course, I should hate it if they did so, but still one rather
+expected it.  To-night," she said regretfully, "no one talked to me of
+anything but Thomas."
+
+"Charles Fenwick," I said, "who used to be considered amusing, has
+become simply idiotic since he married.  He gave me an exact account of
+his little boy's sayings; he copied the way he asked for sugar, like
+the chirruping of a bird.  You won't believe me, I know, but he put out
+his lips and chirped."
+
+"I remember being positively warned against him," said Palestrina,
+"when I used to go to dances in London."  She sighed, and added, "Do
+you think Mrs. Fielden enjoyed it?"
+
+"I think Mrs. Fielden was distinctly amused," I replied.
+
+"Do you think," said Palestrina, still in a disappointed tone, "that
+the men would have been more--more larky if we had been alone?  Mrs.
+Fielden always looks so beautiful and dresses so well that I think she
+impresses people too much, and they are all trying to talk to her
+instead of making a row."
+
+"I think we may as well go to bed," I said.
+
+Palestrina rose slowly, and went towards the bell to ring for my man to
+help me.  She lingered for a moment by my chair.  "Yet books say that
+men require so much keeping in order," she said sadly.  "I wish people
+would not write about what does not occur."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+The Jamiesons have taken lodgings in West Kensington, which they
+describe as being "most central"--a phrase which I have begun to think
+means inexpensive--and near a line of omnibuses.  George and the Pirate
+are assiduous in taking their sisters to the Play and other places of
+amusement, and are showing them something of London with a zeal which
+speaks much for their goodness of heart.  Even Mrs. Jamieson has been
+out once or twice, and although doubly tearful on the morning following
+any little bit of dissipation, her family feel that the variety has
+been good for her.  Eliza has found that London is radio-active, hence
+enjoyable.  And Eliza had been only once to the Royal Institution when
+she said it!  Maud's engagement to the Hampstead young man has been
+finally broken off, and Maud has cried so much that her family have
+forgiven her.  Maud explains that it is such an upset for a girl to
+break off an engagement, and The Family say soothingly that she must
+just try and get over it.
+
+"We hope," said Kate, "that next time things will arrange themselves
+more happily, and at least we can all feel that Maud might have married
+many times, had she wished to do so."  There seems to be a strong
+feeling in The Family that Maud will go on having opportunities.
+Arguing from the general to the particular, they have proved, with a
+sort of tribal feeling of satisfaction, that Maud is undoubtedly very
+attractive to men, and that if one man likes her, why should not
+another?
+
+Still, we all felt that we could not have sympathized immediately with
+another love affair of Maud's, and it was refreshing, not to say most
+pleasing and surprising, to find that since her arrival in Town, it was
+Margaret who attracted the notice of a gentleman, Mr. Swinnerton by
+name, a friend of George's, who brought him to supper one Sunday
+evening.  The Jamiesons could see at a glance that Mr. Swinnerton was
+"struck," and, as he called two or three times in the following week,
+Margaret made the usual Jamieson opportunity of seeing Palestrina home,
+one afternoon when she had been to call, to embark in confidences about
+her lover in the usual Jamieson style.  Margaret was diffident,
+bashful, shy, uncertain about Mr. Swinnerton's feelings for her, and
+hopelessly nervous lest her family should have had their expectations
+raised only to be disappointed.  She implored Palestrina over and over
+again to say nothing about it to them, though it has been more than
+obvious to us all along how full of expectation every member of The
+Family is.  It was a very wet evening as Margaret and my sister left
+the Jamiesons' lodgings, but she hardly seemed conscious of the
+inclemency of the weather, and begged Palestrina not to think of taking
+a cab, as she particularly wished to speak to her.
+
+"At first," she began, "I thought it must be Maud, although she has but
+just broken off her engagement to Mr. Evans; still, one knows she is
+the pretty one, and if any one calls often, it is generally her."
+
+It was a little difficult to follow Margaret's rapid, ungrammatical
+speech, but Palestrina and I both knew that to the vigorous minds of
+the Jamiesons there must be a direct purpose in every action, and that
+therefore if Mr. Swinnerton came to call he must have a purpose,
+presumably a matrimonial purpose, for paying his visits.  After two or
+three afternoon calls from a gentleman the Jamiesons generally ask each
+other ingenuously, "Which of us is it?"  It hardly seems to them
+respectable that a man should continue to pay them visits unless he
+means to show a preference for one of them.
+
+Presuming that it was not Maud he came to see, Margaret, with modest
+hesitation and many blushes, asked Palestrina if she did not think it
+possible that these visits might be intended for her.
+
+"Please do not say anything about it to the others.  I always have
+hoped that if ever I had a love affair it would be when I was away from
+home.  Do you know at all what they think about it?"
+
+She did not pause for a reply, but began again: "You see he has called
+three times in one week, but" (hopelessly) "I am always surrounded by
+The Family, and he couldn't say anything if he wanted to.  Of course I
+don't think it has come to anything of that sort yet; still, you know,
+we could get to know each other better if there were not so many of us
+always about.  Maud doesn't mind a bit; she has had love affairs in
+front of us all, and she does not mind talking about them in the least,
+or even asking us to let her have the drawing-room to herself on
+certain afternoons.  But I don't feel as if I could bear to have this
+discussed before anything is settled.  And then we have so few
+opportunities.  Maud generally takes them to a distant church, and then
+they have the walk home together.  But I never quite know whether she
+makes the suggestion about church, or if she merely thinks it would be
+nice, and leaves the man to make it."
+
+"Maud," I remarked parenthetically to Palestrina, "has raised
+love-making to a science--an exact science."
+
+"I hope you don't think for a moment," Margaret had gone on, "that I am
+abusing Maud; you know how fond we all are of each other."
+
+Maud's experiences on matters matrimonial are always quoted as
+precedent in the Jamieson family, and she is cited whenever anything of
+the sort is afoot.  Each phase in her experience is frankly discussed,
+and conclusions are drawn from it; and I have heard the Jamiesons say,
+"Mr. So-and-so must be in love with Miss So-and-so; he looks at her in
+exactly the same way that Mr. Reddy used to look at Maud."  Maud
+herself, unconsciously as I believe, makes a sort of calendar of her
+love affairs, and it is quite usual for her to date an event by
+referring to it as having happened "in the Albert Gore days," or "when
+Mr. Evans was hovering."
+
+Margaret's voice had not ceased from the moment they left the lodgings
+together.  "It is, however, no use trying to copy other people in your
+love affairs," she said, "because it seems to come to every one so
+differently, and then of course different people must call forth
+different feelings.  I don't think I could have felt for Mr. Reddy, for
+instance, quite as I do now, even if he had been in love with me.  You
+feel so bewildered somehow."
+
+The walk had by this time become very rapid, and Margaret, in her
+short-sighted way, knocked against all the foot-passengers whom she met
+travelling in the opposite direction.  Her umbrella showered raindrops
+upon Palestrina, and she became so incoherent that my sister suggested
+taking a cab to our flat, and talking things over quietly when they
+should get there.
+
+It was about eleven o'clock that night when Margaret Jamieson took
+leave of us, and by that time I fancy the bridesmaids' dresses had been
+arranged.
+
+A few days later Palestrina received a note by the hand of a
+messenger-boy; it bore the word "Immediate" on the cover, and had
+evidently been addressed in some haste.
+
+
+"DEAR PALESTRINA (it ran),
+
+"Can you possibly come to make a fourth at a concert this afternoon?
+Do come, even if it should be rather inconvenient to you.  I want you
+so much.  Mr. Swinnerton has asked mamma and me, and he has taken
+tickets.  They are not reserved places, so we could easily arrange to
+meet at the door and sit together.  Three is such an awkward number.  I
+fear mamma does not care for him, and that is a great grief to me.  I
+will tell you everything this afternoon.
+
+"Yours affectionately,
+    "MARGARET JAMIESON.
+
+"_P.S._--It is all going to come right, I believe, but I have had
+immense difficulties.  Hardly ten minutes alone with him--you know we
+have only one sitting-room.--but the family have been sweet."
+
+
+"Hugo," said Palestrina, "this is an occasion when you could give very
+substantial aid to a deserving family."
+
+"I am sorry I am engaged this afternoon," I said, with an instinct of
+self-preservation, without, however, having any definite idea of what
+Palestrina might say next.
+
+"It is I who am engaged this afternoon," said my sister smiling, "and
+you are perfectly aware of that fact.  Thomas is taking me down to
+Richmond to introduce me to his aunt.  Besides, Hugo, you know you like
+music."
+
+"I am very sorry, Palestrina," I said, "but it is quite impossible."
+
+"Margaret is the Jamieson you like best," said Palestrina, "and I hate
+to think of your being here alone a whole afternoon.  What were you
+thinking of doing?"
+
+I had been thinking of going to this concert, and Palestrina guessed
+it, of course....
+
+I was at the door of the concert hall at two-thirty in the afternoon,
+and found Mrs. Jamieson and Margaret and the young man already on the
+pavement, looking as if they had stood there for a considerable time.
+Mr. Swinnerton is a large, rather stupid-looking man, with a red face,
+a crooked nose, and curly hair.  He wore a dark blue overcoat, so thick
+and strong that it reminded one of some encasement of plaster of Paris,
+or of some heavy coat of mail.  His hands were covered in yellow
+dogskin gloves, equally unyielding, so that Mr. Swinnerton appeared
+deprived of any agility of movement by his garments.  Mr. Swinnerton is
+in the volunteers, and has "Captain Swinnerton" printed on his cards.
+He gave me the idea of seeming to think that every action of his was
+some epoch-making event, and during the afternoon he frequently
+referred to having seen a picture then on view at one of the galleries,
+as though this were rather an up-to-date, not to say remarkable,
+proceeding.  Margaret seemed a good deal impressed by his manner, and
+the Jamiesons had decided that he was "smart," which was a further and
+quite unnecessary addition to Mr. Swinnerton's vanity, and very bad for
+a gentleman of his complacent character.
+
+He ushered us into the Queen's Hall in an important sort of way, which
+gave one the impression that the place belonged to him; and the fact
+that I was making a third in a party under his guidance convinced me
+that I was in some sort adding to his self-satisfaction.  Mr.
+Swinnerton had chosen shilling places, because, as he informed us a
+great number of times, these were in the best position for hearing the
+music.  Mrs. Jamieson was disappointed.  In her class of life a treat
+is given on a more magnificent scale.
+
+"Shall I sit next you, Mrs. Jamieson?" I said, for I believed that this
+was what I was intended to say; but Mr. Swinnerton remarked to
+Margaret, "I'll go next; I like to divide myself amongst the ladies."
+
+Mrs. Jamieson looked uncomfortable in the small amount of space a
+shilling had procured for her, and she suggested apologetically that
+she would like a programme; but the music was beginning, and Mr.
+Swinnerton put up his large, stiff-gloved hand like a slab, and said,
+"Hush!"
+
+We went faithfully through the orthodox Queen's Hall concert from the
+very first note to the "Ride of the Valkyries," and after every item on
+the programme our host turned to us, moving his whole body in his stout
+coat, and said, "Isn't that nice now?--very nice I call it!" still with
+an air of ownership.
+
+Mrs. Jamieson slept a little; but the hardness of her seat made it an
+uneasy resting-place, and it is to be feared that her mantle with the
+storm-collar was too hot; but, she whispered to me in a burst of
+confidence, she was unable to remove it owing to the fact that the
+bodice and skirt of her dress did not correspond.
+
+"I always like these places," said Mr. Swinnerton again; "they are
+exactly in the centre of the hall, and another thing is, they are near
+the door in case of fire."
+
+Margaret assented sweetly.  I always thought until to-day that Margaret
+Jamieson was a plain woman; to-day I find she is good-looking.
+
+"It is ridiculous," said Mr. Swinnerton, "to see the way people throw
+their money away on really inferior seats, just because they think they
+are fashionable."
+
+Mrs. Jamieson stirred a little on her uneasy bench, and Mr. Swinnerton
+said in self-defence, "Don't you agree with me, eh?"
+
+"I think," said Mrs. Jamieson politely, "that perhaps for a long
+concert the _fotoys_ would be more comfortable."
+
+"Ah!" cried Mr. Swinnerton, "you want to be fashionable, I see; but
+there are many of the best people who come to these seats.  I know of a
+Member of Parliament--I don't know him, I know of him" (we felt that
+some connection with the Member had been established)--"who comes
+regularly to these very places, and who declares they are the best in
+the house."
+
+"Perhaps," said Mrs. Jamieson simply, "he had never tried the _fotoys_."
+
+After the concert was over, Mr. Swinnerton suggested that Margaret and
+her mother should go and have tea at a bun-shop, qualifying the
+suggestion with the remark, "I know you ladies can never get on without
+afternoon tea."  When with Mr. Swinnerton ladies are never allowed to
+forget that he is a gentleman and they are ladies, and that a certain
+forbearance is therefore extended to them.  He offered his arm to Mrs.
+Jamieson, who gathered up her skirt and umbrella in one hand, and
+accepted the proffered support in some embarrassment.  Margaret fell
+behind with me, and whispered in a sort of excited way,--
+
+"Hasn't it been lovely?  Do tell me what you think--I mean about him."
+
+"I haven't had much chance of judging," I replied stupidly; "but he
+seems all right, although perhaps his ideas are not very large."
+
+"Still, you mean that one could always alter that," said Margaret
+quickly, with the true Jamieson optimism, as applied to the beneficial
+results of matrimony.  There is hardly, I believe, a defect that they
+think they will not be able to eradicate in a future husband, save,
+perhaps, the conical shape of Mr. Ward's head.  "But I really do not
+think there is anything that I would like altered," she added simply.
+
+"His name is Tudor," she went on.  "George calls him that now, and Maud
+is beginning to do so--Maud is being so kind; she says it promotes a
+familiar tone which is very helpful, to call him 'Tudor'--but I can't
+call him anything but Mr. Swinnerton yet."
+
+After tea Mr. Swinnerton asked us how we had enjoyed our entertainment,
+and Margaret expressed herself in the highest terms in praise of it.
+There seemed to be a lingering tendency on Mrs. Jamieson's part to
+revert to the superior comfort of seven-and-sixpenny places and
+armchairs, but we checked this by saying with emphasis that it was a
+friendly afternoon of this kind that we really enjoyed.  Mr. Swinnerton
+then put the Jamiesons into an omnibus, and directed the conductor to
+"let these ladies out at the top of Sloane Street," in a tone of voice
+that suggested that they were to be caged and padlocked until that
+place of exit was reached.  He lifted his hat with a fine air to them,
+and then, as I had called a hansom, he put me into it rather
+elaborately, and cautioned the commissionaire at the door to "take care
+of this gentleman."
+
+He will probably call me a South African hero next; I wish he would
+keep his attentions to himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Last night we dined at the Darcey-Jacobs'.  Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is
+enjoying "one breath of life" at a hotel with the Major, and she has
+left quite a pathetic number of visiting-cards on all her friends, so
+that her short London season may be as full of gaiety as possible.
+Neither of us looked forward to the dinner-party being particularly
+lively, but we were a good deal amused at the turn the conversation
+took during dinner.  I have often thought since that a certain dumbness
+which falls upon some entertainments can be dispersed if the subject of
+matrimony is started, and I will class with it a discussion on food,
+and personal experience at the hand of the dentist.  Any of these three
+subjects can be thrown, as it were, into the stagnant deep waters of a
+voiceless party, and the surface will be instantly rippled with eager
+conversation.
+
+Talk flagged a little in the private sitting-room of the hotel where
+the Darcey-Jacobs gave their dinner-party.  Major Jacobs, in his
+guileless way, gave us an exhaustive list of the friends whom they had
+invited for that evening, but who had not been able to come; and this
+had a curiously depressing effect upon us all, and within ourselves we
+speculated unhappily as to whether we had been asked to fill up vacant
+places.
+
+"Why are men always allowed to blunder?" said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs,
+looking over her high nose at the gentleman next her, and tapping him
+on the arm with her lorgnettes.
+
+Major Jacobs, from his end of the table, looked penitent but mystified.
+
+"Happy is the woman," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, "who has no men about
+her."
+
+"I should like to have been born a widow," said a pretty girl with
+beseeching blue eyes and a soft, confiding expression, who sat a little
+lower down on my side of the table.  And then the subject of matrimony
+was in full swing.
+
+"Marriage is just an experience," said a shrill-voiced American widow
+who sat opposite.  "Every one should try it, but that is no reason why
+one should not be thankful when it is over."
+
+"I am much interested in what you say," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, with a
+certain profound air suitable to so great a subject.  One felt the want
+of the Jamiesons sadly during the ensuing discussion, and I almost
+found myself, in the words of Mettie, making the suggestion that
+marriage was a great risk.
+
+"Some one once said," ventured Major Darcey-Jacobs, "that choosing a
+wife was like choosing a profession--it did not matter much what your
+choice was, so long as you stuck to it.  It was a mere figure of
+speech, no doubt----"
+
+"I hope so, indeed," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs.
+
+"Marriage is the worst form of gambling," broke in an elderly
+gentleman; "it should be suppressed by law.  Talk about lotteries!
+Talk about sweepstakes!  Why, the worst you can do, if you put your
+money into them, is to draw a blank.  Now, this is fair play, I
+consider; you either get a prize or you get nothing.  But matrimony,
+sir, is a swindle compared with which the Missing Word Competition
+appears like a legal document beside a forged bank-note."
+
+If the old gentleman had a wife present she was evidently of a callous
+disposition, for I saw no wrathful expression on any face.
+
+Mr. Ellicomb--even in London Ellicomb and Anthony Crawshay are asked to
+meet us--gave it as his opinion that a woman's hand was wanted in the
+home.  The voice was the voice of Ellicomb, the sentiment was the
+sentiment of Maud, and Palestrina and I very nearly exchanged glances.
+
+After this, several people began to describe at one and the same time,
+in quite a breathless way, their own personal experiences of the
+happiness of wedded life.
+
+"Of course," said Major Darcey-Jacobs, "a deal of forbearance must be
+exercised if married life is to be a success."  And Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs
+said quickly, "I hope you do not intend to become personal, William."
+To which William replied that no such intention had been his.
+
+Anthony said in his cheery voice, "Of course it is give and take, don't
+you know, and then it is all right."
+
+Every one volunteered ideas on the subject--not once, but several
+times.  And those who applauded the happy state shouted each other down
+by quoting examples of wedded bliss in such words as: "Look at
+Hawkins!" "Look at Jones!" "Look at the Menteiths!"
+
+Quite suddenly Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs leaned across the table, smiled at
+her husband, and remarked, "Look at us, William!"
+
+I do not think I have ever seen any one look so astonished as Major
+Jacobs.  "That was very pretty of Maria," he said in a low voice; "very
+pretty of her, by Gad!"  And we caught him looking at his wife several
+times that evening with a puzzled but delighted expression on his face.
+
+After dinner we played Bridge.  "I disapprove of the game myself," said
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, who certainly was the worst player I have ever met,
+"but Mrs. Fielden likes it, and she has promised to come in in the
+evening."
+
+Mrs. Fielden arrived at the same time as Colonel Jardine, and they
+played as partners together, with me and the American widow as
+opponents.  Colonel Jardine wore some kind of lead ring on his finger,
+which he said cured gout, and gathered up his tricks in a stiff sort of
+way.  He had a pet name for almost every card in the pack, and he
+babbled on without once ceasing throughout the rubber.  "Now we'll see
+where old Mossy Face is.  I think that draws the Curse of Scotland.
+Kinky takes that," and so on.  It was perfectly maddening, but Mrs.
+Fielden seemed quite pleased.  I don't suppose she ever feels
+irritated.  The American widow, who was my partner, was only just
+learning the game.  When I said to her, "May I play?" she always
+replied, if she had a bad hand, "No, certainly not."  And when it was
+pointed out to her that she had either to say, "If you please," or "I
+double," she replied, "Don't ask me if you may play, if you mean to do
+it whether I like it or not."  She always gave us such items of
+information as "I know what I should say if it was left to me this
+time," and she frequently doubled with nothing at all in her hand,
+because she said she liked to play a plucky game.
+
+I have tried to cure Mrs. Fielden of saying "dah-monds" when she means
+"diamonds," but it is quite useless.  She also says (with a radiant
+smile) "How tarsome!" when she has lost a rubber, although I have
+pointed out to her that that is not the phonetic pronunciation of the
+word.  When we are all wrangling over the mistakes and misdeeds of the
+last round, Mrs. Fielden looks hopelessly at us and says, "Is it any
+one's deal?"  And then we laugh and stop arguing.  She never keeps the
+score, or picks up the cards, or deals for herself, or does anything
+useful.
+
+The American widow did not stop talking most of the time, and the
+Colonel kept up his running commentary upon the cards he was playing,
+and then Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs joined us to look on, and she and the
+American widow plunged into a discussion on clothes, which they kept up
+vigorously all the time.  This necessitated a number of questions
+relating to the game from the American widow, whenever she was recalled
+to the fact that she was playing Bridge: "May I see that laast trick?
+What's trumps?  Does my hand go down on the table this time?"  Mrs.
+Fielden beamed kindly upon her, even when the widow had debated five
+minutes which card to lead, and Colonel Jardine had begun to play the
+chromatic scale of impatience up and down the table with his stiff
+fingers.
+
+"Waal," said the American widow to Mrs. Fielden, "I think you are just
+lovely, and I would like to play with you always.  I believe most
+people would like to kill me at Bridge.  Caan't think why.  Colonel
+Jardine, did you play the lost chord?"
+
+"I know the tune," said the Colonel; "but I don't play at all."
+
+The American turned bewildered eyes upon Mrs. Fielden, who said,
+smiling, "Colonel Jardine is practising the chromatic scale.  I think
+he will be a very good player some day."
+
+"How was I to know," said the Colonel, spluttering over his
+whisky-and-soda when the American widow had left, "that she meant the
+last card?  That woman would drive me crazy in six weeks."
+
+"I liked her," said Mrs. Fielden, "and she is very pretty."
+
+There is a certain large-heartedness about this pretty woman of fashion
+and of the world which constrains her to say something kind about every
+one.  With her the absent are always right, and I do not think I have
+ever heard her say an unkind word about any one.  At Stanby, when
+people who are staying there make a newly-departed guest run the
+gauntlet of criticism--not always of the kindest sort--Mrs. Fielden
+says, in that royal fashion of hers which makes her approval the final
+decision in all matters, "I liked him."  And the departed guest's
+character and reputation are safe.  Her charity is boundless and quite
+indiscriminate, save that she sends a trifle more rain and sunshine on
+the unjust than on the just.
+
+"Come to lunch with me some day," she said to me in the off-hand way in
+which she generally gives an invitation.  "I am always at home at two
+o'clock.  Why not come to-morrow?  You are leaving town almost
+immediately, are you not?"
+
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is also asked to lunch; every one is asked to lunch.
+When one goes to the pretty widow's house in South Street one generally
+finds a dozen people lunching with her.
+
+... She came into the room--late, of course--and found ten or twelve
+people waiting for lunch.  "I am so sorry!  Do you all know each
+other?" she asked of the rather constrained group of strangers making
+frigid conversation to each other in the flower-filled drawing-room.
+And then she began to introduce us to each other, and forgot half our
+names, and we went downstairs in a buzz of conversation and laughter,
+and filled with something that is odd and magnetic, which only comes
+when Mrs. Fielden arrives.
+
+As is always the way at her lunch-parties, her carriage drives up to
+the door before any one has finished coffee, and then we all say
+good-bye, complaining of the rush of London.
+
+"I want you to drive with me this afternoon," said Mrs. Fielden, when I
+with the others was saying good-bye.  I think she generally singles
+somebody out for a drive or a long talk, or to take her to a
+picture-gallery after lunch, and it is done in a way that makes the one
+thus singled out feel foolishly elated and flattered.
+
+"I think we are going to drive down to Richmond and see some trees and
+grass, and behave in a rural sort of way this afternoon," she announced
+as she seated herself in the carriage.
+
+"And what about all your engagements for this afternoon?" I asked.
+"And the Red Book, and the visiting-list, and the shopping-list, and
+the visiting-cards, which I see with you?"
+
+"I never keep engagements," said Mrs. Fielden; "and every one knows my
+memory is so bad that they always forgive me.  Some one gave me a
+little notebook the other day, with my initials in silver upon it--I
+can't remember who it was--and I put down in it all the tarsome things
+I ought to do, and then I lost the little pocket-book."
+
+"If I ever find it," I said, "I shall bring it to you, and read out all
+your tarsome engagements to you."
+
+"I didn't say 'tarsome,'" said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"I suppose you are whirling through the London season," I said
+presently; "and going everywhere, and having your frocks chronicled in
+the magazines, and going to a great many parties?"
+
+"No," said Mrs. Fielden; "I have been down at Stanby."
+
+"I wish," I remarked, "that you did not always give one unexpected
+replies.  Why have you been down at Stanby?  You didn't say anything
+about it when I saw you last night."
+
+"Do you know old Miss Lydia Blind?" said Mrs. Fielden.  "She is ill,
+and I got rather a pathetic letter from her, so I went down to Stanby
+to look after her."
+
+She fumbled for the pocket of her dress, raising first what seemed to
+be a layer of lace, and then a number of layers of chiffon, and then,
+after rustling amongst some silk to find her artfully-concealed pocket,
+she produced a letter and handed it to me.
+
+"Am I to read it?" I said; and Mrs. Fielden nodded.
+
+"... One so often hears," so the letter ran, "of a case of long illness
+in which the one who is strong, and who acts as nurse to the invalid,
+breaks down before the end comes.  To me it has always seemed to show
+that the strong one's courage has failed somehow, and that, had zeal
+been stronger or faith greater, she might have endured to the end...."
+And, again, in a postscript: "When I was younger I was very impatient,
+and I think I could not well have borne it had I known that life was to
+be a waiting time.  I do not say this in any discontented spirit, dear,
+and I only write to you because you always understand...."  And then
+the letter broke off suddenly, and I handed it back to Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"So this is you, as Miss Lydia knows you," I said.
+
+"I want you to go and see her when you go back to Stowel.  Will you?"
+said Mrs. Fielden.  "Miss Lydia is an angel, I think; the best woman
+really that ever lived.  Will you take her some things I am sending
+her, and ask how she is when you go back?"
+
+We drove under the trees of Richmond Park in Mrs. Fielden's big,
+luxurious carriage.  She generally drives in a Victoria, and I asked
+her why she had the landau out this afternoon.
+
+"A whim," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I am full of whims."
+
+But of course a landau is the only carriage in which a lame man, who
+has to sit with his foot up, can put it comfortably on the opposite
+seat.
+
+We drove onwards, and she stopped the carriage to look at the view from
+Richmond Hill, and the soft air blew up to us in a manner very cool and
+refreshing; and then we got out and walked about for a time, and Mrs.
+Fielden gave me her arm.
+
+"I don't really require an arm," I said, "but I like taking yours."
+
+"It is a very strong arm," said Mrs. Fielden; and she exclaimed
+quickly, "I believe I am getting fat!  My maid tells me all my dresses
+want altering.  I wish it was time to think about beginning to hunt
+again."
+
+"Do you know," I said, "I always thought, till I got back to England,
+that my leg had been taken off below the knee, and that I should be
+able to get astride of a horse again.  I never used to see it, of
+course, when they dressed it; and when I counted up the things I should
+be able to do, riding was always one of them.  I didn't sell my horses
+till just the other day."
+
+Mrs. Fielden did not sympathize, but one of her silences fell between
+us.  We did not speak again till she began to tell me an amusing story
+which made us both laugh; but when she was sitting in the carriage, and
+the footman was helping me in, and we were still laughing, I could have
+sworn that her eyes looked larger and softer than I have ever seen them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+It is always rather melancholy arriving at home alone, and I miss
+Palestrina very much at these times, and I feel ill-disposed towards
+Thomas.  Down-Jock pretended not to know me, and barked furiously when
+I drove up to the door, and then ran away on three legs, making
+believe, as he sometimes does when he wants to appeal to one's pity,
+that he is old and lame.
+
+It was still early in the afternoon, and the sunshine was blazing over
+everything when I hobbled down the hill to inquire for Miss Lydia.  The
+houses in Stowel are all roofed with red tiles, and each garden has
+flowering shrubs in it or beds full of bright-coloured flowers, so that
+the little place has a very warm and happy look on a sunny summer day.
+A great heavy horse-chestnut tree hung over the walls of the doctor's
+house, and scattered fragments of pink blossom when the soft air
+stirred gently.  The wistaria on the post-office was in full bloom.
+And the place was so full of pleasant sounds this afternoon--of singing
+birds, and heavy-rolling wagons moving up the broad street, and the
+laughter of children, and the soft rush of the summer wind through the
+trees--that one felt that a day like this gave one a very strong
+leaning in favour of the happy view that life is, after all, a good
+thing.
+
+One had, of course, to stop and speak to several old friends, who said
+they were thankful to see me back, as though a visit to London was an
+expedition fraught with many dangers.
+
+When I reached the little cottage with the green gate, and the maid
+opened the door to me, she told me that Lydia Blind had died an hour
+ago.
+
+The staircase of the little house is directly opposite the front door.
+I could not but believe that if I waited a little while Miss Lydia
+would descend the stairs, as she always did, with a smile which never
+failed to welcome every one.  Or, if she were not within doors, that I
+would only have to pass out into the little garden at the back of the
+house to find her.  I thought suddenly of the words of a boy I used to
+know at school, who, when a young playfellow died, said between his
+sobs, "It was so hard upon him dying before he had had a good time."
+Certainly ever since we knew her Lydia's life had been one long
+sacrifice to a witless invalid, and I couldn't help feeling that
+perhaps no one would ever know the extent of her patient service.
+Probably there never lived a more unselfish woman, and I cannot think
+why she never married.
+
+She was a person who lacked worldly wisdom, and in worldly matters she
+was not prosperous--she never sowed that sort of grain.  It was very
+touching to find that she had not even a few trinkets to leave behind,
+but that one by one each had been sold to pay for something for the
+invalid--a doctor's fee, or a chemist's heavy bill.  She left the world
+as unobtrusively as she lived in it.  Her last illness was very sudden
+and brief, and probably she would have been thankful that the little
+household was spared any extra expense.
+
+The news of Lydia's death was unexpected by every one.  When I turned
+and left the house and was walking home again, I met Mrs. Taylor going
+to inquire about her neighbour's health, with an offering of fruit in a
+little basket.  She begged me, in the Stowel fashion, to turn and walk
+back with her, declaring that she felt so seriously upset by the news
+that if I would only see her as far as her gate I should be doing her a
+kindness.  In the garden the General, who had run down to Stowel for a
+couple of days, was reclining in a deck-chair, Indian fashion.  He was
+reading some cookery recipes in a number of _Truth_, and he turned to
+his niece as she crossed the lawn and said, "Do you think your cook
+could manage this, Mary?  Select a fine pineapple----"
+
+"Oh, uncle," said Mrs. Taylor with a good deal of feeling, "we have had
+such bad news!  Our dear old friend in the village, Miss Lydia Blind,
+is dead."
+
+"What Lydia Blind?" said the General; and Mrs. Taylor replied,--
+
+"You never knew her, dear.  She wasn't able to come to the party;
+indeed, I think she has been ailing ever since about that time, but we
+had no idea that the end was so near."
+
+"It can't be the Lydia Blind I used to know?" said the General.
+
+"Oh no, you couldn't have known her," said Mrs. Taylor with a sob; "she
+was just a dear old maiden lady living in the village on very small
+means."
+
+"She hadn't a sister called Belinda, had she?" said the General.
+
+Mrs. Taylor said she had, and I remembered suddenly how I had seen
+Lydia Blind standing one morning in front of the General's picture in
+the photographer's shop, and had heard her say, "I used to know him."
+
+Mrs. Taylor went indoors, and I said good-bye, but the General said to
+me abruptly, "I should like to see her; will you take me there?"  And
+he did not speak again until we found ourselves in the little porch of
+the cottage.  He looked very tall standing by the low door of the
+house, and an odd idea came to me that Miss Lydia would have been proud
+of her afternoon caller.
+
+"Let me go alone," he said gruffly, when he had asked permission to go
+to her room; and I waited in Lydia's morning-room, with its twine cases
+and unframed sketches, and the photographs of babies.
+
+"I cannot see the sister," said the General irritably, when he had
+rejoined me in the darkened room.  "Is she still dumb, poor thing?  If
+ever there was a case," he went on, "of one life--and, to my mind, the
+sweeter and the better life--being sacrificed to another, it is in the
+case of Lydia Blind."  He sat down on the little green sofa, and looked
+about him with eyes that seemed to see nothing.  "I never expected such
+a thing," he said; "I couldn't have expected a thing like this ... I
+didn't even know she lived here....  Do you remember her," he said,
+"when she was very pretty?  No, no, of course you wouldn't....  It
+doesn't hurt you to walk a little, does it?  I have lived nearly all my
+life out of doors, and when anything upsets me I cannot stand being
+within four walls...."
+
+We went out and crossed the field-path into the woods beyond.  The
+paths of the wood are narrow and uneven, and at first we walked in
+single file, until we came to the broader road beyond the stream, and
+then we walked on side by side, the General suiting his pace to my
+slow, awkward gait.
+
+"... Did you ever know the Bazeleys at all?  No, you wouldn't, of
+course: that would be before your time.  They had a very pretty place
+in Lincolnshire--a charming place--with a veranda round the house, and
+wicker-chairs with coloured cushions on them--more like an Indian house
+than an English one....  Harold Bazeley was in love with Lydia too."
+(I believe the General was talking more to himself than to me.)  "It
+was one night sitting in the veranda that I heard him begin to make
+love to her for all he was worth, and I had to cut it....  Poor chap!
+he came into the smoking-room that night, where I was sitting alone,
+and he sat down by the table and put his head in his hands.  He may
+have been saying his prayers (for he was always a religious man ... he
+did a lot of good for the men under him in India), and I sat with him
+till it was time to go to bed.  I don't know if it was any comfort to
+him, but I knew from his face that Lydia must have said no, and I
+thought perhaps he wouldn't like being alone....  Well, then of course
+one didn't like to rush in and ask one's best friend's girl to marry
+one so soon after his disappointment.  One had very strict ideas about
+honour in those days; I hope one has not lost them....  It is very odd
+that I was never here before, until last spring.  Nearly all my service
+has been abroad, and I generally used to spend my leave hunting or in
+London, and my niece used to come up and stay with me there....  I
+didn't care much for Taylor in those days, but he really isn't a bad
+sort of fellow."
+
+The sun began to sink behind the trees, and the General seemed to wake
+from the reverie in which he had been talking to me, and said: "You
+oughtn't to be out after sunset, if you have still got malaria about
+you," and we began to walk slowly homewards.
+
+"It was just such an evening as this," he said, "when I bade her
+good-bye, meaning to come back in a little while and ask her to marry
+me.  She was standing by the gate--fine old gates with stone pillars to
+them, and the sun shone full in her eyes....  I suppose that gentle,
+sweet look never left them, did it?  They were closed, of course, when
+I saw them just now....  She was wearing a white dress that evening, I
+remember--a sort of muslin dress which I suppose would not be
+fashionable now, but which looked very pretty then.  It had a lot of
+pink ribbons about it, and there was a great bunch of pink moss-roses
+in the ribbon of her belt....  Do you know I never picture her except
+as the girl who stood by the gate with the sun behind her, and the
+roses in her belt.  I think I lost my head a little when it came to
+saying good-bye, and I began to say things which I had not meant to
+say--she looked so pretty with the red sunlight upon her, and her white
+muslin dress almost turned to pink in the glare....  I don't think she
+was surprised, only sweeter and gentler than before, and a curious,
+happy look was in her eyes.  But I stopped in time, and stammered like
+a fool, thinking of poor Harold Bazeley, and then I said good-bye
+rather hurriedly.  But I came back again to the gate where she was
+still standing, and asked if I might have one of the roses in her belt.
+And she gave me the whole bunch.
+
+"... It must have been after this that the father died and left them
+very poor, and then the sister (this one, Belinda) had a stroke of
+paralysis, and there was no one to look after her but Lydia....  I
+wrote and proposed to her before I went to India--asked her to come
+with me as my wife.  But she said she could not marry while her sister
+lived.  It isn't as though we could have remained in England, and she
+could have lived with us; but of course India would have been an
+impossibility for the poor thing.  We never thought in those days that
+poor Belinda would live long.  And then she made a sort of recovery,
+but was still quite helpless, and Lydia wrote and asked me to wait for
+her no longer....  I never heard that she had come to live at Stowel."
+
+The broad, wide village road was dim with twilight when we walked
+homewards along it--The Uncle and I.  The children had all gone
+indoors, and the flowers in the little garden had lost their colour in
+the dim light.
+
+As we passed by the cottage the General halted on the quiet, deserted
+road and took off his hat, then he leaned over the little green paling
+and drew towards him a branch of a moss-rose tree that Miss Lydia had
+planted there.  He plucked a bud from it and held it to his face.  Then
+he said gently, "They are the same sort, but they do not smell so
+sweet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Mrs. Fielden came to Stowel for the funeral, and did not return to
+London again.  She went to pay some visits, I believe, and afterwards
+she will go to Scotland to stay with the Melfords, as she always does
+in August.  It was a very quiet summer.  Anthony went to Ireland to
+fish, and Major Jacobs went with him instead of me: Anthony and I used
+to take the fishing together.  Even Frances Taylor went north to stay
+with Mrs. Macdonald, and the Reading Society postponed its future
+meetings till the winter should come again.
+
+Undoubtedly Kate Jamieson's wedding was a stirring event in a very dull
+time.  The festivities connected with it were carried out with the
+Jamiesons' usual energy and lavishness.  It is possible to be lavish on
+five hundred a year.  That is one of the pleasing things that
+kind-hearted people like the Jamiesons can prove.  No one was omitted
+in the list of invitations to the reception which was held on the lawn
+in front of the house.  And there the whole of the Jamiesons' wide
+circle of friends was gathered together, forming an assembly which
+surely only the censorious mind could find fault with.  The
+refreshments, these good Jamiesons informed us, with their ingenuous
+interest in discussing detail, were prepared by Margaret, and Kate
+contributed to the payment of their ingredients from her small savings.
+The group of bride and bridesmaids, which was photographed at the front
+door, each wearing an expression of acute distress upon her face, was
+George's own idea, and was nobly paid for by him.
+
+It was announced at the wedding-feast--although it had been whispered
+for a long time--that there was soon to be another break in the
+Jamieson family.  We all instantly prepared a smile of congratulation
+for Maud, and some disappointment was felt when it was discovered that
+the remark applied to Mrs. Jamieson's youngest son, Kennie.  The Pirate
+had for some time been informing his friends that the Wild West was
+"calling to him," and that he had the "go fever," and that "once he had
+known the perfect freedom of life out there" it was impossible to
+settle down to the conventionalities of English society again.  The
+Pirate had obtained a post as purser on one of the ships of the company
+to which he belonged, and he appeared at the wedding-breakfast in a
+suit of white ducks, a gold-laced cap, and the famous cummerbund.  I
+have a strong suspicion that he had a revolver concealed in a
+mysterious pocket, from the way his hand, in moments of excitement,
+occasionally moved towards it; but fortunately the wedding-party was of
+so peaceful a description that it was not necessary to produce the
+weapon.
+
+Since the exciting news of Kennie's proposed departure for Buenos Ayres
+Mettie has developed nerves and hysteria.  But so limited is the power
+of imagination or discrimination in the human mind, that I must
+honestly confess that I never once connected her indisposition and low
+spirits with the news of her cousin's departure.  Mettie has added to a
+certain helplessness which always distinguishes her a tendency to
+tears, and to sitting alone in her bedroom and sniffing dolorously; the
+big thin nose requires constant attention, and there are red rims round
+poor Mettie's eyes.  The Jamiesons, who trace every variation in life
+to a love affair, are not long of course in coming to the right and the
+sentimental--nay, from the Jamieson point of view, the only reasonable
+explanation of this change in their little cousin.  But Mettie has
+entreated them to say nothing, and to let her suffer in silence, and
+they are too loyal to betray her interesting confidences.  Kennie
+himself is, I believe, still unaware of the interest he is exciting in
+Mettie's gentle breast, but doubtless the little woman's extreme
+timidity and her clinging disposition appeal in no small measure to the
+Defender of the Sex.  Mettie raises meek, adoring eyes to the Pirate's
+ruddy face, under the gold-laced cap, and murmurs with clasped hands:
+"You will never come back to us--I know it, I feel it!  You will be
+murdered by some gang of cut-throats, and then what will I--I mean your
+mother, do?"  The Pirate plumes himself and struts, and the dangers
+that his little cousin has so powerfully depicted for him make his
+young heart swell.
+
+The village church was quite full of spectators and friends; nearly all
+our acquaintances in the village wore new gowns--or apparently new
+gowns--for the wedding.  Mrs. Lovekin, in a black-cloth mantle with
+bead-trimming, showed guests into their pews, and directed the children
+at the doorway into giving a ringing cheer as the bride drove up to the
+church.  It was whispered by a wag that Mrs. Lovekin would like to don
+a surplice and officiate at the interesting ceremony herself.  There
+was a party in white cotton gloves, who banged doors and shouted "Drive
+on!" and it was hard to realize that this was the Jamiesons' odd man
+and gardener, transformed for the occasion.  He wore a large white
+ribbon rosette in his button-hole, and all the morning he had been busy
+erecting an archway over the gate at Belmont with Union Jacks displayed
+thereon, out of consideration, as he explained, to the late Captain
+Jamieson, he being military.  The Miss Traceys were resplendent in
+brown dresses and profuse lace neckties, securely anchored to their
+chests by massive brooches; the dresses were afterwards mentioned in an
+account of the wedding in the local paper, and it was cut out and
+carefully kept by the Miss Traceys, who pasted the interesting news in
+a small album for news-cuttings which they bought for the purpose.
+
+At the Jamiesons' little house there was, I understand, a wild state of
+confusion and energy from a very early hour in the morning, and
+looking-glasses and hand-mirrors were in great demand.  The centre of
+interest there, it seems, was Kate's bedroom, where the whole of The
+Family congregated to give Kate a last kiss before the veil was put on,
+and to wish her happiness again and again.  George, who throughout the
+entire proceedings made a laudable attempt to appear calm, at last told
+his sister that it really was time to start, and the carriage rolled
+down the hill, and Kate Jamieson alighted from it, and walked up the
+aisle of the old church leaning upon her brother's arm.  Eliza Jamieson
+was busy with a note-book the whole time, and almost one seemed to
+begin to see the wedding through her journalistic eyes.
+
+Our curate's wife, who is still far from strong, asked Palestrina to
+look after Peggy, who expressed a wish to see the wedding, and I was
+interested to find how many little games Peggy had invented for herself
+by way of getting through the tedium of a service--games which, I
+imagine, she had been preparing during the many services which a
+curate's little girl is supposed to attend.
+
+"If you press your eyes to the back of your head as far as you can,"
+she whispered to me, "you can see green and red and blue spots, and
+then open them and you can see green and red and blue spots round
+father."  And again: "I can say, 'We beseech Thee!' seven times over
+while the choir are singing it, if we have Jackson's _Te Deum_."  And
+then: "Do you know what Georgie and I do, when we are sent to church
+alone?  We hide in the pew until no one thinks we are there, and then
+we pop up in the middle of the service and begin to say the responses.
+When we sit with the Sunday-school children we play at 'My husband and
+your husband,' and then we each choose in turn which husband we'll have
+in the congregation.  You see, the first man who comes in is to be the
+first child's husband, and the second the second child's, that's how we
+manage; last Sunday I got the baker's boy."
+
+Mr. Swinnerton was at the wedding, somewhat inclined to be
+consequential, as usual; but as he devoted his whole attention to
+Margaret, one could not but feel that his presence was acceptable.  (We
+are on the tip-toe of expectation to know when Mr. Swinnerton will
+"come to the point.")  Margaret Jamieson looked after the needs of the
+Higginses' relations, and attended to the wants of all the humbler of
+the guests.
+
+There was still another element of interest in the marriage-party in
+the person of Mr. Evans, who ran down from Hampstead for it.  "If Mr.
+Evans comes," Maud said, with the characteristic fine common sense of
+the Jamiesons, "I want you all to understand that it is all quite over
+between him and me.  But what I have always thought about Mr. Evans is
+this--that he is the sort of man who would like The Family, and I do
+not see why he should not take a fancy to one of the other members of
+it.  I am quite sure his affection for me was based upon my
+suitability.  He often told me, for instance, that he would like a wife
+who had been brought up to do things for herself, and could manage on a
+small income and dress cheaply, and I am sure we can all do that.  And
+after all, if that is so, one of us is as suitable as another.  He had
+very definite ideas about a wife; but I couldn't help feeling all the
+time that it was some one like ourselves that he had in his mind.  He
+seemed to have a great dread of any one who was too smart; and I said
+to him at the time--for of course we both talked about our families a
+good deal, as one does in the first stages--that we were all very
+homely sort of people.  I could always put myself in the background if
+he seemed, for instance, to take a fancy to Gracie.  And Gracie herself
+has often said that she thinks she would like a man to wear a white
+watered-silk waistcoat."
+
+Gracie looked quite pleased with the arrangement, and Mr. Evans was
+asked down "as a friend."  And I should here like to record--only of
+course it is going too far ahead--that before the summer was over, Mr.
+Evans, charmed with The Family, as Maud felt he would be, and convinced
+of their suitability, had chosen Gracie from amongst the remaining Miss
+Jamiesons who were still at the disposal of those who seek a wife.
+Gracie's energy charmed Mr. Evans.  He often said afterwards that he
+believed he had got the pick of the basket after all.
+
+It was quite evident to me, and I believe to most of the Jamiesons'
+guests, that one of the mysteries, so dear to the hearts of Stowel, was
+in preparation for the wedding afternoon.  Not even my sister and I had
+been initiated into the secret; but Mrs. Jamieson, it must be
+confessed, took away from the shock of surprise which might have been
+ours, by referring during the whole afternoon to the entertainment
+which was to take place later.  The Jamiesons had decided that the
+lawn, newly mown, was to be suddenly cleared of trestle-tables and
+garden-chairs, and that a small band of musicians was to spring up
+unexpectedly out of the ground, as it were, and that every one was to
+know suddenly that they were in the midst of an impromptu dance.  Now
+Mrs. Jamieson, nervously expectant, and half fearing from the detached
+manners of her daughters (so well did the Miss Jamiesons simulate their
+ignorance of what was before them) that they must indeed have forgotten
+about the dance, interrupted every conversation by creeping up to them
+in her melancholy, quiet way, and saying, "Shall I get them to clear
+away now?"
+
+"It's to be impromptu, mamma," entreated the Miss Jamiesons in agitated
+whispers.  It had been decided between them that Gracie, as the
+youngest of the party, should exclaim suddenly, as if by some happy
+inspiration, "I vote we dance;" and that then in a perfectly easy and
+natural manner guests and entertainers alike should, with the utmost
+friendliness, help to push back the tables and chairs into the lilac
+bushes, and that then the musicians should be hastily summoned from the
+kitchen, where they were to have tea.  Before that time arrived the
+unfortunate Mrs. Jamieson had, as one might say, almost skimmed the
+cream off the whole thing.  Her nervousness would not allow her to
+rest, and in the end she had established the musicians in the three
+chairs so artlessly prepared for them under the chestnut-tree; and
+there they were with fiddle and concertina long before Gracie had found
+an opportunity for making her impromptu suggestion.  Their sudden
+appearance, one could not but feel, detracted from the unprepared
+effect that had been intended, and they stood waiting to begin with
+quite a forlorn appearance until the Pirate, for whom the arrival of
+the hour means the arrival of the man (if the Pirate is anywhere
+about), called out in his loud tones, "Strike up, you fellows, and let
+us have a dance!" and the very next moment the white drill suit and the
+gold-laced cap of Kennie might have been seen in the middle of the
+lawn.  He gallantly seized Mettie round the waist and scattered the
+guests by the onslaught and the fierce charge he made upon them, and
+soon had cleared a space in which he footed it gaily.  The Higginses,
+who had been rather shy during the reception, hastened to find
+partners, and warmed to the occasion at once.  Young Abel Higgins, the
+handsome young farmer from Dorming, said it was the pleasantest
+entertainment he had ever been at.  "There is no cliquism about it," he
+remarked.  "You just say to a girl, 'Will you dance?' and up she comes;
+it doesn't matter if she's a lord's daughter!"
+
+Mr. Swinnerton devoted much of his attention and his conversation to me
+during the afternoon.  He discussed what he calls "military matters" at
+great length, pointing out the mistakes of every general in South
+Africa, at the same time clearly stating what Mr. Swinnerton would have
+done under similar circumstances, and lamenting the inefficiency of the
+War Office.  Later in the afternoon, however, when he found me where,
+as I hoped, I had effectually concealed myself behind a laurel bush,
+Mr. Swinnerton plunged heavily into the question of marriage; and this,
+as Maud would say, was surely a very hopeful sign.  I was disappointed,
+however, to find that his views regarding the happy state of matrimony
+seemed to have been made almost entirely from one point of view, and
+that point of view himself.
+
+"Don't you think," he began ponderously, as he seated himself beside me
+after the rather heavy fatigue of dancing on a lawn to the strains of a
+band that did not keep scrupulous time--"don't you think that a man
+ought to see a girl in her own home before he makes up his mind?"
+
+I dissented on the plea of over-cautiousness, but Mr. Swinnerton did
+not hear me.
+
+"What I think," he went on, "is that marriage is a serious undertaking
+for a man, and that one ought to be very sure of one's own mind."
+
+I admitted the seriousness of matrimony, but thought it applied equally
+to the woman.
+
+This remark also seemed to escape Mr. Swinnerton's attention.  Indeed,
+I found that what is extremely irritating about this fellow is that his
+mind never diverges from his own topic; he seems quite incapable of
+excursions into the thoughts and feelings of the persons he addresses,
+but plods steadily on his own path, pleased to give his own views, and
+quite unaffected by the differences of opinion that are offered him.
+There is a legend of my childhood that records that a man once said,
+"It is bitt----" and then went to sleep for a thousand years, and when
+he woke up he said, "--erly cold."  I am often reminded of this story
+when I listen to Mr. Swinnerton's plodding conversation.
+
+"What I feel is," he went on--and one knew that no fatigue on the part
+of the listener would be noticed by him--"what I feel is, that the man
+being the head of the woman he should always choose some one who is
+docile and good-tempered, and perhaps above all things a good cook.
+That's the very first thing I would teach a woman--to be a good cook.
+It's so important for a man to have his meals really nice and nicely
+served.  Don't you agree with me?"
+
+"It is very important," I said.
+
+"I am so glad you agree with me."  Mr. Swinnerton occasionally remarks
+on an agreeable clause in one's conversation, whereas a disagreement
+never even penetrates his mind.  "Of course, you fellows with your mess
+and all that can scarcely realize how necessary it is that a man's wife
+should be a good cook.  And then she ought to be thoroughly
+domesticated," went on Mr. Swinnerton's heavy voice; "a woman should
+not always be wanting to go out in the evening.  What I feel is that
+the home should constitute the woman's happiness."
+
+"And cooking?" I said.
+
+"Yes, and cooking," said Mr. Swinnerton.  "I do not want my wife to
+have any money; I had much rather she had to come to me for things.  I
+am not greedy about money.  I am comfortably off, but I think a man
+should have entire control of the purse.  One could knock off any
+expenditure on a wife's dress, if that is the case.  Ladies like a new
+bonnet, and I should always give my wife a new bonnet if things had
+been nice."
+
+I remarked that Mr. Swinnerton was very generous.
+
+"I know I am generous.  Of course, a man gives up a great deal when he
+marries, but I do not know that in the matter of expense it would cost
+me more to keep a small house than to pay for lodgings."
+
+"It depends," I said, "what wages you give your wife.  An occasional
+new bonnet would not be an extravagant salary, if she turned out to be
+a really good cook."
+
+For the first time Mr. Swinnerton seemed struck by the wisdom of my
+remarks.  "No, it would not," he said; "it would not.  I know that I
+would make a good husband," he remarked; "and I feel that I have a
+future before me in the volunteers."
+
+Margaret joined us at this moment, and Swinnerton smiled indulgently at
+her, without offering, however, to give her his seat.  I do not think
+that Margaret noticed this, as she did not notice any omission on Mr.
+Swinnerton's part.
+
+"I hope you are not very tired," she said.  "Your journey from London
+and then this little dance must be very fatiguing, I am afraid."
+
+"Men don't get tired," said Mr. Swinnerton grandiosely, and he looked
+towards me for applause.  He did not, however, ask her to dance, and
+Margaret moved away to attend to other guests.
+
+"She's a very nice-looking girl," said Mr. Swinnerton approvingly, "and
+a well-brought-up girl, too."
+
+So I suppose it is still hopeful, as the Jamiesons would say.  But I
+pray that Margaret Jamieson will remove Mr. Swinnerton hence when she
+has married him.
+
+Kate and Mr. Ward drove to the station in the best landau and pair of
+horses from Stowel Inn.  Mr. Ward was so upset from first to last by
+the ceremonies and the heat that his conical-shaped head, covered with
+the dew of nervous perspiration, steamed like a kettle; but his
+affection for his bride and his evident delight and pride in her were
+undeniable, and although resenting in his mild way the stinging shower
+of rice with which he was pelted, and the usual facetious jokes that
+were made on the bride and bridegroom, Mr. Ward nevertheless beamed
+with good-nature all the time.
+
+Palestrina made me laugh when she came home in the evening.  She had
+been down to the village to see the Pettifers and to show them her
+wedding finery, as she promised to do; for Mrs. Pettifer is ill in bed
+again, and was unable to stand at the church door with the rest of the
+crowd to see the wedding-party.  My sister found the old lady weeping
+bitterly, and for a long time she could not guess the cause of her
+distress, until at last a remark of her husband's explained it.  "She
+do take on like that tur'ble queer," he said, "as soon as ever the
+wedding-bells ring after a marriage is over."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Pettifer; "I always say to myself, 'She's got him, and
+he ain't disappointed her after all.'"
+
+Kennie sailed for Buenos Ayres the day after the wedding, and Mettie
+walked over to see us, being sent on some errand, I have no doubt,
+wherein she would be more usefully employed than in getting into the
+way of the staff of workers who were clearing up after yesterday's
+festivities.  Mettie brought over Mrs. Ward's first telegram received
+that morning from Dover, and said it was too funny to think of Kate
+being Mrs. Ward.  "Kate Ward," she said with one of her curious little
+chirruping laughs, "Kate Ward--do look at it!"  And we dutifully
+replied that it certainly seemed the height of drollery.
+
+Palestrina is not perfectly just to me when Mettie comes to call.  She
+always remembers something important which she has until this moment
+forgotten, and with apologies to Mettie she flies off to see to it, and
+I am left with our caller.  And then the marriage question is in full
+swing before one can prevent it.  Mettie says she would never, never
+allow a man to know that she cared for him, and that no nice girl
+would.  Did I think that if a girl never gave any evidence of her love,
+and died, it would be a very pitiful end?  And of course I said that
+the pathos of the thing would strike one directly.
+
+"After death," said Mettie, "she might still be his good angel.  It is
+very strange," she said, "to think of becoming a being with wings.  Do
+you know I often wonder what those wings can be like, and I cannot
+imagine them made of anything but white ostrich feathers, which I must
+say would look very pretty....  I am sure it is a brave thing to part
+and say nothing, but do you think that one might write?"
+
+It was only then, at that precise moment, that I in any way connected
+Mettie's remarks with the thought of the Pirate Boy, now a purser in
+the ---- Line.
+
+"My dear Mettie," I said, "I should certainly write to him--write
+often, write affectionately, send him your photograph, work him a
+housewife for his cabin, carve him a frame for your photograph.  I am
+delighted----"
+
+"Oh! but nothing is settled yet," simpered Mettie.
+
+It has sometimes struck me since, although one generally denies the
+suggestion, that the first sentiment of love-making may emanate from
+the woman's mind.  But probably the Pirate will never know that it was
+not his own idea that he should fall in love with Mettie.
+
+This evening I was looking over a lot of old letters, such as our
+fathers and mothers used to keep, put away in drawers with bits of
+ribbon tied round them in the days when there was more time for that
+sort of thing than there is now.  And I came across the following
+letter, written in ink that has grown rather faded, and dated 1845.  It
+describes a wedding, and I have saved it from a number of other letters
+which I have destroyed, to stick it into my diary as an appropriate
+sort of ending to my entries for to-day.  The letter is a genuine one,
+and I have the original of it beside me now.
+
+
+"MY DEAREST AUNT,
+
+"You wished to hear all about our doings on Thursday.  Though I dare
+say you have heard many editions of the affairs of that day, I take the
+earliest opportunity of relating to you, as I promised, my version of
+it, though how often was it wished that dear aunt and uncle had
+themselves been present to illuminate the picture.  We all assembled at
+a quarter-past ten o'clock.  The married ladies (and gentlemen, whether
+they were in that happy state or not) remained in the drawing-room
+till, at a given signal, the bride descended, followed by her
+bridesmaids--first Emily and myself, then Anne and Jane Schofield, then
+Anna and Eliza Schofield.  The four first were in pink, the two last in
+blue.  After talking over matters a little, we entered our respective
+carriages, mamma going in the first carriage, and papa and Mary
+bringing up the rear.  We went through the ceremony very well.  Mary
+responded in a perfectly clear and audible voice; but once the worthy
+bride-groom faltered, and as I stood next to him could perceive he was
+somewhat agitated.  The ceremony of kissing being finished, we returned
+from church, when numerous and costly presents were exhibited to the
+eyes, and amongst them none more beautiful than my dear uncle and
+aunt's.  But, by way of parenthesis, mamma wishes me to ask you, as
+Mary has two silver canisters, whether you would have any objection to
+change the kind and elegant expression of your feeling for Mary into a
+silver waiter.  Knowing your kindness, we sent it by Uncle Kershaw.
+Now to proceed.  We descended to breakfast--a most important business,
+which occupied us a considerable time--in the middle of which Uncle
+Ainsworth produced a bunch of grapes, and signified his intention of
+drinking Mary Schofield's health in the red juice of the grape.  He
+immediately expressed the juice and suited the action to the word.
+Robert Arncliffe made a beautiful speech--quite a gem.  We then
+proceeded to dress the bride in travelling attire.  Then came the
+dreadful moment of parting.  Mamma and papa got over it most
+wonderfully; suffice it to say our sisters' tears flowed most copiously
+on that day.  After her departure, we took a drive to restore us to
+that harmony of spirits so desirable when persons are the entertainers
+of others.  We drove through Hyde Park and Regent's Park in procession,
+and stopped to walk in the Zoological Gardens, coveting the society of
+the brute creation as well as the rational.  We then returned to
+dinner, which was at seven, when, to our indescribable horror, on
+calling over the names of certain young ladies, we discovered their
+toilet was not complete when dinner was announced.  After a small
+delay, however, the offenders appeared, and the business of dinner was
+commenced with astonishing vigour.  There is no occasion to describe to
+you the manners and customs of a dinner-table, as a sameness must
+naturally pervade all such employments.  We ladies at length signified
+our intention of leaving the gentlemen masters of the field, and Uncle
+Jesse came out with us and went to bed.  We proceeded to enjoy a small
+quadrille, till I suppose the sound of feet called the other portion of
+the community from below.  After tea and a little display of musical
+powers, we had another quadrille; but this did not occur till Emily was
+gone.  We finally separated at half-past eleven.  We have heard twice
+or three times from the newly-married people.  They are in Bath to-day.
+Will you excuse, my dear aunt, this dreadful scrawl, but I have had so
+many notes to write, added to which I have sprained my right arm, which
+is now pleading to be spared any further exertions.  Hoping that dear
+uncle and yourself, as well as dear Sarah, are well, and again begging
+to be excused this unconnected epistle, With united love to all,
+Believe me,
+
+"Your very affectionate niece,
+    "MARGARET M. NAYLOR.
+
+"MECKLENBURGH SQUARE,
+  _August_ 1845."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+My leg, "my best leg," as poor Beau Brummell used to say, has been
+hurting rather, for the last week or two.  I do not know how Palestrina
+has discovered this, but the dear little woman is looking harassed and
+anxious, and she is trying to inveigle me into going up to London
+again, to get further advice from my doctor.  She has broached the
+subject in several ways.  There is a play going on at present which she
+would much like to see, if I will be kind enough to take her to London
+for a couple of days.  Or there is some shopping which she wants to do,
+and she must have my advice on the subject.  I believe that she does
+not like to allow, even to herself, that I ought to go expressly to see
+the surgeon, but she means to throw out the suggestion when we shall be
+in town together, and in this way she has decided, with her usual
+thoughtfulness, to spare me the anticipation of hearing that I am not
+going on as well as I ought to be doing.  It is, however, much too hot
+to think of going up to London, so for the present none of Palestrina's
+deep-laid plans have been successful.  It is broiling hot weather even
+down here in the country, but the mornings are cool and fresh, and,
+after tossing about half the night, I generally get up and go for a
+feeble sort of walk before breakfast.  It is extraordinary how new and
+fresh the world feels in the early morning, while the dew is still on
+the grass, and the birds are singing without any fear that their
+concert will be stopped or disturbed by passers-by.
+
+On my way home this morning I passed the Jamiesons' little house, and
+was hailed to come in by the flutter of nearly a dozen dinner-napkins
+waved to me from the window of the breakfast-room.  It is impossible to
+pass Belmont without being asked to come in, or to leave the hospitable
+little house without an invitation to stay longer.  Monday--this was
+Monday--is what the Jamiesons call "one of our busiest mornings," and I
+think that our good friends talk almost more than usual on the days on
+which they are most engaged.
+
+As I entered the room, two of The Family had already finished
+breakfast, and were busy at a side-table, driving their
+sewing-machines.  The whirring noise, added to the amount of talking
+that was going on, had rather a bewildering effect at first.  There
+was, besides, the added confusion attendant upon what is known as
+"getting George off."  The process seems to consist of shaking George
+into his City coat, brushing it, patting him on the back, telling him
+how nice he looks, hoping he will get down in the middle of the week,
+or at least not later than Friday afternoon, and giving him messages
+and remembrances to quite half a dozen friends in London.  The Family
+chorus as I entered was something like this:--
+
+"Cream or sugar, weak or strong?"
+
+"Mettie, did you get your letters?"
+
+"Eliza, which is your napkin-ring?"
+
+"Please say what you will have; I have asked you at least half a dozen
+times."
+
+"Do you mind the window open?"
+
+"Does any one hear the bus?"
+
+"Toast or rolls?"
+
+"Which is your napkin-ring?"
+
+"Did any one hear the rain last night?"
+
+"You haven't said yet if you will have an egg."
+
+"Mother is not well, and is not coming down this morning."
+
+"Does any one mind if we go on with our machines?"
+
+Over and above this, snatches of newspaper were read, and numerous
+directions were given to a very young servant as to how things should
+be placed upon the table--a proceeding which usually goes on at every
+one of the Jamiesons' meals.  It is known as "training one of our
+village girls."
+
+Gracie and Eliza were the two who sat at the side-table before their
+whirring sewing-machines, their very spectacles nearly darting from
+their heads with energy and speed.  George said, "I wish one of you
+girls would mend my glove before I start;" and Gracie said, "Give it to
+me; I can spare five minutes off lunch-time to get this finished."
+
+Margaret remarked, "Mamma seems very much out of spirits to-day, and I
+think one of us ought to go and play draughts with her."
+
+Eliza took out her watch.  "I can play draughts for thirty-five
+minutes," she remarked--"from eleven-five to eleven-forty--and then
+Gracie must take my place, as Margaret will be baking, and I have the
+soup-kitchen accounts to make up."
+
+"I did not anticipate draughts this morning," said poor Gracie.  "I
+must just get this done when I go to bed."  This is the last refuge of
+the overdriven, and one which is so frequently alluded to by the
+Jamiesons that I often fear they deny themselves the proper amount of
+sleep.
+
+George here kissed each of his sisters in turn, and ran upstairs to say
+good-bye to his mother, while the omnibus waited at the gate.
+
+Maud, who was trimming hats for the whole family, and who was
+surrounded by a curious medley of ribbons and finery, said: "What about
+the Church Council work?  I am afraid we have forgotten it."
+
+"That's my business," said Gracie tragically; "and I must give this
+up;" and she stopped her sewing-machine, and rolled the purple cotton
+pinafore into a tight ball and placed it on the table.
+
+"Dear Gracie," said Margaret, "could I not do it?  I could get it in
+between the Kaffirs and my baking."
+
+"I would offer to do it," said Eliza, with that affectionate
+helpfulness which distinguishes The Family, "only I am so filled up
+with soup."  Eliza referred to her soup-kitchen accounts.
+
+The small servant here appeared at the door, and said that an old woman
+wanted to see Miss Gracie.
+
+"My time!  my time!" said Gracie, and went to the back door to give the
+last shilling of her quarter's dress allowance to the poor woman in
+distress.
+
+"The worst of playing draughts is," said Eliza, "that one can do
+nothing else at the same time, except it be to add up accounts in one's
+head.  Otherwise I should have been only too glad.  I tell you what I
+can do, though--I can play instead of Gracie this morning, if she won't
+mind my keeping the candle alight to do my Browning article after I
+have gone to bed."
+
+Mettie always offers to help every one, but so slow is the little
+woman's way of working that the energetic family of Jamieson are quite
+aware that probably the business will be weeks in doing; so their
+answers to Mettie's offers, given in a kindly voice, are always: "My
+dear, you have got your letters to write, and your practising--we could
+not do without your singing in the evening, you know."
+
+Mr. Evans, who was a guest in the house for a few days, was smoking his
+pipe in a leisurely way in the garden, and Gracie said: "I really do
+feel that I ought to give more attention to Mr. Evans, if only I had
+the time for it.  Could one of you run into the garden and make a few
+pleasant remarks to him until I am ready?" And this Eliza did, first
+glancing at her watch in the characteristic Jamieson fashion, and
+coming in presently to say that she had sat "for ten solid minutes
+doing nothing, and that she does wish men had more resources of their
+own."
+
+It would have been useless to suggest that the work should stop for a
+whole summer day.  A child came in with some flowers as an offering to
+the Miss Jamiesons, and Eliza said: "Would you mind putting them down
+somewhere, my dear?  I will try to get a minute to arrange them
+by-and-by."  And then the machines began again, and I walked on
+homewards, and enjoyed a long, hot morning in the garden with a book.
+
+The garden was very shady and pleasant, and one thought regretfully of
+the Jamiesons sitting indoors with their sewing-machines.  Palestrina
+came out presently in a gray dress, very soft and cool-looking, and
+with a big sunshade over her head.  She sat down beside me, and said in
+an off-hand way, and a determination to be congratulatory which was
+very suspicious: "I have got a pressing invitation for you."  And she
+handed me a letter from Kate Ward.
+
+Mrs. Ward wrote upon the almost immaculate notepaper which is affected
+by brides, I have often noticed that this superfine quality of paper is
+one of the first extravagances of young married life, as it is one of
+the first economies of a later date, and a little judgment will soon
+show how long a woman has been married by merely looking at her
+notepaper.  Cream-laid, with a gold address at the top, bespeaks the
+early days of matrimony; and a descent through white stamping, no
+stamping, Hieratica to Silurian note, marks the different stages of the
+rolling years.
+
+Kate said (on the best Court note) that she would never forgive us if
+we did not come and see her in her new home.  James had been generous
+in the extreme, and they had bought everything "plain but good" for the
+house.  And the whole expense of it had been covered by exactly the sum
+of money that they had laid by for the purpose.  Kate continued, "But I
+will not bore you with a description of the house, for I want you to
+see it for yourselves," and then entered upon the usual Jamieson
+descriptive catalogue of every piece of furniture and every wallpaper
+which she had purchased.
+
+I handed the letter back to Palestrina, who was sitting in an
+exaggerated attitude of ease and indifference on the edge of my
+deck-chair, and said to her, "Why leave Paradise?  London will be
+atrocious in this hot weather, and I believe it would be tempting
+Providence to quit this garden."
+
+"I am afraid it will give great disappointment to Kate if we do not
+go," said Palestrina, in a tone of voice which suggested that she had
+been prepared for opposition, and had rehearsed her own arguments
+beforehand.  "After all, she lives in the suburbs, and has a garden of
+her own, and we need not stay more than two or three days."
+
+"We shall have to do so much admiring," I said, smothering a yawn.  "I
+know what brides are!  You, Palestrina, probably know exactly the right
+thing to say about newly-laid linoleum and furniture which is plain but
+good, but I never do."
+
+"I think I should like to go," said Palestrina, putting the matter upon
+personal grounds, as I knew she would do when she had entirely made up
+her mind that I must go up to London.  What pressure she had brought to
+bear upon Mrs. Ward to induce her to invite us to the new house I
+cannot say, but some instinct told me that Kate had been warned to
+write a letter which might be handed to me to read.
+
+I pointed out to Palestrina that, much as I should miss her at home, I
+should not stand in the way of her paying a visit to her old friend.
+
+"I have accepted for us both from Thursday to Tuesday," said Palestrina
+firmly.  "Oh, by-the-bye," she said, rising and going indoors, "I just
+sent a line to Dr.  Fergus at the same time to say that you will look
+in and see him one morning, just to see that you are going on all
+right."
+
+"You also were up early?" I said to the diplomat, who smiled at me from
+under her big umbrella without a vestige of shame at her own cunning.
+"I don't think it is fair on a crippled man to get up early and send
+off letters by the early post.  It's a mean trick."
+
+"You were up half the night," said Palestrina, nodding her head at me,
+"for I heard you."  And she crossed the lawn and went indoors again.
+
+The following Thursday we took train for Clarkham.  I had never stayed
+in this part of the world before, till we came to visit Kate, and the
+suburb where she lives seems to me to be rather a pleasant place, with
+broad roads over whose walls and palings shrubs and red maples and
+other trees hang invitingly.  And it is so near London that a very
+short run in the train takes one to Victoria Station.  But the
+neighbourhood is not fashionable, and I cannot help remarking the
+apologetic tone in which every one we meet speaks of living here.
+
+The Wards' house is a very nice little place, with very new wall-papers
+and very clean curtains and slippery floors, upon which art rugs slide
+dangerously.  There is a small garden with a lawn and a brown hawthorn
+tree upon it, and there are two trim little maids who wait upon one
+excellently well.  Kate is a thorough good manager, and her whole
+household reminds one of those pages on household management which one
+sees in magazines, describing the perfect equipment of a house--its
+management, and the rules to be observed by a young housekeeper.
+
+There is a place for everything, and Kate says her wedding-presents are
+a great assistance in giving a home-like look to the house.
+
+Mr. Ward leaves home at half-past nine every morning, and Kate shakes
+him into his coat in exactly the same way George used to be shaken into
+his, and stands at the hall-door with a bright smile on her face, until
+James has got into the morning bus and driven away, in a manner that is
+very wifely and commendable.
+
+The unpretentious little household seems to be a very happy one, and
+Kate was quite satisfied with the praise which Palestrina bestowed upon
+everything.
+
+"Of course," she said, "the great drawback is that the place is so
+unfashionable;" and we warmly protested against that being of the least
+consequence.  But Kate said with her usual common sense: "It does
+matter, really.  No one thinks anything of you if you live here, and
+nearly every one who has enough money always leaves directly.
+Still"--cheerfully--"one must expect some drawbacks, and I do think I
+have been very lucky.  James is goodness itself, and quite a number of
+people have been to call."
+
+We found to our dismay that Kate, with the laudable intention of
+amusing us, had accepted several invitations to what are called "the
+last of the summer gaieties."  There were tea-parties and
+garden-parties given by her friends, to which we were expected to go;
+and her very nearest neighbours, who are generally known as the "Next
+Doors," actually invited us to dine.
+
+"This afternoon," Kate said, "is the day of the Finlaysons'
+garden-party.  They are frightfully rich people--ironmongers in the
+City; but you never saw such greenhouses and gardens as they have got!
+Do put on your best dress," she said to Palestrina, "and look nice;
+people here seem to dress so smartly for this sort of thing."
+
+I think, indeed, it was the very grandest party to which I have ever
+had an invitation.  Every one seemed to sail about in a most stately
+fashion, in a gown of some rich stuff, and there was such an air of
+magnificence about the whole thing that one hardly dared to speak above
+a whisper.  There was a marquee on the lawn, with most expensive
+refreshments inside, and a great many waiters handing about things on
+trays.  Mrs. Finlayson spoke habitually--at least at parties--in an
+exalted tone of voice, which one wondered if she used when, for
+instance, she was adding up accounts or saying her prayers.  It was
+difficult to imagine that the voice could have been intended for
+private use---it was such a very public, almost a platform voice, and
+the accent was most finished and aristocratic.
+
+The Miss Finlaysons, in exquisite blue dresses and very thin shoes,
+also sailed about and shook hands with their guests in a cold, proud
+way which was very effective.  Young Finlayson was frankly supercilious
+and condescending; and there was a schoolboy in a tall hat, who was
+always alluded to as "our brother at Eton."  The excellent old papa of
+the firm of Finlayson and Merritt was really the most human and the
+least alarming of the whole party.  He seemed quite pleased when
+Palestrina, in her soft gurgling way, admired his greenhouses and
+peaches, and he led her back to where his lady ("wife" is too homely a
+term) was standing in a throne-room attitude on the lawn, and remarked
+genially, "This young lady has just been admiring our little place,
+Lavinia."
+
+"Indeed," said my sister, "it seems to me very charming, and----"
+
+"Hush, hush!" said Mrs. Finlayson playfully, but with an undercurrent
+of annoyance in her party voice.  "I won't hear a word said in its
+praise--it is just a step to the West End."
+
+"What is the actual distance?" I began.
+
+It was old Finlayson who rescued me from my dilemma, and explained that
+until five years ago they had had a very tidy little 'ouse at
+'ampstead, and that this present location, although so magnificent,
+was, in the eyes of his lady, really a stepping-stone to further
+grandeur and a more fashionable locality.
+
+The Next Doors were introduced to us at this party, and we were much
+struck by the fact that, although they seemed appropriately lodged in a
+place well suited to them, and in a society certainly not inferior to
+themselves, they, too, instantly began to apologize for living at
+Clarkham.
+
+"One feels so lost in a place like this," said Mrs. Next Door; "and
+although the boys are so happy with their tennis and things on Saturday
+afternoons, I cannot help feeling that it is a great drawback to the
+girls to live here."
+
+A band began to play under the trees, and Palestrina said to me, with
+one of her low laughs: "I wonder if I shall begin to sail about soon?
+Isn't it funny!  They all do it, and now that the band has begun I feel
+that I must do it too."
+
+The Miss Finlaysons came up at intervals and introduced young men to
+her in a spasmodic sort of way.  When one least expected it, some one
+in a tall hat and a long frock-coat was placed before Palestrina, and a
+Miss Finlayson said quite sharply, "May I introduce--Mr. Smith----" and
+then as suddenly retired.  There was nothing for it but to make a
+little tepid conversation to the various Mr. Smiths, and Sonnenscheins,
+and Seligmanns who were in this way presented, and we noticed that
+almost every one of them began his conversation by saying, "Been going
+out a great deal lately?  Done the Academy?"  And then moved off to be
+introduced to some one else.
+
+The young men were very supercilious and grand, and we could only
+account for it, on discussing the matter afterwards, by supposing that
+they thought Palestrina was a Clarkham young lady, and that this was
+their way of showing their superiority to her.  One or two had
+certainly said to us with a dubious air, "Do you live in the Pork?" But
+it was not until the quieter moments that followed the stress of this
+regal party that we at all realized that this meant, Did we live in
+Clarkham Park.
+
+Kate Ward was very agreeable and pleasant to every one, and was voted a
+nobody directly, and we heard it remarked that she had "no style."  I
+think Kate must have overheard the remark, for she became a little
+nervous towards the end of the afternoon, and presently said, "Perhaps
+we ought to be going?" But young Finlayson was here suddenly introduced
+to her by one of his sisters, and Kate thought it necessary to make a
+few remarks before saying good-bye.  She said something pretty about
+his sisters, who are undoubtedly handsome girls, and Mr. Finlayson said
+bitterly, "Yes, a good many so-called beauties in London would have to
+shut up shop if my sisters appeared in the Row.  It is a beastly shame
+they have got to live down here!"
+
+Kate said, "But I suppose they go to town occasionally?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Finlayson; "but they ought to have their Park hacks,
+and do things in style.  It is a shame the governor does not take a
+house in the West End."
+
+My sister tried to look sympathetic.
+
+"However," said Mr. Finlayson more hopefully, "we have taken a bit of a
+shoot in Scotland this year, so I hope the girls will have some
+society.  Well, it is a deer forest really, and a very fine house and
+grounds," amended Mr. Finlayson, with a burst of candour.
+
+Mrs. Finlayson sailed up, and stooped to make a few remarks about the
+gaiety of the past season to us.  She said that she and her daughters
+were in demand everywhere, and that the other night in a West End
+theatre every lorgnette in the house was turned towards their box.
+"Rupert, of course, has his own chambers in St. James's, and knows
+every one."
+
+The Miss Finlaysons shook hands, and said good-bye with their usual
+lofty condescension, and each said, "Going on anywhere?" to which we
+could only reply humbly that we had no further engagements for that
+afternoon.
+
+Kate praised the party all the way home, and then said, with a burst of
+feeling: "Oh, how I do wish I were a swell!  I know it's wicked, but I
+would snub one or two people."
+
+The next morning, being Sunday, we went to church, and the feeling of
+equality with the rest of mankind which this gives one was very
+refreshing after the magnificence and social distinctions about which
+we had been learning so much during the last few days.  But even in
+church one may notice how superior some families in Clarkham are to
+others.  The pew-letting of the church seems to have been conducted on
+principles other than those recommended in Holy Writ.  Richer
+folk--those with gold chains, for whom we learn precedence should not
+be accorded--occupied the front pews, furnished with red cushions and
+Prayer-Books with silver corners, while the humbler sort were
+accommodated with seats under the gallery.  The Finlaysons sailed in
+rather late, with a rustle of their smart dresses, and kneeled to pray
+on very high hassocks, their elbows just touching the book-board in
+front of them, their faces inadequately covered with their
+tightly-gloved hands.  The Next Doors had a pew half-way up the middle
+aisle.  The day was hot, and the clergyman, a small devout-looking man,
+very earnest and really eloquent, was guilty sometimes in moments of
+excitement of dropping aitches.  This of course may have been the
+result of the hot weather.  It was something of a shock to notice that
+the little Next Doors--terrible children, of high spirits and
+pugnacious dispositions--were allowed to giggle unreproved at each
+omission of the aspirate on the part of the preacher.  The Next Doors
+overtook us on our way out of church, and two of the pugnacious
+children, having dug each other with their elbows, and fought round me
+for permission to walk home with me and talk about the war, threw light
+upon their behaviour in church by remarking with smiling
+self-satisfaction, "Papa says we ought always to giggle when Mr. Elliot
+drops his aitches, to show that we know better...."  Little brutes!
+
+We spent a lazy afternoon under the brown hawthorn tree on the little
+lawn, and Thomas drove down to see Palestrina, and good Kate Ward put
+forth her very best efforts to give us a sumptuous cold supper.  We
+found, to our surprise, that nightingales sing down here, and we sat on
+the lawn till quite late listening to them.  Mr. and Mrs. Ward slipped
+their hands into one another's in the dark, and appeared to be most
+happy and contented.
+
+"I am glad we came," said Palestrina that night, when Mrs. Ward had
+quitted the room.  "Dear old Kate!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+On Monday I went to see Dr. Fergus about my leg, and did not get a very
+good report of it.
+
+We returned from Clarkham on one of the hottest days I ever remember,
+and found Mrs. Fielden waiting for us in the hall.
+
+"Every one seems to have come over to hear about your London visit,"
+said Mrs. Fielden lightly, "for I found Mr. Ellicomb and Maud Jamieson
+here when I came in."
+
+She began pouring out tea for us both as she spoke, and she signalled
+something to Palestrina, who replied as she stooped down to cut some
+cake, "Another operation--yes, four or five weeks in bed at least."
+
+"I sent Maud and Mr. Ellicomb home together," said Mrs. Fielden,
+smiling.  "He, poor man, is in a great state of mental perturbation,
+for it seems that he has heard that in South Africa pigs are fed upon
+arum lilies, and that so delicate is the flesh of the pork thus
+produced that some flower-growers in the Channel Isles are cultivating
+arum lilies for the purpose of feeding pigs, and to produce the same
+delicious pork.  He was so agitated that he got up from his chair and
+walked up and down the room, repeating over and over again, 'Arum-fed
+pork!  Monstrous, monstrous!'  I really did not know how to comfort
+him, so I sent him home with Maud Jamieson, which seemed to please him
+very much."
+
+"And you," I said, "following the Jamieson train of thought, have been
+saying to yourself ever since, 'Is there anything in it?'"
+
+"She certainly had a soothing effect upon him," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"Then," said I, "the second stage has been reached.  When all the
+Jamiesons are married, I think I shall feel that romance is over."
+
+"I know they have been to tea at the farm," said Mrs. Fielden, "because
+Mr. Ellicomb talked so much about his blue china, and Maud said a
+woman's hand was needed in the house."
+
+"I wonder," I said, "what will be the special objection that Maud will
+raise when she becomes engaged to Mr. Ellicomb?  He is not called
+Albert; he does not wear a white watered-silk waistcoat; his hair is
+certainly his own; and his mother is dead, so it cannot be said that he
+too closely resembles her."
+
+One of the objections raised by Maud to a candidate for her hand, was
+that he was far too like his mother--a really delightful woman--but
+Maud declared, with tears, that she could never really look up to a man
+who was so like his mamma.
+
+"At present," said Mrs. Fielden, "the blue china seems to be all in his
+favour; but one cannot feel sure that it will not be an obstacle later
+on, or Mr. Ellicomb's High Church principles, perhaps, may prove a
+deterrent to her ideas of perfect happiness."
+
+"I wish," said Palestrina, "that Margaret's affairs were more settled.
+This summer has been a trying one for her."
+
+"Oh, I forgot to tell you," said Mrs. Fielden, "that that was one of
+Maud's reasons for coming over to see you.  She told me that Mr.
+Swinnerton is coming to pay them a visit.  He has written, it seems, to
+make the offer himself, and Maud says she thinks it will be all right
+now."
+
+Mrs. Fielden was in one of her most light-hearted moods.  After the
+heat of the day there came a delightful coolness, and she stayed
+chatting till nearly dinner-time, and then decided that she would
+remain to dinner if we should ask her to do so.
+
+"I have three dear old sisters-in-law staying with me," said Mrs.
+Fielden, "and they will doubtless drag all the ponds for my body."
+
+"Won't they be anxious about you?" asked Palestrina.
+
+"Perhaps," said Mrs. Fielden, raising her pretty eyebrows in the old
+affected way; "but then they will appreciate me so much more when I
+come back to them from the grave."
+
+We sat out on the lawn after dinner till it was quite dark, and only
+Mrs. Fielden's white dress was visible in the gloom.  For some reason
+best known to herself she put off her wilful mood out there in the
+gloom of the garden.  She was not regal, not even amusing, only
+charming and full of a lovely kindness.  Half the conversation between
+her and Palestrina began with the words, "Do you remember?" as they
+recalled old jokes and stories.  Then her ever-present gaiety broke out
+again, and she laughed and said: "I believe I am becoming reminiscent.
+Why doesn't some one sit upon me, or tell me they will order the
+carriage for me if I really must go?  But it is heavenly here in the
+cool--and in heaven, you know, we shall probably all be reminiscent."
+
+Ten o'clock struck from the tower of the church down below in the
+village, and Mrs. Fielden said that now she really must go, or she
+would find the sisters-in-law saying a Requiem Mass for her; and
+Palestrina went indoors to order the carriage.
+
+"To-morrow," I said, "I am going to have my last dissipation.  I am
+going to the Traceys' tea-party."
+
+"I am certainly going too," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I believe I am getting
+as gay as the Miss Traceys themselves, though I can't help remarking
+that no one who goes to these tea-parties ever seems to be amused when
+they get there."
+
+"Judging from my own standard of what I find amusing," I said, "I
+should be inclined to say that Stowel never enjoys itself
+extravagantly.  Our neighbours never refuse invitations to even the
+smallest party; but the pleasure that they get from them, if it exists
+at all, is carefully concealed."
+
+"I have felt that myself," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I really don't begin to
+enjoy them till I get home."
+
+"I believe you always enjoy yourself," I said resentfully.
+
+After a little time Mrs. Fielden said wistfully, "You don't think there
+is only a certain amount of happiness in the world, do you, Hugo?  And
+that if one person gets a great deal, it means that another will get
+less?"
+
+She asks one questions in this way sometimes, as though one were a
+superior being who could dispel her perplexities for her.
+
+"Probably," I said, "you know ten thousand times more about the subject
+than I do.  You are happy, and I philosophize about it.  Tell me which
+of us is most fitted to give a lecture on the subject?"
+
+I thought Mrs. Fielden was going to say something after that, for she
+stretched out her hand in a certain impulsive way she has got, and gave
+mine just one moment's friendly pressure in the dark.  And then
+Palestrina came back to say the carriage was at the door, and Mrs.
+Fielden said "Good-night."
+
+
+I remember two things about the Miss Traceys' party--first, that Mrs.
+Fielden was not there, for one of the old sisters-in-law was ill
+suddenly, and she could not leave her; and the other thing I remember
+about it is that it was the last occasion on which I ever saw Margaret
+Jamieson look pretty.
+
+There have been some strange innovations in tea-parties ever since Mrs.
+Taylor gave hers to meet The Uncle, and sent out visiting-cards instead
+of notes.  Instead of having tea in the dining-room, all sitting round
+the table, as used to be the custom, it seems that dressing-tables are
+often brought down from upstairs and extended across the window.  These
+are covered with white tablecloths, and behind them two maids stand and
+wait.  The dressing-tables are called the "buffet," and both tea and
+coffee are provided, suggesting the elegance and savour of London
+refreshments.  This is distinctly pleasing, though it is felt that a
+single cup of tea drunk while standing has not got the comfort of
+former old-fashioned days.  Miss Belinda lives on at the little cottage
+with the green gate; and through the kindness of the General a lady has
+been found to wait upon her, and take her out to these small gaieties
+which she loves, and she sits shaking her poor, weak head, and
+muttering, "Glory, glory, glory!"  It does not occur to her to stay at
+home during her period of mourning, and it is acknowledged on all sides
+that she does not miss Lydia much.  The General has not come to stay
+with the Taylors again.  In a long letter which he wrote to me after he
+left he said he would probably never come back to the place, and at the
+same time he thanked me in courteous, old-fashioned phraseology for
+being with him through what he called "one of the dark days that come
+sometimes."  He would never see Miss Belinda, in spite of the many kind
+things he did for her; and I always feel that he resented the poor
+creature's long illness and weak, silly ways--which was only natural,
+no doubt.
+
+The Vicar was present at his sisters' tea-party, "although," as Miss
+Ruby explained to me, "it is not as though this were an evening
+entertainment.  My sister and I often give these little routs without
+him.  Still, a gentleman is always something of an ornament at a party."
+
+There were seven Jamiesons present, and two of them, Margaret and Maud,
+offered, in their usual friendly way, to walk home with Palestrina and
+me.  Maud, one feels sure, engaged Palestrina in confidences directly;
+and Margaret whispered in a shy way to me, "Do you mind coming round by
+the post-office?  I am expecting a letter."  So we walked round by the
+High Street, and Margaret told me that Tudor had had to give up his
+visit to them, but that he was writing.
+
+So we went into the post-office, and Margaret had her letter handed to
+her across the counter by the post-mistress, upon whom she bestowed a
+radiant smile.  When we got outside she opened it and read it without a
+word; and then, quite suddenly, she gave a cry as though some one had
+struck her, and she handed the letter to me, and said, "Oh, Hugo, read
+it!"  And I read:--
+
+
+"I am sure you will be surprised when I tell you that I am going to be
+married; it will explain to you why it was that I was unable to fulfil
+my promise to come to see you.  But sudden though my engagement to Miss
+Lloyd has been--very sudden, much more sudden indeed than I ever felt
+that such a serious step as marriage would be undertaken by me--I
+cannot but feel that it is for my happiness.  Some day I hope you will
+make Miss Lloyd's acquaintance; she is staying with my mother just now,
+and she is already a great favourite.  I cannot but feel that having
+seen so much of you and of your family last summer, and during your
+stay in London, that I may have raised expectations which I find myself
+unable to fulfil; but I am quite sure that a man's first duty is to
+himself in these matters, and that he should not undertake matrimony
+until he is thoroughly convinced it is for his happiness.  Had I not
+met Miss Lloyd, I may say that my intentions to you were of the most
+serious nature, and I know that I have the power in me to make any girl
+happy.  We shall live with my mother for the first year, and then I
+hope to settle somewhere near London, where it will be nice for me to
+get into the fresh air after my work in the City.
+
+"Yours very truly,
+    "TUDOR SWINNERTON.
+
+"_P.S._--Miss Lloyd and I are to be married next month in St. Luke's
+Church, quite near here."
+
+
+I handed the letter back to Margaret, and we never spoke the whole way
+home.  And that was the last day I ever saw Margaret Jamieson look
+pretty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+After the operation on my leg, I was laid up for a long time, and when
+I got about again, Palestrina and Thomas were married.  Thomas has
+lately come into his kingdom in the shape of a lordly castle in
+Scotland, and for the life of me I can't say whether or not Palestrina
+hastened her wedding because the doctor ordered me to the North.  If it
+was so, my sister's plans were frustrated by the fact that Thomas's
+ancient Scottish seat was pronounced uninhabitable by a sanitary
+surveyor, just as we proposed entering it under garlanded archways and
+mottoes on red cotton.  Our old friend Mrs. Macdonald, hearing of our
+dilemma, very kindly invited us to stay with her while Palestrina and
+Thomas looked about for some little house that would take us in till
+their own place should be ready.  The finding of the little house
+occupied some days, owing to the powers of imagination displayed by
+people when describing their property.  One lady, to whom Palestrina
+wrote to ask if her house were to be let, replied, "Yes, madam; this
+dear, delightful, pretty house is to let;" and she pointed out in a
+letter, some four pages long, all the advantages that would accrue to
+us if we took it, ending up with the suggestion, subtly conveyed, that
+by taking the house we should be turning her into the street, but that
+she would bear this indignity in consideration of receiving ten guineas
+a week.
+
+Palestrina went to see it, and returned in the evening, almost in
+tears, to say that the house was a semi-detached villa, and that she
+had found the week's washing spread out on the front lawn.
+
+Thomas said that the railway companies ought to pay a percentage on all
+misleading advertisements which induce people to make these useless
+journeys.
+
+The following day they returned from another fruitless expedition,
+having been to see a very small house owned by the widow of a
+sea-captain, with a strong Scottish accent.  I have often noticed that
+the seafaring man's one idea of well-invested capital is house
+property--perhaps he alone knows how precarious is the life of the sea.
+And I shall like to meet the sailor who has invested his money in a
+shipping concern.  The widow's house was so very small that it was
+almost impossible to believe that it contained the ten bedrooms as
+advertised in my sister's well-worn house-list.  So small indeed were
+the rooms, that Palestrina said she felt sure that they must have been
+originally intended for cupboards.  Nevertheless, the rent of the house
+was very high, and my sister ventured gently to hint this to the lady
+of the house--the sea-captain's widow with the strong Scottish accent.
+
+"Of course, it is a very nice house," she said politely; "but the rent
+is a little more than we thought of paying for a house of this size."
+
+"I ken it's mair than the hoose is worth," said the old dame; "but, ye
+see, I'm that fond o' money--aye, I'm fearfu' fond o' money."
+
+Palestrina and Thomas spent most of their days in their search for a
+suitable house, and Mrs. Macdonald spends the greater part of her life
+house-keeping, so I was rather bored.  What it actually is that
+occupies my hostess during the hours she spends in the back regions of
+her house I have never been able to discover.  But the fact remains
+that we have to get up unusually early in the morning to allow time for
+Mrs. Macdonald's absorbing occupation.  An old-fashioned Scotswoman of
+my acquaintance used to refuse all invitations to leave the house on
+Thursdays, because, as she explained, "I keep Thursdays for my creestal
+and my napery."  The rest of her week, however, was comparatively free.
+At Mrs. Macdonald's, housekeeping is never over.  And so systematic are
+the rules and regulations of the house, so many and so various are the
+lady's keys, that one finds one's self wondering if the rules of a
+prison or a workhouse can be more strict.  The _Times_ newspaper
+arrives every evening after dinner; by lunch-time next day it is locked
+away in a cabinet, so that if one has not read the news by two o'clock,
+one must ask Mrs. Macdonald for the keys; this she does quite
+good-naturedly, but I have never discovered why old newspapers should
+be kept with so much care.  On Saturdays an old man from the village
+comes in to do a little extra tidying-up in the garden.  At nine
+o'clock precisely, Mrs. Macdonald is on the doorstep of her house, with
+a cup of tea in her hand, and a brisk, kindly greeting for John, and
+she stands over the old man while he drinks his tea, and then returns
+with the empty cup to the house.
+
+Tuesday is the day on which her drawing-room is cleaned.  At half-past
+nine precisely on Monday evenings Mrs. Macdonald says, "Monday, you
+know, is our early-closing night;" and she fetches you a candle and
+dispatches you to bed.  Mrs. Macdonald and her housemaid--there seem to
+be plenty of servants to do the work of the house--walk the whole of
+the drawing-room furniture into the hall, Mrs. Macdonald loops up the
+curtains herself, and covers some appalling pictures and the
+mantelpiece ornaments with dust-sheets.  At ten o'clock she removes a
+pair of housemaid's gloves, and an apron which she has donned for the
+occasion, and says, "There! that's all ready for Tuesday's cleaning;"
+and she briskly bids her housemaid good-night.
+
+On Tuesdays we are not allowed to enter the drawing-room all day, and
+on Wednesdays the same restrictions are placed upon the dining-room.
+Indeed, on no day in the week is the whole of the house available, and
+upon no morning of the week has Mrs. Macdonald a spare moment to
+herself.  After breakfast, when Palestrina and Thomas have gone, she
+conducts me to the morning-room, and placing the _Scotsman_ (the
+_Scotsman_ is used for lighting the fires, and is formally handed to
+the housemaid at six o'clock in the evening) by my chair, she says, "I
+hope you will be all right," and shuts the door upon me.  During the
+morning she pops her head in from time to time, like an attentive guard
+who has been told to look after a lady on a journey, and nodding
+briskly from the door, she asks, "Are you all right?  Sure you would
+not like milk or anything?" and then disappears again.  With a little
+stretch of imagination one can almost believe that the green flag has
+been raised to the engine-driver, and that the train is moving off.  At
+lunch-time she is so busy giving directions to her servants that she
+hardly ever hears what one says, and the most interesting piece of news
+is met with the somewhat irrelevant reply, "The bread-sauce, please,
+Jane, and then the cauliflower."  Turning to one, she explains, "I
+always train my servants myself....  What were you saying just now?"
+
+"I saw in the newspaper this morning," I repeat, "that H.M.S. ---- has
+foundered with all hands."
+
+"In the middle of the table, if you please," says Mrs. Macdonald; "and
+then the coffee with the crystallized sugar--not the brown--and open
+the drawing-room windows when you have finished tidying there....  What
+were you saying?  How sad these things are!"
+
+The house is charmingly situated, with a most beautiful view over river
+and hills; but I really think my preoccupied friend hardly ever has
+time to look out of the window, and that to her the interior of a
+store-cupboard with neatly-filled shelves is more beautiful than
+anything which the realms of Nature can offer.
+
+When Palestrina is present Mrs. Macdonald gives her recipes for making
+puddings and for taking stains out of carpets, and she advises her
+about spring-cleanings and the proper sifting of ashes at the back
+door.  Mrs. Macdonald was brought up in the old days, when a young
+lady's training and education were frankly admitted to be a training
+for her as a wife.  She belonged to the period when a girl with a taste
+for music was encouraged to practise "so that some day you may be able
+to play to your husband in the evenings, my dear," and was advised to
+be an early riser so that the house might be comfortable and in order
+when her husband should descend to breakfast.  And now that that
+husband, having been duly administered to, is dead, Mrs. Macdonald's
+homely talents, once the means to an end, have resolved themselves into
+an end, a finality of effort.  Mrs. Macdonald was brought up to be a
+housekeeper, and she remains a housekeeper, and jam-pots and
+preserving-pans form the boundary line of her life and the limit of her
+horizon.
+
+Eliza Jamieson would probably tell us that even though Mrs. Macdonald's
+soups and preserves are excellent, these culinary efforts should not be
+the highest things required of a wife by her husband, and that
+therefore they are not a wife's highest duty, even during the time that
+her husband remains with her.  And she would probably point out that
+servants and weekly bills, and an endeavour to render this creature
+complacent, have ruined many a woman's life.  And I laugh as I think of
+Palestrina's rejoinder, "But then it is so much pleasanter when they
+are complacent."
+
+One certainly imagined that the late Mr. Macdonald must have been well
+looked after during his life, and it was something of a shock to me to
+hear the account of his death, from the lodgekeeper's wife, one
+afternoon when she had come in to help with the cleaning, and was
+arranging my dressing-table for me.  The rest of my bedroom furniture
+was then standing in the passage, and I had found my cap in one of the
+spare bedrooms, and all the boots of the house in the hall.
+
+"He was a rale decent gentleman," said Mrs. Gemmil, "and awfy patient
+with the cleaning.  But I am sure whiles I was sorry for him.  He was
+shuftit and shuftit, and never knew in the morn whichna bed in the
+hoose he would be sleeping in at nicht.  And we a' ken that it was the
+spring-cleaning, when he was pit to sleep ower the stables, that was,
+under Providence, the death o' him.  He had aye to cross ower in the
+wat at nicht-time, and he juist took a pair o' cauld feet, and they
+settled on his lungs."
+
+The day following my chat with Mrs. Gemmil was the day Palestrina found
+a house such as she had been looking for all along.  The day was
+Saturday.  Overnight she had announced her intention of being away all
+day, and Mrs. Macdonald had said delightedly that that would suit her
+admirably.  "I do like the servants to have the entire day for the
+passages on Saturday," she remarked.
+
+Even when the day dawned wet and cloudy, Palestrina had not the courage
+to suggest that she should stay at home, and thereby interfere with the
+cleaning of the passages.
+
+The house she had found seemed to be everything that was desirable, and
+Palestrina returned in an elated frame of mind.  "It is far away from
+everything," she said, "except the village people and the minister, and
+the 'big hoose,' as they call it, which some English bodies have rented
+for the autumn."
+
+"It can't be far from the Melfords," said Thomas, pulling out a map.
+"Yes, I thought so; they are just the other side of the loch."
+
+"We 'mussed the connaketion' on our way back," said Palestrina; "and I
+do believe there's nothing a Scottish porter enjoys telling one so much
+as this."
+
+"I hope I am not unduly disparaging the railway system of my native
+land," said Thomas, "when I say that if you go by steamer and by train
+it is the remark that usually greets one, and it is always made in a
+tone of humorous satisfaction."  And Thomas, with an exaggerated
+Scottish accent, which he does uncommonly well, began to tell me of
+their adventures.  "We had a rush for the train," he said, "and I told
+an elderly Scot, who couldn't have hurried if he had had a mad bull
+behind him, to run and get us two first-class tickets.  He walked
+slowly down the platform, muttering, 'Furrst, furrst,' and then he
+opened the door of a third-class carriage and shoved us in, saying,
+'Ye've no occasion to travel furrst when there's plenty of room in the
+thurrds.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+To get to the house one takes a steamer to the head of the loch, and
+from there old Hughie drives one in the coach, and deposits one at the
+cross-roads where the turf, short and green, is cut into the shape of a
+heart.  On this green heart, in the old days, the girls and men of the
+glen were married.  They stood side by side on the upper part of the
+heart, which is indented, and the minister stood at the point and
+wedded the pair.  Here one leaves the coach, and a "machine" must take
+one on to the little house.  A red creeper grows up its white walls,
+and from the terrace in front of the house one looks down upon the
+little Presbyterian church and the village, and these in their turn
+look on to the loch and the hills on the other side.
+
+The people in the village afford one a good deal of amusement, but we
+have observed that the conversation is always about theology or the
+Royal Family.  There is one story of the late Queen and the crown of
+Scotland which I have heard repeated many times with the utmost gravity
+in the Highlands.
+
+"A gran' wumman," say the old villagers, "but we were no gaein' tae gie
+her the croon o' Scotland.  Na, na.  She would hae liked fine tae hev
+gotten it, but we were no gaein' tae gie her the croon o' Scotland.
+Ye'll mind when she went tae Scotland, it was the foremost thing that
+she spiered tae see.  And when they showed it tae her, 'I would like
+fine tae pit it on ma heid,' said she.  But they said '_No_.'  And syne
+she says, 'Wad ye no let me haud it in ma haund?'  But they say '_No_.'
+'Weel,' she says, 'juist haud it aboon ma heid, and let me staun'
+underneath it.'  But they said, '_No_.'"
+
+The villagers formed our only society until Evan Sinclair's tenants,
+who were known as "the folk at the big hoose," came to call upon us.
+It was very difficult indeed, and for some time we could hardly believe
+that these were the Finlaysons whom we had met at Clarkham, and who, we
+now remembered, had told us that they were going to take a place in
+Scotland.  The change in the Finlaysons is startling and complete.  It
+has taken them exactly two months to become Highlanders, and it is not
+too much to affirm that now the whole family may be said to reek of
+tartan.  Only Mrs. Finlayson is unaffected by her life in the
+Highlands, although she says that she knows it is fashionable to be
+Scottish.  "And so written up as it is at present," she adds; "and all
+the best people taking the deer-moors.  Papa and the girls think all
+the world of Scotland.  But no one can say it is comfortable, I'm sure."
+
+The Finlaysons have a piper, and young Mr. Finlayson wears a kilt, and
+I think they are, without exception, the most strenuous supporters of
+Scottish customs I have ever met.  The young ladies, who had always
+been associated in our mind with silk dresses and thin shoes, came to
+call clad in the very shortest and roughest tweed skirts that I have
+ever seen; and old Mr. Finlayson, whose mother was a Robinson, has
+discovered that that is pretty much the same as being a Robertson, and
+that therefore, in some mysterious way, he is entitled to wear the
+Macdonald tartan.  They asked us to tea in a very polite and friendly
+way, and the old rooms were shown off to us with a good deal of pride.
+The architecture of the house seemed to throw a reflected glory on Mr.
+Finlayson.
+
+"Pure Early Scottish," he said, pointing to the tall narrow windows
+with their shelving ledges.
+
+"So dangerous," said Mrs. Finlayson, "for the servants cleaning the
+windows."
+
+The drawing-room vases were all filled with heather, and the room smelt
+of damp dog and herrings.  The Miss Finlaysons came in to tea in thick
+skirts and brogues, and they wore tartan tam-o'-shanters very
+becomingly placed upon their heads, and affixed to their hair with
+ornamental bonnet-pins.  They ate cake with damp red hands, and seemed
+to pride themselves upon the fish-scales which still clung to their
+skirts, and imparted the rather unpleasant odour which I noticed in the
+room.  Young Finlayson in his kilt showed a great expanse of red knee,
+and told tales of remarks made to him by the boatmen, which he
+considered equal to anything in Ian Maclaren's books.
+
+Mrs. Finlayson took us out after tea to see the garden and tennis-court
+and the game-larder.  "I always like a walled garden," she said; "it is
+so stylish."  Mr. Finlayson found a reflected glory even in the loch
+and the hills, and he waved his fat hand towards them, and said: "We
+are able to do you a nice bit of view here, aren't we?"
+
+"I tell papa," said Mrs. Finlayson, "that he will ruin the girls for
+anything else after this.  The only thing we regret is the want of
+society.  However, a few of the best people round about have called,
+and we are giving quite an informal little dinner-party to-morrow
+night."
+
+Mrs. Finlayson then invited us to dinner, and when we hesitated, on the
+plea that we should have one or two friends with us, Mrs. Finlayson, in
+the most hospitable manner possible, said that she always had a
+"profusion on their own table," so there was nothing for it but to
+accept her invitation.
+
+The dinner was one of those rather purposeless feasts which are given
+in the country, and the Finlaysons' neighbours who had been bidden to
+it bore upon their faces the peculiarly homeless look which one
+observes in the expressions of one's men friends especially, when they
+go out to a rural dinner--the look that says as plainly as possible
+that they are moving about in worlds not realized nor found
+particularly comfortable, and that they would infinitely prefer their
+own armchairs at home.
+
+The minister took Palestrina in to dinner, and occupied himself
+throughout the evening by putting the most searching questions to her
+of an inquisitive nature.  He asked how many servants we had, whether
+we were satisfied with our cook, where we came from, and why we had
+come.  And he did it all with such keen interest and intelligence that
+Palestrina admitted that she really had felt flattered rather than
+provoked.  His friend Evan Sinclair, who, having let his house to the
+Finlaysons, is living on a little farm close by, contradicted
+everything that the minister said, and the two quarrelled the whole
+evening.
+
+Old Tyne Drum, who lives a good many miles away, but who with his wife
+had already been to call upon us, brewed himself the very largest
+glasses of whisky-toddy that I have ever seen, even on a big night at
+mess, and he proposed healths and drank the steaming mixture throughout
+dinner in a very commendable national spirit.  His piper, who stood
+behind his chair, refused at last to pour out any further libations,
+and I heard him mutter to himself, "Ye'll no need tae say that Sandy
+Macnichol ever helpit ye tae the deil."
+
+Young Finlayson is always very jocose upon the subject of whisky, as
+befits his ideas about the Highlands; and even the Misses Finlayson, in
+their faithful loyalty to all things Scottish, were quite pleased with
+Tyne Drum's performance, and would have scorned to look as though a
+whisky-drinking laird was a novelty to them.
+
+Mrs. Finlayson told Thomas, in a very severe manner, and in her
+platform voice which I always find so impressive, that she considered
+intemperance a sin, but that that was what came of all this nonsense
+about Scotland.  She gave him quite a lecture upon the subject, as
+though he, being Scottish born, was responsible for the old laird's
+backsliding.
+
+When the unfortunate old gentleman came into the drawing-room to join
+the ladies and sat down next him, Mrs. Finlayson looked at Thomas as
+though she thought he was in some sort to blame for this behaviour.
+
+Tyne Drum dropped heavily on to the ottoman, and I heard him say, "Do
+you know my wife?"
+
+"Yes," replied Thomas.  "I have met her several times since we came to
+the cottage."
+
+"Hoo old should ye think she was?"  (Tyne Drum is always broadly Doric
+in his speech.)  Thomas calculated that the lady must be a long way the
+wrong side of sixty, and humbly suggested that she might perhaps be
+forty-five.
+
+"Presairve us!" said the Laird.  "This lad here says my wife is
+forty-five!"  He began to sob bitterly, and, putting his handkerchief
+to his eyes, cried, "My pretty wee Jeannie, my bonnie wee wife, wha
+daurs tae say ye was forty-five!"
+
+Thomas was so sorry for him and for what he had done that he did his
+best to cheer him up by telling him that what he had meant to say was
+twenty-five; but Tyne Drum was inconsolable, and went to sleep with the
+tear-drops on his cheeks.
+
+When we got home in the evening Palestrina said, "We are far behind the
+Finlaysons in all things Scottish.  I shall buy a Harris tweed skirt,
+and you and Thomas must buy something too."  So we drove down in the
+coach to the ferry on a very wet and windy day to cross over to the
+"toon."
+
+Our place on the coach was shared with a Scot, who was the most
+truculent defender of the Free Kirk I have ever met.  He argued every
+single point of his creed, and became quite abusive at last, as he
+denounced the "Established" and all who belong to it.
+
+The wind was high as we drove in the coach, and the rain fell heavily
+once or twice, but the voice of the gentleman rose higher and higher as
+the rain descended.  Hughie, the coachman, chided him with no stint of
+words, and at every burst of eloquence on the passenger's part he
+remarked, "Anither worrd, and I'll pit ye in the ditch!"
+
+This method of treating the argumentative passenger suggested the
+possibility of the coach being overturned in order to punish him, and
+Palestrina grew alarmed.
+
+"I do hope," she said to Hughie, "that you will remember that we are
+not all Wee Frees, and that therefore we do not all require the same
+treatment meted out to us."
+
+The guard at the back of the coach here showed his head over the pile
+of boxes covered with tarpaulin on the roof, and called out, "Pit him
+inside the coach wi' Mrs. Macfadyen, and she'll sort him!  She'll gie
+him the Gaelic!"
+
+Hughie chuckled and remarked, "Ay, she's the gran' wumman wi' her
+tongue!"  And during the rest of the drive his threats to the eloquent
+passenger took the form of, "Anither worrd, and I'll pit ye in wi' Mrs.
+Macfadyen!"
+
+There was a marked improvement in our friend's behaviour after this.
+He was in great difficulties when he came to get into the ferry-boat.
+It was easy enough to throw his first leg over the side while holding
+on by a thole-pin, but the balance required to convey the remaining
+limb into the boat was quite out of his power.  And having made one or
+two ineffectual hops on the beach with the shore-loving member, he
+turned to the boatmen, and said gravely,--
+
+"Lift in my leg, Angus!  Juist gie me a hand wi' ma last leg!"
+
+Palestrina chose the tweed for our coats and her skirt, and then we
+walked up to the Castle and called on the Melfords, who told us that
+Mrs. Fielden was coming to stay with them.  They sang her praises, as
+most people do; she has heaps of friends.  Then Palestrina did some
+shopping at the "flesher's" and the baker's, and we went down to the
+ferry again--a boy behind us laden with queer-looking parcels
+containing provisions, and Alloa yarn to knit into stockings, and
+paper-bags with ginger-bread cakes in them.  When we got in and sat
+down under the brown sail of the heavy boat, the two sailors remained
+in their places, and did not show the least sign of getting under way.
+Thomas said to the elder of the two men, a fine old fellow with a face
+such as one connects with stories of the Covenanters,--
+
+"Why don't you get off?"
+
+And the old man replied unmoved, "I'm waiting for the Lord."
+
+Palestrina, who is sympathetic in every matter, put on an expression of
+deep religious feeling, and we thought of the Irvingites, and wished
+that we had Eliza Jamieson with us "to look it up."  As far as we knew,
+the Irvingites wait to perform every action until inspired to perform
+it.  We had heard that in the smallest matter, such as beginning to eat
+their dinner, they will wait until this inspiration, as I suppose one
+must call it, is given to them.  The question then arose, how long
+would it be before we would be likely to get under way?  The two
+sailors sat on without moving, and the elder of them cut a wedge of
+tobacco and was filling his pipe, preparing to smoke.  We wondered if
+the Irvingites often waited for an inspiration in this contented way.
+The big red-funnelled steamer from Greenock was, meanwhile, preparing
+to depart.  It had poured its daily output of tourists for their
+half-hour's run in the town, which time they employ in buying mementoes
+of the place, and we had hurried down to the sailing-boat to escape
+this influx.
+
+Thomas endeavoured to assist inspiration by saying it didn't seem much
+use waiting any longer, and that as time was getting on, did not our
+friend (the gray-bearded Covenanter) think that it was time to be
+moving?  The Covenanter wrinkled up his nose, which already was a good
+deal wrinkled, and gazed upwards at the sail, or, as we interpreted it,
+to Heaven.  Palestrina pressed Thomas's hand, and said gently, "Don't
+urge him, dear; we shall get off in time."  And the younger sailor
+said, "We are waiting for the Lord."  So we knew that they were both
+Irvingites, and the only scepticism that intruded itself upon us was
+this: Suppose inspiration never came, how should we get home?
+
+The steamer now began to move away from the pier, with a great churning
+and hissing of water, and seething white foam fizzing round the staples
+of the pier.  A band began to play on board, and the paddles broke the
+water with a fine sweep.  Two youngsters on shore, to whom "the
+stimmer" is a daily excitement, then called out in shrill, high voices,
+"There's the Lord!  She's aff!"
+
+The _Lord of the Isles_ had moved off on her return journey to
+Greenock, and the notes on Scottish religion which Palestrina was
+carefully preparing were hastily destroyed.  The _Lord_ had departed,
+and we sailed across the loch without waiting any longer.
+
+When we got home, we found the minister awaiting us in the
+drawing-room, he having suggested that as we were not at home, he had
+better stay till our return.  I found out, in the course of
+conversation, that he is a distant relation of old Captain
+Jamieson--the Jamiesons' father--so we had quite a long talk about our
+friends.  The minister is one of those Scots whose national
+characteristics are always stronger than individual character.  Take
+away his nationality from him, and Mr. Macorquodale would be nothing at
+all.  His qualities being entirely Scottish, it is only logical to
+assume that if Mr. Macorquodale were not Scottish, he would be
+non-existent.
+
+Palestrina came out on to the little terrace where we were sitting, and
+I explained to her that the minister was a cousin of the Jamiesons.
+
+"How interesting!" said Palestrina in her usual kind way.
+
+"Why?" said the minister.  He has sandy hair and very round gray eyes,
+and looks like a football player.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said my sister; "it's always interesting, isn't it,
+to find that people are related?"
+
+"Every one must have some relations," said Mr. Macorquodale; "and if my
+choice had been given me, I do not think I should have chosen those
+five gurrls."
+
+"We like them so much," Palestrina said, smiling.
+
+"Is that the truth?" said Mr. Macorquodale; and she replied firmly that
+it was.
+
+"Um umph!" he said, as though considering a perfectly new problem, and
+then added: "Well, each man to his taste.  How many of them have got
+husbands?"
+
+I replied that Kate was married and Gracie engaged.
+
+"Gracie?" said the minister simply.  "Was that the one with a nose like
+a scone?"
+
+We considered Grade's nose silently for a moment, and then admitted
+that perhaps the simile was not unjust.
+
+"How did she get him?" said the minister presently.
+
+The minister has a curious way of eating, which fascinates one to look
+at, while all the time there is a distinct feeling that an accident may
+happen at any moment.  When tea was brought out he accepted some, and
+filled his mouth very full of cookie, stowing into it nearly a whole
+one at a time, and then raised his tea-cup to his lips.  He persists in
+keeping his spoon in his cup as he drinks, and he prevents it from
+tumbling out by holding it with his thumb.  A long draught of tea is
+then partaken of with a gurgling sound, and the minister swallows
+audibly.  It is almost impossible to prevent one's self watching this
+process of eating and drinking during the whole of tea-time.  For it
+seems so uncertain whether the spoon will remain in its place, and the
+cookie and the tea.
+
+The minister is a very young man, with the pugnacity of an Edinburgh
+High School boy, and with the awful truthfulness which distinguishes
+his nation, but which is accentuated in such an alarming degree in a
+minister of the Kirk.
+
+"I sent Kate a scent-bottle when she married," he remarked.  "I won it
+at a bazaar for sixpence, so it was not expensive.  I don't disapprove
+of raffles," he added, although he had not been asked for this piece of
+information--"that is, if ladies do not cheat over it, as they often
+do."  Palestrina bristled at the insinuation, and the minister consoled
+her by saying: "Women sin in such wee ways--that's what I can't
+understand about them.  However," he said, "I have never known a woman
+steal a thing yet that a man has not reaped some benefit by it.  I can
+quote authority for my views from Adam and Eve downwards, to the
+newspapers of yesterday.  I am engaged to be married myself, and I find
+the subject of feminine ethics absorbing.  Good-bye," he said
+presently; "I hope you will not be disappointed with the clothes I hear
+you've ordered."
+
+Alas! the tweed coat and skirt in which my sister hoped to rival the
+Miss Finlaysons proved an utter misfit, and she drove round the loch on
+the following day to take the garments back.  Palestrina had prepared a
+severe reprimand for the tailor, but the old man took the wind out of
+her sails by stopping in amazement at the first word of annoyance which
+she uttered, and standing in the middle of the little fitting-room,
+with a yellow tape measure round his neck, and a piece of chalk in his
+hand, he shook his gray beard at us with something of apostolic
+fervour, and thus addressed us:--
+
+"I'm amazed at ye!  Do ye ever consider the system of planets, and that
+this world is one of the lesser points of light in space, and that even
+here there are countless millions of human beings, full of great
+resolves and high purposes.  Get outside yourselves, ladies and
+gentlemen, and realize in the magnitude of the universe, and the
+immeasurable majesty of the planetary system, how small a thing is the
+ill-fit of a jacket."
+
+We felt much humbled, Palestrina and I.  And it was only when we were
+driving home afterwards that it even dimly suggested itself to us that
+we had right on our side at all.  "After all," Palestrina said, "the
+coats did not fit; I really do not think he need have lectured us so
+severely."
+
+At the time, however, I confess that our feelings were distinctly
+apologetic.
+
+One wonders how a tailor who advanced the planetary system as a reproof
+to complaining customers would get on in London, and one realizes that
+English people have a great deal still to learn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+When Mrs. Fielden came to stay at the Melfords we saw a good deal of
+her.  Their yacht used to steam up in the early morning, and they would
+take us off for a day's cruise on the loch or for a trip round to Oban.
+Mrs. Fielden used to sit on deck with a big red umbrella over her head
+and a white yachting gown on, and seemed serenely unconscious that she
+was looking very pretty and very smart.  My sister tells me she never
+feels badly dressed till she meets Mrs. Fielden.
+
+The Melfords have very pleasant people stopping with them always, and
+there are very jolly little parties on board their yacht.  Mrs.
+Fielden, however, is in her most provoking and wilful mood.  Every day
+it is the same thing--laughter and smiles for every one.  But she has
+absolutely no heart.  All the beautiful, kindly things she does are
+only the whim of the moment.  They bespeak a generous nature, as easily
+moved to tears as to laughter; but she loves every one a little, and
+probably has no depth of affection or constancy in her.  Lately, she
+has added another provoking habit to the many she already possesses.
+She exaggerates her pretence of having no memory, and indeed it may be
+she has not any.
+
+When I left home, rather a wreck as regards health, and drove to the
+station in Mrs. Fielden's luxurious carriage, it was her hand that
+piled the cushions, as no one else can, behind me.  And the last thing
+I saw was her smile as she waved her hand to me from my own door.
+
+Last week, when we met again at the Melfords', she nodded to me in a
+little indifferent sort of way.  She sat under a big cedar-tree on one
+of the lawns, and laughed, and talked a sort of brilliant nonsense the
+whole afternoon.
+
+By-and-by I said to her--probably clumsily, certainly at the wrong
+time--"I never half thanked you for being so good to me when I was
+ill;" for she had come in like some radiant vision, day after day, in
+her beautiful summer gowns and rose-garlanded hats, and had sat by my
+couch, reading to me sometimes, talking to me at others in a voice as
+gentle as a dove's.  Why will she not allow one to admire her?  One
+only wants to do so humbly and at a distance.  It was so pleasant up
+here in the Highlands, with the dear memory of those long days to look
+back upon.  But Mrs. Fielden ruthlessly robbed me and sent me away
+empty the very first day of our meeting.
+
+"Was I kind to you?  I don't believe I was, really.  If I was, I'm sure
+I forget all about it.  Let me see, how long were you ill?  It can't
+have been a bit amusing for you," and so on, laughing at my dull face
+and serious ways.
+
+And this has gone on for a whole week.  At the Melfords' parties she
+selects, quite indiscriminately, and in a royal way which she has, this
+man or that to be her escort or her companion.  Now it is a mere boy
+whom she bewilders with a few of her radiant smiles, and now one of her
+elderly colonels whom she reduces to a state of abject admiration in a
+few hours.  One man goes fishing with her, and another rows her on the
+loch.  A third, hearing that Mrs. Fielden's life will be a blank if she
+does not possess a certain rare fern which may be found sometimes on
+the hillsides of Scotland, spends a whole day scrambling about looking
+for it, and returns triumphant in the evening.  Mrs. Fielden has
+forgotten that she ever wanted it.  When we sulk she does not notice
+it.  When her colonels offer her their fatuous admiration she goes to
+sleep, and then, waking up, is so very, very sorry.  "But you can't
+have amused me properly," she says, "or I should have stayed awake."
+When any one tries by avoiding her to show displeasure, Mrs. Fielden is
+oblivious of the fact.  And when the penitence and boredom which
+immediately ensue when one has deprived Mrs. Fielden of one's company
+have led to ending the one-sided quarrel with an apology, it is only to
+find that Mrs. Fielden has been blissfully unconscious of one's
+absence.  Summer and the air of the Highlands seem to be in her veins.
+Her happiness, like the quality of mercy, is twice blessed, making her,
+through her talent for enjoyment, diffuse something beautiful and gay
+about her.
+
+After all, why should she care?  Life was evidently made to give her
+pleasure.  Why should a woman always be blamed for being loved?  Mrs.
+Fielden's charm is of the irresponsible sort.  To live and to be lovely
+are all one ought to demand of her, and at least she is without vanity.
+She seems to be entirely unconscious of the admiration she receives, or
+perhaps she is simply indifferent to it.
+
+The Melfords adore her, and allow her to see it.  They say no one knows
+her as they do.  Probably we all feel that.  This is one of Mrs.
+Fielden's most maddening charms.  We have all found something in her
+that seems to belong to ourselves alone.
+
+Lately I have discovered that she loves to wander up the hillside by
+herself, and listen to the plover's solitary cry, and sit in the
+sunshine with no companion near her.  And one wonders why so frivolous
+a woman should care for this, and why when she comes back amongst us
+again her eyes should wear the wistful look which covers them like a
+veil sometimes.
+
+When she left the Melfords' Palestrina asked her to come and stay with
+us; and rather to my surprise, Mrs. Fielden came.  It seems to me she
+must find us a very dull lot after the Melfords' cheery house-parties.
+She arrived late one afternoon in the yacht, and the whole party came
+up to dine with us before returning to the castle.  The little house
+was taxed to its utmost capacity, even to provide teacups for our
+guests.  But the Melfords have a happy knack of seeming to find
+pleasure in everything.  Mrs. Fielden's gaiety was infectious, and her
+lightheartedness knocked all one's serious world to pieces, while her
+beauty seemed almost extravagant in the plain setting of the little
+house.
+
+She began to give us some of her experiences in Scotland.  "Do you
+know," she said, putting on a charming gravity and lifting her eyebrows
+in a provoking, childish way, "that every single person in Scotland
+gets up at five o'clock in the morning? and all the coaches and
+excursions start at daybreak, and when you want to hit off what they
+call a 'connection' anywhere, you have to get up in the middle of the
+night?"
+
+"I am afraid you had a horribly early start to join the yacht the other
+day," said Lord Melford, "but it was the only way we could manage to
+get to the Oban Gathering in time."
+
+"I was there before you," said Mrs. Fielden; "and I had to rouse up the
+people at the inn to take me in and give me breakfast.  Even they were
+not up at that hour!  But after ringing twice, such a nice boots came
+and opened the door to me, and brought me some breakfast."
+
+"The gathering was very good this year," said Lord Melford.  "Why
+didn't some of you come?  By-the-bye, your friend Mrs. Macdonald was
+there.  Indeed, it was she who insisted on taking Mrs. Fielden to the
+Gaelic concert."
+
+"Gaelic is rather an alarming language," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I always
+feel as if I were being sworn at when I hear it."
+
+One of Mrs. Fielden's admirers who had reached the savage and sarcastic
+stage here interposed, and said: "Poor Mrs. Fielden!  I saw you at the
+concert.  How did you manage to sit throughout a whole evening between
+Mrs. Macdonald and a wall?"
+
+"Mrs. Macdonald is quite a dear!" said Mrs. Fielden.  (Whom, in the
+name of Fortune, would Mrs. Fielden not find charming?)
+
+"I don't know what you and Mrs. Macdonald can have found to talk
+about," said Palestrina, laughing.
+
+"We discussed the training of servants most of the time," said Mrs.
+Fielden simply.
+
+Every one laughed; and my sister, with a recollection of our visit to
+Mrs. Macdonald, said at once, "Did she give you any useful household
+recipes?"
+
+"It is very odd that you should have asked me that," said Mrs. Fielden.
+"Do you know, that the whole of to-day I have been puzzling over a
+letter which I received this morning?  I did not know the handwriting,
+and it was merely headed, 'Two recipes for boiling a ham, as
+requested.'  Now, I cannot really have asked Mrs. Macdonald for recipes
+for boiling a ham, can I?"
+
+We thought it highly probable that she had done so, and had done it,
+too, with an air of profound interest; and I think we said this, which
+Mrs. Fielden did not mind in the least.
+
+"There is something rather horrible, don't you think so," she said, "in
+knowing how a thing is cooked?"
+
+The minister, who is assiduous in calling, walked up after tea with his
+friend Evan Sinclair; and as we were already far too large a party for
+dinner, we asked them to stay too.
+
+Mr. Macorquodale has frequently described himself to us as a grand
+preacher.  He and Evan Sinclair live quite close to each other, and
+they are friends whose affection is rooted and maintained in warfare.
+For the minister and Sinclair to meet is one strenuous contest as to
+who shall have the last word.  Politeness is not a strong motive with
+either of them--indeed, one would imagine that from the first it has
+been ruled out of place.  The friendship and the warfare began at the
+Edinburgh High School years ago, and both the friendship and the
+warfare have lasted without intermission ever since.  They meet every
+day, and often twice a day; they fish together, and in the winter they
+spend every evening with each other.  Scottish people seem to have a
+sneaking liking for those who dislike them, and a certain pity mingled
+with contempt for those who show them favour and affection.  The
+friendship of Evan and the minister is based upon feelings of the most
+respectful admiration for their mutual antipathy.
+
+To keep alive this laudable and self-respecting warfare is the highest
+effort of genius of both Mr. Sinclair and the Reverend Alexander.  To
+foster it they apply themselves to what they call "plain speaking"
+whenever they meet, and they conceal as much as possible from each
+other every single good quality that they possess.
+
+The minister, who is a big man, always talks of Evan as "Wee Sinkler,"
+and sneers at "heritors;" and Evan invariably addresses Macorquodale as
+"Taurbarrels," a name which he considers appropriate to the minister's
+black clothes and portly figure.
+
+"The minister," said Evan, when he had walked up the hill to see us,
+"has been reading Josephus.  We shall have some erudite learning from
+the pulpit for the next Sunday or two."
+
+The minister was announced a moment later, and, before taking the
+trouble to shake hands with us, he looked Evan Sinclair over from top
+to toe, and remarked, "Ye're very attentive in calling upon ladies."
+
+"I was just talking about your fine preaching," said Evan.
+
+"I admit my gift," said the minister; "but I fear that I very often
+preach to a deaf adder which stops its ears."  He nodded triumphantly
+at us, and it then occurred to him to shake hands.
+
+Evan said at once that he got a better sleep in kirk on Sundays than he
+got during the whole of the week.
+
+"Evan Sinclair," said the minister, "if I find you sleeping under me
+I'll denounce you from my pulpit, as a minister has the right to do."
+
+"And we'll settle it in the graveyard afterwards," said Evan dryly.
+"And ye're not in very good training, my man."
+
+Palestrina broke in gently to discuss a theological point which had
+puzzled us for several Sundays.  On each Lord's Day as it came round we
+had prayed that we might become "a little beatle to the Lord."
+Doubtless the simile is a beautiful one, but its immediate bearing upon
+our needs was not too grossly evident.  And it seemed almost dangerous
+to those who believe in the efficacy of prayer to put up this petition
+in its literal sense.  We had decided for some time past that we should
+ask Mr. Macorquodale what it was exactly for which we made petition,
+when we prayed that we might become "a little beatle to the Lord."
+
+"Similes," said Palestrina in her serious way, "are beautiful
+sometimes, but we can't quite understand one of the references that you
+make in your prayers on Sundays."
+
+"We have prayed so fervently," said Mrs. Fielden, "without perhaps
+entirely understanding the portent of the petition, that we might
+become 'a little beatle to the Lord.'"
+
+The thing was out now, and our curiosity, we hoped, would be gratified.
+There was a pause which suggested that our hearers were puzzled, and
+then Mr. Sinclair put a large pocket-handkerchief into his mouth and
+roared with laughter, and Mr. Macorquodale turned to my sister, who was
+trembling now, and remarked in an awful voice that he wondered that we
+didn't understand plain English.
+
+Of course she apologized, and an explanation came afterwards from Evan
+Sinclair, who told us that the minister's prayer was that we--the
+church--might become a little Bethel, and that Beethel was his Doric
+pronunciation of the word.
+
+It began to rain on Sunday, as it often does in Scotland--Nature itself
+seems to put on a more serious expression on the Sabbath--and it
+continued raining for four whole days.  The rain came down steadily and
+mercilessly, shutting out the view of the hills, and turning the whole
+landscape into a big damp gray blanket.  "I suppose," said Mrs.
+Fielden, who is never affected by bad weather, "that we shall all get
+very cross and quarrel with each other if the rain continues much
+longer."
+
+"I think I shall write a number of unnecessary letters to absent
+friends," said Palestrina.  "And Mr. Ellicomb and Sir Anthony Crawshay
+will arrive to-morrow, and we must tell them to amuse us."
+
+It was a disappointment to find that Mr. Ellicomb's nerves and temper
+were seriously affected by the weather, and in moments of extreme
+depression his low spirits vented themselves in a rabid abuse of the
+Presbyterian Kirk.  I cannot understand why Ellicomb should elect to
+wear a brown velvet shooting-jacket, and a pale-green tie, and neat
+boots laced half-way up his legs, in Scotland.  He went to the village
+church in the rain on Sunday, and he has not been the same man since.
+
+"Don't call it a church!" he cried as we went homewards up the hill,
+where the road was a watercourse and each tree poured down moisture.
+He seemed to think that he had done his soul an irreparable injury by
+entering a Presbyterian kirk.
+
+Anthony said, "Oh! don't be an ass, Ellicomb."  But even on Monday
+morning poor Ellicomb was still suffering from the weather and the
+effects of his churchgoing.
+
+"Can he be in love?" said Palestrina; "and if so, as the Jamiesons
+would say, which is it?"
+
+Palestrina is prettier than ever since her marriage.  She still says,
+"Oh, that will be delightful!" to whatever Thomas and I suggest, and
+she never seems to have any occupation except to be with us when we
+want her, and to accede to everything we say, which of course, from a
+man's point of view, is a very delightful trait in a woman.
+
+"I rather wonder," said Palestrina, "that I have not heard from any of
+the Jamiesons lately.  They are usually such good writers."
+
+"Depend upon it, there is a great bit of news coming," said Thomas.
+"The Jamiesons always maintain a dramatic silence just before
+announcing some tremendous piece of intelligence."
+
+Thomas had hardly spoken the words before a telegram was handed to
+Palestrina, containing the following enigmatical words:---
+
+
+"Engaged Cuthbertson.  Greatly surprised.  Deeply thankful.--ELIZA."
+
+
+This rather mysterious message was followed, later in the day, by a
+letter four pages in length, and marked on the outside, for some reason
+best known to Eliza, "Immediate."  The letter explained more fully the
+cause of Eliza's thankfulness, and who it was that was greatly
+surprised.
+
+"If you had told me," wrote Eliza, "six weeks ago that I should now be
+engaged to Mr. Cuthbertson, I should hardly have believed it.  I really
+had not a notion that he cared for me until he actually said the words.
+Is it not too strange to think that perhaps, after all, Maud may be one
+of the last of us to get married?"
+
+Here followed the usual descriptive catalogue, so characteristic of the
+Jamiesons' letters.  "Mr. Cuthbertson looks like a widower, though he
+is not one."  Strangely enough, I could never think of any other words,
+when I came to know Mr. Cuthbertson, that described him so well as
+these, and I can only account for it by saying that the man's deep
+melancholy and the crape band that he habitually wore round his hat
+must have given one the feeling that at some time Mr. Cuthbertson had
+suffered a heavy bereavement.  "I have only known him," Eliza's letter
+went on, "for six weeks, but even that time has shown me his worth.  He
+has a very straight nose and a black beard, and his forehead is
+distinctly intellectual.  I met him first at Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs',
+where, as you know, I had gone to stay to catalogue their library, and
+to do a little typewriting for her.  You know, of course, that she has
+become a member of the S.R.S., and their library is a _mine of
+information_.
+
+"At first I was afraid to say, or even to allow myself to think, he
+showed me any preference, but Maud thought from the first that he was
+struck, and I asked her not to appear at all until everything was
+settled, for you know how attractive she is.  But I really don't think
+that even then I thought that there was anything serious in it."  (For
+an intelligent woman Eliza's letter strikes one as being strangely
+lacking in concentration.)  "I have just been to the meeting of the
+Browning Society--our first appearance in public together--and I read
+my paper on "The Real Strafford," but I could hardly keep my voice
+steady all the time.  I wear his own signet-ring for the present, but
+we are going up to London next week, when he will buy me a hoop of
+pearls.  I am sure that you will be glad to hear that he is comfortably
+off.  When the right man comes preconceived objections to matrimony
+vanish, _but it must be the right man_."
+
+Palestrina said that she was "thrilled" to hear of Eliza's engagement,
+because an engagement was always thrilling, and she instantly went to
+tell the news to Mr. Ellicomb.  She told me afterwards that when she
+had said that one of the Jamiesons was engaged Mr. Ellicomb became
+suddenly very pale in his complexion, and exclaimed, in a most anxious
+tone of voice, "Which?"
+
+
+The cold weather has set in very suddenly, and already there is a
+sprinkling of snow on some of the distant hills.  The robins still sing
+cheerily, but the gulls on the shore, flying over the yellow seaweed,
+call to each other plaintively in the gray of the early twilight.  The
+heavy-winged herons stand in an attitude of serious thought for hours
+on the cold rocks; then, as if suddenly making up their minds to
+something, they stretch out their red legs behind them, and flop with
+large wings over the waters of the loch.  The red Virginian creeper has
+begun to drop its leaves regretfully, after a night or two of white
+frost, and the dahlias hang their heads, heavy with the moisture which
+their cups contain.  The sun wakes late in the mornings now, but shines
+strong and warm when it does get up.  Cottage lights and fires burn
+cheerily o' nights, and within the cottages the old folks and the young
+ones draw round the fires and speak eerily of wraiths and whaurlochs,
+and some will tell of death-lights which they have seen on the lonely
+shore road.  The herring fishers who sail away in the early twilight
+wear good stout jerseys now, and red woollen "crauvats" which the
+"wumman at hame" has knitted.  The _Lord_ has sailed away to Dunoon to
+lay up for the winter, and the shepherds have gone away down South "to
+winter the hogs."  The shepherds' wives sit alone in the little
+hillside cottages away up on the face of the brae, and "mak dae" with
+their slender money till their men come home again.
+
+The old women in the village have begun their winter spinning, and the
+tap, tap, tap of the treadle on the floor gives a pleasant sound as one
+passes outside on the dark road.  Old men tell tales of snow in the
+passes in winter-time, and of death on the bleak hillsides, and some
+wife, shuddering, will say, "Ay, I mind I saw his corp-licht the very
+evening he was lost."  And then they tell tales of fantasy and signs
+and premonitions of death.
+
+The Finlaysons are going to wind up their very successful autumn in the
+Highlands by giving what they insist upon calling a gillies' dance,
+though probably the revels will mostly be indulged in by their large
+retinue of English servants.  Good-natured old Finlayson has more than
+once said that he hopes we shall all come to the gillies' dance, and
+that it will give ourselves and our guests a chance of seeing some
+Highland customs.  A good many of us come to Scotland most years, and
+have seen gillies and pipers before, but our good-natured neighbours
+certainly out-distance any one I know in their Highland sympathies.
+
+They invited us to dine with them before the dance should begin, and
+six of us went, feeling very like the Jamiesons, and resolved that when
+we got home we should never put a limit to their numbers when we send
+them an invitation again.
+
+We talk of returning home at the end of next week, and Mrs. Fielden and
+our other two guests are leaving on Monday, I believe.
+
+Mrs. Fielden looks much prettier in the Highlands, I think, than
+anywhere else.  Young Finlayson is in love with her, and I believe has
+offered her his heart and the ironmongery business with it; but I think
+of all her lovers Anthony Crawshay is the one she likes best.  He is
+the only one for whom her moods never alter, and to whom she is always
+gracious and charming and sweet.  Perhaps it is in a quiet, less
+radiant way than that in which she treats others, but it is with an
+unvarying loving-kindness which I have not seen her bestow elsewhere.
+And Anthony Crawshay is a good fellow--one of the best.
+
+Old Mr. Finlayson actually donned a kilt for the gillies' dance; young
+Finlayson also wore the national dress, and Thomas tells me that they
+have sported the Macdonald tartan, and wants to know why.  Old
+Finlayson met us at the door of his baronial hall in a clannish, feudal
+sort of way, and seizing his glengarry bonnet from his head he flung it
+down upon the oak settle in the hall, and exclaimed in hearty accents,
+"Welcome to the Glen."  The Misses Finlayson wore sashes of royal
+Stuart tartan put plaid-wise across their shoulders.  Mrs. Finlayson
+was dressed in a very regal manner which I cannot attempt to describe,
+and her platform voice was in use throughout the entire evening.
+
+Ellicomb said the dance was barbaric, but Thomas enjoyed the evening
+immensely, and so did Crawshay, who said in his hearty way, "The
+Finlaysons did us uncommonly well," and shouted out, "Not at all bad
+people, not at all bad."
+
+After dinner old Finlayson showed us all the pictures in the hall by
+the light of a long wax taper which he held above his head, and he
+pointed out the beauties of the house in a proprietary way, even to
+Evan himself, to whom the place belongs.  Evan Sinclair, in a shabby
+green doublet, accepted all Mr. Finlayson's wildest statements about
+his own house with a queer, humorous grin on his face, and submitted to
+being patronized by the Miss Finlaysons, whose commercial instincts, no
+doubt, caused them to despise a young man who was obliged to let his
+place.
+
+One of the Highland axioms which the Finlaysons have accepted is that
+"a man's a man for a' that," and they shook hands with every one in an
+effusive way, and condescended to a queer sort of familiarity with the
+boatmen and keepers about the place.  The daughters of the house, with
+flying tartan ribbons, swung the young gillies about in the intricate
+figures of the hoolichan, and talked to them with a heartiness which
+one would hardly have thought possible of the Clarkham young ladies.
+The Finlaysons had a large number of English guests staying in the
+house for the dance.  These all made the same joke when the pipes began
+to play.  "Is the pig being killed?" they asked, and looked very
+pleased with their own ready wit.
+
+Red-headed Evan Sinclair carried his old green doublet and battered
+silver ornaments very well, and his neat dancing was in pleasant
+contrast to the curious bounds and leaps of the Finlaysons.  Old Mr.
+Finlayson spent his evening strutting about in a kindly, important
+fashion, and in making Athole Brose after a recipe supplied by Tyne
+Drum, who superintended the brewing of it himself.
+
+I hope I am not fanciful when I say that the pipes when I hear them
+have to me something irresistibly sad about them, and that they conjure
+up many fantasies in my head which I am half ashamed to put down on
+paper.  They seem to me to gather up in their bitter sobbings all the
+sorrows of a people who have suffered much and have said very little
+about it.  There is the cry in them of children dying in the lonely
+glens in winter-time, when the wind howls round the clachan and the
+snow fills the passes.  One almost sees the little procession of
+black-coated men bearing away a tiny burden from the cottage door into
+the whiteness beyond, with its one heaped-up patch of brown earth on
+either side of the little grave.  They wail, too, of the Killing Time,
+when the Covenanters were crushed but never broken under persecution;
+and one seems to see the defiant gray-haired old men, with their
+splendid obstinacy, unmoved by threats--not defiant, but simply
+unbreakable.  Thinking of the Covenanters as they pass slowly before
+one to the sighing of the pipes, one wonders if it is possible to
+punish by death the man who is content to die.
+
+The tuneful reeds sob out, too, the story of the Prince for whom so
+many brave men bled, and they tell again of the days of song, and of
+noble legends and deeds of daring when the nation spent its passionate
+love on its King.  "Come back! come back!"  The desolate cry of the
+times.  Almost one hears it sounding across the hills, and it seems to
+me that all that it is so hard to speak, so hard even to look, may
+perhaps be told in music.  And I think loyalty and love speak very
+beautifully in the old Jacobite airs.
+
+Again, as Evan's piper marches up and down in the moonlight playing a
+lament, the romance of life seems lost in the hardness of it, its
+stress and its loss.  "Hame, hame, hame!" the pipes sob forth, crying
+for the homes that are sold to strangers, and for the hills and the
+glens which pass away from the old hands.  It is "Good-bye, good-bye,"
+an eternity of farewells.  And still, wherever life is most difficult,
+wherever comforts are fewest and work is most hard, in the distant
+parts of the world are the Scottish exiles.  But I know that all the
+world over the sons of the heather and the mist, in however distant or
+alien lands they may be, feel always, as they steer their way through
+life, that there is a pole-star by which they set their compass; and
+that some day, perhaps, they or their children may steer the boat to a
+haven on some rocky shore, where the whaup calls shrilly on the moors
+above the loch, and the heather grows strong and tough on the hillside,
+and the peat reek rises almost like the incense of an evening prayer,
+against a gray, soft sky in the land of the North.
+
+I suppose that even in a diary I have no business to mix this up with
+an account of the Finlaysons' dance.
+
+Palestrina came up to me after conscientiously dancing reels with
+Thomas, looking very pink and pretty, and thoughtful of me, as usual.
+
+"Don't stay longer than you feel inclined," she said.  "I told them to
+come for you in the dog-cart, and to wait about for you between twelve
+and one."
+
+"I will take a turn down on the shore," I said, "and have a cigar, and
+then I will come back and see how you are getting on."
+
+Palestrina gave me my crutch, and I went down towards the loch, which
+looked like a sheet of silver in the moonlight, and I found Anthony and
+Mrs. Fielden sitting on a garden bench beneath some wind-torn beeches
+by the shore.  To-night there was not a breath of air stirring, and
+Mrs. Fielden had only thrown a light wrap round her.
+
+"Have you come to tell me that I am to go in and dance reels with old
+Mr. Finlayson?" she said.  "It is really so much pleasanter out here.
+Do sit down and talk to Sir Anthony and me."
+
+She would never have allowed one to know that one was in the way, even
+if one had interrupted a proposal of marriage.
+
+Anthony made room for me on the bench, and said heartily, "I am awfully
+glad to see you able to sit up like this, Hugo.  Why, man, you're
+getting as strong as a horse!"
+
+"Oh.  I'm all right again," I said.  "I'll begin to grow a new leg
+soon.  And the first thing I mean to do when that happens is to dance
+reels like the Finlaysons."
+
+"I believe I ought to be going in to supper now with Mr. Finlayson,"
+said Mrs. Fielden.  "Does any one know what time it is?  He said he
+would 'conduct me to the dining-hall' at twelve o'clock."
+
+"It is a quarter past now," said Anthony, looking at his watch in the
+moonlight.  "Don't go in, Mrs. Fielden.  Wait out here, and talk to
+Hugo and me."
+
+But old Finlayson in his kilt had tracked us to our seat underneath the
+beech-trees, and he took instant possession of our fair neighbour, and
+told us to follow presently.  He thought all the supper-tables were
+full just now.
+
+"We shan't eat everything before you come," said hospitable old
+Finlayson, walking away with his beautiful partner on his arm.
+
+Mrs. Fielden was dressed in white satin, with some pretty soft stuff
+about her, and she wore some white heather in her hair.
+
+"What a good sort she is!" said Anthony in a loud voice, almost before
+Mrs. Fielden was out of hearing.
+
+It wasn't, perhaps, the most poetical way in which he could have put
+it, but one didn't want or expect Anthony to express himself poetically.
+
+"Utterly spoilt!" I replied, because at that moment I happened to be
+feeling supremely miserable, and I did not want Anthony to know it.
+
+"Not a bit," he replied; "and you know that as well as I do, old chap."
+
+"Allow me, Anthony," I said, "to be as savage as I like; it is one of
+the privileges of a cripple."
+
+"Oh, blow cripples!" said Anthony.  "You will be shooting next autumn,
+man."
+
+"And what will you be doing?" I said.  After all, we have been pals all
+our lives, and I think Anthony might tell me about it if there is
+anything to tell.
+
+"Oh, I'll be shooting too, I suppose," said Anthony.
+
+We smoked for some time in silence.
+
+And then Anthony began, and said that he had enjoyed himself amazingly
+up here in the North, and he went on to say a good word for every one.
+Old Finlayson had been a brick about his shooting and deer-stalking,
+and it was beastly hard luck that I hadn't been able to come too.  The
+minister wasn't a bad fellow, even when he was jocose; and Evan
+Sinclair was one of the best; and so on.
+
+"What shall you be doing when you go back, Anthony?" I said, harking
+back to my old question, and hoping for more information than I
+actually asked for.  "Are you going straight home?"
+
+"I'll be at the first shoot at Stanby.  Shall you be there?"
+
+"I'm afraid not," I said.  "I haven't learned to do cross-stitch yet,
+and I'm sure all the women would think me a great bore, sitting about
+in their morning-rooms all day.  Except Mrs. Fielden, of course!  Mrs.
+Fielden would probably persuade me into thinking that the only thing
+that made her house-party successful, or saved herself from boredom,
+was the presence of a lame man in the house."
+
+"I don't think you are quite just about Mrs. Fielden, Hugo," said
+Anthony, moving rather resentfully on the garden bench.
+
+"That doesn't matter much," I replied.  "One voice will not be missed
+from the general chorus of praise that follows Mrs. Fielden wherever
+she goes."
+
+"No; but still----" began Anthony; and then he stopped, and we smoked
+on for some time without speaking.  "You see," he began at last, "she
+is the best friend I ever had."  He did not lower his voice, because I
+suppose Anthony finds it impossible to do so, but went on steadily:
+"You see, I once cared for a little cousin of hers, and she died when
+she was eighteen.  I don't think anybody ever knew about it, except
+Mrs. Fielden.  But she knows how much cut up I was, and I suppose that
+is why she is so nice to me always."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry!" I said.
+
+"I never meant to speak about it," said Anthony in a brisk, cheerful
+voice.  "Oh, don't you bother about it, Hugo!  I mean I'm awfully keen
+about hunting, and I have an excellent time, only I don't suppose I
+shall ever care for any one else."
+
+"Thanks for telling me, Tony."
+
+"I wouldn't have said anything about it," said Anthony, "if it hadn't
+been for what you said about Mrs. Fielden.  Y'see, she has been so
+awfully good to me, and I don't think you quite understand all she is
+really."
+
+"Why, man," I cried, "I love her with every bit of my heart!  And I
+worship her--how does one say one worships a woman?--as if she were the
+sun!"
+
+And I think that was the very first moment that I told myself that I
+loved Mrs. Fielden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+The minister and Evan Sinclair came to say good-bye; the minister has
+accepted our approaching departure with his usual philosophy.  "You
+would soon tire of this place in the winter-time," he said.  "And even
+looking at it from the other point of view, I believe that summer
+visitors should not prolong their stay above a few months.  I admit
+that we have enjoyed your sojourn amongst us; but were you and your
+sister to become residenters in the place, our intercourse would have
+to be reconstructed from the foundation."  The minister crossed his
+legs, and, without being pressed to continue the subject, he went on:
+"There is a certain conventionality, not to say forbearance, admitted
+and allowed between friends with whom one's acquaintance is to be
+short; but there is a basis stronger than that upon which any lengthy
+friendship must be made."
+
+"And that basis?" I asked.
+
+"That basis, I take it," said the minister, "should be a
+straightforward disregard for one another.  I do not believe in
+politeness between near neighbours; it cannot last."
+
+"I had hoped," said Palestrina, pouting a little, "that you would all
+miss us, Mr. Macorquodale."
+
+"We shall miss you," said the minister quickly, but with judgment.  "We
+shall see the merits as well as the demerits of the case.  For
+instance, one of your friends cost me a sovereign for a favourite
+charity of hers."
+
+Evan Sinclair said very kindly, blinking his fair eyelashes in a shy
+way, "Well, I know I shall miss you.  The place will seem very dull
+with only Alexander and me left in it."
+
+"_I_ shall have my wife," said the minister brutally.
+
+"Yes," said Sinclair; "and her mother!  You have kept that pretty dark
+from us, Taurbarrels."
+
+"It is only a visit," said Mr. Macorquodale shortly.  And he went on in
+a truculent tone, "And I need not have her unless I want to."
+
+"I hear she is strict," murmured Evan.  "I hope you will be allowed to
+look out of the window on the Sabbath, my man."
+
+"I am master in my own house," said Mr. Macorquodale magnificently.
+
+"Believe me," said Evan, "that's a courtesy title, supported by no
+valid claim, and still less precedent.  A man never has been master of
+his own house when there is a mistress in it.  I remember when my
+brother got married he had just your very ideas, and he gave his wife
+the keys of the linen-press and the store-cupboard, 'But the rest of
+the bunch,' he said, 'I keep to myself.'  And he put them all in his
+pocket.  It was not six months after that," said Evan, "that I went to
+stay with them, and I heard him ask my sister-in-law if she would mind
+his having two pocket-handkerchiefs on Sundays."
+
+Palestrina and I were alone, for Ellicomb had left us a few days
+before, and we hear from the Jamiesons that he is a daily visitor at
+their house.  Thomas and Anthony were out shooting, and Mrs. Fielden
+had gone for a walk over the hills.
+
+"I have a thousand things to do," said Palestrina, when Evan and the
+minister had departed.
+
+"I also have a thousand things to do," I replied.
+
+"Don't tire yourself," said Palestrina.  "What are you going to do?"
+
+"I am going to re-write my diary," I said.
+
+"But, my dear," said Palestrina, "that would be the work of months."
+
+"I am only going to correct all the mistakes I have made in it," I
+replied; and I took my book and a pen, and went and sat in the little
+room on the ground-floor which they call my den.
+
+We once had an old aunt, Palestrina and I, who kept a diary all her
+life, and when any of the relatives whom she mentioned in its pages
+came to die, she used to go through all the back numbers of her journal
+and insert affectionate epithets in front of the names of the deceased.
+For instance (my aunt's existence was not marked by any thrilling
+events), the entry would perhaps be as follows: "Maria was late for
+breakfast this morning.  In the afternoon she had her singing-lesson,
+and afterwards we did some shopping, when Maria tried on her new gown."
+But the amended entry after Maria's death would be, "Our darling Maria
+was (a little) late for breakfast this morning; in the afternoon she
+had her singing-lesson"--and here would probably be a footnote praising
+Maria's voice--"afterwards we did some shopping, and"--Maria struck
+out--"my sweet girl tried on her new gown."  Any one's death, or even a
+successful marriage of one of the family, would cause her to revise and
+correct her diary in this way, and she used to fan the wet ink with a
+piece of blotting-paper to make it dry black, and thus prevent
+posterity from knowing that the words written over the lines were an
+afterthought induced by subsequent events.
+
+It was manifestly an unfair way of keeping a diary.  But I can claim
+her example and hereditary taint as an excuse for my own dishonesty
+this afternoon.  I read through my diary with a sense of utter shame,
+and wherever I found, for instance, that I had said that Mrs. Fielden
+was frivolous, or even that she raised her eyebrows in an affected way,
+I corrected the misstatement by the light of the magnificent discovery
+I had made that Mrs. Fielden was faultless, and that I loved her.  Oh,
+the beauty of this woman and her blessed kindness! the cunning with
+which she conceals her unselfishness, and her ridiculous attempts at
+pretending she is frivolous or worldly.
+
+Alas! there were so many misstatements to correct, and so many dear
+adjectives to fill in, that I was not halfway through my task before
+Mrs. Fielden herself tapped at the window and looked in.
+
+I believe I must have grinned foolishly, but what I wanted to do was to
+stretch out my arms to the beautiful vision, framed in the hectic
+Virginian creeper round the window, and call out to her to come to me.
+
+Mrs. Fielden came in for a minute, and said with the adorable lift of
+the eyebrows: "I have been educating a pair of young boots by walking
+through all the bogs on the hillside.  Listen, they are quite full of
+water."  She raised herself on her toes with a squelching sound of the
+leather, and gave one of her joyous soft laughs.
+
+"You must change directly," I said, with an idiotic sense of
+proprietorship.
+
+"When I have done so I think I shall come and have tea with you," said
+Mrs. Fielden.  And of course then I knew that she had come home early
+on purpose to have tea with me, and that probably she had given up
+something else which she wanted to do, in order that she might sit by
+me when I was alone--because of course I have found Mrs. Fielden out
+now, and exposed her hypocrisy.
+
+Fortunately she took nearly a quarter of an hour to change her wet
+boots, and this gave me time to ask myself why I was behaving like a
+raving idiot, because I had found out that Mrs. Fielden was absolutely
+perfect, and that I loved her.
+
+It was quite the worst quarter of an hour that I have ever spent,
+because in it I had time to remember that I was a crippled man with one
+leg, and that Mrs. Fielden was a beautiful young woman whom of course
+every one loved, and that she owned an old historical place called
+Stanby, and probably--I realized this also--that she would continue to
+come over and sit with a dull man and bewilder him with her beauty and
+her kindness only so long as he did not allow her to know the supremely
+impertinent fact that he had fallen in love with her.
+
+I must plead ill-health, and a certain weakness of nerve which no doubt
+always follows a surgical operation, for the fact that I turned round
+and put my face in the pillows for a moment and groaned.
+
+Mrs. Fielden came in in my favourite pale-blue gown which she sometimes
+wears when she changes her frock at tea-time.  She came and took a seat
+beside me, and as she never hurriedly plunges into a conversation we
+sat silent for a time.  The afternoon was darkening now, and the light
+of a blazing fire leaped and played upon her pale-blue dress, and
+turned her brown hair to a sort of red-gold.
+
+Mrs. Fielden thinks she is the only person in the world who can make up
+a fire.  And she is perfectly right.  She arranged the logs with a long
+brass poker, shifting them here and there, while her dear face glowed
+in the light of the fire.  She is not a luxurious woman, in spite of
+being surrounded always by luxury.  For instance, she stands and walks
+in a very erect way, and I have never seen her stuff a lot of sofa
+cushions at her back in a chair, nor lounge on a sofa.  Her glorious,
+buoyant health seems to exempt her from need of support or ease, and
+her figure is too pretty for lounging.
+
+When she had finished arranging the logs she put down the poker and
+looked at me with that dear kindliness of hers, and said in her pretty
+voice, "What have you been doing with yourself this afternoon?"
+
+"The minister and Evan Sinclair came up to say good-bye," I said.
+
+"And since then?"
+
+I took my diary, which still lay on my knee, and hid it under the sofa
+cushions.
+
+"Since then," I said, "I have been correcting--that is, writing my
+diary."
+
+"Oh, the diary!" exclaimed Mrs. Fielden delightedly.  "I had forgotten
+about that!"
+
+"No, you hadn't," I said to myself.  "It is only part of your wilful,
+uncomprehendable, untranslatable charm that makes you pretend sometimes
+that you have no memory.  As a matter of fact, you knew from the first
+that it would be a relief to an egotistical grumbler to get rid of his
+spleen sometimes on blue ruled essay paper, and so you set him a task
+to do, and you have often wondered since how he is getting on with it.
+
+"I think I must see the diary," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"That you certainly shall not," I said; and I pushed the book still
+farther under the sofa cushions--just as if it was necessary to fight
+with Mrs. Fielden for anything, or any use either!
+
+"I thought you promised," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"If I did I have changed my mind," I said firmly.
+
+"You know you mean all the time to let me see it," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"I know I do not mean to let you see it for even a minute of time," I
+replied.
+
+One of Mrs. Fielden's special odd little silences fell between us.
+"No," I said to myself.  "I will _not_ say I am sorry.  I will _not_
+say I have been a brute, I will _not_ feel a desire to comfort her,
+even if her eyes have the wistful look in them."
+
+Mrs. Fielden sat still and looked into the fire.
+
+What unexpected thing will she do next, I wonder?  Will she suddenly
+burst out laughing, or will she turn and take every bit of manhood out
+of me by smiling?  Or shall I find, when I turn and look at her face,
+simply that she has gone to sleep?
+
+Good heavens!  What if she should be crying?
+
+In an agony of compunction I turned and looked at her; and Mrs. Fielden
+not only smiled, but held out her hand for the book....  I rummaged
+underneath the sofa cushions, and passed it over to her.  She bent
+forward till the firelight from the blazing logs fell full on the open
+page, and she read every one of those corrected lines.  She saw where I
+had once put "affected" I had now put "beautiful," and for "frivolous"
+I put a "lovely gaiety," and she read till she came to the last
+correction of all.  I had run a line through the words "Mrs. Fielden
+came to sit with me," and had written over it, "My darling came to see
+me----"
+
+Then Mrs. Fielden closed the book, and left her chair where she had
+been sitting.  She crossed the hearthrug quite slowly till she reached
+my sofa.  And then she kneeled down and took both my hands in her dear
+strong ones, and looked at me with misty blue eyes, like wet
+forget-me-nots.  "But, Hugo dear," she said, "why did you not tell me
+long ago?"
+
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  _UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_
+
+
+  BY Miss MACNAUGHTAN.
+  THE FORTUNE OF CHRISTINA M'NAB.
+
+
+  THE DUENNA OF A GENIUS.             M. E. Francis.
+  OWD BOB.                            Alfred Ollivant.
+  EIGHT DAYS.                         R. E. Forrest.
+  LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.               Miss Braddon.
+  THE OCTOPUS.                        Frank Norris.
+  THE PIT.                            Frank Norris.
+  MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE, Etc.            Booth Tarkington.
+  WOODSIDE FARM.                      Mrs. W. K. Clifford.
+  WHITE FANG.                         Jack London.
+  THE PRINCESS PASSES.                C. N. & A. M. Williamson.
+  THE MAN FROM AMERICA.               Mrs. H. de la Pasture.
+  SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE.               "Q"
+  INCOMPARABLE BELLAIRS.              A. and E. Castle.
+  IF YOUTH BUT KNEW!                  A. and E. Castle.
+  MATTHEW AUSTIN.                     W. E. Norris.
+  HIS GRACE.                          W. E. Norris.
+  THE AMERICAN PRISONER.              Eden Phillpotts.
+  THE HOSTS OF THE LORD.              Mrs. F. A. Steel.
+  THE LADY OF THE BARGE.              W. W. Jacobs.
+  THE GOD IN THE CAR.                 Anthony Hope.
+  QUISANTE.                           Anthony Hope.
+  THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.            Anthony Hope.
+  THE KING'S MIRROR.                  Anthony Hope.
+  THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE.        Sir G. Parker.
+  AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH.         Sir G. Parker.
+  THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG.           Sir G. Parker.
+  MARRIAGE OF WILLIAM ASHE.           Mrs. Humphry Ward
+  HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE.            Mrs. Humphry Ward.
+  ROBERT ELSMERE.                     Mrs. Humphry Ward.
+  CLEMENTINA.                         A. E. W. Mason.
+  THE RECIPE FOR DIAMONDS.            C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne.
+  THE WAGES OF SIN.                   Lucas Malet.
+
+_Etc., Etc._
+
+_NELSON'S LIBRARY._
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Lame Dog's Diary, by S. Macnaughtan
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+</TITLE>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Lame Dog's Diary, by S. Macnaughtan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Lame Dog's Diary
+
+Author: S. Macnaughtan
+
+Release Date: February 3, 2011 [EBook #34777]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LAME DOG'S DIARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="img-front"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="&quot;But, Hugo dear,&quot; she said, &quot;why did you not tell me long ago?&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="351" HEIGHT="551">
+<H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 351px">
+&quot;But, Hugo dear,&quot; she said, &quot;why did you not tell me long ago?&quot;
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t1">
+A LAME DOG'S DIARY
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t2">
+S. Macnaughtan
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t4">
+Thomas Nelson and Sons,
+<BR>
+London, Edinburgh, and New York
+<BR>
+1908
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+
+<P CLASS="t2">
+A LAME DOG'S DIARY.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER I.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps curiosity has never been more keen, nor mystery more baffling,
+than has been the case during the last few weeks.  There have been "a
+few friends to tea" at almost every house in the village to see if in
+this way any reasonable conclusions can be arrived at, and even
+Palestrina is satisfied with the number of people who have taken the
+trouble to walk up the hill and chat by my sofa in the afternoons.  But
+although each lady who has called has remarked that she is in the
+secret, but at present is not at liberty to say anything about it, we
+are inclined to think that this is vain boasting, or at least selfish
+reticence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two Miss Traceys have announced to almost every caller at their
+little cottage during the last two years that they intend to build.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We have all been naturally a good deal impressed by this statement, and
+although it was never plainly said what the structure was to be, we had
+had for a long time a notion of a detached house on the Common.  And
+surely enough the foundation-stone was laid last year by Miss Ruby
+Tracey with some ceremony, and the first turf of the garden was cut by
+Miss Tracey, and only last month the whole of the Fern Cottage
+furniture was removed in a van to Fairview, as the new house is
+called&mdash;the handsomer pieces placed upon the outside of the van, and
+the commoner and least creditable of the bedroom furniture within.
+Every one was at his or her window on the day that the Miss Traceys'
+furniture, with the best cabinet and the inlaid card-table duly
+displayed, was driven in state by the driver of the station omnibus
+through the town.  A rumour got abroad that even more beautiful things
+were concealed from view inside the van, and the Miss Traceys satisfied
+their consciences by saying, "We did not spread the rumour, and we
+shall not contradict it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the mystery concerns the furniture in quite a secondary sort of
+way, and it is only important as being the means of giving rise to the
+much-discussed rumour in the town.  For mark, the drawing-room
+furniture was taken at once and stored in a spare bedroom, and the
+drawing-room was left unfurnished.  This fact might have remained in
+obscurity, for in winter time, at least, it is not unusual for ladies
+to receive guests in the dining-room with an apology, the drawing-room
+being a cold sitting-room during the frost.  But Mrs. Lovekin, the lady
+who acts as co-hostess at every entertainment in our neighbourhood,
+handing about her friends' cakes and tea, and taking, we are inclined
+to think, too much upon herself, did, in a moment of expansion, offer
+to show the Traceys' house to the Blinds, who happened to call there on
+the day when she was paying her respects to Miss Tracey.  Mrs. Lovekin
+always removes her bonnet and cloak in every house, and this helps the
+suggestion that she is in some sort a hostess everywhere.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina, who was also calling on the Miss Traceys, gave me a full,
+true, and particular account of the affair the same evening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mind the wet paint," Mrs. Lovekin called from the dining-room window
+to the Miss Blinds as they came in at the gate, "and I'll open the
+door," she remarked, as she sailed out into the passage to greet the
+sisters.  Miss Ruby Tracey would rather have done this politeness
+herself, in order that she might hear the flattering remarks which
+people were wont to make about the hall paper.  It is so well known
+that she and her sister keep three servants that they never have any
+hesitation in going to the door themselves.  Whereas the Miss Blinds,
+who have only one domestic, would seem hardly to know where their front
+door is situated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What an elegant paper!" exclaimed Miss Lydia Blind, stopping awestruck
+in the little hall.  Miss Lydia would, one knows, have something kind
+to say if she went to pay a call at a Kaffir hut.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Mrs. Lovekin in a proprietary sort of way; "it is one of
+Moseley's which Smithson got down in his book of patterns.  The blue
+paint is what they call 'eggshell'&mdash;quite a new shade.  Come this way
+and have a cup of tea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sure it is all very simple," said Miss Tracey, in a disparaging
+manner that showed her good breeding, as they sat down in the
+dining-room.  "How do you like the new carpet, Miss Belinda?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Glory, glory, glory!" said Miss Belinda; "glory, glory, glory!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Show Miss Lydia the new footstools, Ruby dear," said Miss Tracey; "I
+am sure she would like to see them."  For we all believe&mdash;or like to
+believe&mdash;that to praise our property must be Miss Lydia's highest
+pleasure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Lovekin seized the opportunity to act as tea-maker to the party.
+She poured cream and sugar into the cups with the remark that there was
+no one in Stowel whose tastes in these respects she did not know, and
+she handed a plate of cake to Miss Belinda, saying,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There, my dear, you sit comfortable and eat that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Glory, glory, glory!" said Miss Belinda.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Miss Traceys had tea dispensed to them by the same hand, and
+accepted it with that slight sense of bewilderment which Mrs. Lovekin
+sometimes makes us feel when she looks after us in our own houses; and
+Miss Lydia Blind distributed her thanks equally between her and the
+Miss Traceys.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nothing was talked of that afternoon but the new house&mdash;its sunny
+aspect and its roomy cupboards in particular commanding the heartiest
+commendation.  Presently the ladies were taken to see all over it, with
+the exception of one of the spare bedrooms and the drawing-room.  They
+knew these rooms existed, because Miss Tracey paused at the door of
+each, and said lightly, "This is the drawing-room," and "This is
+another spare bedroom;" and although, as my sister confided to me, they
+would have given much to see the interior of the rooms, they could not
+do so, of course, uninvited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They paused to admire something at every turn, even saying generously,
+but playfully, that there were many of Miss Tracey's possessions which
+they positively coveted for themselves.  The Miss Traceys smilingly
+repudiated their felicitations, while Mrs. Lovekin accepted them and
+announced the price of everything.  She became quite breathless,
+hurrying upstairs, while she exhibited stair-rods and carpets, and with
+shortened breath apostrophized them as being "real brass" or "the best
+Brussels at five-and-threepence."  No one is vulgar in Stowel, but Mrs.
+Lovekin is, we fear, not genteel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the close of the visit, Mrs. Lovekin again ushered the visitors into
+the hall, and opening, "by the merest accident," as she afterwards
+said&mdash;without, however, gaining any credence for her statement&mdash;opening
+by the merest accident the door of the drawing-room, she peeped in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The drawing-room was void of furniture.  The wild thought came into
+Mrs. Lovekin's mind&mdash;had the Traceys overbuilt themselves, and had the
+furniture, which had been carried so proudly through the town on the
+top of the furniture-van, been sold to pay expenses?  The suggestion
+was immediately put aside.  The Miss Traceys' comfortable means were so
+well known that such an explanation could not be seriously contemplated
+for a moment.  No; putting two and two together, a closed spare bedroom
+and an empty drawing-room, and bringing a woman's instinct to bear upon
+the question, it all pointed to one thing&mdash;the Miss Traceys were going
+to give a party, probably an evening party, in honour of the new house,
+and the drawing-room furniture was being stored for safety in the spare
+bedroom until the rout was over.  Doubtless the first rumour of the
+Miss Traceys' party was meanly come by, but it was none the less
+engrossing, all the same.  Miss Lydia hoped that no one would believe
+for a moment that she was in any way connected with the fraudulent
+intrusion that had been made into Miss Tracey's secret, and Miss Tracey
+said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have known Mary Anne Lovekin for thirty years"&mdash;this was
+understating the case, but numbers are not exactly stated as we grow
+older&mdash;"but I never would have believed that she could have done such a
+thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bad butter," said Miss Belinda, shaking her head in an emphatic
+fashion; "bad butter, bad butter!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not want to judge people," said Miss Tracey; "but there was a
+want of delicacy about opening a closed door which I for one cannot
+forgive."  The Miss Traceys' good-breeding is proverbial in Stowel, and
+it was felt that her uncompromising attitude could not but be excused
+when it was a matter of her most honourable sensibilities having been
+outraged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>I</I> shall not say what I think," said Miss Ruby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We often find that when Miss Ruby cannot transcend what her sister has
+said, she has a way of hinting darkly at a possible brilliance of
+utterance which for some reason she refrains from making.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bad butter!" said Miss Belinda; "bad, bad butter!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Many years ago Miss Belinda Blind, who was then a beautiful young
+woman, was thrown from a pony carriage.  The result of the fall was an
+injury to the spine, and she was smitten with a paralytic stroke which
+deprived her of all power of speech.  She was dumb for some years, and
+then two phrases came back to her stammering tongue, "glory," and "bad
+butter."  She understands perfectly what is said to her, but she has no
+means of replying, save in this very limited vocabulary.  And,
+strangely enough, these words can only be made to correspond with Miss
+Belinda's feelings.  However polite her intentions may be, if at heart
+she disapproves she can only utter her two words of opprobrium.  When a
+sermon displeases her she sits in her pew muttering softly, and her
+lips show by their movement the words she is repeating; while a
+particularly good cup of tea will evoke from her the extravagant
+phrase, "Glory, glory, glory!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly," I said to Miss Lydia on the day succeeding the famous
+visit to the Traceys, "Mrs. Lovekin's information, if so it may be
+called, has been wrongly come by, and yet so frail is human nature one
+cannot help speculating upon it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is what is so sad," said Miss Lydia; "one almost feels as though
+sharing in Mrs. Lovekin's deceit by dwelling upon her information, and
+yet one's mind seems incapable of even partially forgetting such an
+announcement."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps some suggestion of what was forming the topic of conversation
+in the town may have reached the Miss Traceys, and hastened their
+disclosure of the mystery.  For very shortly afterwards, one morning
+when a flood of April sunshine had called us out of doors to wander on
+the damp paths of the garden, and watch bursting buds and listen to the
+song of birds in a very rural and delightful fashion, we were informed
+by a servant who tripped out in a white cap and apron, quite dazzling
+in the sunshine, that the Miss Traceys were within.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I appealed to my sister to furnish me with a means of escape.  But she
+replied: "I am afraid they have seen you.  Besides, you know I like you
+to see people."  We went indoors, and Miss Ruby apologized for the
+untimely hour at which she and her sister had come, but explained it by
+saying, "We wanted to find you alone."  And then we knew that the
+mystery was about to be solved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are the first to hear about it," said Miss Tracey in a manner
+which was distinctly flattering.  The Miss Traceys sit very erect on
+their chairs, and when they come to call I always apologize for having
+my leg up on the sofa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The fact is," Miss Tracey went on, "that we knew that we could rely
+upon your good sense and judgment in a matter which is exercising us
+very seriously at present."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a delicate subject, of course," said Miss Ruby, "but one which
+we feel certain we may confide to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We always look upon Mr. Hugo as a man of the world," said Miss Tracey,
+"although he is such an invalid, and we rely upon the sound judgment of
+you both."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, to state the subject without further preamble&mdash;but of course it
+must be understood that everything spoken this morning was to be in
+strict confidence&mdash;would we consider that they, the Miss Traceys, were
+sufficiently chaperoned if their brother the Vicar were present at the
+dance, and promised not to leave until the last gentleman had quitted
+the house?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I do not like to overstate a lady's age, and it is with the utmost
+diffidence that I suggest that Miss Ruby Tracey, the younger of the two
+sisters, may be on the other side of forty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see, we have not only our own good name to consider," said Miss
+Tracey, "but the memory of our dear and ever-respected father must, we
+feel, be our guide in this matter, and we cannot decide how he would
+have wished us to act.  If our brother were married it would simplify
+matters very much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You would have had your invitation before now," said Miss Ruby, "if we
+had been able to come to a decision, but without advice we felt that
+was impossible.  I am sure," she went on, giving her mantle a little
+nervous composing touch, and glancing aside as though hardly liking to
+face any eye directly&mdash;"I am sure the things one hears of unmarried
+women doing nowadays ... but of course one would not like to be classed
+with that sort of person."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina was the first of us who spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think," she said gravely, "that as you are so well known here,
+nothing could be said."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You really think so?" said Miss Ruby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Miss Tracey still demurred.  She said: "But it is the fact of our
+being so well known here that really constitutes my chief uneasiness.
+We often feel," she added with a sigh, "that in another place we could
+have more liberty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I assure you," said Miss Ruby, in a tone of playful confession, "that
+when we go to visit our cousins in London we are really quite
+shockingly frivolous.  I do not know what it is about London; one
+always seems to throw off all restraint."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think you are giving a wrong impression, dear," said Miss Tracey.
+"There was nothing in the whole of our conduct in London which would
+not bear repetition in Stowel.  Only, in a place like this, one feels
+one must often explain one's actions, lest they should give rise to
+misrepresentations; whereas in London, although behaving, I hope, in a
+manner just as circumspect, one feels that no apology or explanation is
+needed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is a sort of cheerful privacy about London," said the other
+sister, "which I find it hard to explain, but which is nevertheless
+enjoyable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To say that there is a dull publicity about the country, was too
+obvious a retort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think we went out every evening when we were in West Kensington,"
+said Miss Tracey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Counting church in the evening," said Miss Ruby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Still, those evening services in London almost count as going out,"
+said Miss Tracey; "I mean, they are so lively.  I often blame myself
+for not being able to look upon them more in the light of a religious
+exercise.  I find it as difficult to worship in a strange pew as to
+sleep comfortably in a strange bed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Miss Traceys' morning call lasted until one o'clock, and even then,
+as they themselves said, rising and shaking out their poplin skirts,
+there was much left undiscussed which they would still have liked to
+talk over with us.  The ball supper, as they called it, was to be
+cooked at home, and to consist of nothing which could not be "eaten in
+the hand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Claret-cup was, to use Miss Tracey's own figure of speech, to be
+"flowing" the whole evening, both in the dining-room with the
+sandwiches and cakes, and on a tray placed in a recess behind the hall
+door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gentlemen always seem so thirsty," said Miss Tracey, making the remark
+as though speaking of some animal of strange habits which she had
+considered with the bars of its cage securely fixed between herself and
+it at the Zoo.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have bought six bottles of Essence of Claret-cup," said the younger
+sister, "which we have seen very highly recommended in advertisements;
+and although it says that three tablespoonfuls will make a quart of the
+cup, we thought of putting four, and so having it good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As regards the music," went on Miss Tracey, "we have come, I think, to
+a very happy decision.  A friend of ours knows a blind man who plays
+the piano for dances, and by employing him we feel that we shall be
+giving remunerative work to a very deserving person, as well as
+ensuring for ourselves a really choice selection of the most
+fashionable waltzes.  Ruby pronounces the floor perfect," said Miss
+Tracey, glancing admiringly at her younger sister's still neat figure
+and nimble feet; "she has been practising upon it several times&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"With the blinds down, dear," amended Miss Ruby, simpering a little.
+"We understand," she continued, "that some chalk sprinkled over the
+boards before dancing begins is beneficial.  You should have known
+Stowel in the old days, when there was a county ball every winter at
+the Three Jolly Postboys&mdash;such a name!" continued Miss Ruby, who was in
+that curiously excited state when smiles and even giggles come easily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now remember," said Miss Tracey to Palestrina, as she took leave of
+her, "you must come and help with the decorations on the morning of the
+dance.  You can rest in the afternoon, so as to look your best and
+rosiest in the evening."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In Stowel it is ingenuously admitted that a young lady should try and
+look her best when gentlemen are to be present, and rosy cheeks are
+still in vogue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Miss Traceys' drawing-room is not a very large room, even when
+empty of furniture, but it certainly had a most festive appearance when
+we drove up to the famous house-warming.  Every curtain was looped with
+evergreens, and every fireplace was piled with ivy, while two large
+flags, which were referred to several times as "a display of bunting,"
+festooned the little staircase.  Several friends in the village had
+lent their white-capped maids for the occasion, and these ran against
+each other in the little linoleum passage in a state of great
+excitement, and called each other "dear" in an exuberance of affection
+which relieved their fluttered feelings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A palm had been ordered from London and placed triumphantly in a
+corner&mdash;the palm had been kept as a surprise for us all.  In the course
+of the evening it was quite a common thing to hear some girl ask her
+partner if he had seen The Palm; and if the reply was in the negative,
+the couple made a journey to the hall to look at it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And here I must note a curious trait in the conversation prevalent in
+our select circle at Stowel.  We all speak in capitals.  The definite
+article is generally preferred to the "a" or "an" which points out a
+common noun; and so infectious is the habit, that when writing, for
+instance, of the Jamiesons, I find myself referring to The Family, with
+a capital, quite in a royal way, so perspicuously are capital letters
+suggested by their manner of speech.  In the same way, the Taylors'
+uncle is never referred to by any of us except as The Uncle, and I feel
+sure that I should be doing the Traceys' plant an injustice if I did
+not write it down The Palm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This, however, is a digression.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The calmness of the Miss Traceys was almost overdone.  They stood at
+the door of their drawing-room, each holding a small bouquet in her
+hand, and they greeted their guests as though nothing could be more
+natural than to give a dance, or to stand beneath a doorway draped with
+white lace curtains, and with a background of dissipated-looking
+polished boards and evergreens.  The elder Miss Tracey, who is tall,
+was statuesque and dignified; the younger lady was conversational and
+natural almost to the point of artificiality&mdash;so determined was Miss
+Ruby to repudiate any hint of arrogance this evening.  And it may be
+said of both sisters that they were strikingly well-bred and
+unembarrassed.  Those who had seen them in all the flutter of
+preparations during the day&mdash;washing china and glass, issuing packets
+of candles from their store cupboard below the stairs, and jingling
+large bunches of keys&mdash;could admire these outward symbols of ease, and
+appreciate the self-restraint that they involved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I do not remember before, at any dance, seeing so many old young
+ladies, or so few and such very juvenile young men.  The elderly young
+ladies smiled the whole time, while their boy partners looked
+preternaturally grave and solemn.  They appeared to be shyly conscious
+of their shirt collars, and these, I fancy, must have been made after
+some exaggerated pattern which I cannot now recall; I only remember
+that they appeared to be uncomfortably high and somewhat conspicuous,
+and that they gave one the idea of being the wearers' first high
+collars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Vicar, who had promised to come at eight o'clock so that there
+should be no mistake about his being in the house from first to last of
+the dance, and who had been sent for in a panic at a quarter past
+eight, acted conscientiously throughout the entire entertainment.  He
+began by inviting Mrs. Fielden to dance, and afterwards he asked every
+lady in turn according to her rank, and I do not think that during the
+entire evening his feet can have failed to respond to a single bar of
+the music.  The blind musician was a little late in arriving, and we
+all sat round the drawing-room with our backs to the new blue wallpaper
+and longed for home.  No one dared to offer to play a waltz, in case it
+should be considered an affront at a party where etiquette was so
+conspicuous, and where the peculiar Stowel air of mystery pervaded
+everything.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Jamiesons arrived, a party of nine, in the station omnibus, and
+chatted in the hearty, unaffected manner peculiar to themselves, waving
+little fans to and fro in the chilly air of the new drawing-room, and
+putting an end to the solemn silence which had distinguished the first
+half-hour of the party.  Each of the sisters wore a black dress
+relieved by a touch of colour, and carried a fan.  Their bright eyes
+shone benignly behind their several pairs of pince-nez; and as they
+shook hands with an air of delight with every single person in the room
+when they entered, their arrival caused quite a pleasant stir.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Lovekin had already, in her character of co-hostess, begun to
+distribute the Essence of Claret-cup that, diluted with water, formed
+the staple beverage of the evening and was placed on a small table
+behind the hall-door.  There was rather a curious sediment left at the
+bottom of the glasses, and the flavour of cucumber suggested vaguely to
+one that the refreshment might be claret-cup.  Very young men in split
+white kid gloves drank a good deal of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last the blind musician was led solemnly across the room, and took
+up his position at the piano.  He always left off playing before a
+figure of a quadrille or lancers was finished, and then the dancers
+clapped their hands to make him continue, and the elderly young ladies
+smiled more than ever.  At the second or third waltz my sister was in
+the proud position of being claimed in turn by the Vicar as his
+partner; and the position, besides being prominent, was such an
+enviable one that Palestrina, who is not more given to humility than
+other good-looking young women of her age, was carried away by popular
+feeling so far as to remark in a tone of gratitude that this was very
+kind of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He replied, "I have made up my mind to sacrifice myself for the night;"
+and one realized that a lofty position and a prominent place in the
+world may carry with them sufficient humiliations to keep one meek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The conscientious Vicar did not allow his partner to sit down once
+throughout the entire waltz, and I think the blind musician played at
+greater length than usual.  I began to wonder if her partner regarded
+my excellent Palestrina as a sort of Sandow exerciser, and whether he
+was trying to get some healthy gymnastics, if not amusement, out of
+their dance together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There!" he said at last, placing her on a chair beside me as a
+fulfilled duty; and feeling that she was expected to say "Thank you,"
+Palestrina meekly said it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have only danced once in the last twenty years," said the Vicar,
+"and that was with some choir boys."  And the next moment the blind man
+began to play again, and he was footing it with conscientious energy
+with Miss Lydia Blind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Young ladies who had sat long with their empty programmes in their
+hands now began to dance with each other with an air of overdone
+merriment, protesting that they did not know how to act gentleman, but
+declaring with emphasis that it was just as amusing to dance with a
+girl-friend as with a man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The music, as usual, failed before the end of each figure of the dance,
+and the curate, who wore a pair of very smart shoe-buckles, remarked to
+me that the lancers was a dance that created much diversion, and I
+replied that they were too amusing for anything.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Jamiesons' youngest brother, who is in a shipping-office in London,
+had come down to Stowel especially for this occasion.  Once, some years
+ago, Kennie, as he is called, made a voyage in one of the shipping
+company's large steamers to South America.  He landed at Buenos Ayres
+armed to the teeth, and walked about the pavement of that
+highly-civilized town, with its wooden pavements and plate-glass shop
+windows, in a sombrero and poncho, and with terrible weapons stuck in
+his belt.  At the end of a week he returned in the same ship in which
+he had made the outward voyage, and since then he has had tales to tell
+of those wild regions with which any of the stories in the <I>Boys' Own
+Paper</I> are tame in comparison.  In his dress and general appearance he
+even now suggests a pirate king.  His tales of adventure are always
+accompanied by explanatory gestures and demonstrations, and it is not
+unusual to see Kennie stand up in the midst of an admiring circle of
+friends and make some fierce sabre-cuts in the air.  He was dressed
+with a red cummerbund round his waist, and he drew attention to it by
+an apology to every one of his partners for having it on.  "One gets
+into the habit of dressing like this out there," he said in a tone of
+excuse.  The Pirate Boy was in great demand at the dance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Pretty Mrs. Fielden, who had driven over from Stanby, beautifully
+dressed as usual, and slightly amused, ordered her carriage early, and
+had merely come to oblige those quaint old dears, the Miss Traceys.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Even at the house-warming Mrs. Fielden would have considered it quite
+impossible to sit out a dance.  She brought an elderly Colonel with
+her, and she conducted him into a corner behind The Palm, and talked to
+him there till it was her turn to dance with the Vicar.  Had it not
+been Mrs. Fielden, whose position placed her above criticism, the
+breath of envy might have whispered that it was hardly fair that one
+couple should occupy the favourite sitting-out place&mdash;two drawing-room
+chairs beneath The Palm&mdash;to the exclusion of others.  But Mrs. Fielden
+being whom she was, the young ladies of Stowel were content to pass and
+repass the coveted chairs and to whisper admiringly, "How exquisite she
+is looking to-night!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is there anything of me left?" she said to me, looking cool and
+unruffled when her dance with the Vicar was over.  She had only made
+one short turn of the room with him, and her beautiful dress and her
+hair were quite undisturbed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You haven't danced half so conscientiously as his other partners
+have," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wanted to talk about the parish," said Mrs. Fielden, "so I stopped.
+I think I should like to go and get cool somewhere."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will take you to sit under The Palm again, as Colonel Jardine did,"
+I replied, "and you shall laugh at all the broad backs and flat feet of
+our country neighbours, and hear everybody say as they pass how
+beautiful you are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden turned her head towards me as if to speak, and I had a
+sudden vivid conviction that she would have told me I was rude had I
+not been a cripple with one leg.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We sat under The Palm.  Mrs. Fielden never rushes into a conversation.
+Presently she said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why do you come to this sort of thing?  It can't amuse you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You told me the other day," I said, "that I ought to cultivate a small
+mind and small interests."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did I?" said Mrs. Fielden lightly.  "If I think one thing one day, I
+generally think quite differently a day or two after.  To-night, for
+instance, I think it is a mistake for you to lean against the Miss
+Traceys' new blue walls and watch us dance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not sure that it isn't better than sitting at home and reading how
+well my old regiment is doing in South Africa.  Besides, you know, I am
+writing a diary."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you?" said Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You advised it," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Mrs. Fielden is provoking she always looks ten times prettier than
+she does at other times.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A good many people in this little place," I said, "have made up their
+minds to 'do the work that's nearest' and to help 'a lame dog over
+stiles.'  I think I should be rather a brute if I didn't respond to
+their good intentions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think they need invent stiles, though!" said Mrs. Fielden
+quickly; "wood-carving, and beating brass, and playing the zither&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not play the zither," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;are not stiles.  They are making a sort of obstacle race of your
+life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Since I have begun to write the diary," I said, "I've been able to
+excuse myself attempting these things, even when tools are kindly
+brought to me.  And, so far, no one has so absolutely forgotten that
+there is a lingering spark of manhood in me as to suggest that I should
+crochet or do cross-stitch."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know I am going to help to write the diary," said Mrs. Fielden,
+"only I'm afraid I shall have to go to all their tea-parties, shan't I,
+to get copy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will certainly have to go," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm dreadfully bored to-night; aren't you?" she said confidentially,
+and in a certain radiant fashion as distant as the Poles from boredom.
+"No one can really enjoy this sort of thing, do you think?  It's like
+being poor, or anything disagreeable of that sort.  People think they
+ought to pretend to like it, but they don't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish I could entertain you better," I said sulkily; "but I'm afraid
+I never was the least bit amusing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden relapsed into one of her odd little silences, and I
+determined I would not ask her what she was thinking about.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently Colonel Jardine joined us, and she said to him: "Please see
+if you can get my carriage; it must be five o'clock in the morning at
+least."  And the next moment I was made to feel the egotism of
+imagining I had been punished, when she bade me a charming
+"good-night."  She smiled congratulations on her hostesses on the
+success of the party, and pleaded the long drive to Stanby as an excuse
+for leaving early.  The Colonel wrapped her in a long, beautiful cloak
+of some pale coloured velvet and fur&mdash;a sumptuous garment at which
+young ladies in shawls looked admiringly&mdash;and Mrs. Fielden slipped it
+on negligently, and got into her brougham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, how tired I am!" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was pretty deadly," said the Colonel.  "Did you taste the
+claret-cup?" he added, making a grimace in the dark.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I found it excellent," said Mrs. Fielden quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Margaret Jamieson now took her place at the piano, to enable the blind
+man to go and have some supper; but, having had it, he slept so
+peacefully that no one could bear to disturb him, so between them the
+young ladies shared his duties till the close of the evening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina had suggested, as a little occupation for me, that I should
+write out programmes for the dance, and I had done so.  Surely
+programmes were never so little needed before!  Every grown man had
+left the assembly long before twelve o'clock struck, the feebleness of
+the excuses for departing thus early being only equalled by the gravity
+with which they were made.  Even the lawyer, who we thought would have
+remained faithful to the end, pleaded that since he ricked his knee he
+is obliged to have plenty of rest.  The Pirate Boy had had some bitter
+words with the lawyer at a previous stage in the evening about the way
+in which the lancers should be danced, and had muttered darkly, "I
+won't make a disturbance in a lady's house, but I have seen a fellow
+called out for less."  He considered that the lawyer was running away,
+unable to bear his cold, keen eye upon him during the next lancers, and
+he watched him depart, standing at the head of the tiny staircase,
+beneath the display of bunting, with his arms folded in a Napoleonic
+attitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All good things come to an end, and even the Vicar of Stowel must have
+felt that there are limits to the most conscientious energy.  And
+girls, dancing with each other, learn perhaps that the merriment caused
+by acting as a man is not altogether lasting; while elderly young
+ladies, although agreed in smiling to the very end, must be aware how
+fixed in expression such a smile may become towards the end of a long
+evening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Good-nights were said, and carriages were called up with a good deal of
+unnecessary shouting, while the Pirate Boy insisted upon going to the
+heads of the least restive horses and soothing them in a way which he
+said he had learned from those Gaucho fellows out there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have never been able to tell what the Miss Traceys thought about
+their dance.  If they were disappointed, the world was not allowed to
+probe that tender spot.  Possibly they were satisfied with its success;
+the proprietary instinct of admiration applies to entertainments as
+well as to tangible possessions.  But that satisfaction, if it existed,
+was modestly veiled&mdash;the house-warming was less discussed by them than
+by any one else.  Miss Ruby spoke rather wistfully one day about simple
+pleasures being the best and safest after all, and she alluded with a
+sigh to the time which must come some day when she would be no longer
+young.  Miss Tracey drew herself up and said: "A woman is only as old
+as she looks, my dear," and glanced admiringly at her sister.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The diluted Essence of Claret-cup was bottled, and formed a nice light
+luncheon wine at the Miss Tracey's for many weeks afterwards.  The
+furniture was brought down from the spare bedroom by the maids, who
+walked the heavier pieces in front of them with a curious tip-toeing
+movement of the castors of the several easy-chairs.  The art tiles in
+the grate were cleared of their faded burden of evergreens, and The
+Palm was carried into the bay-window, where it could be seen from the
+road.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I drove over to see Mrs. Fielden and to ask her if she thought I had
+been a sulky brute at the dance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Were you?" said Mrs. Fielden, lifting her pretty dark eyebrows; "I
+forget."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER II.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina and I live in the country, and whenever we are dull or sad,
+like the sailors in Mr. Gilbert's poem, we decide that our
+neighbourhood is too deadly uninteresting, and then we go and see the
+Jamiesons.  They are our nearest neighbours, as they are also amongst
+our greatest friends, and the walk to their house is a distance that I
+am able to manage.  I believe that our visits to the Jamiesons are most
+often determined by the state of the weather.  If we have passed a long
+wet day indoors I feel that it is going to be a Jamieson day, and I
+know that my sister will say to me after tea, "Suppose we go over and
+see the Jamiesons;" and she generally adds that it is much better than
+settling down for the evening at five o'clock in the afternoon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I do not think that Palestrina was so sociable a young woman, nor did
+she see so much of her neighbours, before I came home an invalid from
+South Africa&mdash;I got hit in the legs at Magersfontein, and had the left
+one taken off in the hospital at Wynberg&mdash;but she believes, no doubt
+rightly, that the variety that one gets by seeing one's fellow-men is
+good for a poor lame dog who lies on a sofa by the fire the greater
+part of the day, wishing he could grow another leg or feel fit again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Acting upon this unalterable conviction of my sister, we drive about in
+the afternoon and see people, and they come and see me and suggest
+occupations for me.  In Lent I had a more than usual number of callers,
+which says much for the piety of the place, as well as for the goodness
+of heart of its inhabitants.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is a slight coolness between what is known as the "County" and
+the Jamiesons, and their name is never mentioned without the
+accompanying piece of information, "You know, old Jamieson married his
+cook!"  To be more exact, Mrs. Jamieson was a small farmer's daughter,
+and Captain Jamieson fell in love with her when, having left the army,
+he went to learn practical farming at old Higgins's, and he loved her
+faithfully to the day of his death.  She is a stout, elderly woman who
+speaks very little, but upon whom an immense amount of affection seems
+to be lavished by her family of five daughters and two sons.  And it
+has sometimes seemed to my sister and me that her good qualities are of
+a lasting and passive sort, which exist in large measure in the hearts
+of those who bestow this boundless affection.  Mrs. Jamieson's form of
+introducing herself to any one she meets consists in giving an account
+of the last illness and death of her husband.  There is hardly a
+poultice which was placed upon that poor man which her friends have not
+heard about.  And when she has finished, in her flat, sad voice, giving
+every detail of his last disorder, Mrs. Jamieson's conversation is at
+an end.  She has learned, no doubt unconsciously, to gauge the
+characters of new acquaintances by the degree of interest which they
+evince in Captain Jamieson's demise.  It is Mrs. Jamieson's test of
+their true worth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of the other sorrow which saddened a nature that perhaps was never very
+gay, Mrs. Jamieson rarely speaks.  Possibly because she thinks of it
+more than of anything else in the world.  Among her eight children
+there was only one who appeared to his mother to combine all perfection
+in himself.  He was killed by an accident in his engineering works
+seven years ago, and although his friends will, perhaps, only remember
+him as a stout young fellow who sang sea-songs with a distended chest,
+his mother buried her heart with him in his grave, and even the voice
+of strangers is lowered as they say, "She lost a son once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The late Captain Jamieson, a kindly, shrewd man and a Scotchman withal,
+was agent to Mrs. Fielden, widow of the late member for Stanby, and
+when he died his income perished with him, and The Family of
+Jamieson&mdash;a large one, as has been told&mdash;were thankful enough to
+subsist on their mother's inheritance of some four or five hundred a
+year, bequeathed to her by the member of the non-illustrious house of
+Higgins, late farmer deceased.  It is a hospitable house, for all its
+narrow means, and there live not, I believe, a warmer-hearted or more
+generous family than these good Jamiesons.  The girls are energetic,
+bright, and honest; their slender purses are at the disposal of every
+scoundrel in the parish; and their time, as well as their boundless
+energy, is devoted to the relief of suffering or to the betterment of
+mankind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden is of the opinion that nothing gives one a more perfect
+feeling of rest than going to Belmont, as the Jamiesons' little house
+is called, and watching them work.  She calls it the "Rest Cure."
+Every one of the five sisters, except Maud, who is the beauty of the
+family, wears spectacles, and behind these their bright, intelligent
+small eyes glint with kindness and brisk energy.  The worst feature of
+this excellent family is their habit of all talking at the same time,
+in a certain emphatic fashion which renders it difficult to catch what
+each individual is saying, and this is especially the case when three
+of the sisters are driving sewing-machines simultaneously.  They have a
+genius for buying remnants of woollen goods at a small price, and
+converting them into garments for the poor; and their first question
+often is, as they hold a piece of flannel or serge triumphantly aloft,
+"What do you think I gave for that?"  Palestrina always names at least
+twice the sum that has purchased the goods, and has thereby gained a
+character for being dreadfully extravagant but sympathetic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not believe," I said to Palestrina the other day, "that these
+good Jamiesons have a thought beyond making other people happy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That and getting married are the sole objects of their existence,"
+said Palestrina.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is very odd," I said, "that women so devoid of what might be called
+sentiment are yet so bent upon this very thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eliza told me to-day," said Palestrina, "that as Kate has not
+mentioned one single man in her letters home, they cannot help thinking
+that there is something in it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Jamiesons have the same vigorous, energetic ideas about matrimony
+that they have about everything else, and almost their sole grievance,
+naïvely expressed, is that Maud, "who gets them all"&mdash;meaning, I
+believe, offers of marriage&mdash;is the only one of the family who is
+unable to make up her mind clearly on this momentous question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We should not mind," say the conclave of sisters during one of the
+numerous family discussions on this subject, "even if she does get all
+the admirers&mdash;for of course she is the pretty one&mdash;if only she would
+accept one of them.  But she always gets undecided and silly as soon as
+they come to the point."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It should be observed in passing that the different stages of
+development in love affairs are shrewdly noted and commented upon by
+the Jamiesons.  The first evidence of a man's preference is that he "is
+struck;" and the second, when he begins to visit at the house, is known
+as "hovering."  An inquiry after Maud's health will sometimes elicit
+the unexpected reply that another admirer is hovering at present.  The
+third stage is reached when the lover is said to be "dangling;" and the
+final triumph, when Maud has received a proposal, is noted as having
+"come to the point."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If Maud's triumphs are watched with small sighs of envy by her sisters,
+they are a source of nothing but gratification to them to retail to the
+outside world.  There is a strict account kept of Maud's "conquests" in
+the letters sent to relatives, and the evening's post will sometimes
+contain the startling announcement that Maud has had a fourth in one
+year.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, you know how fond we all are of each other," said Eliza
+Jamieson to me one day with one of those unexpected confidences which
+the effeminacy of sickness seems to warrant, if not actually to invite,
+"but we can't help thinking that, humanly speaking, we should all have
+a better chance if only Maud would marry.  No one would wish her to
+marry without love, but we fear she is looking for perfection, and
+<I>that</I> she will never get; and it was really absurd of her to be so
+upset when she discovered, after nearly getting engaged to Mr. Reddy,
+that he wore a wig.  After all, a man may be a good Christian in spite
+of having no hair."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is undoubtedly a fact," I said warmly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Mr. Reddy had excellent prospects," said Eliza, "although perhaps
+nothing very tangible at present.  Then there was Albert Gore, to whom,
+one must admit, Maud gave every encouragement, and we had begun to
+think it quite hopeful; but just at the end she discovered that she
+could not care for any one called Albert, which was too silly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She might have called him Bertie," I suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Eliza eagerly; "and you see, none of us hope or expect to
+marry a man who has not some of these little drawbacks, so I really do
+not see why Maud should expect it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Five matrimonial alliances in one house are, perhaps, not easily
+arranged in a quiet country neighbourhood, yet there is always a
+hopeful tone about these family discussions, and it is very common to
+hear the Miss Jamiesons relate at length what they intend to do when
+they are married.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And there is yet another maiden to be arranged for in the little house;
+Mettie is the Jamiesons' cousin who lives with them, and I believe that
+what appeals to me most strongly in this unknown provincial family is
+their kindness to the little shrunken, tiresome cousin who shares their
+home.  Mettie is like some strange little bright bird, utterly devoid
+of intelligence, and yet with the alertness of a sparrow.  Her beady
+eyes are a-twinkle in a restless sort of way all day long, and her
+large thin nose has always the appearance of having the skin stretched
+unpleasantly tightly across it.  The good Jamiesons never seem to be
+ruffled by her presence among them, and this forbearance certainly
+commands one's respect.  Mettie travesties the Jamiesons in every
+particular.  She has adopted their matrimonial views with interest, and
+she utters little platitudes upon the subject with quite a surprising
+air of sapience.  One avoids being left alone with Mettie whenever it
+is possible to do so, for, gentle creature though she is, her remarks
+are so singularly devoid of interest that one is often puzzled to
+understand why they are made.  Yet I see one or other of the Jamiesons
+walk to the village with her every day&mdash;her little steps pattering
+beside their giant strides, while the bird-like tongue chirps gaily all
+the way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Every one in our little neighbourhood walks into the village every day;
+it is our daily dissipation; and frivolous persons have been known to
+go twice or three times.  On days when Palestrina thinks that I am
+getting moped she steals the contents of my tobacco-jar, and then says,
+without blushing, that she has discovered that my tobacco is all
+finished, and that we had better walk into the village together and get
+some more.  When I am in a grumpy mood, I reply: "It's all right, thank
+you; I have plenty upstairs."  But it generally ends in my taking the
+walk with my sister.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our house is pleasantly situated where, by peeping through a tangle of
+shrubs and trees, we can see the lazy traffic of the highroad that
+leads to the village.  Strangers pause outside the screen of evergreens
+sometimes and peep between the branches to see the quaint gables of the
+old house.  Its walls have turned to a soft yellow colour with old age,
+and its beams are of oak, gray with exposure to the storms of many
+winters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This old hall of yours is much too dark," Mrs. Fielden said, when she
+came to call the other day muffled up in velvet and fur.  She lighted
+the dull afternoon by something that is radiant and holiday-like about
+her, and left us envying her for being so pretty and so young and gay.
+"Oh, I know," she said in her whimsical way, "that it is Jacobean and
+early Tudor and all sorts of delightful things, but it isn't very
+cheerful, you know.  I'm so glad it is near the road; I think if I
+built a house I should like it to be in Mansion House Square, or inside
+a railway station.  Don't you love spending a night at a station hotel?
+I always ask for a room overlooking the platform, for I like the
+feeling of having the trains running past me all night.  I love your
+house really," she said, "only I'm afraid it preaches peace and
+resignation and all those things which I consider so wrong."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Since I have been laid up I have been recommended to carve wood, to
+beat brass, to stuff sofa-cushions, and to play the zither; but these
+things do not amuse me much.  It was Mrs. Fielden who suggested that I
+should write a diary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must grumble," she said, raising her pretty eyebrows in the
+affected way she has.  "It wouldn't be human if you didn't; so why not
+write a diary, and have a real good grumble on paper every night before
+you go to bed.  Of course, if I were in your place I should grumble all
+day instead, and go to sleep at night.  But I'm not the least bit a
+resigned person.  If anything hurts me I scream at once; and if there
+is anything I don't like doing I leave it alone.  Palestrina," she said
+to my sister, "don't let him be patient; it's so bad for him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina smiled, and said she was afraid it was very dull for me
+sometimes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But if one is impatient enough, one can't be dull," said Mrs. Fielden.
+"It's like being cross&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am constitutionally dull," I said.  "I used to be known as the
+dullest man in my regiment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You studied philosophy, didn't you?" said Mrs. Fielden.  "That must be
+so depressing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was much struck by this suggestion.  "I dare say you are quite
+right," I said, "although I had not seen it in that light before.  But
+I'm afraid it has not made me very patient, nor given me a great mind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, what you want just now," said Mrs. Fielden gravely, "is a
+little mind.  You must lie here on your sofa, and take a vivid interest
+in what all the old ladies say when they come to call on Palestrina.
+And you must know the price of Mrs. Taylor's last new hat, and how much
+the Traceys spend on their washing-bill, and you must put it all down
+in your diary.  I'll come over and help you sometimes, and write all
+the wicked bits for you, only I'm afraid no one ever is wicked down
+here.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good-bye," she said, holding out the smallest, prettiest, most
+useless-looking little hand in the world.  "And please," she added
+earnestly, "get all this oak painted white, and hang some nice muslin
+curtains in the windows."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kindly folk in Stowel are always ingenuously surprised at any one's
+caring to live in the country; and although it is but a mile from here
+to the vestry hall, and much less by the fields, they often question us
+whether we do not feel lonely at night-time, and they are of the
+opinion that we should be better in "town."  They frequently speak of
+going into the country for change of air, or on Bank Holidays; but
+considering that the last house in the village&mdash;and, like the City of
+Zoar, it is but a little one&mdash;is built amongst fields, it might be
+imagined that these rural retreats could readily be found without the
+trouble of hiring the four-wheeled dog-cart from the inn, or of taking
+a journey by train.  Yet an expedition into the country is often talked
+of as being a change, and friends and relations living outside the town
+are considered a little bit behindhand in their views of
+things&mdash;"old-feshioned" they call it in Stowel&mdash;and these country
+cousins are visited with just a touch of kindly condescension by the
+dwellers in a flower-bordered, tree-shadowed High Street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One is brought rather quaintly into immediate correspondence with the
+domestic concerns of every one in Stowel, and Palestrina has been
+coaching me in the etiquette of the place.  It is hardly correct to do
+any shopping at dinner-time, when the lady of the house, busy feeding
+her family, has to be called from the inner parlour, where that family
+may all be distinctly seen from the shop.  Driving or walking through
+Stowel at the hour thus consecrated by universal consent to gastronomy,
+one might almost imagine it to be a deserted village.  Even the dogs
+have gone inside to get a bone; and one says, as one walks down the
+empty streets, "Stowel dines."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When a shop is closed on Thursday, which is early-closing day, one can
+generally "be obliged" by ringing at the house-bell, and, under conduct
+of the master of the place, may enter the darkened shop by the side
+door, and be accommodated with the purchase that one requires.  For the
+old custom still holds of living&mdash;where it seems most natural for a
+merchant to live&mdash;in the place where he does his business.  There is a
+pleasurable feeling of excitement even in the purchase of a pot of
+Aspinall's enamel behind closed shutters, and this is mingled with a
+feeling of solemnity and privilege, which I can only compare, in its
+mixed effect upon me, to going behind the scenes of a theatre, or being
+permitted to enter the vestry of a church.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Any purchases except those which may be called necessaries are seldom
+indulged in in our little town.  A shop which contains anything but
+dress and provisions has few customers, and its merchandise becomes
+household fixtures.  I called at the furniture shop the other day; the
+place looked bare and unfamiliar to me, but I did not realize what was
+amiss until my sister exclaimed, "Where is the sofa?"  The sofa had
+been for sale for fifteen years, and had at last been purchased.  There
+are other things in the shop which I think must have been there much
+longer, and I believe their owner would part with them with regret,
+even were a very fair profit to be obtained for them.  Palestrina tells
+me she ordered some fish the other day, and was met with the objection
+that "I fear that piece will be too big for your fish-kettle, ma'am,"
+although she had never suspected that the size of her fish-kettle was a
+matter known to the outside world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet Stowel prides itself more upon its reserve than upon anything
+else, except perhaps its gentility.  There is a distinct air of mystery
+over any and every one of the smallest affairs of daily life in the
+little place, and I hardly think that our neighbours would really enjoy
+anything if it were "spoken about" before the proper time.  There is
+something of secrecy in the very air of the town.  No one, I am told,
+has ever been known to mention, even casually, what he or she intends
+to have for dinner; and the butcher has been warned against calling
+across the shop to the lady at the desk, "Two pounds of rumpsteak for
+Miss Tracey," or, "One sirloin, twelve two, for the Hall."  Mr.
+Tomsett, who was the first butcher to introduce New Zealand mutton to
+the inhabitants of Stowel, lost his custom by this vulgar habit of
+assorting his joints in public.  And Miss Tracey, who knew him best (he
+was still something of a stranger, having been in Stowel only five
+years), warned him that that was not the sort of thing we were
+accustomed to.  "If you must make our private concerns public in this
+way," she said, "at least it cannot be necessary to mention in what
+country the mutton was raised."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is even considered a little indelicate to remain in the post-office
+when a telegram is being handed in.  And parcels addressed and laid on
+the counter at the grocer's, although provocative of interest, are not
+even glanced at by the best people.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the authority of my sister, I learn that when the ladies of Stowel
+do a little dusting in the morning the front blinds are pulled down.
+And keen though the speculation may be as to the extent of our
+neighbours' incomes, the subject is, of course, a forbidden one.  Poor
+though some of these neighbours are, a very kindly charity prevails in
+the little town.  When the elder Miss Blind was ill&mdash;as she very often
+is, poor thing!&mdash;it might seem a matter of coincidence to the
+uninitiated that during that week every one of her friends happened to
+make a little strong soup, a portion of which was sent to the
+invalid&mdash;just in case she might fancy it; while the Miss Traceys, who,
+as all the world knew, had inherited a little wine from their father,
+the late Vicar of the parish, sent their solitary remaining bottle of
+champagne, with their compliments, to Miss Belinda.  The champagne
+proved flat after many a year of storage in the lower cupboard of Miss
+Tracey's pantry, but the two sisters to whom it was sent, not being
+familiar with the wine, did not detect its faults, and they left the
+green bottle with the gilt neck casually standing about for weeks
+afterwards, from an innocent desire to impress their neighbours with
+its magnificence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina, with the good intention, I believe, of providing me with
+what she calls an object for a walk, asked me to call and inquire for
+Miss Blind on the day that the bottle of champagne was drawn and
+sampled.  Miss Lydia was in the sick-room, and Mrs. Lovekin, who had
+called to inquire, was sitting in the little parlour when I entered.
+"How do you do?" she said.  "I suppose you have heard about Belinda and
+the champagne?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The reproachful note in Mrs. Lovekin's voice, which seemed to tax the
+invalid with ingratitude, subtly conveyed the impression that the flat
+champagne had not agreed with poor Miss Belinda.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER III.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It is a subject of burning curiosity with every woman in Stowel to know
+whether it is a fact that the Taylors have taken to having late dinner
+instead of supper since Mrs. Taylor's uncle was made a K.C.B.  There
+was something in a remark made by Miss Frances Taylor which distinctly
+suggested that such a change had been effected, but Stowel, on the
+whole, is inclined to discredit the rumour.  A portrait of the General
+has been made in London, from a photograph in uniform which Mrs. Taylor
+has of him, and it has been framed, regardless of expense, by the
+photographer in the High Street.  Mr. Taylor at one time had thought of
+having the whole thing done in London, but it had been decided by an
+overwhelming majority that it would be only fair to give the commission
+to provide the frame to some one in our own town; and Mr. and Mrs.
+Taylor have granted a permission, which amounts to a command, that the
+portrait of "Sir John" shall be placed in the window for a week before
+it is sent home, so that Stowel may see it&mdash;for the Taylors, it should
+be remembered, do not receive every one at their own house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To-day I met the younger Miss Blind&mdash;Miss Lydia, she is generally
+called&mdash;at the window of the photographer's, to which she had made a
+pilgrimage, as we all intended to do, to see the famous picture.
+Probably she had stood there for some time, for she turned nervously
+towards me, and said in a tone of apology and with something of an
+effort in her speech, "I used to know him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!" I replied.  "I suppose he has often been down to stay with the
+Taylors?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has not been once in twenty years," said Lydia.  I was thinking of
+other things, and I do not know why it suddenly struck me that there
+was a tone of regret, even of hopelessness, in Miss Lydia's voice, and
+that she spoke as one speaks, perhaps, when one has waited long for
+something.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia Blind is a tall woman with a slight, stooping figure.  Sometimes
+I have wondered if it is only her sister's constant ill-health that has
+made Miss Lydia stoop a little.  There is something delicately precise
+about her, if so gentle a woman can fitly be described as precise.
+Perhaps her voice explains her best, as a woman's voice will often do;
+it is low and of a very charming quality, although broken now and then
+by asthma.  Each word has its proper spacing, and does not intrude upon
+the next; each vowel possesses the rare characteristic of its proper
+sound.  I have never heard her use an out-of-the-way expression; but
+her simple way of speaking has an old-fashioned gracefulness about it,
+and her manner, with all its simplicity, is dignified by reason of its
+perfect sincerity.  Her eyes are large and gray, and set somewhat far
+apart; her hair is worn in a fringe so demure and smooth, so primly
+curled, that it has the appearance of plainly-brushed hair.  It is Mrs.
+Fielden who says that no good woman can do her hair properly, and she
+wonders if St. Paul's recommendations as to plain braids has for ever
+stamped the hairdresser's profession as a dangerous art.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To-day when I met Lydia it struck me suddenly to wonder how old she is.
+Perhaps something in the insolent youthfulness of the springtime
+suggested the thought, or it may have been because Miss Lydia looked
+tired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When one meets a friend in Stowel High Street, it is considered very
+cold behaviour merely to bow to her.  Not only do we stop and chat for
+a few minutes, but it is the friendly fashion of the place for ladies
+to say to each other, "Which way are you going?" and to accompany their
+friend a little way along the sunny, uneven pavement, while offers to
+come in and rest are generally given and accepted at the end of the
+promenade.  Of course it is quite unusual for gentlemen to be detained
+in this way, and I am sure it cost Miss Lydia an effort to suggest to
+me that I should come in and sit down for a little while, and that she
+only did so because I seemed tired.  Also I think that a man with a
+crutch and with but one leg&mdash;and that one not very sound&mdash;is not
+considered such a source of danger to ladies living alone as a strong
+and hale man is supposed to be.  We stopped at the little green gate in
+the village street, with its red flagged pathway beyond, bordered with
+spring flowers&mdash;wall-flowers, early blooming in this warm and sheltered
+corner, forget-me-nots and primroses, while a brave yellow jasmine
+starred with golden flowers covered the walls of the cottage.  I asked
+after her sister's health, and Miss Lydia begged me to come in and rest
+for a few minutes; which I did, for I was horribly tired.  But this was
+one of Miss Belinda's bad days, and her sister, who watches every
+variation in colour in the hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes of the
+invalid, saw that she was unable to speak, and motioned me out of the
+room.  She showed me into her own little sanctum, and gave me a
+cushioned chair by the window, and said: "Do wait for a few minutes and
+rest.  I can see that my sister wants to say something to me, but she
+is always more than usually inarticulate when she is in one of these
+nervous states."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have been thinking a good deal about old maids lately&mdash;one has time
+to think about all manner of subjects when one is lying down most of
+the day.  Mrs. Fielden is of opinion that an old maid may have an
+exaggerated sense of humour.  To my mind her danger may be that she is
+always rather pathetically satisfied with everything.  She prefers the
+front seat of a carriage and the back seat of a dog-cart, and the leg
+of a chicken and a tiny bedroom.  Doubtless this is a form of
+self-respect.  This suitability of tastes on the part of an old maid
+enables her to say, as she does with almost suspicious frequency, that
+she gets dreadfully spoiled wherever she goes.  Adaptability to
+environment is the first law of existence, and yet there may have been
+times, even in the life of an old maid, when she has yearned for the
+wing of a chicken.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little room into which Miss Lydia ushered me was plainly furnished,
+but Miss Lydia says that she is always getting something pretty given
+to her to add to her treasures.  Her room is, indeed, rather suggestive
+of a stationer's shop window, where a card with "Fancy goods in great
+variety" is placed.  It would not be unkind to hint of some of the
+articles on the table and on the wall-brackets that they must have been
+purchased more as a kindly remembrance at Christmas-time or on
+birthdays than from any apparent usefulness to the recipient.  There
+are three twine-cases from which the scissors have long since been
+abstracted by unknown dishonest persons; and there are four ornamental
+thermometers, each showing its own fixed and unalterable idea
+respecting the temperature of the room.  A large number of unframed
+sketches which children have given her are fastened to the wall by
+pins, or hung on tacks whose uncertain hold bespeaks a feminine hand on
+the hammer.  There are several calendars, and there is quite an
+uncountable collection of photograph frames, which fall over unless
+they are propped against something.  Most of the photographs are old
+and faded, and they are nearly all of babies.  Babies clothed and
+unclothed; babies with bare feet and little nightshirts on; babies
+sucking their thumbs; babies lying prone on fur carriage-rugs; babies
+riding on their mammas' backs, or sitting on their mammas' knees;
+babies crowing or crying.  No one who has a baby ever fails to send
+this maiden lady a photograph of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Lydia settled me with some cushions in my chair, and shut the
+doorway leading to her bedroom beyond, where I caught sight of a
+painted iron bedstead, and a small indiarubber hot-water bottle hanging
+from one of its knobs.  It is Miss Lydia's most cherished possession,
+and she generally speaks of it reverently as "the comfort of my life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Poor Miss Lydia!  Hers must be, I think, a lonely life, sacrificed
+patiently to an invalid and almost inarticulate sister, and yet it is
+the very solitude of this little chamber which is one of the few
+privileges to which she lays claim.  It is to this little room, with
+its humble furnishings, that all her troubles are taken, and it is here
+by the window that she can sit with folded hands and think perhaps of
+something in life which surely poor Lydia has missed.  It is here she
+prays for those whose sins weigh far more heavily upon her than they do
+upon themselves, and it is here that she can pause and question with
+gentle faith the perplexities of life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Lydia tells my sister that she makes a thorough examination of her
+room every night before she goes to bed, to see if there is a burglar
+concealed anywhere.  The movable property in the tiny house is probably
+not worth many pounds, as a pawnbroker appraises things, and it would
+be a hardened thief that could deprive the sisters of their small
+possessions; but the dread remains&mdash;the dread of burglars and the dread
+of mice.  Were it not for the look of the thing, she would almost
+rather discover a burglar than a mouse&mdash;"for at least burglars are
+human," she explains, "and one might be able to reason with them or
+pray for them, but who shall control the goings of a mouse?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sometimes these fears become quite a terror to Lydia Blind, and she
+once said that she felt so defenceless that she thought it would be a
+great comfort to have a male defender to protect her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is the only unmaidenly remark she ever made, and it makes her blush
+in the dark when she thinks of it.  She believes every one remembers it
+with as vivid a distinctness as she does, and she trembles to think
+what sort of construction may have been put upon her words by
+ill-natured or thoughtless persons.  It is a real trouble to her; but
+then all her troubles are real, and so are her bitter repentances over
+perfectly imaginary sins.  But she has her little room and her faded
+photographs&mdash;life has its consolations.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IV.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Kate Jamieson, who is the independent member of The Family, and has
+been in a situation for some years as companion to a lady at Bath, has
+written home what she calls a "joint-letter" to apprise the whole of
+her family at one and the same time that she is engaged to be married.
+The excitement which this letter produced in the little household is
+hardly possible to describe.  The news arrived when the Jamiesons were
+at breakfast.  Perhaps I should mention, before going any further, that
+the Jamiesons' only extravagance is to take in three daily papers.  One
+is an evening paper, which arrives at breakfast-time, and the other two
+are morning publications, which arrive at the same hour.  It is
+customary for the members of this family each to read his own
+particular paper aloud during the entire meal, the rest of the party
+read their letters to each other, and there are still left several
+voices to demand what you will have for breakfast, to inquire how you
+have slept, and to comment upon the weather.  So that from half-past
+eight until nine a cross-fire of conversation is going on all the
+time....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see Hearne has scored sixty-eight at cricket, not out.  That's not
+bad, you know.  Kent ought to be looking up.  The Australians are doing
+well.  Yorkshire might do better.  Extraordinary!  Here's this chap who
+promised so well bowled for a duck!"  This from the eldest son of the
+House of Jamieson; while at precisely the same moment may be heard the
+voice of Maud: "I must say I am rather astonished at the way boleros
+have remained in.  This is one of the prettiest designs I have seen
+this year.  How soon one gets accustomed to small sleeves.  Well, I
+cannot say I like these Chesterfield fronts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Jamieson is meanwhile reading aloud the columns of births, deaths,
+and marriages from beginning to end.  Her limited acquaintance with the
+outside world might seem to preclude her from any vivid interest in
+those who must necessarily only be names to her, yet she finds
+subject-matter for comment through the entire perusal of the column.
+Needless to say, Mrs. Jamieson inclines to regard only the sadder
+aspects of these natural occurrences, and her comments thereupon are
+full of a sort of resigned melancholy.  From her corner of the table
+may be heard the plaintive words: "Here's a young fellow of twenty-four
+taken," or, "Fourscore years, well, well, and then passed away!"  While
+the happier news of birth provokes her to hark back to an announcement
+of a similar nature in the family, perhaps only a year ago, and to talk
+of the responsibilities and the expense that the poor young couple will
+have to undergo.  Mettie, who spends the greater part of every day
+writing letters, and whose chief joy in life is to receive them, reads
+the whole of her correspondence aloud from beginning to end; while
+Margaret Jamieson, behind the teapot, is letting off rapid volleys of
+questions respecting individual tastes about cream and sugar, and the
+Pirate Boy offers ham-and-eggs or sausages in a deep stentorian bass.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the midst of this confusion of noise, when only a Jamieson, whose
+ear is curiously trained to it, can possibly hear what is being said,
+Mrs. Jamieson bursts into tears and, in the strong Kentish dialect of
+her youth, exclaims: "Here's our Kate going to be married!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After the first burst of delighted surprise, there is a family feeling
+of apology towards Maud.  That Kate should marry first is surely a
+little disloyal to the beauty of Belmont, and Mrs. Jamieson goes so far
+as to say: "Never mind, Maud; it will be your turn next."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After that, they all, singly and severally, recall their
+previously-expressed opinion that they knew something was up, and that
+certainly Kate could not have given them a more pleasant or more
+unexpected surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The letter is then read aloud, and it is so long that one is glad to
+think that the absent Kate did not attempt to duplicate it, but
+contented herself with the Pauline method of one general epistle.  With
+the Jamieson characteristic of telling everything exhaustively, Kate
+writes:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Ward is not at all bad-looking; a little hesitating in his manner,
+and inclined to be untidy&mdash;you see, I am telling you everything quite
+candidly&mdash;but of course I can remedy all these defects when we are
+married.  He has a short brown moustache, and rather a conical-shaped
+head."  (This is a fault that one feels Kate will not be able to
+remedy, even when she has married him.)  "He looks clever, though I do
+not think he is, very; he is well-connected, but does not know all his
+best relations.  Poor, but with generous instincts"&mdash;one feels as
+though a chiromancist were reading a client's palm&mdash;"well-read, but
+without power of conveying intelligence to others; hair rather thin,
+and (I am afraid) false teeth; very religious, but I consider this in
+him more temperament than anything else.  He has had a hard life, and
+not always enough to eat, until his uncle died; but now he could be
+quite independent if he liked, but he prefers the position which a
+Government appointment gives him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope to bring him down to stay when I return; please let him have
+the south bedroom, as that is the warmest, and I do not think James is
+very strong.  I should like him to have a fire at night&mdash;I can arrange
+that with mother, as I feel quite well off now.  We are to be married
+in July, and I am giving up my post here at once, so as to see
+something of you all before I go away."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+At this point the letter referred once more to Mr. Ward's personal
+appearance, and the description was of so great length that when
+Margaret Jamieson, who had run all the way from her home to ours to
+give it to us to read, asked me breathlessly what I thought about it, I
+determined to leave unread the remaining paragraphs, and to judge for
+myself of the bridegroom when he should come to Belmont and we should
+be invited to meet him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is one thing," said Mrs. Jamieson when, at the request of The
+Family, Palestrina went to sit with her one afternoon a few weeks
+later, to support her through the trying ordeal of waiting for Kate and
+"James," as he is now familiarly called, to arrive; "the girls have
+nothing to be ashamed of in their home."  She looked with a certain
+amount of pardonable pride at the clean white curtains, and we gathered
+that we were meant to comment upon their early appearance.  The white
+curtains, Palestrina says, are not usually put up at Belmont until the
+first week in May.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They look very handsome," I said.  It was a Jamieson afternoon&mdash;very
+wet, but clearing up about sundown, and Palestrina had suggested my
+escorting her as far as Belmont.  But the rain came down in torrents
+again when I would have started to return home, and the good Jamiesons
+begged me to stay, to avoid the chance of a chill, and to meet James.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is the first break in the family," said Mrs. Jamieson tearfully,
+"since poor Robert died.  But, as James says, he hopes I am gaining a
+son and not losing a daughter."  From which I gathered that James was a
+gentleman given to uttering rather a stale form of platitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All were waiting in a state of great trepidation the arrival of the
+engaged couple, and it was quite hopeless to avoid the encounter, for
+the rain descended in sheets outside, and preparations for supper
+seemed to be going on in the dining-room at Belmont.  It was decided,
+by universal consent, that only Mrs. Jamieson and Palestrina and I
+should be in the drawing-room at the moment when they should enter.
+The presence of strangers, it was thought, would make it easier for
+James at the meeting where all were kinsfolk except himself.  With
+their usual consideration The Family decided that the rest of their
+large number should afterwards drop in casually, two by two, and be
+introduced to the new brother-in-law without ceremony.  Mrs. Jamieson,
+who had not left the house that day, nor for many days previously,
+having been absorbed in preparations for the expected guest, was
+dressed in a bonnet and her favourite jacket with the storm-collar,
+which, as she explained to my sister, took away from the roundness of
+her face and gave her confidence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her habitual shyness, added to her fears of the unknown in the shape of
+the future son-in-law, had wrought her into a sort of rigid state in
+which conversation seemed impossible, and although we did our best to
+divert her attention I am doubtful if she heard a word we said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They should be here soon," I remarked presently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Jamieson, following some line of thought of her own, remarked that
+the first marriage in a family was almost like a death; and to this
+mournful analogy I gave assent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kate says he is quite a gentleman," hazarded Mrs. Jamieson, still
+rigid, and now white with anxiety and shyness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I found myself replying, without overdone brilliance, that that seemed
+a good thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sands of Mrs. Jamieson's courage were running very low.  "I hope he
+is not one of your grandees," she said apprehensively; "I would not
+like to think of Kate not being up to him.  But their father was a
+gentleman&mdash;the most perfect gentleman I ever knew, and I have always
+that to think of.  Still, a gentlemanly man is all I want for any of my
+girls, with no difference between the two families."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sometimes in this way Mrs. Jamieson gives one an unexpected insight
+into the difficulties of her life, and one feels that even her
+admiration for her daughters may be tinged with a slight feeling of
+being their inferior.  I have heard her say, making use of a French
+expression such as she hazards so courageously, that there is something
+of the "<I>grawn dam</I> about Maud;" and perhaps the loyal admiration thus
+expressed may have been mingled with another sensation not so
+pleasurable to the farmer's daughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I endeavoured to follow the intricacies of her train of thought, but
+the station omnibus had stopped at the gate, and the moment of supreme
+excitement had arrived.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate entered first.  This was probably the crowning moment of her life.
+She came in with a little air of assurance that already suggested the
+married woman, and having kissed her mother she said in a proprietary
+sort of way: "This is Mr. Ward, mamma."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ward had a curious way of walking on his toes; he came into the
+room as though tip-toeing across some muddy crossing on a wet day, and
+shook hands with a degree of nervousness that made even Mrs. Jamieson
+appear bold.  One can hardly be surprised at Kate for having mentioned
+that he has a conical-shaped head, for it is of the most strange
+pear-shape, and the sparse hair hangs from a ridge behind like a
+fringe.  He sat down and locked his knees firmly together, with his
+clasped hands tightly wedged between them, while Kate made inquiries
+about the rest of the family, and I plunged heavily into remarks about
+the weather and the state of the roads.  It was a great relief when two
+of the sisters entered, in their best silk blouses, even although they
+repeated exactly what I had said a moment before about the weather and
+the mud.  Five minutes later, according to preconceived arrangement,
+two other sisters came in and were kissed by Kate, and introduced by
+her to James.  We had unconsciously taken up our position in two
+straight lines facing James, and it is no exaggeration to say that by
+this time shyness was causing great beads of perspiration to stand out
+on poor James's pear-shaped head.  "Surely they will spare him any more
+introductions before supper," I thought; but the door had again opened,
+and Mettie and the Pirate Boy entered, and some unhappy chance was
+causing these last comers to comment upon the weather and the state of
+the roads, and to extend the line of chairs now facing James.  We began
+to make feverish little remarks to each other, as though we were all
+strangers, and Palestrina asked Eliza if she were fond of dancing.
+George Jamieson, the eldest brother, was the last to enter the room,
+and Kate said: "George, I am sure James would like to unpack before
+supper;" and the unhappy James tip-toed out between the two lines of
+chairs, with his eyes fixed upon the carpet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Well?</I>" said Kate.  And as The Family was The Family of Jamieson,
+that of course was a signal for each member of it to say the kindest
+thing that could possibly be said for the new arrival.  Margaret found
+that he had kind eyes.  And Eliza said: "Not intellectual, but a good
+man."  Eliza, it must be remarked in passing, is the intellectual
+sister, with a passion for accurate information, and for looking up
+facts in the "Encyclopedia Britannica."  Maud found that even his
+shyness was in his favour, and disliked men who made themselves at home
+at once.  Mettie remarked that marriage was a great risk.  This is one
+of poor little Mettie's platitudes, which she makes with faithful
+regularity upon all occasions.  The Pirate Boy preferred, perhaps, a
+more robust development, and throwing out his own chest, he beat it
+with a good deal of violence, and said he would like to put on the
+gloves with Mr. Ward.  Mrs. Jamieson could be got to say nothing but
+"Poor fellow, poor fellow!" at intervals.  But Gracie, the youngest
+daughter, remarked that she was sure that they would all get to like
+him immensely in time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate looked grateful, and spoke with her usual fine common sense.
+"What I say is," she remarked, "that of course no one sees James's
+faults more clearly than I do, but then I don't see why any of us
+should expect perfection.  We haven't much to offer: I am sure I have
+neither looks, nor money, nor anything.  And, after all, it's nice to
+think of one of us getting married&mdash;and I was no bother about it," said
+the independent Kate.  "I mean, The Family had not to help, or chaperon
+me, or ask James down to stay."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sisters assented to this in a very hearty, congratulatory sort of
+way; and then, as the rain had ceased, I took my leave, but Palestrina
+was persuaded to stay and have supper.  Kennie offered, in a doughty
+fashion, to see me home.  The boy's kindness of heart constitutes him
+my defender upon many occasions, and he always looks disappointed if I
+do not take his arm.  I do not think that the peaceful country road in
+the waning twilight could be considered a dangerous one, even to a
+cripple like myself; but Kennie, armed with a large stick and wearing a
+curious felt hat turned up at one side, appeared a most truculent
+defender, and regarded with suspicion all the pedestrians whom we met.
+Did but a country cart pass us, Kennie made a movement to ward off the
+danger of a collision with his arm.  There is something in my helpless
+condition which, quite unconsciously I believe, produces a very
+valorous frame of mind in the Pirate, and he beguiled the whole of the
+way home with stories of his own prowess, and of the hair-breadth
+escapes which he had had.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I only once," he said, "had to take a human life in self-defence.
+Curiously enough"&mdash;Kennie's voice deepened, and he spoke with the air
+of a man who will spare a weak fellow-mortal all he can in the telling
+of his tale, and he enunciated all his words with a measured calm which
+was very impressive&mdash;"curiously enough, it was on the Thames
+Embankment!"  Kennie cleared his throat, and dropping the deep bass
+voice of reminiscence, he began the history in a high-pitched tone of
+narrative.  "I was walking home alone one night from the City, when a
+very strange, low fellow accosted me, and asked me for some money.  The
+man's destitute appearance appealed to me, and unfortunately I gave him
+threepence.  I suppose the action was about as dangerous a thing as I
+could have done.  It showed that I had money, and I was practically
+defenceless while feeling in my pockets.  The Embankment at that time
+of the evening was almost deserted; I could see the shipping in the
+river and the lights, and even passing cabs, but I was strangely alone,
+and still the man followed me.  At last, in desperation, I raised my
+stick to drive him from me, and the next moment he had grappled with
+me!  Instantly my blood was up!"  The Pirate Boy stood still in the
+middle of the highroad, and went through a series of very forcible
+pantomimic gestures, and with awful facial contortions, indicative of
+violent exertion, he raised some imaginary object above his head and
+flung it from him.  "The next moment," said Kennie, "I heard a splash.
+I had vanquished the man, and flung him far from me, straight from the
+Thames Embankment into the river."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was prepared to make an exclamation, but was prevented by Kennie, who
+said in a dramatic sort of way, "Wait!" and went on with his story.
+"My instinct was to plunge after him, but I heard no sound, no cry, and
+from that day to this that struggle by the water's edge remains as one
+of the most vivid experiences of my life&mdash;in England, at least.  But
+the man's end remains a mystery: I can tell you nothing more of him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I would have fished the poor wretch out," I said, and moved
+onwards on our walk, our pause in the public highway having lasted a
+considerable time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One learns rough justice out there," said Kennie.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER V.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Miss Taylor was really responsible for the formation of the Stowel
+Reading Society, but Eliza Jamieson was her staunch supporter.  Eliza
+drew the line at poetry and metaphysics, "Neither of which," she said,
+"I consider an exact science."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Taylor said: "But it is not a scientific course that I propose; it
+is English literature in its fullest sense.  I do think that Stowel is
+getting behind the rest of the world in its knowledge of the best
+literature, and I am sure that if a Reading Society were founded The
+Uncle would be pleased to choose books and send them to us from London."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To no one, perhaps, is the specializing definite article felt to be
+more appropriate than to Sir John.  It seems to distinguish him from
+ordinary human beings; and it is felt to be indicative of a
+considerable amount of good taste and good feeling on the part of the
+Taylors to drop the General's title when conversing with their intimate
+friends, and to refer to him merely as "The Uncle."  When we call upon
+the Taylors we always ask how The Uncle is.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eliza Jamieson became the Society's secretary and treasurer in one, and
+she it was who in her neat hand transcribed the letter, which all had
+helped to compose, to ask The Uncle what works in English literature it
+would be advisable for the Reading Society to get.  His reply was read
+aloud at one of the first meetings, and each eulogized it in turn as
+being "courtly," "gentlemanly," "manly," and "concise."  It could not
+but be felt, however, that as a guide to a choice of literature the
+letter was disappointing:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"DEAR MADAM" (it ran),
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I much regret that I am unable to help you in any way about your
+books.  I read very little myself, except the newspapers, though I
+occasionally take a dip into one of my old favourites by Charles Lever.
+I think a cookery-book is the most useful reading for a young lady, and
+she would be best employed studying that, and not filling her head with
+nonsense.  This is the advice of a very old fellow, who remembers many
+charming girls years ago who knew nothing about advanced culture...."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+It was a distinct salve to the Society's feelings to note that the
+letter was written on paper stamped with the address of a military
+club, and instead of copying it, and making an entry of it in the
+minutes of the Reading Society, it was pasted into the notebook, as it
+was thought the autograph and the crest were "interesting."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Since the foundation of the Reading Society there has followed a period
+during which the young ladies of Stowel have written essays, and have
+met in each other's drawing-rooms to read poetry aloud, to their own
+individual satisfaction and to the torture of other ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden did not join the Society, her plea being that poetry is
+merely prose with the stops in the wrong places, and therefore very
+fatiguing to read, and very obscure in its meaning.  But Eliza has worn
+us out with books of reference, and we have become so learned and so
+full of culture that it is impossible to say where it will all end.  My
+own library has been ransacked for books&mdash;I think it is the fact of my
+having a library that has made our house a sort of centre for the
+Reading Society.  We criticize freely all contemporary literature, and
+base our preference for any book upon its "vigorous Saxon style."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eliza has written two reviews for the local newspaper, pointing out
+some mistakes in grammar in one of the greatest novels of the day, and
+this naturally makes us feel very proud of Eliza.  Those of us who
+plead for an easy flowing style consider that she has an almost
+hypersensitive ear for errors in the use of the English accidence.  A
+split infinitive has heretofore hardly arrested our attention; now we
+shudder at its use: while the misuse of the word to "aggravate," which
+up to the present we believed in all simplicity to mean to "annoy,"
+causes the gravest offence when employed in the wrong sense.  Books
+from the circulating library have been known to be treated almost like
+proof-sheets, and corrections are jotted down in pencil on the margin
+of the leaves.  Even the notes which ladies send to each other are
+subject to revision at the hands of the recipient.  Ordinary
+conversation is now hardly known in Stowel, and tea-parties take the
+form of discussions.  The spring weather is so warm that I generally
+have my long chair taken on to the lawn in the afternoons, and tea is
+sometimes brought out there when the meetings of the Reading Society
+are over.  But tea, and even pound-cake, are thrown away upon young
+ladies who partake of it absently, and to whom all things material and
+mundane&mdash;these words are often used&mdash;must now be offered with a feeling
+of apology.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Major Jacobs rode over to see me this afternoon, and we had not long
+enjoyed the repose of deckchairs and cigarettes under the medlar-tree,
+and the songs of birds which have begun nesting very early this year,
+and the quiet rumbling of heavy wagons that pass sometimes in the
+highroad beyond the garden, when the Reading Society in a body joined
+us from the house, and I heard my sister give directions for tea to be
+brought out on to the lawn.  The other day I heard Palestrina tell a
+friend of hers that she nearly always contrived to have some one to
+tea, or to sit with Hugo in the afternoon, and my sister's satisfaction
+increases in direct proportion to the number of people who come.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We had hardly finished tea when Frances Taylor said suddenly, yet with
+the manner of one who has risen to make a speech on a platform, "Was
+Coleridge a genius or a crank?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eliza, assuming the deep frown of learning which is quite common
+amongst us nowadays, was upon her in a moment, and said emphatically,
+"How would you define a genius?"  The Socratic habit of asking for a
+definition is one that is always adopted during our discussions, and it
+is generally demanded in the tone of voice in which one says "check"
+when playing chess.  Frances Taylor was quite ready for Eliza, and
+said, "Genius, I think, is like some star&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Analogy is not argument!"  Eliza pounced upon her in the voice that
+said, "I take your pawn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It will be noticed, I fear, that in Stowel we are not altogether
+original in our arguments&mdash;many of them can be traced, alas! to the
+"Encyclopædia Britannica," and they are not often the outcome of
+original thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Frances Taylor's king was once more in check, and she became a little
+nervous and irritable.  "I do not think we need go into definitions,"
+she said; but Eliza had gone indoors to "look it up."  She returned
+presently with a dictionary, walking across the lawn towards us with
+its pages held close to her near-sighted eyes.  "A genius," she began,
+and then she glanced disparagingly at the title of the book, and said,
+"according to Webster, that is&mdash;but I do not know if we ought to accept
+him as a final authority&mdash;is explained as being 'a peculiar structure
+of mind which is given by Nature to an individual which qualifies him
+for a particular employment; a strength of mind, uncommon powers of
+intellect, particularly the power of invention.'  A crank," she went
+on, "in its modern meaning, seems hardly to have been known to the
+writer of this dictionary; the word is rendered literally, as meaning
+'a bend or turn.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I submit," said Miss Taylor, "that Coleridge was a genius."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Tracey said in a very sprightly manner&mdash;she often astonished us by
+showing a subtle turn of mind, and a graceful aptitude for epigram
+which, it was believed, could only have found its proper field in those
+salons which are now, alas! things of the past&mdash;"Let us write him down
+a genius <I>and</I> a crank!  The two"&mdash;she advanced her daring view
+bravely&mdash;"the two are often allied."  She had a volume of Coleridge on
+her bookshelves, and prided herself upon her appreciation&mdash;unusual in a
+woman&mdash;of the "Ancient Mariner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A genius in italics, and a crank followed by a mark of interrogation!"
+said Eliza in a brilliant fashion; and Miss Taylor, not to be beaten in
+a matter of intellect, said at once, "Did Bacon write Shakespeare's
+plays?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Gallup and Mr. Lee were quoted extensively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Taylor could only suggest, with a good deal of quiet dignity, that
+she could write to The Uncle and find out who is right.  This of course
+closes the controversy for the present.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+George Jamieson, who goes to town every day, gains advanced views from
+the magazines which he reads during his dinner-hour in the City, and he
+is a great assistance to the Reading Society.  I contribute the use of
+my library, and I have heard the members of the Reading Society say
+that "women are the true leaders of the present movement, and already
+their influence is being felt by the male mind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+George brought with him the current number of the Nineteenth Century
+when he came home last Friday, instead of Pearson's or the Strand, and
+already there are whispers of a Magazine Club in Stowel.  Miss Frances
+Taylor received nothing but books on her last birthday, and Palestrina
+told me a pathetic little story of how Gracie Jamieson went without a
+pair of shoes to buy a copy of Browning.  Perhaps the climax of culture
+and learning was felt only to have been reached when Eliza introduced
+the expression "Hypothesis of Purpose" into an ordinary conversation at
+the conclusion of one of the meetings of the Reading Society.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After this, as Palestrina remarked, it was quite refreshing to hear
+that the curate's wife had got a new baby.  It was born on Sunday, and
+the anxious father spent his days bicycling wildly to and fro between
+his own house and the church, hopelessly confusing his reading of the
+service, and then flying back to inquire about his wife's health.  Led
+by him we prayed successively for fine weather and for rain, while the
+Sunday-school teachers' meeting was announced for 2 a.m. on the
+following Saturday, and the Coal Club notices were inextricably
+confused with the banns of marriage.  After each service the distracted
+little man would leap on his bicycle again, and, scattering the
+departing congregation with his bicycle bell, he was off down the hill
+to his house.  His perturbation was nothing compared with the confusion
+at home, where, so far as I could make out, the bewildered household
+did nothing but run up and down stairs, and madly offer each other cups
+of tea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My sister's kind heart suggested that we should have Peggy, the eldest
+child, to stay with us until her mother should be better.  Is it
+necessary to mention the fact that Palestrina is fat and very pretty,
+and that she spoils me dreadfully?  Do I want a book, I generally find
+that Palestrina has written for it, almost before I had realized that
+life was a wilderness without it.  I have never known her out of
+temper, nor anything else but placid and serene.  And she has a low,
+gurgling laugh, and a certain way of saying, "Oh, that will be very
+nice!" to any proposal that one makes, which one must admit makes her a
+very charming and a very easy person to live with.  She is fond of
+children, and she announced to Peggy with a beaming smile this morning
+that she had a new little brother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peggy went on quietly with her breakfast for some time without making
+any remark; then she gave a little sigh, and said: "Mamma thought she
+had enough children already, but I suppose God thought otherwise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peggy has been in low spirits all day, and closely following some line
+of reasoning of her own she has flatly refused to say her prayers at
+bedtime.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden rode over to see us this morning, in her dark habit and
+the neat boots which she loves to tap with her riding-crop.  She came
+into the dim hall like the embodiment of Spring or of Life, and sat
+down in her oddly-shaped habit as though she were at home and in no
+hurry to go off anywhere else.  This gives a feeling of repose to a
+sick man.  One knew that she would probably stop to luncheon, and that
+one would not have to say to her half a dozen times in the morning,
+"Please don't go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently Margaret Jamieson, who had been doing the whole work of the
+curate's household during the late trying time, came with the baby in
+her arms to show him to Palestrina.  Her manner had a charming air of
+matronliness about it, and she threw back the fretted silk of the veil
+that covered the face of the little creature in her arms with an air of
+pride that was rather pretty to see.  But Eliza, who had raced over to
+our house in the usual Jamieson headlong fashion, to say something to
+us on the subject of textual criticism, looked severely at the infant
+through her glasses, and remarked that she had no sympathy whatever
+with that sort of thing.  Margaret hugged the baby closer to her, and
+Mettie, who had pattered over to see us with her cousin Eliza, remarked
+that children and their upbringing were doubtless among the great risks
+of matrimony.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sure," said Eliza, "when one sees how happy Kate is with James,
+it makes one feel that marriage is not so very great a risk after all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That there should be an element of sarcasm in this remark did not even
+suggest itself to Eliza.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We should all be thankful," piped forth Mettie, who is always ready to
+talk, "that it has turned out so well.  Kate's courage and independence
+of mind seem exactly suited to Mr. Ward.  But that is what I think
+about us all at Belmont; our characteristics are so different that any
+gentleman coming amongst us might find something to attract him in one,
+if not in the others.  Margaret is our home-bird, and Eliza is so
+cultured, and Kate&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two Miss Jamiesons were looking very uncomfortable, and Margaret
+said, "O Mettie, dear!" while Mrs. Fielden made an excuse for walking
+over to the piano.  There was a piece of music open upon it.  "Do sing
+it," she said to Palestrina.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+THE GAY TOM-TIT.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"A tom-tit lived in a tip-top tree,<BR>
+And a mad little, bad little bird was he.<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">He'd bachelor tastes, but then&mdash;oh dear!</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">He'd a gay little way with the girls, I fear!</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Now, a Jenny wren lived on a branch below,<BR>
+And it's plain she was vain as ladies go,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">For she pinched her waist and she rouged a bit.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">With a sigh for the eye of that gay tom-tit.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">She sighed, 'Oh my!'</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">She sighed, 'Ah me!'</SPAN><BR>
+While the tom-tit sat on his tip-top tree-tree-tree.<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">And she piped her eye</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">A bit-bit-bit</SPAN><BR>
+For the love of that gay tom-tit-tit-tit.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"She saw that her rouge did not attract,<BR>
+So she tried to decide how next to act:<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">She donned a stiff collar and fancy shirt,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">And she wore, what is more, a divided skirt.</SPAN><BR>
+Then she bought cigarettes and a big latch-key,<BR>
+And she said, 'He'll be bound to notice me!'<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">But she found her plan did not work one bit,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">For he sneered, as I feared, did that gay tom-tit.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">He sneered, 'Oh my!'</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">He sneered, 'Oh lor!</SPAN><BR>
+What on earth has she done that for-for-for?'<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">And he winked his eye</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">A bit-bit-bit,</SPAN><BR>
+That giddy and gay tom-tit-tit-tit.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'Alas! no more,' said the poor young wren,<BR>
+'Will I ape the shape of heartless men!'<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">So she flung cigarettes and big latch-key</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">With a flop from the top of the great green tree.</SPAN><BR>
+And she wouldn't use rouge or pinch her waist,<BR>
+But she dressed to the best of a simple taste;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Then she learned to cook and sew and knit&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">'What a pearl of a girl!' said the gay tom-tit.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">Said he, 'Good day!'</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">Said she, 'How do?'</SPAN><BR>
+They were very soon friends, these two-two-two.<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">And I'm bound to say</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">In a bit-bit-bit</SPAN><BR>
+She married that gay tom-tit-tit-tit."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Thus sang Palestrina.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ethically considered, my dear Palestrina," said Eliza, "that song is
+distinctly unmoral."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't let us consider it ethically," said Palestrina tranquilly; and
+she went over and sat in the corner of the sofa with several pillows at
+her back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ethically considered," repeated Eliza, "that song, if one pursues its
+teaching to a logical conclusion, can only mean that all female social
+development is impossible, and that the whole reason for a woman's
+existence is that she may gratify man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are really not worth it," murmured Mrs. Fielden, who was in a
+frivolous mood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And mark you," said Eliza, in quite the best of the Reading Society
+manner: "it does not suggest that that gratification may be inspired
+either by our beauty or by our intellect; indeed, it proves that such
+powers are worthless to inspire it.  It postulates the
+hypothesis"&mdash;Eliza is really splendid&mdash;"that man is a brute whose
+appreciation can only be secured by ministering to his desire for food
+and suitable clothing, and that woman's whole business is to render
+this creature complacent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you think things are much pleasanter when people <I>are</I>
+complacent?" said my sister easily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eliza fixed her with strong, dark eyes.  "Were I describing you in a
+book," she said&mdash;one feels as though Eliza will write a book, probably
+a clever one, some day&mdash;"I should describe you as a typical woman, and
+therefore a pudding.  A dear, tepid pudding, with a pink sauce over it.
+Very sweet, no doubt, but squashy&mdash;decidedly squashy.  Some day," said
+Eliza triumphantly, "you will be squashed into mere pulp, and you will
+not like that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This did not seem to be a likely end for Palestrina.  Eliza continued:
+"Who will deny that men are selfish?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But they are also useful," said Mrs. Fielden in an ingenuous way.
+"They open doors for one, don't you know, and give one the front row
+when there is anything to be seen, even when one wears a big hat; and
+they see one into one's carriage&mdash;oh! and lots of other useful little
+things of that sort."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Admitted," said Eliza, "that women have certain privileges&mdash;have they
+any Rights?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden admitted that they had not.  "But," she said, "I don't
+really think that that is important.  The men whom one knows are always
+nice to one, and I don't think it matters much what the others are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rank individualism," said Eliza.  And she said it without a moment's
+hesitation, which gave us a very high opinion indeed of her powers of
+speech.  "It is the fashion to say that each woman has only one man to
+manage, and she must be a very stupid woman if she cannot manage him;
+but there are thousands of women who, being weaker morally and
+physically than their particular man, can do nothing with him, and it
+is not fair to leave their wrongs unredressed because you are
+comfortable and happy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Still, you know," said Mrs. Fielden thoughtfully, "one cannot help
+wishing that they could get what they want without involving us in the
+question.  You see, if they got their rights we should probably get
+ours too, and then I'm afraid we should lose our privileges."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are like the man," said I, "who could do quite well without the
+necessaries of life, but he could not do without its luxuries."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a nice man it must have been who said that!" exclaimed Mrs.
+Fielden.  "It would be quite easy to do without meat on one's table,
+but it would be impossible to dine without flowers and dessert."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It must be admitted that Eliza had the last word in the argument after
+all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just so," she said; "and all life shows just this&mdash;that a woman has,
+with her usual perverseness, chosen a diet of flowers and dessert with
+intervals of starvation, instead of wholesome meat and pudding."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VI.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"We shall have to ask the engaged couple to dinner," I said to
+Palestrina one morning a few days later.  "And I suppose one or two
+more of the rest of The Family would like to be asked at the same time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never know in what quantities one ought to ask the Jamiesons," said
+my sister, "nor how to make a proper selection.  It seems invidious to
+suggest that Kate and Eliza and Margaret should come, and not Maud and
+Gracie; and yet what is one to do?  The last time that you were away
+from home I wrote and said, 'Will a few of you come?'  And Mrs.
+Jamieson, the Pirate Boy, and four sisters came."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One feels sure," I replied, "that the Jamiesons thought that was quite
+a modest number to take advantage of your invitation.  One knows that
+had they been inviting some girls from a boarding-school they would
+have included the entire number of pupils."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina protested that as the meal to which our friends were to come
+was dinner, it would be only reasonable to invite the same number of
+ladies and gentlemen; and to this I assented.  She suggested asking the
+Darcey-Jacobs, whom we had not seen for a long time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is a woman who always affords one considerable
+inward amusement, being herself, I believe, more conspicuously devoid
+of humour than any one else I have ever met.  Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs has
+never been known to see a joke.  That she herself should appear to any
+one in a humorous light would, I know, appear an inconceivable
+contingency to her.  She has a high Roman nose, and rather faded yellow
+hair, which was her principal claim to beauty when a girl.  It is even
+now thick and long, and is always worn in a sort of majestic coronet on
+the top of her head.  Her manner is somewhat formidable and emphatic,
+and the alarm which this engenders in timid or diffident persons is
+increased by the habit she has of accentuating many of her remarks by a
+playful but really somewhat severe rap over the knuckles of the person
+she is addressing, with her fan or lorgnettes.  She dresses handsomely
+in expensive materials somewhat gaudy in colour, and she has an erect
+carriage, of which she is very proud.  Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs has a good
+deal to say on the subject of the feeble-mindedness of the male sex,
+and when something has been proved impossible of attainment by them she
+always says, "A woman could have done it in five minutes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the time of her marriage, Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs (Miss Foljambe she was
+then) was a dowerless girl with two admirers, Major Jacobs and Mr.
+Morgan.  Not being, it would seem, a young lady of very deep
+affections, her choice of a husband was decided entirely by the extent
+of the worldly prospects he could offer, and the Major, being the
+better match of the two, was accepted.  But how cruel are the tricks
+that fate will sometimes play!  Not long after her marriage Mr. Morgan
+not only inherited a large fortune, but shortly afterwards left this
+world for a better, and Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is in the habit of
+remarking, with a good deal of feeling, "If I had only chosen the other
+I might have been a happy widow now!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs lives in our quiet country neighbourhood during the
+greater part of the year, on the distinct understanding that she
+loathes every hour of it.  When she goes abroad or to London she talks
+quite cheerfully of having had one breath of life.  So fraught with
+happy successes are these pilgrimages in her brocaded satin gowns into
+the outer world that she often says that were she but free she might
+have the world at her feet to-morrow.  And she has been known to refer
+to the Major, still in the tone of cheerful resignation and with her
+emphasizing tap of the fan, as "a dead weight round her neck."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Major himself is a guileless person, whose very simplicity causes
+his wife more exquisite suffering than even a husband of keen,
+vindictive temper could inflict.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Does Mrs. Jacobs give a dinner-party, it is not unusual for the master
+of the house to remark in a congratulatory tone from his end of the
+table, "What has Mullens been doing to the silver, my dear? it looks
+unusually bright;" while his greeting to his friends as they arrive at
+his house, though distinctly cordial, often takes the form of a hearty
+"I had no idea that we were going to see you to-night."  As Mrs.
+Darcey-Jacobs always sends some kind message from the Major in her
+notes of invitation, this of course is most disconcerting, both for her
+and for her guests.  This year when they were in Italy a friend of ours
+in the same hotel overheard a lady ask the Major if he were related to
+the Darceys of Mugthorpe.  "I really can't tell you," said the Major;
+"the Darcey was my wife's idea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Four Jamiesons," I said, "and the Darcey-Jacobs, and our two selves.
+Isn't it humiliating to think that we have invariably to invite the
+same two men to balance our numbers at a dinner-party?  I can't help
+remarking that Anthony Crawshay and Ellicomb are present at every
+dinner-party in this neighbourhood, as surely as soup is on the table."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We might ask Mrs. Fielden," said Palestrina; "she is sure to have some
+colonels with her.  Besides, I love Mrs. Fielden, though people say she
+is a flirt.  I think most men are in love with her; some propose to
+her, and some do not, but they all love her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even when she refuses to marry them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have heard Mrs. Fielden say that an offer of marriage should be
+refused artistically," said Palestrina.  "She says young girls hardly
+ever do it properly, and that they are brusque and brutal.  I suppose
+she herself has some charming way of her own of refusing men which does
+not hurt their feelings.  I believe," said Palestrina, "that she would
+marry Sir Anthony Crawshay if he could play Bridge."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Anthony is an excellent fellow," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ellicomb is a young man of High Church principles and artistic
+tastes who has taken an old Tudor farmhouse in the neighbourhood, and
+has furnished it very well.  He waxes eloquent on the monstrous
+inelegance of modern dress, and the decadence of Japanese art, and he
+says he would rather sit in the dark than burn gas in his house, and he
+dusts his own blue china himself.  In his house it is a sign of art to
+divert anything from its proper use, and to use it for another purpose
+than that for which it was originally intended.  Poor Ellicomb uses a
+cabbage-strainer as a fern-pot, a drain-tile for an umbrella-stand, his
+mother's old lace veils as antimacassars, bed-posts as palm-stands, a
+linen press as a book-case, and a brass spittoon for growing lilies.
+It is almost like playing at guessing riddles to go over his house with
+him, and to try and discover for what purpose some of his things were
+originally created.  Their conversion to another use is, I am sure, a
+very high form of art.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are the Jamiesons," said my sister, as we sat in the hall ready
+to receive our guests.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It does not require any occult power to sit indoors and to be able to
+distinguish the Jamiesons' carriage-wheels from those of the other
+arrivals, for the Jamiesons have, as usual, employed the "six-fifty"
+bus on its return journey from the station to set them down at our
+gate.  It is quite a subject of interest with our neighbours to find
+themselves fellow-passengers with the young ladies, in their black
+skirts and their more dressy style of bodice concealed beneath tweed
+capes.  And it generally gets about in Stowel circles before the
+evening is over, or certainly soon after the morning shopping has
+begun, that the Miss Jamiesons have been dining at such or such a
+house.  Even the bus conductor has a sympathetic way of handing the
+young ladies into his conveyance when they are going out to dinner, and
+he fetches a wisp of straw and wipes down the step if the night is wet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ward piloted the independent Kate up the short carriage-drive with
+quite an affectionate air of solicitude, frequently inquiring of her if
+she did not feel her feet a little damp; and Kate answered cheerfully
+and kindly, feeling, no doubt, that this sort of fussing was one of the
+drawbacks of prospective matrimony, but that it was only right to
+accept the little attentions in the spirit in which they were made.
+The Pirate Boy, who followed with his sister Maud, begged her to take
+his arm in a burly fashion, and fell a little distance behind.  The
+Pirate Boy thinks that it is etiquette to place himself at a distance
+from any engaged couple, even during the shortest walk.  He does so
+even when he makes the untoward third in a party.  On these occasions
+he falls behind and puts on an air of abstraction a little overdone.
+The Jacobs arrived next, and then Anthony Crawshay, who drove over in
+his high dog-cart, with its flashing lamps and glittering wheels&mdash;a
+very good light-running cart it is; Anthony and I used often to drive
+in it together&mdash;and Ellicomb arrived in a brougham, in which we have a
+shrewd suspicion that there is a foot-warmer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Maud began to flirt with Mr. Ellicomb directly.  I have never known her
+to be for long in the society of a gentleman without doing so, and her
+sisters are wont to say of Maud that she certainly has her
+opportunities, while the criticism of an unprejudiced observer might be
+that she certainly makes them.  Mr. Ellicomb, it is believed, has
+written an article in one of the magazines on the reformation of men's
+clothing, and it is hoped he will become a member of the Reading
+Society.  He ate very little at dinner, and talked in a low, cultured
+voice about Church matters the whole of the evening, and uttered some
+very decided views upon the subject of the celibacy of the clergy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must say," said Major Jacobs, "that I also approve of celibacy in
+the Church, and I may say in the army and in the navy.  If I had my
+life to live over again&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"William!" said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs in an awful voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+William was about to retreat precipitately from his position, but
+catching sight perhaps of a sympathetic eye turned upon him from that
+good comrade of his, Anthony Crawshay, he blundered on,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If Confession, now, became more general in the English Church," he
+said, "secrets confided to the clergy could hardly be kept inviolate.
+A clergyman's wife might almost&mdash;well, not to put too fine a point on
+it&mdash;wring from him by force the secret that had been committed to him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope so, indeed," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Anglican Church," said Mr. Ellicomb, "recognizes that difficulty,
+and has met it in the persons of the Fathers of the Church."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Maud Jamieson raised soft eyes to his, and said that a woman might be a
+help and a comfort to a man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ellicomb seemed disposed to admit that it might be so.  "I have
+been in retreat at Cowley for some weeks," he said, "and the cooking
+was certainly monstrous, and, would you believe it, they did not allow
+one to bring one's own servant with one."  There is nothing monkish
+about Ellicomb, nor is his asceticism overdone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have been reading a book on sects and heresies," said Mrs. Fielden,
+"and I find I belong to them all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ellicomb interposed eagerly by saying, "If I had to state my own
+convictions exactly, I should certainly say that I was a Manichæan,
+with just a touch of Sabellianism."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think," said Mrs. Fielden gravely, "that I am a Rosicrucian heretic."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ellicomb was interested and delighted.  "I know," he said, "that
+many people would think that I had not exactly stated my position.  For
+instance, a lady to whom I described my symptoms the other day, told me
+at once that I was a Buddhist by nature and an Antinomian by education,
+and I felt that in part she was right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs here interposed, and gave it as her opinion
+emphatically that man was a contemptible creature whatever his beliefs
+might be, and that he required a woman to look after him.  "To look
+after him," she repeated, in a tone that said as plainly as possible,
+"to keep him in order," and she tapped Mr. Ellicomb sharply on the
+knuckles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Pirate Boy had some brave notions about what he called The Sex, and
+here plunged into a long description of how he had rescued a fair
+creature out of the hands of cut-throats out there, and he illustrated
+his action of saving the fair one by holding an imaginary six-shooter
+to Palestrina's head in a very alarming way.  He talked of man as The
+Protector, and thrust his hand into his cummerbund&mdash;the action, I
+suppose, being intended to show that the six-shooter had been
+replaced&mdash;and glanced round the table with an air of defiance.  "There
+is not a man," he remarked, "I don't care who he is, if he fail in
+respect to a woman when I am present, that shall not get a decanter
+hurled straight at his head&mdash;straight at his head.  I have said it!"
+He laid his hand impetuously upon one of two heavy cut-glass bottles
+that had been placed in front of me, and one trembled for the safety of
+one's guests.  "I remember," he said, "in one of those gambling-hells
+in the Far West, where there was about as unruly a set of fellows and
+cut-throats as ever I came across&mdash;&mdash;"  The rest of the story was so
+evidently culled from the last number of the <I>Strand Magazine</I> that it
+hardly seemed rude of Palestrina to interrupt it by bowing to Mrs.
+Fielden, and suggesting that they should adjourn.  Maud Jamieson drew
+my sister aside as they stood grouped round the fire-place in the hall
+drinking their coffee, and thanked her for introducing Mr. Ellicomb to
+her.  "He is perfectly charming," she said.  But Maud's sisters have
+confided to us that this is her invariable conclusion about the last
+man she has met, and it is intended as a sort of previndication of
+herself.  Maud, it seems, intends to flirt with every one she sees, but
+if she pretends that her affections are really touched there can be no
+upbraidings on the part of The Family.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate Jamieson sat on the sofa, and twisted her engagement ring
+complacently round her finger.  She thought that Mr. Ward had carried
+himself very well this evening.  His quietness throughout the dinner
+compared favourably with the conversation of other guests.  Kate said
+once to Palestrina: "He is a man that I shall feel the utmost
+confidence in taking about with me everywhere."  And the remark
+conveyed the suggestion that Mr. Ward would always be an appendage to
+Kate Jamieson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Anthony Crawshay is a very good fellow indeed.  The most advanced and
+cultured young lady will never get him to talk about metaphysics in the
+crush of a ballroom, nor to concern himself about the inartistic shape
+of the clothes we wear nowadays.  "If I didn't like them, I shouldn't
+wear them," says Anthony.  He is a short, spare man, with a voice
+somewhat out of proportion to his size, and the best cross-country
+rider in the county.  The habit he has of shouting all his remarks
+seems rather pleasantly in accordance with his honest nature.  Anthony
+very seldom speaks of any one of whom he has not a good word to say;
+but if he does mention any one whom he dislikes, he does so in a very
+hearty manner, which is almost as good as many other people's praise.
+He is as obstinate, as straightforward, and as good a fellow as a
+country neighbour ought to be.  "We have been hunting a May fox, by
+Gad, Hugo," said Anthony, and he began to tell me about the run&mdash;a
+thing I can hardly get any one to do nowadays.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Pirate Boy, upon whom the word "horse" had a rousing effect,
+condemned the whole breed of English horses in one short speech.  "I
+assure you," he said, getting up and sawing the air with his hand,
+"there are some of those wild mustangs out there which would knock
+spots out of any horses in your stables."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus challenged, Anthony, who was standing on the hearthrug, turned,
+and stooping towards me asked, in what he intended to be a whisper, who
+the young fellow was, and shouted abroad, "Rum chap that, very rum
+chap!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By-and-by Maud Jamieson went to the piano and began to sing ballads to
+Mr. Ellicomb; and we have an inward conviction&mdash;Palestrina and I&mdash;that
+this evening's report to the Jamieson family will be that Mr. Ellicomb
+is "struck."  Major Jacobs considers himself musical because he likes
+hearing the words of a song distinctly pronounced.  He was charmed with
+Maud's singing, and Kate encouraged the girl in a little matronly way
+which she has lately assumed.  She called forth Maud's best efforts by
+saying, "What was the pretty Irish song you sang the other night?" or
+"You haven't given us 'We'd better bide a wee' yet, dear."  Maud
+responded with several ballads, and wished she had some of Lord Henry
+Somerset's songs with her, Mr. Ellicomb having expressed a fondness for
+them.  An opportunity was thus given for suggesting a call at
+Belmont&mdash;Maud knows mamma will be delighted&mdash;she wished Kennie were
+better at that sort of thing; the invitation to come in some afternoon
+might perhaps have come more properly from a brother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was very gratifying to find that Mr. Ward, fortified by dinner,
+became more courageous than I have ever known him to be before.  He
+tip-toed almost boldly across the room, and sitting down beside my
+sister began to make a series of deliberate remarks to her, mostly in
+the form of interrogation: "Do you care for Scotch songs?"  "Have you
+ever been in Ireland?"  "Do you know Wales at all?"  And to these
+important questions Palestrina made suitable replies.  "That is <I>most</I>
+interesting," I heard her say from time to time, using the formula of
+those who are bored to the extent of complete absence of mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden crossed the room suddenly with a shimmer of silken skirts.
+In spite of her frivolity she has a way of making herself necessary to
+every party to which she goes.  There used to be an old saying long ago
+in Scotland that wherever The Macgregor sat was the head of the table.
+Mrs. Fielden is always the centre of every party, although she has a
+childish habit, which in another woman might be ascribed to shyness, of
+taking the least conspicuous seat in the room.  Consequently, when she
+dispersed the little group that was standing or sitting about her,
+applauding everything she said, and came across the room in pink satin
+and roses and diamonds, and sat down beside my sofa, the action had
+something regal about it, as though she had left a throne and come to
+speak to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am going to teach you to play Bridge," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is most kind of you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am going to carry you off to Stanby next week to give you lessons,"
+she went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have a strong conviction that if Mrs. Fielden were to give a beggar a
+halfpenny he would probably stoop down and kiss the edge of her skirt,
+or do something equally unconventional and self-abasing.  She might, as
+a great favour, give a courtier who had risked his life for her, her
+hand to kiss.  When she smiles men become foolish about her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is very kind of you to want us," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want Bridge," said Mrs. Fielden, and, as usual when she is going to
+be provoking, she looked prettier than ever, and began to smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any one will do to make up a rubber, I suppose?" I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh yes, any one," said Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Consequently, my sister and I need not feel particularly distinguished
+by being asked," I continued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am so glad Palestrina is coming," said Mrs. Fielden, "because
+several men have written to tell me they are coming to stay, just when
+my sisters-in-law are leaving, and I suppose I oughtn't to entertain a
+houseful of men alone, ought I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden does exactly as she pleases upon all occasions, but this
+does not prevent her from pretending to have acute attacks of propriety
+sometimes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We will play Bridge and chaperon you with pleasure," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought of drowning myself yesterday," said Mrs. Fielden, "because
+it rained all day, and I had no one to amuse me, and then I thought I
+would ask you to come over and play Bridge instead.  When I am bored I
+never can make up my mind whether I shall commit suicide, or go into a
+convent, or get married.  Which do you advise?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should advise you to marry," I said.  "As far as I can gather, a
+great source of discord and danger in our neighbourhood would be
+removed if you did so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden said with her eyes, "Hugo, you are very cross."  But being
+the most good-natured woman in the world, and sharing that forbearance
+which most people extend to an invalid, she smiled instead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why do you stay here when you are feeling so tired?" she said to me
+presently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because," I replied, "my sister lies awake half the night and thinks I
+am going to die, if I show any signs of fatigue, or go to bed early.
+Besides, for us, you know, this is quite an exciting evening.  We have
+thought about our dinner-party for days past."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you were nice," said Mrs. Fielden after a pause, "you would ask me
+to come into your library and smoke."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you smoke?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Mrs. Fielden, "I don't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm glad you don't," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For years," said Mrs. Fielden, "I tried to think it was wrong, and
+then I quite enjoyed smoking; but there is a certain effort involved in
+trying to raise an innocent occupation to the level of a crime."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a very unfeminine habit," I said; partly because I was in a
+contradictious mood, and partly because I wanted to snub Mrs. Fielden
+for being so beautiful and young and charming.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The last man," said Mrs. Fielden gravely, "who made that remark died
+shortly afterwards."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was gathering up my cushions and pillows as she spoke, and she
+turned to my sister as she crossed the hall, and said, "We are going to
+study philosophy in the library."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The library was lit by a single lamp, and the fire burned low in the
+grate; but the room was illumined suddenly by a pink dress and roses
+and diamonds, and Mrs. Fielden was arranging cushions, in the very
+skilful way she has, on my sofa by the fire.  She handed me my
+cigarette-box and matches, and spread a rug over my leg.  For some
+occult reason the rustling pink dress only whispered softly over the
+carpet now, like a woman's hushed voice in a sick-room, and Mrs.
+Fielden, by the simple act of drawing up a chair to the fire and
+sitting in it, took the head of the table again, and became the centre
+of the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I really smoke," I asked, "after being such a brute as to say you
+mustn't?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I look upon smoking as a purely feminine habit, like drinking tea, or
+having headaches, or anything of that sort," said Mrs. Fielden.  "It
+was simply because it was so expensive that men took to it in the first
+place.  Ethics should not be based upon accident, should it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I handed Mrs. Fielden my cigarette-box.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you are quite sure you disapprove, I will have one," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the hall came the sound of Maud's singing.  Her voice is not of
+great compass, nor very strong, but it is clear and fresh, with a
+tuneful cadence in it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You spend nearly all your days here?" said Mrs. Fielden, looking round
+the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Until the afternoon," I said; "and then Palestrina and I go for a
+little walk, and at tea-time I go to the hall sofa, and she asks people
+to come up and sit with me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am glad you like books," said Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But really," I said, "the good folks in Stowel are all extraordinarily
+kind to me, and some of the Jamiesons are up nearly every day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I like the Jamiesons," said Mrs. Fielden; "they are so intelligent.
+Have you ever noticed that their watches all keep exact time, and that
+they tell you the hour to the very second?  And they always know what
+day of the month it is, and when Easter falls, and how much stuff it
+takes to make a blouse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You wrong Eliza Jamieson," I said; "she studies philosophy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," said Mrs. Fielden eagerly, "I forgot to tell you, I have begun to
+study philosophy.  I began last week.  Will you lend me some books,
+please?  I want to be very wise and learned."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think," said Mrs. Fielden, "that it might be nice if people did not
+always call one frivolous; and that if I studied philosophy&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall not lend you any books," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is rather disobliging of you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because," I said, "our lives should always show a perfect equation.
+If you are a frivolous person you should behave frivolously."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean <I>as</I> I am a frivolous person," said Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As you are a frivolous person," I repeated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And after all," said Mrs. Fielden with a contemplative air, "how silly
+philosophy is!  I asked somebody the other day the meaning of a
+syllogism, and really I don't think I ever heard anything quite so
+foolish."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is quite beneath your notice," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did think of asking you if I might come over sometimes and read
+these musty volumes of yours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You would probably find them as uninteresting as I am," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden looked as if she thought that might be possible, and did
+not press the matter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I dislike being disloyal to my books, for they are such good friends of
+mine.  But a great wish came to me then to get up and do something,
+instead of for ever reading the doings and the thoughts of other
+people.  I thought how much I should like to live again, and just for
+once sleep on the veldt with the stars overhead, or longed that I could
+get astride of a horse, and follow a burst of the hounds over the wet
+fields in England.  And so thinking I turned on the sofa and said
+petulantly, "I wish Maud Jamieson would not sing that song."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, that we two were maying," she sang, in the song that tells of love
+and separation, and the longings and heartbreaks which it is much
+better not to speak about, and the things which we want and cannot have.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hate yearners," I said.  "Why can't she sing something cheerful?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden rose from her chair by the fire and crossed the hearthrug,
+and came and sat down on my sofa.  She took my hand in hers and said:
+"Poor boy! is it very hard sometimes?"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," said Palestrina, as we went upstairs to bed after our
+guests had departed, "you are sure to feel tired.  The little party has
+been too much for you, I'm afraid.  It was very tiresome for you having
+to leave us all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I felt rather a crock after dinner," I said, "and I think the hall
+gets hot in the evening."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish I could make you better," said Palestrina affectionately; "it
+is horrid for you being ill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Every one," I said, "makes far too much fuss about health.  Why, ten
+officers of our regiment are buried in South Africa.  I suppose half
+the pensioners in Chelsea Hospital have had wounds as bad as mine, and
+a cripple more or less in the world does not matter very much.  Women
+are kind enough to pity me.  They even confide their troubles to me
+sometimes, because I am a poor thing lying on a sofa.  I am really
+quite happy hobbling about with you, Palestrina; and when I am older, I
+shall probably take an interest in the garden.  There is a proper and
+philosophical attitude of mind in respect of these things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Hugo," said Palestrina, "I always know you are not happy when you
+begin to be philosophical."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Life is very easily explained without the assistance of philosophy
+when everything goes all right," I replied.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VII.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Have I ever mentioned that Palestrina is engaged to be married?  If I
+have not done so, it is because it seems an obvious fact that all
+Palestrinas are engaged to be married.  Her <I>fiancé</I>, who is called
+Thomas, is stationed with his regiment in Ireland.  A few weeks ago he
+sent her, as a token of his affection, a yellow dog with long hair.
+Palestrina does not like dogs, but she is trying to love Down-Jock for
+Thomas's sake.  She says his name is Jock.  The dog is a curious
+creature, with a passion for hurling himself at those who wear clean
+flannel trousers or light skirts.  Thomas says he is full of
+intelligence.  He appears to be quite a young animal, but he can affect
+the airs of extreme old age, sleeping in a basket a great part of the
+day, or standing on the doorstep to bark at visitors in an asthmatical
+manner, as though he would say, "I am too old and too feeble to give
+chase, but while I am alive this house shall not lack a defender."  At
+other times he is wildly juvenile, and rolls himself over and over in
+an exuberance of youthful fun.  This is chiefly on Sundays, when (his
+best joke) he pretends he wants to come to church with us.  Sunday is
+Down-Jock's happiest day in all the week.  No Christian in the land
+loves it more than he does.  He begins his religious exercises early in
+the morning by barking outside the doors of all those people who have
+determined to take an extra half-hour's rest, and he continues barking
+without ceasing until the sleeper awakes and gets out of bed to open
+the door for him.  He bustles in and wags his tail cheerfully, saying
+as plainly as a dog can say it, "I am an early riser, you see&mdash;and a
+teetotaler," he adds, trotting across the room to the water-jug, and
+lapping full red tonguefuls of its contents.  Then he stands in the
+middle of the room and barks at you; runs to the door and barks at it;
+barks at the servants as they go downstairs, promising&mdash;the little
+tell-tale!&mdash;that their lateness shall be reported in the proper
+quarter.  Finally, he climbs on to the bed, and goes to sleep upon your
+feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During breakfast he is attentive to every one, and sits on the skirts
+of those ladies who most dislike dogs, and pulls them down
+uncomfortably from the waist.  He watches every mouthful of food that
+is eaten, and grudges it to the eater; and his eyes are saying all the
+time, "How can you be so greedy?"  After breakfast his most boisterous
+juvenile mood begins.  He jumps on every one, or rolls himself over and
+over under every one's feet.  He wags his tail, barks in a piercing
+manner&mdash;the bark of the gay young dog&mdash;and madly rushes after imaginary
+rats.  All gloves and shoes become his playthings, and he frolics
+blithely with the hat-brush.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On weekdays he pleads old age as an excuse, and refuses to come
+anywhere with us; but on the Sabbath morning who so ready as Down-Jock
+to take his walks abroad?  He flies after us to the gate, his long hair
+streaming in the wind, and his short legs racing like a clockwork dog.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina says: "Oh dear, what shall we do?  Down-Jock! down, sir!
+Oh, he has spoilt my dress!  Good doggie, mustn't go to church!  Go
+home! go home!  Oh, Jock, do get down!&mdash;Look, he is following us still,
+and the church door is always open; he is sure to come in in the middle
+of the service, and trot up to us in our pew.  Do you think Thomas
+would mind if I were to look as if he didn't belong to us?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jock flies back with an old bone in his mouth and deposits it at
+Palestrina's feet, dares her to touch it, and makes flying snatches at
+her shoes when she kicks the treasure aside.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must take him back," says Palestrina.  "It will make me late of
+course, but I must go and shut him up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He won't follow you," I say.  "He is quite determined to go to church."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina lifts the heavy beast in her arms, and in an exuberance of
+joy Down-Jock makes a doormat of her dress, and rubs his paws
+affectionately against it and licks her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course he escapes presently and runs after us; that is his best and
+most killing joke.  Inwardly one feels he is in a state of
+hardly-suppressed laughter as he tears down the road again, barking
+with glee.  And then he gets a sober fit, walks demurely in front of us
+in the narrow field-path, changes his mind suddenly about going to
+church, stops dead short, and trips us up; thinks after all he ought to
+go to the morning service as an example to the servants; toddles on
+again, and stops to say (with the air of extreme old age again assumed)
+that, after all, he is not up to the exertion, and would have to sit
+down at the Psalms, so perhaps it really would be better to stay
+quietly at home.  Another stop.  A rapid toilet performed by scratching
+his head with his hind-leg, "just in case I meet any one coming out of
+church whom I know;" and then Down-Jock meets a boy friend strolling
+off to the fields, and running up to him, says: "One must conform to
+conventionalities, but between you and me I never had the remotest
+intention of going to church."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Down-Jock, in his moments of most restless activity, always reminds me
+of a servant of ours who has occasional fits of the most intense
+energy.  It begins quite early in the morning, when she gets up some
+hours before her usual time, and gives a sort of surprise party to the
+rest of the household.  These parties take place two or three times a
+year, and we do not get over them for weeks afterwards.  Every room in
+the house is visited in turn, and delinquencies of a twelvemonth are
+laid bare.  During the morning cupboards are turned out in a
+magisterial sort of way, and dusty corners are triumphantly displayed.
+The most cherished rubbish is freely consigned to the waste-paper
+baskets, and collections of all sorts are contemptuously swept away.
+We hastily gather up books and precious oddments, and hurry off with
+them to my den, where we take refuge till the whirlwind is past.
+Curtains and tablecloths are shaken with a sort of vindictive energy at
+the back-door; all windows are flung open, and rugs are rolled up,
+making a sort of obstacle race in every passage and room.  Down-Jock,
+who never recognizes a superior in any one, is the only member of the
+party who is not rendered an abject coward.  He unrolls rugs, and runs
+away with dusters, and snaps at the heels of the housemaid in a way
+that provokes one's wonder at his temerity.  My sister and I, having
+locked away our most cherished possessions, generally contrive to be
+out of the house as much as possible on one of these tempestuous days.
+And following the line of reasoning, not of the highest order, which
+suggests that if one cannot be happy one had better try and be good,
+Palestrina always visits her old women at the workhouse on these days.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish," she said to me, "that you would walk into the village and
+meet me on my way home.  I don't think anybody is coming up to see you
+this afternoon, and the house is so uncomfortable when Janet is in one
+of her whirlwind moods.  Come as far as the corner, and go in and sit
+down at old Pettifer's if you get tired."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shadrach Pettifer tells me," I said, "that his affection for you is
+based on the fact that you are so like his poor old mother.  Perhaps
+while I am waiting at his cottage he may give me further interesting
+facts about you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shadey is an old man with a bent back and curious bright eyes that
+gleam under a heavy thatch of eyebrow.  His wife is the very thinnest
+old woman that I have ever seen; her cheeks have fallen in and are so
+very wrinkled that they always remind me of a toy balloon that a child
+has pricked with a pin.  She is always ill and never complaining.  Any
+expression of sympathy seems foreign to her comprehension, and the
+"Poor thing!" or "I am so sorry," so eagerly accepted by more fortunate
+folk, is received by her with a certain air of independence.  Last
+winter Mrs. Pettifer was dangerously ill with internal gout, but
+expressions of condolence were always met with the rather curious
+reply, "Well, you see, sir, we must have something to bring us to our
+end."  There is a whole world of philosophy in this.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To-day the old couple spent the time while I waited for Palestrina in
+their cottage in describing to me the last days in the life of their
+tortoise, an old friend, and an animal of evidently strange and unusual
+qualities.  Towards the close of its life it was, on the testimony of
+the Pettifers, taken with screaming fits, and, it even had to be held
+down "when the high-strikes was wuss."  Later it used to run round and
+round as never was.  And at last Shadey determined to release it from
+this earthly tabernacle.  He asked his friend Bridgeman, Anthony
+Crawshay's head-keeper, to come round some evening and administer
+poison to the unfortunate beast, and the effect of the dose was as
+strange as it was unexpected.  The poison was the first thing for weeks
+that poor Toots the tortoise had seemed to enjoy.  It seemed, to quote
+again from the testimony of those most intimately acquainted with the
+animal, to "put new life into Toots," and the more poison that was
+administered the livelier did he become, "until he was that gay it
+seemed as if he would ha' laughed at yer!"  Finally, I understood that
+when poison sufficient to kill two cart-horses had been given, the
+afflicted animal yielded to treatment, and its shell now adorns the
+kitchen dresser.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We returned home to find the house smelling of furniture polish, and
+permeated with a certain cold primness which succeeds a tidying-up, and
+which can only be dispelled by a glowing fire.  One by one things were
+brought back to the hall, and we felt like snails creeping out in the
+evening after a day of rain.  Banished property strewed the tables
+again, and Palestrina opened the piano and spread it with music.  It
+was an act of defiance, but comfortable nevertheless, to collect the
+cushions which had been dotted primly about in clean muslin covers, and
+to pile them all on to the sofa before the fire.  But Down-Jock, who
+always goes one better than any one else, contributed still more
+completely to the systematized disorganization of the house.  He gaily
+wiped his muddy feet on clean paint, and tore blithely round after
+imaginary rats wherever order reigned.  Finally, in an exuberance of
+joy, he made a hearty supper of Palestrina's manuscript book of music,
+and barked with glee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet some people say that dogs are not intelligent!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VIII.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The Uncle, Sir John, is coming to stay at the Taylors', and the town is
+in something of a flutter over this event.  It was hoped that the
+Taylors would give a tea-party in honour of their guest, but there is a
+shrewd notion abroad that no one will be allowed to see very much of
+him except at a distance.  The Taylors had hoped that there would be
+some occasion during his visit on which The Uncle might speak in
+public, and Mr. Taylor has tried, half jestingly, to induce his brother
+townsfolk to arrange what he calls "something in the political line"
+while the august relative is staying with him.  I think we owe it to
+the fact that the political meeting was found to be an impossibility
+that we were asked to tea at the Taylors'.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Invitations, instead of taking the form of a friendly note, after the
+pattern of Stowel invitations in general, were conveyed on one of Mrs.
+Taylor's visiting cards, with "At home, Thursday the 17th, four to
+seven," upon it.  "A little abrupt," ladies of Stowel were inclined to
+think, but of course the Taylors are people of some importance in the
+place.  No one quite knew how to answer the invitation, and a good many
+friendly little visits were paid on the afternoon on which it arrived,
+and the mysterious card was produced from a bag or purse, with the
+smiling apology, "I am sure fashions change so quickly that one hardly
+knows how to keep up with them."  And then ideas were exchanged as to
+the reply suitable to such a form of invitation.  Miss Tracey said that
+she always thought that an invitation was accepted in as nearly as
+possible the same manner in which it was given, and she announced that
+she and her sister meant to return one of their own visiting-cards to
+Mrs. Taylor, with the day and the hour named upon it, and "With
+pleasure" written underneath.  This was considered suitable, for the
+most part; but those who still had doubts upon the subject made
+elaborate efforts to meet Mrs. Taylor during the morning's shopping,
+and to say to her in a friendly way, "We are coming, of course, on
+Thursday.  Will you excuse our writing a note, at this busy time?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Miss Blinds always send their thanks for a "polite invitation" in
+the old style, but on this occasion Miss Lydia was obliged to offer
+regrets as well as thanks, as she had not been very well lately.  She,
+I suppose, was the only person in Stowel who did not accept Mrs.
+Taylor's invitation.  Two parties are, of course, never given on the
+same day, and it would be considered eccentric to prefer staying at
+home to going out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sorry Miss Lydia cannot come," said Mr. Taylor, when the notes of
+acceptance were being opened at breakfast-time; "after all, it is not
+every day that people have a chance of meeting so distinguished a man
+as the General."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Lydia was never intrusive," said Mrs. Taylor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Lovekin was one of those who avoided the difficulty raised by Mrs.
+Taylor's unusual form of invitation by meeting her accidentally in the
+baker's shop, where an assortment of cakes was being ordered for the
+tea-party, and signifying her intention of coming to tea.  "No need to
+write, I suppose," said Mrs. Lovekin lightly, "as I have met you?"
+Both Mrs. Taylor and the baker's wife thought it would have been in
+better taste if Mrs. Lovekin had then withdrawn, instead of remaining
+in the shop and hearing what was ordered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Taylor had made up her mind at an early stage in the proceedings
+that she would be very firm indeed about the matter of dispensing tea
+herself in her own house.  She would appropriate one teapot, and her
+daughter should have the other, and not even to shake hands with a
+late-arriving guest would they run the risk of letting this badge of
+office fall into the hands of the co-hostess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And if," said Mrs. Taylor, "I find that she is appropriating The Uncle
+too much, I shall not hesitate to remove him, on the plea of
+introducing him to some other and more important guests."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was in church on Sunday that we were first allowed to see The Uncle,
+and this is only following the usual custom in Stowel.  Church on
+Sunday is, as it were, the public life of the town.  After a death it
+is customary to wait until the family has appeared in church to pay
+visits of condolence&mdash;not so much to avoid intrusiveness in the first
+hour of grief as from a feeling that perhaps the crape mourning will
+not have arrived.  In the same way, if any one moves into a new
+house&mdash;a very unusual proceeding&mdash;we are made aware that the carpets
+are all down, and the drawing-room curtains are hung, when the new
+arrivals are seen in their pew on Sunday.  This, also, is accepted as a
+token that calling may now begin.  Mrs. Taylor said afterwards, in
+describing that first Sunday when The Uncle appeared in Stowel Church,
+that her heart beat so painfully at the door that she thought she would
+have been obliged to turn back.  It was a triumphal progress that the
+party of four made up the centre aisle to their pew, but the inward
+excitement of the Taylors rendered a natural deportment difficult.
+Neither Mrs. Taylor nor her daughter joined in the hymns or the
+responses that Sunday morning.  It is doubtful whether they heard a
+word of the service.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir John is a very military-looking person, with white whiskers and a
+bald pink head.  He sat between Mrs. and Miss Taylor, who supplied him
+with hymn and prayer books in as natural a manner as they found it
+possible to assume; and Mr. Taylor sat at the end of the pew with a
+genial expression on his face, and a look of tempered pride, due no
+doubt to the fact that the General was "one of my wife's people," and
+not a blood relation of his own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a disappointment to Mr. Taylor that his own sister, Mrs.
+Macdonald&mdash;widow of a Scotch gentleman, whom the Taylors always talk of
+as "The Laird"&mdash;was not able to come to this family gathering.  But
+Mrs. Macdonald pleaded spring-cleaning as an insuperable objection to
+leaving home at present.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Miss Taylor, Mrs. Macdonald used to be one of Stowel's central
+figures, for she was a lady of considerable means and an indefatigable
+housekeeper; and Mr. Macdonald was considered to have done well when he
+took her as his bride to the North.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Sunday on which the Taylors appeared in church with The Uncle was
+curiously hot for the time of year.  It was very stuffy in church, and
+Miss Lydia had a slight fainting attack, and had to leave before the
+service was over.  Following the accepted custom in Stowel, my sister
+called the next day to ask how she did.  But indisposition, usually a
+matter of solemn pleasure with us, was overshadowed and shorn of its
+interest by the presence of The Uncle amongst us.  Even the Vicar
+looked keenly at him from the pulpit before his sermon began, but no
+one except Mrs. Lovekin was forward enough to address the august party
+as they left the church.  Mrs. Lovekin, who always affirmed that she
+saw no difference in rank, was the very first person in Stowel to shake
+hands with The Uncle.  She overtook the Taylors before they had even
+reached the gate of the churchyard, and was perforce introduced to
+their relative, "who," Mrs. Taylor said afterwards, "was almost more
+cordial than she could have wished him to be; but of course his manners
+were always perfect."  What annoyed every one a little in the days that
+followed was that Mrs. Lovekin constantly referred to the General as if
+he had been an old friend; whereas of course it was well known in what
+an intrusive way her precedence had been gained.  During the week,
+however, we all had an opportunity of seeing Sir John, for he was
+marched in triumph up and down the village street regularly twice a
+day.  Miss Taylor even condescended to subterfuge in the matter.  For
+having taken The Uncle as far as the baker's at the end of the town,
+with a view to continuing the walk into the country at The Uncle's
+request, she pretended to have forgotten something at the draper's, and
+marched him down the street again, in the proud knowledge that all
+eyes, whether from pedestrians or from the interior of shops and houses
+in the High Street, were turned upon her.  The tobacconist from whom
+The Uncle bought some tobacco gave Miss Taylor quite a sympathetic look
+as he said, "Allow me to send it for you, Sir John."  And Miss Taylor
+said, "Do allow him to send it, uncle!  I am sure that you ought not to
+carry parcels for yourself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On Thursday, when we went to the party, we saw at once that the Taylors
+meant to make no snobbish distinction between their guests, but that
+each and every one of them was to be introduced to The Uncle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am no good at this sort of thing, Mary," The Uncle said before the
+party began, "and I think I will walk over and see Willie Jacobs, and
+spend the afternoon with him."  Mrs. Taylor turned pale at the
+suggestion.  "It will ruin it!" she said.  "I shall feel as if I had
+been acting on false pretences."  And though the General remained, as
+he was requested to do, he showed a most irritating tendency to slip
+away, and sometimes he was not to be found at the most critical
+moments.  Mrs. Taylor stationed him close to herself in the
+drawing-room where she received her guests.  But at the very moment
+when she turned round to effect an introduction between him and some
+particular friend, it was discovered that the General had slipped off
+to the smoking-room or the tea-room, or was wandering aimlessly about
+the garden, looking at the flower-beds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Altogether, that most successful afternoon (and the Taylors really did
+feel that it had been a success from the very highest point of view)
+had still some drawbacks to it, which they regret, and always will
+regret.  For instance, when Miss Taylor had been dispatched into what
+the Taylors call the "grounds" to see "what The Uncle is doing"
+(playfully), "and tell him to come and make himself agreeable," she had
+hardly departed to fulfil her mother's request when Mrs. Lovekin bore
+down upon the teapot, poured out several of the most distinguished cups
+of tea, and handed round macaroons as though they were her own.  Last
+of all, as the party was breaking up, and Mrs. Lovekin's vicarious
+hospitality was therefore at an end, she was actually heard inviting
+The Uncle to come and call upon her.  Even the Miss Blinds, on being
+told of the incident, admitted that this behaviour on Mrs. Lovekin's
+part could not be called anything but forward.  Miss Lydia could only
+say, in a sort of sweet distress, "Perhaps she did not mean it;" but
+Miss Blind shook her head vigorously, and said, "Bad butter, bad
+butter, bad butter!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Margaret Jamieson had, of course, been helping to prepare the party,
+for Margaret Jamieson always helps wherever there is anything to be
+done.  And Eliza, we thought, made a deep impression upon The Uncle by
+her knowledge of literature, and the perfectly easy and natural way in
+which, without a moment's preparation, she alluded to the "atomic
+theory."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah! you are one of the Reading Society young ladies that I heard
+about," said he.  "Sorry I couldn't do more for you in the way of
+books, but that's not in my line at all, you know.  I was educated at a
+Grammar School, and I never had the advantages that you young people
+have nowadays."  (Mrs. Taylor thought this statement unnecessary, but
+reflected that great men often make allusions of this sort.)  "However,
+if I ever can be of any use to you&mdash;getting you an order for reading at
+the British Museum, or anything of that sort&mdash;I hope you will let me
+know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For one brief day the Jamiesons were inclined to tease Eliza about
+having made a conquest, but the Taylors would not have any nonsense of
+that sort for a moment.  It made Mrs. Taylor quite nervous to think of
+such a thing, and she remarked that that was the worst of having
+distinguished people to stop with one; there was always somebody
+running after them.  Eliza Jamieson, we noticed, was treated with
+marked coldness by the Taylors for some time afterwards, and Miss
+Taylor recollected darkly that it was Eliza's suggestion, in the first
+instance, that The Uncle should be consulted on the choice of books for
+the Reading Society.  "She may," said Miss Taylor, "have had an eye on
+him from the first."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A purely visionary affair of this sort, however, could not be
+considered satisfactory or exciting, even by the Jamiesons; and the
+Taylors' suspicions and anxieties were put on one side for the time
+being&mdash;ousted from their place, as it were&mdash;by the very distinct and
+exciting rumours which have reached us about Maud.  Maud has been
+staying with friends at Hampstead, and has written home in a certain
+veiled way which is very provoking, but which, nevertheless, gives the
+impression that another man has come to the point, and has proposed to
+Maud Jamieson.  Maud seems out of spirits, and has written to say that
+she is returning; and this makes the sisters think that she must have
+accepted her present suitor, and is coming home to shed a few natural
+tears.  Eliza, who walked over to tell us the news, voiced The Family's
+opinion when she said: "We have quite made up our minds that if Maud
+has said 'Yes,' she is to stick to it this time.  She is always in a
+panic directly she has accepted any one, but we know that it would be
+the same whoever it was: and doubtless, unless we are firm, she will
+treat this admirer just as she treated Mr. Reddy and Albert Gore and
+the others.  Mamma says that she will not have Maud coerced, and I am
+sure no one wants to coerce her; but why should she always get to a
+certain point, and then begin to have doubts?  It is so
+unbusiness-like."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The very next day Maud Jamieson came to tea.  She looked well dressed,
+as usual, and had some pretty spring finery about her&mdash;yellow mimosa
+wreathing a broad hat, and some yellow ribbons about her tasteful
+dress&mdash;but her pretty face looked very white, and she fidgeted
+nervously for half an hour, and then told me I was so sympathetic she
+would like to ask me something.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dare say," she said, "that you have heard something about Mr. Evans
+from The Family?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I admitted that I had, and then there was a very long pause.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How is one to know," said Maud, "when it is the real thing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another pause.  I wished with all my heart that I could have been more
+helpful to this young lady in such evident distress of mind; but the
+intricacies of Maud's thoughts are most difficult to follow, and I
+thought it better to wait until she had given me her entire confidence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Little things," said Maud, "might annoy one so much if one had always
+to live with a man.  For instance, I do not think I could ever truly
+love a man who sniffs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Our friend Mrs. Fielden says," I remarked, "that a man generally
+proposes when he has a cold in his head.  But I pointed out to her that
+these statistics do her no credit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Evans doesn't sniff," said Maud.  "I was only citing that as an
+example of what one might find very trying in a companion for life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I assented, and could only suggest hopefully the usual Jamieson remedy
+that such a defect might be cured after marriage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But men are so obstinate about some things," said Maud.  "For
+instance, suppose a man were well off and of really excellent
+character, do you think it would matter much if he wore a white
+watered-silk waistcoat in the evening?  Would it, for instance, appear
+an insuperable objection to most minds?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I replied that doubtless it was a serious fault, but that I did not
+consider it an incurable one; and I further remarked, with what I hoped
+showed a broad and liberal way of looking at things, that all men had
+their idiosyncrasies.  Maud admitted this, and seemed cheered by the
+reflection; but she pushed the matter further, and said she would like
+to know what sort of a man I should presume any one to be who wore a
+white watered-silk waistcoat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you care for Mr. Evans&mdash;" I began, and regretted that one's
+articulate expression is sometimes behindhand in the matter of
+conveying the comprehensiveness of the inner working of one's mind&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am afraid I care for some one else," said Maud, bursting into tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me see you home," I said, unable to think of any but this very
+doubtful method of consolation; still, it seemed unkind to let her go
+home alone when she had been crying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the threshold of the Jamiesons' house several of The Family were
+waiting for us, and they drew me into the drawing-room, while by tacit
+consent it seemed to be understood that Maud should not join in the
+conclave, but should go straight upstairs and take off her hat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you persuaded her?" said Eliza.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope you have put a little common sense into her," said Kate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+James was admitted to family discussions now, and here remarked that he
+believed that all girls were happier married.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Though, of course," said Mettie, "it is a great risk."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did she tell you," asked Gracie, "that she cares for some one else?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I admitted that Maud had said something of the sort.  And her family
+exclaimed triumphantly that this was always Maud's plea for releasing
+herself from an engagement as soon as that engagement had been made.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Jamieson remarked that she would not like any of the girls to feel
+that they were not welcome at home, and all her affectionate daughters
+kissed her in turn, or patted her hand, and said that they knew that
+such a thought as wanting to get rid of one of them would never enter
+her head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Jamieson here left the room to seek her banished daughter and to
+administer comfort, and the members of The Family conclave said that
+they hoped that Mrs. Jamieson did not think that they had been unkind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If it had not happened so often!" sighed Eliza.  "However, as we do
+not know Mr. Evans, he can't ask to come down and stay with us, as Mr.
+Reddy did, so as to have an opportunity of pressing his suit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He cried so much one afternoon," said Kate, turning in an explanatory
+sort of way to Mr. Ward, "that I really thought I should have to send
+for mamma."  James looked sympathetic, and Gracie added: "We all really
+felt quite relieved when he got engaged to some one else three weeks
+afterwards, and we hear that they are most happy, and have got a dear
+little baby."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap09"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IX.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden's motor car is still a matter of absorbing interest to the
+inhabitants of Stowel.  When it breaks down, as it frequently does,
+there is always a crowd round it immediately.  Our friends and
+neighbours in the town have an ingenuous respect for anything that
+costs a great deal of money, and they are quite congratulatory to any
+one who has been for a drive with Mrs. Fielden, and they talk about the
+motor and its owner, and who has seen it, and who has not, over their
+afternoon tea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The motor car is a noisy, evil-smelling vehicle of somewhat rowdy
+appearance, which leaves a trail behind it as of a smoking lamp.  It
+drew up at our door to-day, and kicked and snorted impatiently until we
+were ready to get into it.  The next moment, with a final angry snort
+and plunge, it started down the drive and whizzed through the village
+and up the hill on the other side without pausing to take breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The worst of a motor car is," said Mrs. Fielden, "that one gets
+through everything so quickly.  In London I get my shopping done in
+about a quarter of an hour, and then I take a turn round Regent's Park,
+and I find I have put away about ten minutes, so I fly down to
+Richmond, and even then it is too early to go to tea anywhere.  Talking
+of tea&mdash;isn't everybody very hungry?  I am really ravenous&mdash;and that is
+the motor car's fault, too.  Because one has learned to want one's
+meals by the amount of business one has got through, and when one has
+done a whole afternoon's work in three-quarters of an hour, one is
+dying for tea, just as if it were five o'clock."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have always been ravenous since I was in South Africa," said one of
+Mrs. Fielden's colonels, who had driven over in the motor car to take
+care of her and to bring us back.  "I don't know when I shall satisfy
+the pangs of hunger which I acquired on the veldt."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I shall call on Mr. Ellicomb," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I believe
+he has excellent afternoon teas, and he is making me an enamel box
+which I should like to see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellicomb said once or twice, as we sat in his picturesque house with
+its blue china and old brass work, that he only wished we had given him
+warning that we were coming.  We found him with an apron on, working at
+his enamels; and when he had displayed this work to us, he showed us
+his bookbinding, and his fretwork-carving, and his type-writing
+machine.  Afterwards we had tea, which Ellicomb poured very deftly into
+his blue cups, having first warmed the teapot and the cups, and flicked
+away one or two imaginary specks of dirt from the plates with what
+appeared to be a small lace-trimmed dinner-napkin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden began to admire his majolica ware, of which she knows
+nothing whatever, and Ellicomb took her for a tour round his rooms, and
+asked her to guess the original uses of his drain-tiles and spittoons
+and copper ham-pots.  Afterwards we were taken into a very small
+conservatory adjoining his house, where every plant was displayed to us
+in turn; and we were subsequently shown his coal-cellar and his larder
+and his ash-pit before we were allowed to return to the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellicomb smiles more often than any other man I know, and he had only
+one epithet to apply to his house.  "It's so cosy," he said.  "Isn't it
+cosy?"  "I do think it's a cosy little place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden was charmed with everything, and deprecated the idea that
+she might consider the little house very small after Stanby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I always think," she said, "that I should much prefer to live in a
+place like this, and then the people who come to see one really would
+pay one a little attention, instead of talking of nothing but the
+house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Colonel laughed and apologized.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I know I'm not half good enough for Stanby," said Mrs. Fielden,
+smiling.  "But I really can't help it!  I was brought up in a house
+with hot and cold water upstairs, and white paint, and I suppose I
+never can really appreciate anything else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dignity of Mrs. Fielden's surroundings has never affected her in
+the very smallest degree, and I do not believe that the traditions of
+the house interest her in the very least.  I am quite aware that she
+asked me to write out the history of Lady Hylda, for instance, simply
+because it is part of her charm always to ask one to do something for
+her.  It is the fashion to wait upon Mrs. Fielden's behests, and it
+would appear almost an unkindness to her many men friends if she did
+not give them some commission to do when they go up to town.  Her
+manner of thanking one for a service is almost as pretty as her manner
+of asking for it, and I am really not surprised that she is the most
+popular woman in the country-side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ellicomb said ecstatically that the dim twilight at Stanby was one
+of the most impressive things he knew; and he added, with a shudder,
+that he always expected to see ghosts there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden does not believe in ghosts except on those occasions when
+she has some one very charming to defend her, and she spends her
+evenings in a cheerful white boudoir in the modern part of the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Having admired all the majolica plates in the house, and having
+completely bewildered her host by showing an interest in him and his
+possessions one minute, and complete indifference the next, Mrs.
+Fielden fell into one of those little silences which are so
+characteristic of her.  Her silence is one of the most provoking things
+about her.  She has been witty and amusing the moment before, and then
+relapses into silence in the most natural manner possible, and her face
+takes a certain wistful look, and a man wonders how he can comfort her
+or whether he has offended her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think we ought to go now," she said, coming out of this wistful
+reverie like a child awaking from sleep.  "Is every one ready?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We got into the motor car again, and sped onwards along the smooth
+white road.  Every turn made a picture which I suppose an artist would
+love to paint.  There were red-roofed cottages smothered in orchards of
+plum blossom, and simple palings set across gaps in the hedges, with
+gardens beyond filled with spring flowers.  Now a labourer, gray-coated
+and bent with age, passed by like a flash, as he tramped slowly
+homewards from his work; and some school children, loitering to pick
+primroses under a hedge, dropped their slates and satchels in the
+ditch, and called to each other to take care, while they clung together
+and shouted "Hurrah!" as we passed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The park gates of Stanby are lion guarded and of stone, and then a long
+carriage-drive takes one up to the house.  The park round the old gray
+pile was starred with primroses, and ghost-like little lambs were
+capering noiselessly in the fields.  The scent of wallflowers was blown
+to us from a great brown ribbon of them round the walls of the
+lodgekeeper's house as we swung through the gates.  The sheep in the
+park, bleating to their young, drew away from the palings where they
+had been rubbing their woolly sides, and made off to the farther corner
+of the field, and Mrs. Fielden's gray pony in the paddock tossed his
+heels in a vindictive fashion at us from a distance of fifty yards or
+more.  And the motor car drew up with a jerk at the great doors of the
+house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stanby is not quite so large now as it originally was, immense though
+the house undoubtedly is, and only some ruins on the north side show
+where the chapel used to stand.  A mound within the ruin's walls marks
+the resting-place of Hylda&mdash;Hylda, whose history I wrote out at the
+request of Mrs. Fielden, and sent to her; but I don't suppose she has
+ever read it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The evening of our arrival at Stanby it pleased Mrs. Fielden to put on
+an old-fashioned dress of stiffest brocade, which she had found in some
+old chest in the house.  She wore a high comb of pearls in her dark
+hair, and she looked a very regal and beautiful figure in the great
+dining-hall and drawing-rooms of her house.  She did not play Bridge,
+as the others did, but sat on a carved high-backed chair near my sofa,
+and told me many of the old stories of the house, and asked me to write
+down some of them for her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I sent you the story of Hylda more than a week ago," I said, "and I
+don't suppose you ever read it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did read it," said Mrs. Fielden gently, "and I liked it very much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had put on an unapproachable mood with her beautiful stiff brocade
+gown, and the gentleness of her voice seemed to heighten rather than to
+lessen her royalty.  The radiance and the holiday air, which are Mrs.
+Fielden's by divine right, were not dimmed to-night so much as
+transformed.  There was a subtle aromatic scent of dried rose-leaves
+clinging to the old brocade dress, and about herself a sort of
+fragrance of old-world dignity and beauty.  The pearl comb in her hair
+made her look taller than usual.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A deerhound got up from his place by the fire and came and laid his
+head on her lap, and some footmen in old-fashioned bright blue liveries
+came in to arrange the card-tables and hand round coffee.  Everything
+was stately and magnificent in the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you pretend," I said, "that you do nothing; yet probably the whole
+ordering of this house devolves upon you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am quite a domestic person sometimes," said Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is rather bewildering," I said, "to find that you are everything in
+turn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the next morning she wore a short blue skirt, with a silver belt
+round her waist, and spent the morning punting on the lake with Anthony
+Crawshay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope I look after you all properly," she said at lunch-time, in a
+certain charming deprecating way she has of speaking sometimes.  "There
+really are punts, and horses, and motor cars, and things, if you want
+them.  Will you all order what you like?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Each man at the table then offered to take Mrs. Fielden for a ride, or
+a drive, or a row, and not one of them could be quite sure that she had
+refused to go with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want to go for a turn in the garden and talk about books," she said
+to me as we left the dining-room.  And then I found that I was sitting
+in her boudoir having coffee with her, and that every one else was
+excluded from the room&mdash;how it was done I have not the slightest
+idea&mdash;and that by-and-by we left it by the open French windows, and
+were strolling in the garden in the spring sunshine.  The garden, with
+its high walls, is sheltered from every wind that blows, and there are
+wide garden-seats in it painted white, and every border was bright with
+early spring flowers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I call this my Grove of Academe," said Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because I think it has a nice classical sound; and it is here I come
+with my friends and discuss metaphysics."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems to me you have a great many friends," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was thinking," said Mrs. Fielden thoughtfully, "of adding another to
+their number."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have a constitutional dislike to worshipping in crowded temples," I
+said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden became silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It would be forging a sword against themselves did men allow women to
+know what a powerful weapon silence is.  A soft answer turneth away
+wrath, but a woman's silence makes a man's heart cry out: "My dear, did
+I hurt you?  Forgive me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the end of five minutes or so of silence Mrs. Fielden turned towards
+me and smiled, and the garden seemed to be filled with her.  There was
+no room for anything else but herself and that bewildering smile she
+gave me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How is the diary getting on?" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The diary," I answered, "continues to record our godly, righteous, and
+sober life&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," said Mrs. Fielden quickly, "don't you think it is possible to be
+too good sometimes?  That is really what I wanted to say to you&mdash;I
+brought you into the garden to ask you that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is an interesting suggestion," I remarked, "and I think we ought to
+give it to Eliza Jamieson for one of her discussions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not wish to discuss it with Eliza Jamieson," said Mrs. Fielden,
+"but with you.  You know there really is a great danger in becoming too
+good; for although I do not think that you would grow wings, or hear
+passing bells, or anything of that sort, still you might become a
+little dull, might you not?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think it would be possible to become duller than I am," I
+replied.  "You have more than once told me that I am not amusing.  So
+long as my sister is not aware of the fact, I do not in the least mind
+admitting that I find every day most horribly tedious.  I suppose I
+shall get accustomed to it in time, but I don't enjoy being an invalid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have watched the Jamiesons making flannel petticoats for the
+poor," went on Mrs. Fielden, "and you have had the Curate to tea, and
+you have been to the Taylors' party, and if it does not kill you, I am
+sure you will become like people in those books which one gives as
+prizes to choir-boys."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One so often mistakes monotony for virtue," I said.  "I believe I was
+beginning to think that there was almost a merit in getting accustomed
+to a sofa and a crutch."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, but it is a sin!" exclaimed Mrs. Fielden.  "It is a sin to get
+accustomed to anything that is disagreeable.  But that is what comes of
+studying philosophy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose reasoning is always bad," I said humbly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Mrs. Fielden; "and it is so unnatural, too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I heard a man say the other day," I said, "that solitude is always
+sententious.  And he pointed out that foreigners, who are never alone,
+base their ethics upon conduct; but that English people, who simply do
+not understand the life of the boulevards and cafés and family
+affection, sit apart in the solitude of their garrets or studies, and
+decide that the right or the wrong of a thing consists in what they
+think about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I recollected that this garden was the Grove of Academe, and that
+it was here that Mrs. Fielden discussed metaphysics with all her
+friends.  "What cure do you propose?" I said shortly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not go to London for a little while and enjoy yourselves?" said
+Mrs. Fielden.  "Put off the conventionalities of Stowel, as the Miss
+Traceys do, and do something amusing and gay."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you ever hear of the man in the Bastille," I said, "who had been
+in prison so long that when he was offered his freedom he elected to
+remain where he was?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you must break out of the Bastille long before it comes to that!"
+said Mrs. Fielden.  "Couldn't you do something exciting?  I am sure
+nothing else will restore your moral tone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How is it to be done?" I asked.  "We must recognize the limitations of
+our environment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are going to be philosophical," said Mrs. Fielden; "you are going
+to quote Protagoras, or Pythagoras, or Plato, which will not convince
+me in the least.  Philosophy tries to make people believe that things
+are exactly the reverse of what they are.  I don't think that alters
+the sum total of things very much.  Because, by the time that you have
+proved that all agreeable things are disagreeable, and all unpleasant
+things are pleasant, you are in exactly the same position as you were
+before.  I dare say it fills up people's time to turn everything upside
+down and stand everything on its head, but it is not amusing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you want me to do?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Couldn't you enjoy yourselves a little?" said Mrs. Fielden, putting on
+her wistful voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As we are in the Grove of Academe, let me point out that the pursuit
+of pleasure for its own sake was one of the corrupt forms of a decadent
+epicureanism," I said sternly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am quite sure it was," said Mrs. Fielden, smiling; "but we were
+talking about your visit to London, were we not?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so I knew that the thing was settled, and I thought it very odd
+that Palestrina and I had not thought of the plan before.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As it is getting cold," said Mrs. Fielden, "I am going to be a
+peripatetic philosopher," and she rose from the seat where we were
+sitting and gave me her hand to help me up, for I am still awkward with
+my crutch, and then let me lean on her arm as we walked up and down the
+broad gravel pathway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you think," she began, "that it is a great waste of opportunity
+not to be wild and wicked sometimes, when one is very good?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am afraid I do not quite follow you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What I mean is, what is the good of filling up years of curates and
+Taylors and flannel petticoats, unless you are going to kick them all
+over some day, and have a good time.  You see, if you and Palestrina
+were not so good you would always have to pretend to be tremendously
+circumspect.  But it seems such waste of goodness not to be bad
+sometimes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your argument being," I said, "that an honest man may sometimes steal
+a horse?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, that is what I mean," said Mrs. Fielden delightedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A dangerous doctrine, and one&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not Plato, please," said Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+... It ended in our taking a flat in London for some weeks.  It was a
+small dwelling, with an over-dressed little drawing-room, and a red
+dining-room, and a roomy cupboard for a smoking-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Remember, Palestrina," I said to my sister when we settled down, "that
+we are under strict orders to live a very rapid and go-ahead life while
+we are in London.  Can you suggest anything very rowdy that a crippled
+man with a crutch and a tendency to chills and malaria might undertake?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We might give a supper-party," said Palestrina brilliantly, "and have
+long-stemmed champagne-glasses, and perhaps cook something in a
+chafing-dish.  I was reading a novel the other day in which the bad
+characters did this.  I made a note of it at the time, meaning to ask
+you why it should be fast to cook things in a chafing-dish or to have
+long-stemmed champagne-glasses?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the evening came Mrs. Fielden dined with us, and she and
+Palestrina employed themselves after dinner in rehearsing how they
+should behave.  My sister said in her low, gurgling voice: "I think I
+shall sit on the sofa with my arms spread out on the cushions on either
+side of me, and I shall thump them sometimes, as the adventuress in a
+play does."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or you might be singing at the piano," said Mrs. Fielden, "and then
+when the door opens you could toss the music aside and sail across the
+room, and give your left hand to whoever comes in first, and say, 'What
+a bore! you have come!' or something rude of that sort."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden's spirit of fun inspired my quiet sister to-night, and the
+two women, began masquerading in a way that was sufficiently amusing to
+a sick man lying on a sofa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or you might continue playing the piano," Mrs. Fielden went on, "after
+any one has been announced.  I notice that that is very often done,
+especially in books written by the hero himself in the first person.
+'She did not leave the piano as I entered, but continued playing
+softly, her white hands gliding dreamily over the keys.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall do my best," Palestrina answered; "and I thought of calling
+all our guests by their Christian names, if only I could recollect what
+they are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nicknames would be better," said Mrs. Fielden.  "We ought to have
+found out, I think, something about this matter before the night of the
+party."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What shall we do till they arrive?" said Palestrina.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We must read newspapers and periodicals," Mrs. Fielden replied, "and
+then fling them down on the carpet.  There is something about seeing
+newspapers on a carpet which is certainly untidy, but has a distinctly
+Bacchanalian touch about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish I had a red tea-gown," sighed my sister.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or a white one trimmed with some costly furs," said Mrs. Fielden.
+"Almost any tea-gown would do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One thing I will have!" she exclaimed, starting in an energetic manner
+to her feet.  "I'll turn all the lamps low, and cover them with
+pink-paper shades.  Where is the crinkly paper and some ribbon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After that we sat in a rose twilight so dim that we couldn't even read
+the evening newspaper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think they need have come quite so early," I said, as the
+first ring was heard at the door-bell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden had insisted upon it that one actress at least should be
+asked.  "What is a supper-party without an actress?" she had said.  And
+Mrs. Travers at present acting in Mr. Pinero's new play, was the first
+to arrive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder if you know any of our friends who are coming to-night?" said
+Palestrina.  "We expect Squash Bosanquet and Dickie Fenwick."
+Palestrina then broke down, because we had no idea if these two men had
+ever answered to these names in their lives.  Also she blushed, which
+spoilt it all, and Mrs. Fielden began to smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Travers came to the party in a very simple black evening gown, and
+Bosanquet and Charles Fenwick came almost immediately afterwards.
+Anthony Crawshay was amongst the friends whom we had invited, because,
+Palestrina said, as we did not seem to know many fast people, we had
+better have some one who was sporting.  There was an artist whom we
+considered Bohemian because he wore his hair long, but he disappointed
+us by coming in goloshes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Altogether we were eight at supper.  There was an attractive menu, and
+the long-stemmed champagne-glasses were felt to be a distinct challenge
+to quiet behaviour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina thought that if she were going to be really fast she had
+better talk about divorce, and I heard her ask Anthony in a diffident
+whisper if he had read any divorce cases lately.  Anthony looked
+startled, and in his loud voice exclaimed, "Egad!  I hope <I>you</I>
+haven't!"  Palestrina coloured with confusion, and I frowned heavily at
+her, which made it worse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Travers seemed to have taken it into her head that Palestrina was
+philanthropic, and she talked a great deal about factory girls, and
+Bosanquet talked about methylated ether.  What it was that provoked his
+remarks on this subject I cannot now recall, nor why he discussed it
+without intermission almost throughout the entire evening, but I have a
+distinct recollection of hearing him dinning out the phrase "methylated
+ether."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was, I think, the dullest party that even Palestrina and I have ever
+given, and I blame Mrs. Fielden for this.  Mrs. Fielden refused to be
+the centre of the room.  She became an onlooker at the party which she
+had planned, and she smiled affectionately at us both, and watched, I
+think, to see how the party would go off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The long-stemmed champagne-glasses were hardly used.  Several people
+said to me jocosely, "How is South Africa?" and to this I could think
+of no more suitable reply than, "It's all right."  We longed for even
+the Pirate Boy to make a little disturbance.  Palestrina whispered to
+me that she thought I might throw a piece of bread at some one, or do
+something.  But the action she suggested seemed to me to be in too
+daring contrast to the general tone of the evening; and really, as I
+murmured back to her, there seemed to be very little point in throwing
+my bread at a guest who had done me no harm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish," she said to me when we returned to the drawing-room, "that I
+knew some daring little French songs.  In books the girl always sings
+daring little French songs, and afterwards every one begins to be
+vulgar and delightful, like those people in 'The Christian.'  I think
+I'll light a cigarette."  She did so, and choked a little, and then
+wondered if Thomas would like her to smoke, and threw the cigarette
+into the fire.  The Bohemian, who had travelled considerably, asked for
+a map, and told us of his last year's journeyings, tracing out the
+route of them for us on the map with a pin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Mrs. Fielden was smiling all the time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose," I said to my sister when the last guest had departed, and
+we sat together in the pink light of the drawing-room before going to
+bed&mdash;"I suppose we carry about with us an atmosphere of slowness which
+it is impossible to penetrate.  You are engaged to Thomas, and I am an
+invalid&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But in books," said Palestrina wistfully, "men talk about all sorts of
+things to girls whether they happen to be engaged or not, and they ask
+them to go to see galleries with them next day, or squeeze their hands.
+Of course, I should hate it if they did so, but still one rather
+expected it.  To-night," she said regretfully, "no one talked to me of
+anything but Thomas."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Charles Fenwick," I said, "who used to be considered amusing, has
+become simply idiotic since he married.  He gave me an exact account of
+his little boy's sayings; he copied the way he asked for sugar, like
+the chirruping of a bird.  You won't believe me, I know, but he put out
+his lips and chirped."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I remember being positively warned against him," said Palestrina,
+"when I used to go to dances in London."  She sighed, and added, "Do
+you think Mrs. Fielden enjoyed it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think Mrs. Fielden was distinctly amused," I replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think," said Palestrina, still in a disappointed tone, "that
+the men would have been more&mdash;more larky if we had been alone?  Mrs.
+Fielden always looks so beautiful and dresses so well that I think she
+impresses people too much, and they are all trying to talk to her
+instead of making a row."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think we may as well go to bed," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina rose slowly, and went towards the bell to ring for my man to
+help me.  She lingered for a moment by my chair.  "Yet books say that
+men require so much keeping in order," she said sadly.  "I wish people
+would not write about what does not occur."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap10"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER X.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The Jamiesons have taken lodgings in West Kensington, which they
+describe as being "most central"&mdash;a phrase which I have begun to think
+means inexpensive&mdash;and near a line of omnibuses.  George and the Pirate
+are assiduous in taking their sisters to the Play and other places of
+amusement, and are showing them something of London with a zeal which
+speaks much for their goodness of heart.  Even Mrs. Jamieson has been
+out once or twice, and although doubly tearful on the morning following
+any little bit of dissipation, her family feel that the variety has
+been good for her.  Eliza has found that London is radio-active, hence
+enjoyable.  And Eliza had been only once to the Royal Institution when
+she said it!  Maud's engagement to the Hampstead young man has been
+finally broken off, and Maud has cried so much that her family have
+forgiven her.  Maud explains that it is such an upset for a girl to
+break off an engagement, and The Family say soothingly that she must
+just try and get over it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We hope," said Kate, "that next time things will arrange themselves
+more happily, and at least we can all feel that Maud might have married
+many times, had she wished to do so."  There seems to be a strong
+feeling in The Family that Maud will go on having opportunities.
+Arguing from the general to the particular, they have proved, with a
+sort of tribal feeling of satisfaction, that Maud is undoubtedly very
+attractive to men, and that if one man likes her, why should not
+another?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Still, we all felt that we could not have sympathized immediately with
+another love affair of Maud's, and it was refreshing, not to say most
+pleasing and surprising, to find that since her arrival in Town, it was
+Margaret who attracted the notice of a gentleman, Mr. Swinnerton by
+name, a friend of George's, who brought him to supper one Sunday
+evening.  The Jamiesons could see at a glance that Mr. Swinnerton was
+"struck," and, as he called two or three times in the following week,
+Margaret made the usual Jamieson opportunity of seeing Palestrina home,
+one afternoon when she had been to call, to embark in confidences about
+her lover in the usual Jamieson style.  Margaret was diffident,
+bashful, shy, uncertain about Mr. Swinnerton's feelings for her, and
+hopelessly nervous lest her family should have had their expectations
+raised only to be disappointed.  She implored Palestrina over and over
+again to say nothing about it to them, though it has been more than
+obvious to us all along how full of expectation every member of The
+Family is.  It was a very wet evening as Margaret and my sister left
+the Jamiesons' lodgings, but she hardly seemed conscious of the
+inclemency of the weather, and begged Palestrina not to think of taking
+a cab, as she particularly wished to speak to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At first," she began, "I thought it must be Maud, although she has but
+just broken off her engagement to Mr. Evans; still, one knows she is
+the pretty one, and if any one calls often, it is generally her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a little difficult to follow Margaret's rapid, ungrammatical
+speech, but Palestrina and I both knew that to the vigorous minds of
+the Jamiesons there must be a direct purpose in every action, and that
+therefore if Mr. Swinnerton came to call he must have a purpose,
+presumably a matrimonial purpose, for paying his visits.  After two or
+three afternoon calls from a gentleman the Jamiesons generally ask each
+other ingenuously, "Which of us is it?"  It hardly seems to them
+respectable that a man should continue to pay them visits unless he
+means to show a preference for one of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presuming that it was not Maud he came to see, Margaret, with modest
+hesitation and many blushes, asked Palestrina if she did not think it
+possible that these visits might be intended for her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please do not say anything about it to the others.  I always have
+hoped that if ever I had a love affair it would be when I was away from
+home.  Do you know at all what they think about it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She did not pause for a reply, but began again: "You see he has called
+three times in one week, but" (hopelessly) "I am always surrounded by
+The Family, and he couldn't say anything if he wanted to.  Of course I
+don't think it has come to anything of that sort yet; still, you know,
+we could get to know each other better if there were not so many of us
+always about.  Maud doesn't mind a bit; she has had love affairs in
+front of us all, and she does not mind talking about them in the least,
+or even asking us to let her have the drawing-room to herself on
+certain afternoons.  But I don't feel as if I could bear to have this
+discussed before anything is settled.  And then we have so few
+opportunities.  Maud generally takes them to a distant church, and then
+they have the walk home together.  But I never quite know whether she
+makes the suggestion about church, or if she merely thinks it would be
+nice, and leaves the man to make it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maud," I remarked parenthetically to Palestrina, "has raised
+love-making to a science&mdash;an exact science."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope you don't think for a moment," Margaret had gone on, "that I am
+abusing Maud; you know how fond we all are of each other."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Maud's experiences on matters matrimonial are always quoted as
+precedent in the Jamieson family, and she is cited whenever anything of
+the sort is afoot.  Each phase in her experience is frankly discussed,
+and conclusions are drawn from it; and I have heard the Jamiesons say,
+"Mr. So-and-so must be in love with Miss So-and-so; he looks at her in
+exactly the same way that Mr. Reddy used to look at Maud."  Maud
+herself, unconsciously as I believe, makes a sort of calendar of her
+love affairs, and it is quite usual for her to date an event by
+referring to it as having happened "in the Albert Gore days," or "when
+Mr. Evans was hovering."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Margaret's voice had not ceased from the moment they left the lodgings
+together.  "It is, however, no use trying to copy other people in your
+love affairs," she said, "because it seems to come to every one so
+differently, and then of course different people must call forth
+different feelings.  I don't think I could have felt for Mr. Reddy, for
+instance, quite as I do now, even if he had been in love with me.  You
+feel so bewildered somehow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The walk had by this time become very rapid, and Margaret, in her
+short-sighted way, knocked against all the foot-passengers whom she met
+travelling in the opposite direction.  Her umbrella showered raindrops
+upon Palestrina, and she became so incoherent that my sister suggested
+taking a cab to our flat, and talking things over quietly when they
+should get there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was about eleven o'clock that night when Margaret Jamieson took
+leave of us, and by that time I fancy the bridesmaids' dresses had been
+arranged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A few days later Palestrina received a note by the hand of a
+messenger-boy; it bore the word "Immediate" on the cover, and had
+evidently been addressed in some haste.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"DEAR PALESTRINA (it ran),
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can you possibly come to make a fourth at a concert this afternoon?
+Do come, even if it should be rather inconvenient to you.  I want you
+so much.  Mr. Swinnerton has asked mamma and me, and he has taken
+tickets.  They are not reserved places, so we could easily arrange to
+meet at the door and sit together.  Three is such an awkward number.  I
+fear mamma does not care for him, and that is a great grief to me.  I
+will tell you everything this afternoon.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"Yours affectionately,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">"MARGARET JAMIESON.</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>P.S.</I>&mdash;It is all going to come right, I believe, but I have had
+immense difficulties.  Hardly ten minutes alone with him&mdash;you know we
+have only one sitting-room.&mdash;but the family have been sweet."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Hugo," said Palestrina, "this is an occasion when you could give very
+substantial aid to a deserving family."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sorry I am engaged this afternoon," I said, with an instinct of
+self-preservation, without, however, having any definite idea of what
+Palestrina might say next.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is I who am engaged this afternoon," said my sister smiling, "and
+you are perfectly aware of that fact.  Thomas is taking me down to
+Richmond to introduce me to his aunt.  Besides, Hugo, you know you like
+music."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am very sorry, Palestrina," I said, "but it is quite impossible."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Margaret is the Jamieson you like best," said Palestrina, "and I hate
+to think of your being here alone a whole afternoon.  What were you
+thinking of doing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had been thinking of going to this concert, and Palestrina guessed
+it, of course....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was at the door of the concert hall at two-thirty in the afternoon,
+and found Mrs. Jamieson and Margaret and the young man already on the
+pavement, looking as if they had stood there for a considerable time.
+Mr. Swinnerton is a large, rather stupid-looking man, with a red face,
+a crooked nose, and curly hair.  He wore a dark blue overcoat, so thick
+and strong that it reminded one of some encasement of plaster of Paris,
+or of some heavy coat of mail.  His hands were covered in yellow
+dogskin gloves, equally unyielding, so that Mr. Swinnerton appeared
+deprived of any agility of movement by his garments.  Mr. Swinnerton is
+in the volunteers, and has "Captain Swinnerton" printed on his cards.
+He gave me the idea of seeming to think that every action of his was
+some epoch-making event, and during the afternoon he frequently
+referred to having seen a picture then on view at one of the galleries,
+as though this were rather an up-to-date, not to say remarkable,
+proceeding.  Margaret seemed a good deal impressed by his manner, and
+the Jamiesons had decided that he was "smart," which was a further and
+quite unnecessary addition to Mr. Swinnerton's vanity, and very bad for
+a gentleman of his complacent character.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He ushered us into the Queen's Hall in an important sort of way, which
+gave one the impression that the place belonged to him; and the fact
+that I was making a third in a party under his guidance convinced me
+that I was in some sort adding to his self-satisfaction.  Mr.
+Swinnerton had chosen shilling places, because, as he informed us a
+great number of times, these were in the best position for hearing the
+music.  Mrs. Jamieson was disappointed.  In her class of life a treat
+is given on a more magnificent scale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shall I sit next you, Mrs. Jamieson?" I said, for I believed that this
+was what I was intended to say; but Mr. Swinnerton remarked to
+Margaret, "I'll go next; I like to divide myself amongst the ladies."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Jamieson looked uncomfortable in the small amount of space a
+shilling had procured for her, and she suggested apologetically that
+she would like a programme; but the music was beginning, and Mr.
+Swinnerton put up his large, stiff-gloved hand like a slab, and said,
+"Hush!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We went faithfully through the orthodox Queen's Hall concert from the
+very first note to the "Ride of the Valkyries," and after every item on
+the programme our host turned to us, moving his whole body in his stout
+coat, and said, "Isn't that nice now?&mdash;very nice I call it!" still with
+an air of ownership.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Jamieson slept a little; but the hardness of her seat made it an
+uneasy resting-place, and it is to be feared that her mantle with the
+storm-collar was too hot; but, she whispered to me in a burst of
+confidence, she was unable to remove it owing to the fact that the
+bodice and skirt of her dress did not correspond.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I always like these places," said Mr. Swinnerton again; "they are
+exactly in the centre of the hall, and another thing is, they are near
+the door in case of fire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Margaret assented sweetly.  I always thought until to-day that Margaret
+Jamieson was a plain woman; to-day I find she is good-looking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is ridiculous," said Mr. Swinnerton, "to see the way people throw
+their money away on really inferior seats, just because they think they
+are fashionable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Jamieson stirred a little on her uneasy bench, and Mr. Swinnerton
+said in self-defence, "Don't you agree with me, eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think," said Mrs. Jamieson politely, "that perhaps for a long
+concert the <I>fotoys</I> would be more comfortable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!" cried Mr. Swinnerton, "you want to be fashionable, I see; but
+there are many of the best people who come to these seats.  I know of a
+Member of Parliament&mdash;I don't know him, I know of him" (we felt that
+some connection with the Member had been established)&mdash;"who comes
+regularly to these very places, and who declares they are the best in
+the house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps," said Mrs. Jamieson simply, "he had never tried the <I>fotoys</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After the concert was over, Mr. Swinnerton suggested that Margaret and
+her mother should go and have tea at a bun-shop, qualifying the
+suggestion with the remark, "I know you ladies can never get on without
+afternoon tea."  When with Mr. Swinnerton ladies are never allowed to
+forget that he is a gentleman and they are ladies, and that a certain
+forbearance is therefore extended to them.  He offered his arm to Mrs.
+Jamieson, who gathered up her skirt and umbrella in one hand, and
+accepted the proffered support in some embarrassment.  Margaret fell
+behind with me, and whispered in a sort of excited way,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hasn't it been lovely?  Do tell me what you think&mdash;I mean about him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I haven't had much chance of judging," I replied stupidly; "but he
+seems all right, although perhaps his ideas are not very large."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Still, you mean that one could always alter that," said Margaret
+quickly, with the true Jamieson optimism, as applied to the beneficial
+results of matrimony.  There is hardly, I believe, a defect that they
+think they will not be able to eradicate in a future husband, save,
+perhaps, the conical shape of Mr. Ward's head.  "But I really do not
+think there is anything that I would like altered," she added simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His name is Tudor," she went on.  "George calls him that now, and Maud
+is beginning to do so&mdash;Maud is being so kind; she says it promotes a
+familiar tone which is very helpful, to call him 'Tudor'&mdash;but I can't
+call him anything but Mr. Swinnerton yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After tea Mr. Swinnerton asked us how we had enjoyed our entertainment,
+and Margaret expressed herself in the highest terms in praise of it.
+There seemed to be a lingering tendency on Mrs. Jamieson's part to
+revert to the superior comfort of seven-and-sixpenny places and
+armchairs, but we checked this by saying with emphasis that it was a
+friendly afternoon of this kind that we really enjoyed.  Mr. Swinnerton
+then put the Jamiesons into an omnibus, and directed the conductor to
+"let these ladies out at the top of Sloane Street," in a tone of voice
+that suggested that they were to be caged and padlocked until that
+place of exit was reached.  He lifted his hat with a fine air to them,
+and then, as I had called a hansom, he put me into it rather
+elaborately, and cautioned the commissionaire at the door to "take care
+of this gentleman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He will probably call me a South African hero next; I wish he would
+keep his attentions to himself.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap11"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XI.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Last night we dined at the Darcey-Jacobs'.  Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is
+enjoying "one breath of life" at a hotel with the Major, and she has
+left quite a pathetic number of visiting-cards on all her friends, so
+that her short London season may be as full of gaiety as possible.
+Neither of us looked forward to the dinner-party being particularly
+lively, but we were a good deal amused at the turn the conversation
+took during dinner.  I have often thought since that a certain dumbness
+which falls upon some entertainments can be dispersed if the subject of
+matrimony is started, and I will class with it a discussion on food,
+and personal experience at the hand of the dentist.  Any of these three
+subjects can be thrown, as it were, into the stagnant deep waters of a
+voiceless party, and the surface will be instantly rippled with eager
+conversation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Talk flagged a little in the private sitting-room of the hotel where
+the Darcey-Jacobs gave their dinner-party.  Major Jacobs, in his
+guileless way, gave us an exhaustive list of the friends whom they had
+invited for that evening, but who had not been able to come; and this
+had a curiously depressing effect upon us all, and within ourselves we
+speculated unhappily as to whether we had been asked to fill up vacant
+places.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why are men always allowed to blunder?" said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs,
+looking over her high nose at the gentleman next her, and tapping him
+on the arm with her lorgnettes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Major Jacobs, from his end of the table, looked penitent but mystified.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Happy is the woman," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, "who has no men about
+her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should like to have been born a widow," said a pretty girl with
+beseeching blue eyes and a soft, confiding expression, who sat a little
+lower down on my side of the table.  And then the subject of matrimony
+was in full swing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marriage is just an experience," said a shrill-voiced American widow
+who sat opposite.  "Every one should try it, but that is no reason why
+one should not be thankful when it is over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am much interested in what you say," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, with a
+certain profound air suitable to so great a subject.  One felt the want
+of the Jamiesons sadly during the ensuing discussion, and I almost
+found myself, in the words of Mettie, making the suggestion that
+marriage was a great risk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some one once said," ventured Major Darcey-Jacobs, "that choosing a
+wife was like choosing a profession&mdash;it did not matter much what your
+choice was, so long as you stuck to it.  It was a mere figure of
+speech, no doubt&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope so, indeed," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marriage is the worst form of gambling," broke in an elderly
+gentleman; "it should be suppressed by law.  Talk about lotteries!
+Talk about sweepstakes!  Why, the worst you can do, if you put your
+money into them, is to draw a blank.  Now, this is fair play, I
+consider; you either get a prize or you get nothing.  But matrimony,
+sir, is a swindle compared with which the Missing Word Competition
+appears like a legal document beside a forged bank-note."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If the old gentleman had a wife present she was evidently of a callous
+disposition, for I saw no wrathful expression on any face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ellicomb&mdash;even in London Ellicomb and Anthony Crawshay are asked to
+meet us&mdash;gave it as his opinion that a woman's hand was wanted in the
+home.  The voice was the voice of Ellicomb, the sentiment was the
+sentiment of Maud, and Palestrina and I very nearly exchanged glances.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After this, several people began to describe at one and the same time,
+in quite a breathless way, their own personal experiences of the
+happiness of wedded life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," said Major Darcey-Jacobs, "a deal of forbearance must be
+exercised if married life is to be a success."  And Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs
+said quickly, "I hope you do not intend to become personal, William."
+To which William replied that no such intention had been his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Anthony said in his cheery voice, "Of course it is give and take, don't
+you know, and then it is all right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Every one volunteered ideas on the subject&mdash;not once, but several
+times.  And those who applauded the happy state shouted each other down
+by quoting examples of wedded bliss in such words as: "Look at
+Hawkins!" "Look at Jones!" "Look at the Menteiths!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quite suddenly Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs leaned across the table, smiled at
+her husband, and remarked, "Look at us, William!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I do not think I have ever seen any one look so astonished as Major
+Jacobs.  "That was very pretty of Maria," he said in a low voice; "very
+pretty of her, by Gad!"  And we caught him looking at his wife several
+times that evening with a puzzled but delighted expression on his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After dinner we played Bridge.  "I disapprove of the game myself," said
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, who certainly was the worst player I have ever met,
+"but Mrs. Fielden likes it, and she has promised to come in in the
+evening."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden arrived at the same time as Colonel Jardine, and they
+played as partners together, with me and the American widow as
+opponents.  Colonel Jardine wore some kind of lead ring on his finger,
+which he said cured gout, and gathered up his tricks in a stiff sort of
+way.  He had a pet name for almost every card in the pack, and he
+babbled on without once ceasing throughout the rubber.  "Now we'll see
+where old Mossy Face is.  I think that draws the Curse of Scotland.
+Kinky takes that," and so on.  It was perfectly maddening, but Mrs.
+Fielden seemed quite pleased.  I don't suppose she ever feels
+irritated.  The American widow, who was my partner, was only just
+learning the game.  When I said to her, "May I play?" she always
+replied, if she had a bad hand, "No, certainly not."  And when it was
+pointed out to her that she had either to say, "If you please," or "I
+double," she replied, "Don't ask me if you may play, if you mean to do
+it whether I like it or not."  She always gave us such items of
+information as "I know what I should say if it was left to me this
+time," and she frequently doubled with nothing at all in her hand,
+because she said she liked to play a plucky game.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have tried to cure Mrs. Fielden of saying "dah-monds" when she means
+"diamonds," but it is quite useless.  She also says (with a radiant
+smile) "How tarsome!" when she has lost a rubber, although I have
+pointed out to her that that is not the phonetic pronunciation of the
+word.  When we are all wrangling over the mistakes and misdeeds of the
+last round, Mrs. Fielden looks hopelessly at us and says, "Is it any
+one's deal?"  And then we laugh and stop arguing.  She never keeps the
+score, or picks up the cards, or deals for herself, or does anything
+useful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The American widow did not stop talking most of the time, and the
+Colonel kept up his running commentary upon the cards he was playing,
+and then Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs joined us to look on, and she and the
+American widow plunged into a discussion on clothes, which they kept up
+vigorously all the time.  This necessitated a number of questions
+relating to the game from the American widow, whenever she was recalled
+to the fact that she was playing Bridge: "May I see that laast trick?
+What's trumps?  Does my hand go down on the table this time?"  Mrs.
+Fielden beamed kindly upon her, even when the widow had debated five
+minutes which card to lead, and Colonel Jardine had begun to play the
+chromatic scale of impatience up and down the table with his stiff
+fingers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Waal," said the American widow to Mrs. Fielden, "I think you are just
+lovely, and I would like to play with you always.  I believe most
+people would like to kill me at Bridge.  Caan't think why.  Colonel
+Jardine, did you play the lost chord?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know the tune," said the Colonel; "but I don't play at all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The American turned bewildered eyes upon Mrs. Fielden, who said,
+smiling, "Colonel Jardine is practising the chromatic scale.  I think
+he will be a very good player some day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How was I to know," said the Colonel, spluttering over his
+whisky-and-soda when the American widow had left, "that she meant the
+last card?  That woman would drive me crazy in six weeks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I liked her," said Mrs. Fielden, "and she is very pretty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is a certain large-heartedness about this pretty woman of fashion
+and of the world which constrains her to say something kind about every
+one.  With her the absent are always right, and I do not think I have
+ever heard her say an unkind word about any one.  At Stanby, when
+people who are staying there make a newly-departed guest run the
+gauntlet of criticism&mdash;not always of the kindest sort&mdash;Mrs. Fielden
+says, in that royal fashion of hers which makes her approval the final
+decision in all matters, "I liked him."  And the departed guest's
+character and reputation are safe.  Her charity is boundless and quite
+indiscriminate, save that she sends a trifle more rain and sunshine on
+the unjust than on the just.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come to lunch with me some day," she said to me in the off-hand way in
+which she generally gives an invitation.  "I am always at home at two
+o'clock.  Why not come to-morrow?  You are leaving town almost
+immediately, are you not?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is also asked to lunch; every one is asked to lunch.
+When one goes to the pretty widow's house in South Street one generally
+finds a dozen people lunching with her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+... She came into the room&mdash;late, of course&mdash;and found ten or twelve
+people waiting for lunch.  "I am so sorry!  Do you all know each
+other?" she asked of the rather constrained group of strangers making
+frigid conversation to each other in the flower-filled drawing-room.
+And then she began to introduce us to each other, and forgot half our
+names, and we went downstairs in a buzz of conversation and laughter,
+and filled with something that is odd and magnetic, which only comes
+when Mrs. Fielden arrives.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As is always the way at her lunch-parties, her carriage drives up to
+the door before any one has finished coffee, and then we all say
+good-bye, complaining of the rush of London.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want you to drive with me this afternoon," said Mrs. Fielden, when I
+with the others was saying good-bye.  I think she generally singles
+somebody out for a drive or a long talk, or to take her to a
+picture-gallery after lunch, and it is done in a way that makes the one
+thus singled out feel foolishly elated and flattered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think we are going to drive down to Richmond and see some trees and
+grass, and behave in a rural sort of way this afternoon," she announced
+as she seated herself in the carriage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what about all your engagements for this afternoon?" I asked.
+"And the Red Book, and the visiting-list, and the shopping-list, and
+the visiting-cards, which I see with you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never keep engagements," said Mrs. Fielden; "and every one knows my
+memory is so bad that they always forgive me.  Some one gave me a
+little notebook the other day, with my initials in silver upon it&mdash;I
+can't remember who it was&mdash;and I put down in it all the tarsome things
+I ought to do, and then I lost the little pocket-book."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I ever find it," I said, "I shall bring it to you, and read out all
+your tarsome engagements to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't say 'tarsome,'" said Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose you are whirling through the London season," I said
+presently; "and going everywhere, and having your frocks chronicled in
+the magazines, and going to a great many parties?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Mrs. Fielden; "I have been down at Stanby."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish," I remarked, "that you did not always give one unexpected
+replies.  Why have you been down at Stanby?  You didn't say anything
+about it when I saw you last night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know old Miss Lydia Blind?" said Mrs. Fielden.  "She is ill,
+and I got rather a pathetic letter from her, so I went down to Stanby
+to look after her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She fumbled for the pocket of her dress, raising first what seemed to
+be a layer of lace, and then a number of layers of chiffon, and then,
+after rustling amongst some silk to find her artfully-concealed pocket,
+she produced a letter and handed it to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Am I to read it?" I said; and Mrs. Fielden nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... One so often hears," so the letter ran, "of a case of long illness
+in which the one who is strong, and who acts as nurse to the invalid,
+breaks down before the end comes.  To me it has always seemed to show
+that the strong one's courage has failed somehow, and that, had zeal
+been stronger or faith greater, she might have endured to the end...."
+And, again, in a postscript: "When I was younger I was very impatient,
+and I think I could not well have borne it had I known that life was to
+be a waiting time.  I do not say this in any discontented spirit, dear,
+and I only write to you because you always understand...."  And then
+the letter broke off suddenly, and I handed it back to Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So this is you, as Miss Lydia knows you," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want you to go and see her when you go back to Stowel.  Will you?"
+said Mrs. Fielden.  "Miss Lydia is an angel, I think; the best woman
+really that ever lived.  Will you take her some things I am sending
+her, and ask how she is when you go back?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We drove under the trees of Richmond Park in Mrs. Fielden's big,
+luxurious carriage.  She generally drives in a Victoria, and I asked
+her why she had the landau out this afternoon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A whim," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I am full of whims."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But of course a landau is the only carriage in which a lame man, who
+has to sit with his foot up, can put it comfortably on the opposite
+seat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We drove onwards, and she stopped the carriage to look at the view from
+Richmond Hill, and the soft air blew up to us in a manner very cool and
+refreshing; and then we got out and walked about for a time, and Mrs.
+Fielden gave me her arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't really require an arm," I said, "but I like taking yours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a very strong arm," said Mrs. Fielden; and she exclaimed
+quickly, "I believe I am getting fat!  My maid tells me all my dresses
+want altering.  I wish it was time to think about beginning to hunt
+again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know," I said, "I always thought, till I got back to England,
+that my leg had been taken off below the knee, and that I should be
+able to get astride of a horse again.  I never used to see it, of
+course, when they dressed it; and when I counted up the things I should
+be able to do, riding was always one of them.  I didn't sell my horses
+till just the other day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden did not sympathize, but one of her silences fell between
+us.  We did not speak again till she began to tell me an amusing story
+which made us both laugh; but when she was sitting in the carriage, and
+the footman was helping me in, and we were still laughing, I could have
+sworn that her eyes looked larger and softer than I have ever seen them.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap12"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XII.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It is always rather melancholy arriving at home alone, and I miss
+Palestrina very much at these times, and I feel ill-disposed towards
+Thomas.  Down-Jock pretended not to know me, and barked furiously when
+I drove up to the door, and then ran away on three legs, making
+believe, as he sometimes does when he wants to appeal to one's pity,
+that he is old and lame.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was still early in the afternoon, and the sunshine was blazing over
+everything when I hobbled down the hill to inquire for Miss Lydia.  The
+houses in Stowel are all roofed with red tiles, and each garden has
+flowering shrubs in it or beds full of bright-coloured flowers, so that
+the little place has a very warm and happy look on a sunny summer day.
+A great heavy horse-chestnut tree hung over the walls of the doctor's
+house, and scattered fragments of pink blossom when the soft air
+stirred gently.  The wistaria on the post-office was in full bloom.
+And the place was so full of pleasant sounds this afternoon&mdash;of singing
+birds, and heavy-rolling wagons moving up the broad street, and the
+laughter of children, and the soft rush of the summer wind through the
+trees&mdash;that one felt that a day like this gave one a very strong
+leaning in favour of the happy view that life is, after all, a good
+thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One had, of course, to stop and speak to several old friends, who said
+they were thankful to see me back, as though a visit to London was an
+expedition fraught with many dangers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I reached the little cottage with the green gate, and the maid
+opened the door to me, she told me that Lydia Blind had died an hour
+ago.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The staircase of the little house is directly opposite the front door.
+I could not but believe that if I waited a little while Miss Lydia
+would descend the stairs, as she always did, with a smile which never
+failed to welcome every one.  Or, if she were not within doors, that I
+would only have to pass out into the little garden at the back of the
+house to find her.  I thought suddenly of the words of a boy I used to
+know at school, who, when a young playfellow died, said between his
+sobs, "It was so hard upon him dying before he had had a good time."
+Certainly ever since we knew her Lydia's life had been one long
+sacrifice to a witless invalid, and I couldn't help feeling that
+perhaps no one would ever know the extent of her patient service.
+Probably there never lived a more unselfish woman, and I cannot think
+why she never married.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was a person who lacked worldly wisdom, and in worldly matters she
+was not prosperous&mdash;she never sowed that sort of grain.  It was very
+touching to find that she had not even a few trinkets to leave behind,
+but that one by one each had been sold to pay for something for the
+invalid&mdash;a doctor's fee, or a chemist's heavy bill.  She left the world
+as unobtrusively as she lived in it.  Her last illness was very sudden
+and brief, and probably she would have been thankful that the little
+household was spared any extra expense.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The news of Lydia's death was unexpected by every one.  When I turned
+and left the house and was walking home again, I met Mrs. Taylor going
+to inquire about her neighbour's health, with an offering of fruit in a
+little basket.  She begged me, in the Stowel fashion, to turn and walk
+back with her, declaring that she felt so seriously upset by the news
+that if I would only see her as far as her gate I should be doing her a
+kindness.  In the garden the General, who had run down to Stowel for a
+couple of days, was reclining in a deck-chair, Indian fashion.  He was
+reading some cookery recipes in a number of <I>Truth</I>, and he turned to
+his niece as she crossed the lawn and said, "Do you think your cook
+could manage this, Mary?  Select a fine pineapple&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, uncle," said Mrs. Taylor with a good deal of feeling, "we have had
+such bad news!  Our dear old friend in the village, Miss Lydia Blind,
+is dead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What Lydia Blind?" said the General; and Mrs. Taylor replied,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You never knew her, dear.  She wasn't able to come to the party;
+indeed, I think she has been ailing ever since about that time, but we
+had no idea that the end was so near."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It can't be the Lydia Blind I used to know?" said the General.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh no, you couldn't have known her," said Mrs. Taylor with a sob; "she
+was just a dear old maiden lady living in the village on very small
+means."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She hadn't a sister called Belinda, had she?" said the General.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Taylor said she had, and I remembered suddenly how I had seen
+Lydia Blind standing one morning in front of the General's picture in
+the photographer's shop, and had heard her say, "I used to know him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Taylor went indoors, and I said good-bye, but the General said to
+me abruptly, "I should like to see her; will you take me there?"  And
+he did not speak again until we found ourselves in the little porch of
+the cottage.  He looked very tall standing by the low door of the
+house, and an odd idea came to me that Miss Lydia would have been proud
+of her afternoon caller.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me go alone," he said gruffly, when he had asked permission to go
+to her room; and I waited in Lydia's morning-room, with its twine cases
+and unframed sketches, and the photographs of babies.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cannot see the sister," said the General irritably, when he had
+rejoined me in the darkened room.  "Is she still dumb, poor thing?  If
+ever there was a case," he went on, "of one life&mdash;and, to my mind, the
+sweeter and the better life&mdash;being sacrificed to another, it is in the
+case of Lydia Blind."  He sat down on the little green sofa, and looked
+about him with eyes that seemed to see nothing.  "I never expected such
+a thing," he said; "I couldn't have expected a thing like this ... I
+didn't even know she lived here....  Do you remember her," he said,
+"when she was very pretty?  No, no, of course you wouldn't....  It
+doesn't hurt you to walk a little, does it?  I have lived nearly all my
+life out of doors, and when anything upsets me I cannot stand being
+within four walls...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We went out and crossed the field-path into the woods beyond.  The
+paths of the wood are narrow and uneven, and at first we walked in
+single file, until we came to the broader road beyond the stream, and
+then we walked on side by side, the General suiting his pace to my
+slow, awkward gait.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... Did you ever know the Bazeleys at all?  No, you wouldn't, of
+course: that would be before your time.  They had a very pretty place
+in Lincolnshire&mdash;a charming place&mdash;with a veranda round the house, and
+wicker-chairs with coloured cushions on them&mdash;more like an Indian house
+than an English one....  Harold Bazeley was in love with Lydia too."
+(I believe the General was talking more to himself than to me.)  "It
+was one night sitting in the veranda that I heard him begin to make
+love to her for all he was worth, and I had to cut it....  Poor chap!
+he came into the smoking-room that night, where I was sitting alone,
+and he sat down by the table and put his head in his hands.  He may
+have been saying his prayers (for he was always a religious man ... he
+did a lot of good for the men under him in India), and I sat with him
+till it was time to go to bed.  I don't know if it was any comfort to
+him, but I knew from his face that Lydia must have said no, and I
+thought perhaps he wouldn't like being alone....  Well, then of course
+one didn't like to rush in and ask one's best friend's girl to marry
+one so soon after his disappointment.  One had very strict ideas about
+honour in those days; I hope one has not lost them....  It is very odd
+that I was never here before, until last spring.  Nearly all my service
+has been abroad, and I generally used to spend my leave hunting or in
+London, and my niece used to come up and stay with me there....  I
+didn't care much for Taylor in those days, but he really isn't a bad
+sort of fellow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sun began to sink behind the trees, and the General seemed to wake
+from the reverie in which he had been talking to me, and said: "You
+oughtn't to be out after sunset, if you have still got malaria about
+you," and we began to walk slowly homewards.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was just such an evening as this," he said, "when I bade her
+good-bye, meaning to come back in a little while and ask her to marry
+me.  She was standing by the gate&mdash;fine old gates with stone pillars to
+them, and the sun shone full in her eyes....  I suppose that gentle,
+sweet look never left them, did it?  They were closed, of course, when
+I saw them just now....  She was wearing a white dress that evening, I
+remember&mdash;a sort of muslin dress which I suppose would not be
+fashionable now, but which looked very pretty then.  It had a lot of
+pink ribbons about it, and there was a great bunch of pink moss-roses
+in the ribbon of her belt....  Do you know I never picture her except
+as the girl who stood by the gate with the sun behind her, and the
+roses in her belt.  I think I lost my head a little when it came to
+saying good-bye, and I began to say things which I had not meant to
+say&mdash;she looked so pretty with the red sunlight upon her, and her white
+muslin dress almost turned to pink in the glare....  I don't think she
+was surprised, only sweeter and gentler than before, and a curious,
+happy look was in her eyes.  But I stopped in time, and stammered like
+a fool, thinking of poor Harold Bazeley, and then I said good-bye
+rather hurriedly.  But I came back again to the gate where she was
+still standing, and asked if I might have one of the roses in her belt.
+And she gave me the whole bunch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... It must have been after this that the father died and left them
+very poor, and then the sister (this one, Belinda) had a stroke of
+paralysis, and there was no one to look after her but Lydia....  I
+wrote and proposed to her before I went to India&mdash;asked her to come
+with me as my wife.  But she said she could not marry while her sister
+lived.  It isn't as though we could have remained in England, and she
+could have lived with us; but of course India would have been an
+impossibility for the poor thing.  We never thought in those days that
+poor Belinda would live long.  And then she made a sort of recovery,
+but was still quite helpless, and Lydia wrote and asked me to wait for
+her no longer....  I never heard that she had come to live at Stowel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The broad, wide village road was dim with twilight when we walked
+homewards along it&mdash;The Uncle and I.  The children had all gone
+indoors, and the flowers in the little garden had lost their colour in
+the dim light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As we passed by the cottage the General halted on the quiet, deserted
+road and took off his hat, then he leaned over the little green paling
+and drew towards him a branch of a moss-rose tree that Miss Lydia had
+planted there.  He plucked a bud from it and held it to his face.  Then
+he said gently, "They are the same sort, but they do not smell so
+sweet."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap13"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIII.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden came to Stowel for the funeral, and did not return to
+London again.  She went to pay some visits, I believe, and afterwards
+she will go to Scotland to stay with the Melfords, as she always does
+in August.  It was a very quiet summer.  Anthony went to Ireland to
+fish, and Major Jacobs went with him instead of me: Anthony and I used
+to take the fishing together.  Even Frances Taylor went north to stay
+with Mrs. Macdonald, and the Reading Society postponed its future
+meetings till the winter should come again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Undoubtedly Kate Jamieson's wedding was a stirring event in a very dull
+time.  The festivities connected with it were carried out with the
+Jamiesons' usual energy and lavishness.  It is possible to be lavish on
+five hundred a year.  That is one of the pleasing things that
+kind-hearted people like the Jamiesons can prove.  No one was omitted
+in the list of invitations to the reception which was held on the lawn
+in front of the house.  And there the whole of the Jamiesons' wide
+circle of friends was gathered together, forming an assembly which
+surely only the censorious mind could find fault with.  The
+refreshments, these good Jamiesons informed us, with their ingenuous
+interest in discussing detail, were prepared by Margaret, and Kate
+contributed to the payment of their ingredients from her small savings.
+The group of bride and bridesmaids, which was photographed at the front
+door, each wearing an expression of acute distress upon her face, was
+George's own idea, and was nobly paid for by him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was announced at the wedding-feast&mdash;although it had been whispered
+for a long time&mdash;that there was soon to be another break in the
+Jamieson family.  We all instantly prepared a smile of congratulation
+for Maud, and some disappointment was felt when it was discovered that
+the remark applied to Mrs. Jamieson's youngest son, Kennie.  The Pirate
+had for some time been informing his friends that the Wild West was
+"calling to him," and that he had the "go fever," and that "once he had
+known the perfect freedom of life out there" it was impossible to
+settle down to the conventionalities of English society again.  The
+Pirate had obtained a post as purser on one of the ships of the company
+to which he belonged, and he appeared at the wedding-breakfast in a
+suit of white ducks, a gold-laced cap, and the famous cummerbund.  I
+have a strong suspicion that he had a revolver concealed in a
+mysterious pocket, from the way his hand, in moments of excitement,
+occasionally moved towards it; but fortunately the wedding-party was of
+so peaceful a description that it was not necessary to produce the
+weapon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Since the exciting news of Kennie's proposed departure for Buenos Ayres
+Mettie has developed nerves and hysteria.  But so limited is the power
+of imagination or discrimination in the human mind, that I must
+honestly confess that I never once connected her indisposition and low
+spirits with the news of her cousin's departure.  Mettie has added to a
+certain helplessness which always distinguishes her a tendency to
+tears, and to sitting alone in her bedroom and sniffing dolorously; the
+big thin nose requires constant attention, and there are red rims round
+poor Mettie's eyes.  The Jamiesons, who trace every variation in life
+to a love affair, are not long of course in coming to the right and the
+sentimental&mdash;nay, from the Jamieson point of view, the only reasonable
+explanation of this change in their little cousin.  But Mettie has
+entreated them to say nothing, and to let her suffer in silence, and
+they are too loyal to betray her interesting confidences.  Kennie
+himself is, I believe, still unaware of the interest he is exciting in
+Mettie's gentle breast, but doubtless the little woman's extreme
+timidity and her clinging disposition appeal in no small measure to the
+Defender of the Sex.  Mettie raises meek, adoring eyes to the Pirate's
+ruddy face, under the gold-laced cap, and murmurs with clasped hands:
+"You will never come back to us&mdash;I know it, I feel it!  You will be
+murdered by some gang of cut-throats, and then what will I&mdash;I mean your
+mother, do?"  The Pirate plumes himself and struts, and the dangers
+that his little cousin has so powerfully depicted for him make his
+young heart swell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The village church was quite full of spectators and friends; nearly all
+our acquaintances in the village wore new gowns&mdash;or apparently new
+gowns&mdash;for the wedding.  Mrs. Lovekin, in a black-cloth mantle with
+bead-trimming, showed guests into their pews, and directed the children
+at the doorway into giving a ringing cheer as the bride drove up to the
+church.  It was whispered by a wag that Mrs. Lovekin would like to don
+a surplice and officiate at the interesting ceremony herself.  There
+was a party in white cotton gloves, who banged doors and shouted "Drive
+on!" and it was hard to realize that this was the Jamiesons' odd man
+and gardener, transformed for the occasion.  He wore a large white
+ribbon rosette in his button-hole, and all the morning he had been busy
+erecting an archway over the gate at Belmont with Union Jacks displayed
+thereon, out of consideration, as he explained, to the late Captain
+Jamieson, he being military.  The Miss Traceys were resplendent in
+brown dresses and profuse lace neckties, securely anchored to their
+chests by massive brooches; the dresses were afterwards mentioned in an
+account of the wedding in the local paper, and it was cut out and
+carefully kept by the Miss Traceys, who pasted the interesting news in
+a small album for news-cuttings which they bought for the purpose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the Jamiesons' little house there was, I understand, a wild state of
+confusion and energy from a very early hour in the morning, and
+looking-glasses and hand-mirrors were in great demand.  The centre of
+interest there, it seems, was Kate's bedroom, where the whole of The
+Family congregated to give Kate a last kiss before the veil was put on,
+and to wish her happiness again and again.  George, who throughout the
+entire proceedings made a laudable attempt to appear calm, at last told
+his sister that it really was time to start, and the carriage rolled
+down the hill, and Kate Jamieson alighted from it, and walked up the
+aisle of the old church leaning upon her brother's arm.  Eliza Jamieson
+was busy with a note-book the whole time, and almost one seemed to
+begin to see the wedding through her journalistic eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our curate's wife, who is still far from strong, asked Palestrina to
+look after Peggy, who expressed a wish to see the wedding, and I was
+interested to find how many little games Peggy had invented for herself
+by way of getting through the tedium of a service&mdash;games which, I
+imagine, she had been preparing during the many services which a
+curate's little girl is supposed to attend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you press your eyes to the back of your head as far as you can,"
+she whispered to me, "you can see green and red and blue spots, and
+then open them and you can see green and red and blue spots round
+father."  And again: "I can say, 'We beseech Thee!' seven times over
+while the choir are singing it, if we have Jackson's <I>Te Deum</I>."  And
+then: "Do you know what Georgie and I do, when we are sent to church
+alone?  We hide in the pew until no one thinks we are there, and then
+we pop up in the middle of the service and begin to say the responses.
+When we sit with the Sunday-school children we play at 'My husband and
+your husband,' and then we each choose in turn which husband we'll have
+in the congregation.  You see, the first man who comes in is to be the
+first child's husband, and the second the second child's, that's how we
+manage; last Sunday I got the baker's boy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Swinnerton was at the wedding, somewhat inclined to be
+consequential, as usual; but as he devoted his whole attention to
+Margaret, one could not but feel that his presence was acceptable.  (We
+are on the tip-toe of expectation to know when Mr. Swinnerton will
+"come to the point.")  Margaret Jamieson looked after the needs of the
+Higginses' relations, and attended to the wants of all the humbler of
+the guests.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was still another element of interest in the marriage-party in
+the person of Mr. Evans, who ran down from Hampstead for it.  "If Mr.
+Evans comes," Maud said, with the characteristic fine common sense of
+the Jamiesons, "I want you all to understand that it is all quite over
+between him and me.  But what I have always thought about Mr. Evans is
+this&mdash;that he is the sort of man who would like The Family, and I do
+not see why he should not take a fancy to one of the other members of
+it.  I am quite sure his affection for me was based upon my
+suitability.  He often told me, for instance, that he would like a wife
+who had been brought up to do things for herself, and could manage on a
+small income and dress cheaply, and I am sure we can all do that.  And
+after all, if that is so, one of us is as suitable as another.  He had
+very definite ideas about a wife; but I couldn't help feeling all the
+time that it was some one like ourselves that he had in his mind.  He
+seemed to have a great dread of any one who was too smart; and I said
+to him at the time&mdash;for of course we both talked about our families a
+good deal, as one does in the first stages&mdash;that we were all very
+homely sort of people.  I could always put myself in the background if
+he seemed, for instance, to take a fancy to Gracie.  And Gracie herself
+has often said that she thinks she would like a man to wear a white
+watered-silk waistcoat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gracie looked quite pleased with the arrangement, and Mr. Evans was
+asked down "as a friend."  And I should here like to record&mdash;only of
+course it is going too far ahead&mdash;that before the summer was over, Mr.
+Evans, charmed with The Family, as Maud felt he would be, and convinced
+of their suitability, had chosen Gracie from amongst the remaining Miss
+Jamiesons who were still at the disposal of those who seek a wife.
+Gracie's energy charmed Mr. Evans.  He often said afterwards that he
+believed he had got the pick of the basket after all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was quite evident to me, and I believe to most of the Jamiesons'
+guests, that one of the mysteries, so dear to the hearts of Stowel, was
+in preparation for the wedding afternoon.  Not even my sister and I had
+been initiated into the secret; but Mrs. Jamieson, it must be
+confessed, took away from the shock of surprise which might have been
+ours, by referring during the whole afternoon to the entertainment
+which was to take place later.  The Jamiesons had decided that the
+lawn, newly mown, was to be suddenly cleared of trestle-tables and
+garden-chairs, and that a small band of musicians was to spring up
+unexpectedly out of the ground, as it were, and that every one was to
+know suddenly that they were in the midst of an impromptu dance.  Now
+Mrs. Jamieson, nervously expectant, and half fearing from the detached
+manners of her daughters (so well did the Miss Jamiesons simulate their
+ignorance of what was before them) that they must indeed have forgotten
+about the dance, interrupted every conversation by creeping up to them
+in her melancholy, quiet way, and saying, "Shall I get them to clear
+away now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's to be impromptu, mamma," entreated the Miss Jamiesons in agitated
+whispers.  It had been decided between them that Gracie, as the
+youngest of the party, should exclaim suddenly, as if by some happy
+inspiration, "I vote we dance;" and that then in a perfectly easy and
+natural manner guests and entertainers alike should, with the utmost
+friendliness, help to push back the tables and chairs into the lilac
+bushes, and that then the musicians should be hastily summoned from the
+kitchen, where they were to have tea.  Before that time arrived the
+unfortunate Mrs. Jamieson had, as one might say, almost skimmed the
+cream off the whole thing.  Her nervousness would not allow her to
+rest, and in the end she had established the musicians in the three
+chairs so artlessly prepared for them under the chestnut-tree; and
+there they were with fiddle and concertina long before Gracie had found
+an opportunity for making her impromptu suggestion.  Their sudden
+appearance, one could not but feel, detracted from the unprepared
+effect that had been intended, and they stood waiting to begin with
+quite a forlorn appearance until the Pirate, for whom the arrival of
+the hour means the arrival of the man (if the Pirate is anywhere
+about), called out in his loud tones, "Strike up, you fellows, and let
+us have a dance!" and the very next moment the white drill suit and the
+gold-laced cap of Kennie might have been seen in the middle of the
+lawn.  He gallantly seized Mettie round the waist and scattered the
+guests by the onslaught and the fierce charge he made upon them, and
+soon had cleared a space in which he footed it gaily.  The Higginses,
+who had been rather shy during the reception, hastened to find
+partners, and warmed to the occasion at once.  Young Abel Higgins, the
+handsome young farmer from Dorming, said it was the pleasantest
+entertainment he had ever been at.  "There is no cliquism about it," he
+remarked.  "You just say to a girl, 'Will you dance?' and up she comes;
+it doesn't matter if she's a lord's daughter!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Swinnerton devoted much of his attention and his conversation to me
+during the afternoon.  He discussed what he calls "military matters" at
+great length, pointing out the mistakes of every general in South
+Africa, at the same time clearly stating what Mr. Swinnerton would have
+done under similar circumstances, and lamenting the inefficiency of the
+War Office.  Later in the afternoon, however, when he found me where,
+as I hoped, I had effectually concealed myself behind a laurel bush,
+Mr. Swinnerton plunged heavily into the question of marriage; and this,
+as Maud would say, was surely a very hopeful sign.  I was disappointed,
+however, to find that his views regarding the happy state of matrimony
+seemed to have been made almost entirely from one point of view, and
+that point of view himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you think," he began ponderously, as he seated himself beside me
+after the rather heavy fatigue of dancing on a lawn to the strains of a
+band that did not keep scrupulous time&mdash;"don't you think that a man
+ought to see a girl in her own home before he makes up his mind?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I dissented on the plea of over-cautiousness, but Mr. Swinnerton did
+not hear me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What I think," he went on, "is that marriage is a serious undertaking
+for a man, and that one ought to be very sure of one's own mind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I admitted the seriousness of matrimony, but thought it applied equally
+to the woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This remark also seemed to escape Mr. Swinnerton's attention.  Indeed,
+I found that what is extremely irritating about this fellow is that his
+mind never diverges from his own topic; he seems quite incapable of
+excursions into the thoughts and feelings of the persons he addresses,
+but plods steadily on his own path, pleased to give his own views, and
+quite unaffected by the differences of opinion that are offered him.
+There is a legend of my childhood that records that a man once said,
+"It is bitt&mdash;&mdash;" and then went to sleep for a thousand years, and when
+he woke up he said, "&mdash;erly cold."  I am often reminded of this story
+when I listen to Mr. Swinnerton's plodding conversation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What I feel is," he went on&mdash;and one knew that no fatigue on the part
+of the listener would be noticed by him&mdash;"what I feel is, that the man
+being the head of the woman he should always choose some one who is
+docile and good-tempered, and perhaps above all things a good cook.
+That's the very first thing I would teach a woman&mdash;to be a good cook.
+It's so important for a man to have his meals really nice and nicely
+served.  Don't you agree with me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is very important," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am so glad you agree with me."  Mr. Swinnerton occasionally remarks
+on an agreeable clause in one's conversation, whereas a disagreement
+never even penetrates his mind.  "Of course, you fellows with your mess
+and all that can scarcely realize how necessary it is that a man's wife
+should be a good cook.  And then she ought to be thoroughly
+domesticated," went on Mr. Swinnerton's heavy voice; "a woman should
+not always be wanting to go out in the evening.  What I feel is that
+the home should constitute the woman's happiness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And cooking?" I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, and cooking," said Mr. Swinnerton.  "I do not want my wife to
+have any money; I had much rather she had to come to me for things.  I
+am not greedy about money.  I am comfortably off, but I think a man
+should have entire control of the purse.  One could knock off any
+expenditure on a wife's dress, if that is the case.  Ladies like a new
+bonnet, and I should always give my wife a new bonnet if things had
+been nice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I remarked that Mr. Swinnerton was very generous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know I am generous.  Of course, a man gives up a great deal when he
+marries, but I do not know that in the matter of expense it would cost
+me more to keep a small house than to pay for lodgings."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It depends," I said, "what wages you give your wife.  An occasional
+new bonnet would not be an extravagant salary, if she turned out to be
+a really good cook."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the first time Mr. Swinnerton seemed struck by the wisdom of my
+remarks.  "No, it would not," he said; "it would not.  I know that I
+would make a good husband," he remarked; "and I feel that I have a
+future before me in the volunteers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Margaret joined us at this moment, and Swinnerton smiled indulgently at
+her, without offering, however, to give her his seat.  I do not think
+that Margaret noticed this, as she did not notice any omission on Mr.
+Swinnerton's part.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope you are not very tired," she said.  "Your journey from London
+and then this little dance must be very fatiguing, I am afraid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Men don't get tired," said Mr. Swinnerton grandiosely, and he looked
+towards me for applause.  He did not, however, ask her to dance, and
+Margaret moved away to attend to other guests.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's a very nice-looking girl," said Mr. Swinnerton approvingly, "and
+a well-brought-up girl, too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So I suppose it is still hopeful, as the Jamiesons would say.  But I
+pray that Margaret Jamieson will remove Mr. Swinnerton hence when she
+has married him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate and Mr. Ward drove to the station in the best landau and pair of
+horses from Stowel Inn.  Mr. Ward was so upset from first to last by
+the ceremonies and the heat that his conical-shaped head, covered with
+the dew of nervous perspiration, steamed like a kettle; but his
+affection for his bride and his evident delight and pride in her were
+undeniable, and although resenting in his mild way the stinging shower
+of rice with which he was pelted, and the usual facetious jokes that
+were made on the bride and bridegroom, Mr. Ward nevertheless beamed
+with good-nature all the time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina made me laugh when she came home in the evening.  She had
+been down to the village to see the Pettifers and to show them her
+wedding finery, as she promised to do; for Mrs. Pettifer is ill in bed
+again, and was unable to stand at the church door with the rest of the
+crowd to see the wedding-party.  My sister found the old lady weeping
+bitterly, and for a long time she could not guess the cause of her
+distress, until at last a remark of her husband's explained it.  "She
+do take on like that tur'ble queer," he said, "as soon as ever the
+wedding-bells ring after a marriage is over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Mrs. Pettifer; "I always say to myself, 'She's got him, and
+he ain't disappointed her after all.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kennie sailed for Buenos Ayres the day after the wedding, and Mettie
+walked over to see us, being sent on some errand, I have no doubt,
+wherein she would be more usefully employed than in getting into the
+way of the staff of workers who were clearing up after yesterday's
+festivities.  Mettie brought over Mrs. Ward's first telegram received
+that morning from Dover, and said it was too funny to think of Kate
+being Mrs. Ward.  "Kate Ward," she said with one of her curious little
+chirruping laughs, "Kate Ward&mdash;do look at it!"  And we dutifully
+replied that it certainly seemed the height of drollery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina is not perfectly just to me when Mettie comes to call.  She
+always remembers something important which she has until this moment
+forgotten, and with apologies to Mettie she flies off to see to it, and
+I am left with our caller.  And then the marriage question is in full
+swing before one can prevent it.  Mettie says she would never, never
+allow a man to know that she cared for him, and that no nice girl
+would.  Did I think that if a girl never gave any evidence of her love,
+and died, it would be a very pitiful end?  And of course I said that
+the pathos of the thing would strike one directly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After death," said Mettie, "she might still be his good angel.  It is
+very strange," she said, "to think of becoming a being with wings.  Do
+you know I often wonder what those wings can be like, and I cannot
+imagine them made of anything but white ostrich feathers, which I must
+say would look very pretty....  I am sure it is a brave thing to part
+and say nothing, but do you think that one might write?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was only then, at that precise moment, that I in any way connected
+Mettie's remarks with the thought of the Pirate Boy, now a purser in
+the &mdash;&mdash; Line.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear Mettie," I said, "I should certainly write to him&mdash;write
+often, write affectionately, send him your photograph, work him a
+housewife for his cabin, carve him a frame for your photograph.  I am
+delighted&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh! but nothing is settled yet," simpered Mettie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It has sometimes struck me since, although one generally denies the
+suggestion, that the first sentiment of love-making may emanate from
+the woman's mind.  But probably the Pirate will never know that it was
+not his own idea that he should fall in love with Mettie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This evening I was looking over a lot of old letters, such as our
+fathers and mothers used to keep, put away in drawers with bits of
+ribbon tied round them in the days when there was more time for that
+sort of thing than there is now.  And I came across the following
+letter, written in ink that has grown rather faded, and dated 1845.  It
+describes a wedding, and I have saved it from a number of other letters
+which I have destroyed, to stick it into my diary as an appropriate
+sort of ending to my entries for to-day.  The letter is a genuine one,
+and I have the original of it beside me now.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"MY DEAREST AUNT,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You wished to hear all about our doings on Thursday.  Though I dare
+say you have heard many editions of the affairs of that day, I take the
+earliest opportunity of relating to you, as I promised, my version of
+it, though how often was it wished that dear aunt and uncle had
+themselves been present to illuminate the picture.  We all assembled at
+a quarter-past ten o'clock.  The married ladies (and gentlemen, whether
+they were in that happy state or not) remained in the drawing-room
+till, at a given signal, the bride descended, followed by her
+bridesmaids&mdash;first Emily and myself, then Anne and Jane Schofield, then
+Anna and Eliza Schofield.  The four first were in pink, the two last in
+blue.  After talking over matters a little, we entered our respective
+carriages, mamma going in the first carriage, and papa and Mary
+bringing up the rear.  We went through the ceremony very well.  Mary
+responded in a perfectly clear and audible voice; but once the worthy
+bride-groom faltered, and as I stood next to him could perceive he was
+somewhat agitated.  The ceremony of kissing being finished, we returned
+from church, when numerous and costly presents were exhibited to the
+eyes, and amongst them none more beautiful than my dear uncle and
+aunt's.  But, by way of parenthesis, mamma wishes me to ask you, as
+Mary has two silver canisters, whether you would have any objection to
+change the kind and elegant expression of your feeling for Mary into a
+silver waiter.  Knowing your kindness, we sent it by Uncle Kershaw.
+Now to proceed.  We descended to breakfast&mdash;a most important business,
+which occupied us a considerable time&mdash;in the middle of which Uncle
+Ainsworth produced a bunch of grapes, and signified his intention of
+drinking Mary Schofield's health in the red juice of the grape.  He
+immediately expressed the juice and suited the action to the word.
+Robert Arncliffe made a beautiful speech&mdash;quite a gem.  We then
+proceeded to dress the bride in travelling attire.  Then came the
+dreadful moment of parting.  Mamma and papa got over it most
+wonderfully; suffice it to say our sisters' tears flowed most copiously
+on that day.  After her departure, we took a drive to restore us to
+that harmony of spirits so desirable when persons are the entertainers
+of others.  We drove through Hyde Park and Regent's Park in procession,
+and stopped to walk in the Zoological Gardens, coveting the society of
+the brute creation as well as the rational.  We then returned to
+dinner, which was at seven, when, to our indescribable horror, on
+calling over the names of certain young ladies, we discovered their
+toilet was not complete when dinner was announced.  After a small
+delay, however, the offenders appeared, and the business of dinner was
+commenced with astonishing vigour.  There is no occasion to describe to
+you the manners and customs of a dinner-table, as a sameness must
+naturally pervade all such employments.  We ladies at length signified
+our intention of leaving the gentlemen masters of the field, and Uncle
+Jesse came out with us and went to bed.  We proceeded to enjoy a small
+quadrille, till I suppose the sound of feet called the other portion of
+the community from below.  After tea and a little display of musical
+powers, we had another quadrille; but this did not occur till Emily was
+gone.  We finally separated at half-past eleven.  We have heard twice
+or three times from the newly-married people.  They are in Bath to-day.
+Will you excuse, my dear aunt, this dreadful scrawl, but I have had so
+many notes to write, added to which I have sprained my right arm, which
+is now pleading to be spared any further exertions.  Hoping that dear
+uncle and yourself, as well as dear Sarah, are well, and again begging
+to be excused this unconnected epistle, With united love to all,
+Believe me,
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"Your very affectionate niece,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">"MARGARET M. NAYLOR.</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"MECKLENBURGH SQUARE,<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<I>August</I> 1845."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap14"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIV.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+My leg, "my best leg," as poor Beau Brummell used to say, has been
+hurting rather, for the last week or two.  I do not know how Palestrina
+has discovered this, but the dear little woman is looking harassed and
+anxious, and she is trying to inveigle me into going up to London
+again, to get further advice from my doctor.  She has broached the
+subject in several ways.  There is a play going on at present which she
+would much like to see, if I will be kind enough to take her to London
+for a couple of days.  Or there is some shopping which she wants to do,
+and she must have my advice on the subject.  I believe that she does
+not like to allow, even to herself, that I ought to go expressly to see
+the surgeon, but she means to throw out the suggestion when we shall be
+in town together, and in this way she has decided, with her usual
+thoughtfulness, to spare me the anticipation of hearing that I am not
+going on as well as I ought to be doing.  It is, however, much too hot
+to think of going up to London, so for the present none of Palestrina's
+deep-laid plans have been successful.  It is broiling hot weather even
+down here in the country, but the mornings are cool and fresh, and,
+after tossing about half the night, I generally get up and go for a
+feeble sort of walk before breakfast.  It is extraordinary how new and
+fresh the world feels in the early morning, while the dew is still on
+the grass, and the birds are singing without any fear that their
+concert will be stopped or disturbed by passers-by.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On my way home this morning I passed the Jamiesons' little house, and
+was hailed to come in by the flutter of nearly a dozen dinner-napkins
+waved to me from the window of the breakfast-room.  It is impossible to
+pass Belmont without being asked to come in, or to leave the hospitable
+little house without an invitation to stay longer.  Monday&mdash;this was
+Monday&mdash;is what the Jamiesons call "one of our busiest mornings," and I
+think that our good friends talk almost more than usual on the days on
+which they are most engaged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As I entered the room, two of The Family had already finished
+breakfast, and were busy at a side-table, driving their
+sewing-machines.  The whirring noise, added to the amount of talking
+that was going on, had rather a bewildering effect at first.  There
+was, besides, the added confusion attendant upon what is known as
+"getting George off."  The process seems to consist of shaking George
+into his City coat, brushing it, patting him on the back, telling him
+how nice he looks, hoping he will get down in the middle of the week,
+or at least not later than Friday afternoon, and giving him messages
+and remembrances to quite half a dozen friends in London.  The Family
+chorus as I entered was something like this:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cream or sugar, weak or strong?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mettie, did you get your letters?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eliza, which is your napkin-ring?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please say what you will have; I have asked you at least half a dozen
+times."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mind the window open?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does any one hear the bus?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Toast or rolls?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Which is your napkin-ring?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did any one hear the rain last night?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You haven't said yet if you will have an egg."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother is not well, and is not coming down this morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does any one mind if we go on with our machines?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Over and above this, snatches of newspaper were read, and numerous
+directions were given to a very young servant as to how things should
+be placed upon the table&mdash;a proceeding which usually goes on at every
+one of the Jamiesons' meals.  It is known as "training one of our
+village girls."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gracie and Eliza were the two who sat at the side-table before their
+whirring sewing-machines, their very spectacles nearly darting from
+their heads with energy and speed.  George said, "I wish one of you
+girls would mend my glove before I start;" and Gracie said, "Give it to
+me; I can spare five minutes off lunch-time to get this finished."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Margaret remarked, "Mamma seems very much out of spirits to-day, and I
+think one of us ought to go and play draughts with her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eliza took out her watch.  "I can play draughts for thirty-five
+minutes," she remarked&mdash;"from eleven-five to eleven-forty&mdash;and then
+Gracie must take my place, as Margaret will be baking, and I have the
+soup-kitchen accounts to make up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did not anticipate draughts this morning," said poor Gracie.  "I
+must just get this done when I go to bed."  This is the last refuge of
+the overdriven, and one which is so frequently alluded to by the
+Jamiesons that I often fear they deny themselves the proper amount of
+sleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+George here kissed each of his sisters in turn, and ran upstairs to say
+good-bye to his mother, while the omnibus waited at the gate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Maud, who was trimming hats for the whole family, and who was
+surrounded by a curious medley of ribbons and finery, said: "What about
+the Church Council work?  I am afraid we have forgotten it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's my business," said Gracie tragically; "and I must give this
+up;" and she stopped her sewing-machine, and rolled the purple cotton
+pinafore into a tight ball and placed it on the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear Gracie," said Margaret, "could I not do it?  I could get it in
+between the Kaffirs and my baking."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I would offer to do it," said Eliza, with that affectionate
+helpfulness which distinguishes The Family, "only I am so filled up
+with soup."  Eliza referred to her soup-kitchen accounts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The small servant here appeared at the door, and said that an old woman
+wanted to see Miss Gracie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My time!  my time!" said Gracie, and went to the back door to give the
+last shilling of her quarter's dress allowance to the poor woman in
+distress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The worst of playing draughts is," said Eliza, "that one can do
+nothing else at the same time, except it be to add up accounts in one's
+head.  Otherwise I should have been only too glad.  I tell you what I
+can do, though&mdash;I can play instead of Gracie this morning, if she won't
+mind my keeping the candle alight to do my Browning article after I
+have gone to bed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mettie always offers to help every one, but so slow is the little
+woman's way of working that the energetic family of Jamieson are quite
+aware that probably the business will be weeks in doing; so their
+answers to Mettie's offers, given in a kindly voice, are always: "My
+dear, you have got your letters to write, and your practising&mdash;we could
+not do without your singing in the evening, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Evans, who was a guest in the house for a few days, was smoking his
+pipe in a leisurely way in the garden, and Gracie said: "I really do
+feel that I ought to give more attention to Mr. Evans, if only I had
+the time for it.  Could one of you run into the garden and make a few
+pleasant remarks to him until I am ready?" And this Eliza did, first
+glancing at her watch in the characteristic Jamieson fashion, and
+coming in presently to say that she had sat "for ten solid minutes
+doing nothing, and that she does wish men had more resources of their
+own."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It would have been useless to suggest that the work should stop for a
+whole summer day.  A child came in with some flowers as an offering to
+the Miss Jamiesons, and Eliza said: "Would you mind putting them down
+somewhere, my dear?  I will try to get a minute to arrange them
+by-and-by."  And then the machines began again, and I walked on
+homewards, and enjoyed a long, hot morning in the garden with a book.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The garden was very shady and pleasant, and one thought regretfully of
+the Jamiesons sitting indoors with their sewing-machines.  Palestrina
+came out presently in a gray dress, very soft and cool-looking, and
+with a big sunshade over her head.  She sat down beside me, and said in
+an off-hand way, and a determination to be congratulatory which was
+very suspicious: "I have got a pressing invitation for you."  And she
+handed me a letter from Kate Ward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Ward wrote upon the almost immaculate notepaper which is affected
+by brides, I have often noticed that this superfine quality of paper is
+one of the first extravagances of young married life, as it is one of
+the first economies of a later date, and a little judgment will soon
+show how long a woman has been married by merely looking at her
+notepaper.  Cream-laid, with a gold address at the top, bespeaks the
+early days of matrimony; and a descent through white stamping, no
+stamping, Hieratica to Silurian note, marks the different stages of the
+rolling years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate said (on the best Court note) that she would never forgive us if
+we did not come and see her in her new home.  James had been generous
+in the extreme, and they had bought everything "plain but good" for the
+house.  And the whole expense of it had been covered by exactly the sum
+of money that they had laid by for the purpose.  Kate continued, "But I
+will not bore you with a description of the house, for I want you to
+see it for yourselves," and then entered upon the usual Jamieson
+descriptive catalogue of every piece of furniture and every wallpaper
+which she had purchased.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I handed the letter back to Palestrina, who was sitting in an
+exaggerated attitude of ease and indifference on the edge of my
+deck-chair, and said to her, "Why leave Paradise?  London will be
+atrocious in this hot weather, and I believe it would be tempting
+Providence to quit this garden."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am afraid it will give great disappointment to Kate if we do not
+go," said Palestrina, in a tone of voice which suggested that she had
+been prepared for opposition, and had rehearsed her own arguments
+beforehand.  "After all, she lives in the suburbs, and has a garden of
+her own, and we need not stay more than two or three days."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We shall have to do so much admiring," I said, smothering a yawn.  "I
+know what brides are!  You, Palestrina, probably know exactly the right
+thing to say about newly-laid linoleum and furniture which is plain but
+good, but I never do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I should like to go," said Palestrina, putting the matter upon
+personal grounds, as I knew she would do when she had entirely made up
+her mind that I must go up to London.  What pressure she had brought to
+bear upon Mrs. Ward to induce her to invite us to the new house I
+cannot say, but some instinct told me that Kate had been warned to
+write a letter which might be handed to me to read.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I pointed out to Palestrina that, much as I should miss her at home, I
+should not stand in the way of her paying a visit to her old friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have accepted for us both from Thursday to Tuesday," said Palestrina
+firmly.  "Oh, by-the-bye," she said, rising and going indoors, "I just
+sent a line to Dr.  Fergus at the same time to say that you will look
+in and see him one morning, just to see that you are going on all
+right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You also were up early?" I said to the diplomat, who smiled at me from
+under her big umbrella without a vestige of shame at her own cunning.
+"I don't think it is fair on a crippled man to get up early and send
+off letters by the early post.  It's a mean trick."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were up half the night," said Palestrina, nodding her head at me,
+"for I heard you."  And she crossed the lawn and went indoors again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The following Thursday we took train for Clarkham.  I had never stayed
+in this part of the world before, till we came to visit Kate, and the
+suburb where she lives seems to me to be rather a pleasant place, with
+broad roads over whose walls and palings shrubs and red maples and
+other trees hang invitingly.  And it is so near London that a very
+short run in the train takes one to Victoria Station.  But the
+neighbourhood is not fashionable, and I cannot help remarking the
+apologetic tone in which every one we meet speaks of living here.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Wards' house is a very nice little place, with very new wall-papers
+and very clean curtains and slippery floors, upon which art rugs slide
+dangerously.  There is a small garden with a lawn and a brown hawthorn
+tree upon it, and there are two trim little maids who wait upon one
+excellently well.  Kate is a thorough good manager, and her whole
+household reminds one of those pages on household management which one
+sees in magazines, describing the perfect equipment of a house&mdash;its
+management, and the rules to be observed by a young housekeeper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is a place for everything, and Kate says her wedding-presents are
+a great assistance in giving a home-like look to the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ward leaves home at half-past nine every morning, and Kate shakes
+him into his coat in exactly the same way George used to be shaken into
+his, and stands at the hall-door with a bright smile on her face, until
+James has got into the morning bus and driven away, in a manner that is
+very wifely and commendable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The unpretentious little household seems to be a very happy one, and
+Kate was quite satisfied with the praise which Palestrina bestowed upon
+everything.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," she said, "the great drawback is that the place is so
+unfashionable;" and we warmly protested against that being of the least
+consequence.  But Kate said with her usual common sense: "It does
+matter, really.  No one thinks anything of you if you live here, and
+nearly every one who has enough money always leaves directly.
+Still"&mdash;cheerfully&mdash;"one must expect some drawbacks, and I do think I
+have been very lucky.  James is goodness itself, and quite a number of
+people have been to call."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We found to our dismay that Kate, with the laudable intention of
+amusing us, had accepted several invitations to what are called "the
+last of the summer gaieties."  There were tea-parties and
+garden-parties given by her friends, to which we were expected to go;
+and her very nearest neighbours, who are generally known as the "Next
+Doors," actually invited us to dine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This afternoon," Kate said, "is the day of the Finlaysons'
+garden-party.  They are frightfully rich people&mdash;ironmongers in the
+City; but you never saw such greenhouses and gardens as they have got!
+Do put on your best dress," she said to Palestrina, "and look nice;
+people here seem to dress so smartly for this sort of thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I think, indeed, it was the very grandest party to which I have ever
+had an invitation.  Every one seemed to sail about in a most stately
+fashion, in a gown of some rich stuff, and there was such an air of
+magnificence about the whole thing that one hardly dared to speak above
+a whisper.  There was a marquee on the lawn, with most expensive
+refreshments inside, and a great many waiters handing about things on
+trays.  Mrs. Finlayson spoke habitually&mdash;at least at parties&mdash;in an
+exalted tone of voice, which one wondered if she used when, for
+instance, she was adding up accounts or saying her prayers.  It was
+difficult to imagine that the voice could have been intended for
+private use&mdash;-it was such a very public, almost a platform voice, and
+the accent was most finished and aristocratic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Miss Finlaysons, in exquisite blue dresses and very thin shoes,
+also sailed about and shook hands with their guests in a cold, proud
+way which was very effective.  Young Finlayson was frankly supercilious
+and condescending; and there was a schoolboy in a tall hat, who was
+always alluded to as "our brother at Eton."  The excellent old papa of
+the firm of Finlayson and Merritt was really the most human and the
+least alarming of the whole party.  He seemed quite pleased when
+Palestrina, in her soft gurgling way, admired his greenhouses and
+peaches, and he led her back to where his lady ("wife" is too homely a
+term) was standing in a throne-room attitude on the lawn, and remarked
+genially, "This young lady has just been admiring our little place,
+Lavinia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed," said my sister, "it seems to me very charming, and&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush, hush!" said Mrs. Finlayson playfully, but with an undercurrent
+of annoyance in her party voice.  "I won't hear a word said in its
+praise&mdash;it is just a step to the West End."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is the actual distance?" I began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was old Finlayson who rescued me from my dilemma, and explained that
+until five years ago they had had a very tidy little 'ouse at
+'ampstead, and that this present location, although so magnificent,
+was, in the eyes of his lady, really a stepping-stone to further
+grandeur and a more fashionable locality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Next Doors were introduced to us at this party, and we were much
+struck by the fact that, although they seemed appropriately lodged in a
+place well suited to them, and in a society certainly not inferior to
+themselves, they, too, instantly began to apologize for living at
+Clarkham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One feels so lost in a place like this," said Mrs. Next Door; "and
+although the boys are so happy with their tennis and things on Saturday
+afternoons, I cannot help feeling that it is a great drawback to the
+girls to live here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A band began to play under the trees, and Palestrina said to me, with
+one of her low laughs: "I wonder if I shall begin to sail about soon?
+Isn't it funny!  They all do it, and now that the band has begun I feel
+that I must do it too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Miss Finlaysons came up at intervals and introduced young men to
+her in a spasmodic sort of way.  When one least expected it, some one
+in a tall hat and a long frock-coat was placed before Palestrina, and a
+Miss Finlayson said quite sharply, "May I introduce&mdash;Mr. Smith&mdash;&mdash;" and
+then as suddenly retired.  There was nothing for it but to make a
+little tepid conversation to the various Mr. Smiths, and Sonnenscheins,
+and Seligmanns who were in this way presented, and we noticed that
+almost every one of them began his conversation by saying, "Been going
+out a great deal lately?  Done the Academy?"  And then moved off to be
+introduced to some one else.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young men were very supercilious and grand, and we could only
+account for it, on discussing the matter afterwards, by supposing that
+they thought Palestrina was a Clarkham young lady, and that this was
+their way of showing their superiority to her.  One or two had
+certainly said to us with a dubious air, "Do you live in the Pork?" But
+it was not until the quieter moments that followed the stress of this
+regal party that we at all realized that this meant, Did we live in
+Clarkham Park.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate Ward was very agreeable and pleasant to every one, and was voted a
+nobody directly, and we heard it remarked that she had "no style."  I
+think Kate must have overheard the remark, for she became a little
+nervous towards the end of the afternoon, and presently said, "Perhaps
+we ought to be going?" But young Finlayson was here suddenly introduced
+to her by one of his sisters, and Kate thought it necessary to make a
+few remarks before saying good-bye.  She said something pretty about
+his sisters, who are undoubtedly handsome girls, and Mr. Finlayson said
+bitterly, "Yes, a good many so-called beauties in London would have to
+shut up shop if my sisters appeared in the Row.  It is a beastly shame
+they have got to live down here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate said, "But I suppose they go to town occasionally?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Mr. Finlayson; "but they ought to have their Park hacks,
+and do things in style.  It is a shame the governor does not take a
+house in the West End."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My sister tried to look sympathetic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"However," said Mr. Finlayson more hopefully, "we have taken a bit of a
+shoot in Scotland this year, so I hope the girls will have some
+society.  Well, it is a deer forest really, and a very fine house and
+grounds," amended Mr. Finlayson, with a burst of candour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Finlayson sailed up, and stooped to make a few remarks about the
+gaiety of the past season to us.  She said that she and her daughters
+were in demand everywhere, and that the other night in a West End
+theatre every lorgnette in the house was turned towards their box.
+"Rupert, of course, has his own chambers in St. James's, and knows
+every one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Miss Finlaysons shook hands, and said good-bye with their usual
+lofty condescension, and each said, "Going on anywhere?" to which we
+could only reply humbly that we had no further engagements for that
+afternoon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate praised the party all the way home, and then said, with a burst of
+feeling: "Oh, how I do wish I were a swell!  I know it's wicked, but I
+would snub one or two people."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next morning, being Sunday, we went to church, and the feeling of
+equality with the rest of mankind which this gives one was very
+refreshing after the magnificence and social distinctions about which
+we had been learning so much during the last few days.  But even in
+church one may notice how superior some families in Clarkham are to
+others.  The pew-letting of the church seems to have been conducted on
+principles other than those recommended in Holy Writ.  Richer
+folk&mdash;those with gold chains, for whom we learn precedence should not
+be accorded&mdash;occupied the front pews, furnished with red cushions and
+Prayer-Books with silver corners, while the humbler sort were
+accommodated with seats under the gallery.  The Finlaysons sailed in
+rather late, with a rustle of their smart dresses, and kneeled to pray
+on very high hassocks, their elbows just touching the book-board in
+front of them, their faces inadequately covered with their
+tightly-gloved hands.  The Next Doors had a pew half-way up the middle
+aisle.  The day was hot, and the clergyman, a small devout-looking man,
+very earnest and really eloquent, was guilty sometimes in moments of
+excitement of dropping aitches.  This of course may have been the
+result of the hot weather.  It was something of a shock to notice that
+the little Next Doors&mdash;terrible children, of high spirits and
+pugnacious dispositions&mdash;were allowed to giggle unreproved at each
+omission of the aspirate on the part of the preacher.  The Next Doors
+overtook us on our way out of church, and two of the pugnacious
+children, having dug each other with their elbows, and fought round me
+for permission to walk home with me and talk about the war, threw light
+upon their behaviour in church by remarking with smiling
+self-satisfaction, "Papa says we ought always to giggle when Mr. Elliot
+drops his aitches, to show that we know better...."  Little brutes!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We spent a lazy afternoon under the brown hawthorn tree on the little
+lawn, and Thomas drove down to see Palestrina, and good Kate Ward put
+forth her very best efforts to give us a sumptuous cold supper.  We
+found, to our surprise, that nightingales sing down here, and we sat on
+the lawn till quite late listening to them.  Mr. and Mrs. Ward slipped
+their hands into one another's in the dark, and appeared to be most
+happy and contented.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am glad we came," said Palestrina that night, when Mrs. Ward had
+quitted the room.  "Dear old Kate!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap15"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XV.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+On Monday I went to see Dr. Fergus about my leg, and did not get a very
+good report of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We returned from Clarkham on one of the hottest days I ever remember,
+and found Mrs. Fielden waiting for us in the hall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Every one seems to have come over to hear about your London visit,"
+said Mrs. Fielden lightly, "for I found Mr. Ellicomb and Maud Jamieson
+here when I came in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She began pouring out tea for us both as she spoke, and she signalled
+something to Palestrina, who replied as she stooped down to cut some
+cake, "Another operation&mdash;yes, four or five weeks in bed at least."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I sent Maud and Mr. Ellicomb home together," said Mrs. Fielden,
+smiling.  "He, poor man, is in a great state of mental perturbation,
+for it seems that he has heard that in South Africa pigs are fed upon
+arum lilies, and that so delicate is the flesh of the pork thus
+produced that some flower-growers in the Channel Isles are cultivating
+arum lilies for the purpose of feeding pigs, and to produce the same
+delicious pork.  He was so agitated that he got up from his chair and
+walked up and down the room, repeating over and over again, 'Arum-fed
+pork!  Monstrous, monstrous!'  I really did not know how to comfort
+him, so I sent him home with Maud Jamieson, which seemed to please him
+very much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you," I said, "following the Jamieson train of thought, have been
+saying to yourself ever since, 'Is there anything in it?'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She certainly had a soothing effect upon him," said Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then," said I, "the second stage has been reached.  When all the
+Jamiesons are married, I think I shall feel that romance is over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know they have been to tea at the farm," said Mrs. Fielden, "because
+Mr. Ellicomb talked so much about his blue china, and Maud said a
+woman's hand was needed in the house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder," I said, "what will be the special objection that Maud will
+raise when she becomes engaged to Mr. Ellicomb?  He is not called
+Albert; he does not wear a white watered-silk waistcoat; his hair is
+certainly his own; and his mother is dead, so it cannot be said that he
+too closely resembles her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of the objections raised by Maud to a candidate for her hand, was
+that he was far too like his mother&mdash;a really delightful woman&mdash;but
+Maud declared, with tears, that she could never really look up to a man
+who was so like his mamma.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At present," said Mrs. Fielden, "the blue china seems to be all in his
+favour; but one cannot feel sure that it will not be an obstacle later
+on, or Mr. Ellicomb's High Church principles, perhaps, may prove a
+deterrent to her ideas of perfect happiness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish," said Palestrina, "that Margaret's affairs were more settled.
+This summer has been a trying one for her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I forgot to tell you," said Mrs. Fielden, "that that was one of
+Maud's reasons for coming over to see you.  She told me that Mr.
+Swinnerton is coming to pay them a visit.  He has written, it seems, to
+make the offer himself, and Maud says she thinks it will be all right
+now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden was in one of her most light-hearted moods.  After the
+heat of the day there came a delightful coolness, and she stayed
+chatting till nearly dinner-time, and then decided that she would
+remain to dinner if we should ask her to do so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have three dear old sisters-in-law staying with me," said Mrs.
+Fielden, "and they will doubtless drag all the ponds for my body."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Won't they be anxious about you?" asked Palestrina.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps," said Mrs. Fielden, raising her pretty eyebrows in the old
+affected way; "but then they will appreciate me so much more when I
+come back to them from the grave."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We sat out on the lawn after dinner till it was quite dark, and only
+Mrs. Fielden's white dress was visible in the gloom.  For some reason
+best known to herself she put off her wilful mood out there in the
+gloom of the garden.  She was not regal, not even amusing, only
+charming and full of a lovely kindness.  Half the conversation between
+her and Palestrina began with the words, "Do you remember?" as they
+recalled old jokes and stories.  Then her ever-present gaiety broke out
+again, and she laughed and said: "I believe I am becoming reminiscent.
+Why doesn't some one sit upon me, or tell me they will order the
+carriage for me if I really must go?  But it is heavenly here in the
+cool&mdash;and in heaven, you know, we shall probably all be reminiscent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ten o'clock struck from the tower of the church down below in the
+village, and Mrs. Fielden said that now she really must go, or she
+would find the sisters-in-law saying a Requiem Mass for her; and
+Palestrina went indoors to order the carriage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-morrow," I said, "I am going to have my last dissipation.  I am
+going to the Traceys' tea-party."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am certainly going too," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I believe I am getting
+as gay as the Miss Traceys themselves, though I can't help remarking
+that no one who goes to these tea-parties ever seems to be amused when
+they get there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Judging from my own standard of what I find amusing," I said, "I
+should be inclined to say that Stowel never enjoys itself
+extravagantly.  Our neighbours never refuse invitations to even the
+smallest party; but the pleasure that they get from them, if it exists
+at all, is carefully concealed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have felt that myself," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I really don't begin to
+enjoy them till I get home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe you always enjoy yourself," I said resentfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a little time Mrs. Fielden said wistfully, "You don't think there
+is only a certain amount of happiness in the world, do you, Hugo?  And
+that if one person gets a great deal, it means that another will get
+less?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She asks one questions in this way sometimes, as though one were a
+superior being who could dispel her perplexities for her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Probably," I said, "you know ten thousand times more about the subject
+than I do.  You are happy, and I philosophize about it.  Tell me which
+of us is most fitted to give a lecture on the subject?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I thought Mrs. Fielden was going to say something after that, for she
+stretched out her hand in a certain impulsive way she has got, and gave
+mine just one moment's friendly pressure in the dark.  And then
+Palestrina came back to say the carriage was at the door, and Mrs.
+Fielden said "Good-night."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+I remember two things about the Miss Traceys' party&mdash;first, that Mrs.
+Fielden was not there, for one of the old sisters-in-law was ill
+suddenly, and she could not leave her; and the other thing I remember
+about it is that it was the last occasion on which I ever saw Margaret
+Jamieson look pretty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There have been some strange innovations in tea-parties ever since Mrs.
+Taylor gave hers to meet The Uncle, and sent out visiting-cards instead
+of notes.  Instead of having tea in the dining-room, all sitting round
+the table, as used to be the custom, it seems that dressing-tables are
+often brought down from upstairs and extended across the window.  These
+are covered with white tablecloths, and behind them two maids stand and
+wait.  The dressing-tables are called the "buffet," and both tea and
+coffee are provided, suggesting the elegance and savour of London
+refreshments.  This is distinctly pleasing, though it is felt that a
+single cup of tea drunk while standing has not got the comfort of
+former old-fashioned days.  Miss Belinda lives on at the little cottage
+with the green gate; and through the kindness of the General a lady has
+been found to wait upon her, and take her out to these small gaieties
+which she loves, and she sits shaking her poor, weak head, and
+muttering, "Glory, glory, glory!"  It does not occur to her to stay at
+home during her period of mourning, and it is acknowledged on all sides
+that she does not miss Lydia much.  The General has not come to stay
+with the Taylors again.  In a long letter which he wrote to me after he
+left he said he would probably never come back to the place, and at the
+same time he thanked me in courteous, old-fashioned phraseology for
+being with him through what he called "one of the dark days that come
+sometimes."  He would never see Miss Belinda, in spite of the many kind
+things he did for her; and I always feel that he resented the poor
+creature's long illness and weak, silly ways&mdash;which was only natural,
+no doubt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Vicar was present at his sisters' tea-party, "although," as Miss
+Ruby explained to me, "it is not as though this were an evening
+entertainment.  My sister and I often give these little routs without
+him.  Still, a gentleman is always something of an ornament at a party."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were seven Jamiesons present, and two of them, Margaret and Maud,
+offered, in their usual friendly way, to walk home with Palestrina and
+me.  Maud, one feels sure, engaged Palestrina in confidences directly;
+and Margaret whispered in a shy way to me, "Do you mind coming round by
+the post-office?  I am expecting a letter."  So we walked round by the
+High Street, and Margaret told me that Tudor had had to give up his
+visit to them, but that he was writing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So we went into the post-office, and Margaret had her letter handed to
+her across the counter by the post-mistress, upon whom she bestowed a
+radiant smile.  When we got outside she opened it and read it without a
+word; and then, quite suddenly, she gave a cry as though some one had
+struck her, and she handed the letter to me, and said, "Oh, Hugo, read
+it!"  And I read:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"I am sure you will be surprised when I tell you that I am going to be
+married; it will explain to you why it was that I was unable to fulfil
+my promise to come to see you.  But sudden though my engagement to Miss
+Lloyd has been&mdash;very sudden, much more sudden indeed than I ever felt
+that such a serious step as marriage would be undertaken by me&mdash;I
+cannot but feel that it is for my happiness.  Some day I hope you will
+make Miss Lloyd's acquaintance; she is staying with my mother just now,
+and she is already a great favourite.  I cannot but feel that having
+seen so much of you and of your family last summer, and during your
+stay in London, that I may have raised expectations which I find myself
+unable to fulfil; but I am quite sure that a man's first duty is to
+himself in these matters, and that he should not undertake matrimony
+until he is thoroughly convinced it is for his happiness.  Had I not
+met Miss Lloyd, I may say that my intentions to you were of the most
+serious nature, and I know that I have the power in me to make any girl
+happy.  We shall live with my mother for the first year, and then I
+hope to settle somewhere near London, where it will be nice for me to
+get into the fresh air after my work in the City.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"Yours very truly,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">"TUDOR SWINNERTON.</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>P.S.</I>&mdash;Miss Lloyd and I are to be married next month in St. Luke's
+Church, quite near here."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+I handed the letter back to Margaret, and we never spoke the whole way
+home.  And that was the last day I ever saw Margaret Jamieson look
+pretty.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap16"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVI.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+After the operation on my leg, I was laid up for a long time, and when
+I got about again, Palestrina and Thomas were married.  Thomas has
+lately come into his kingdom in the shape of a lordly castle in
+Scotland, and for the life of me I can't say whether or not Palestrina
+hastened her wedding because the doctor ordered me to the North.  If it
+was so, my sister's plans were frustrated by the fact that Thomas's
+ancient Scottish seat was pronounced uninhabitable by a sanitary
+surveyor, just as we proposed entering it under garlanded archways and
+mottoes on red cotton.  Our old friend Mrs. Macdonald, hearing of our
+dilemma, very kindly invited us to stay with her while Palestrina and
+Thomas looked about for some little house that would take us in till
+their own place should be ready.  The finding of the little house
+occupied some days, owing to the powers of imagination displayed by
+people when describing their property.  One lady, to whom Palestrina
+wrote to ask if her house were to be let, replied, "Yes, madam; this
+dear, delightful, pretty house is to let;" and she pointed out in a
+letter, some four pages long, all the advantages that would accrue to
+us if we took it, ending up with the suggestion, subtly conveyed, that
+by taking the house we should be turning her into the street, but that
+she would bear this indignity in consideration of receiving ten guineas
+a week.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina went to see it, and returned in the evening, almost in
+tears, to say that the house was a semi-detached villa, and that she
+had found the week's washing spread out on the front lawn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thomas said that the railway companies ought to pay a percentage on all
+misleading advertisements which induce people to make these useless
+journeys.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The following day they returned from another fruitless expedition,
+having been to see a very small house owned by the widow of a
+sea-captain, with a strong Scottish accent.  I have often noticed that
+the seafaring man's one idea of well-invested capital is house
+property&mdash;perhaps he alone knows how precarious is the life of the sea.
+And I shall like to meet the sailor who has invested his money in a
+shipping concern.  The widow's house was so very small that it was
+almost impossible to believe that it contained the ten bedrooms as
+advertised in my sister's well-worn house-list.  So small indeed were
+the rooms, that Palestrina said she felt sure that they must have been
+originally intended for cupboards.  Nevertheless, the rent of the house
+was very high, and my sister ventured gently to hint this to the lady
+of the house&mdash;the sea-captain's widow with the strong Scottish accent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, it is a very nice house," she said politely; "but the rent
+is a little more than we thought of paying for a house of this size."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ken it's mair than the hoose is worth," said the old dame; "but, ye
+see, I'm that fond o' money&mdash;aye, I'm fearfu' fond o' money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina and Thomas spent most of their days in their search for a
+suitable house, and Mrs. Macdonald spends the greater part of her life
+house-keeping, so I was rather bored.  What it actually is that
+occupies my hostess during the hours she spends in the back regions of
+her house I have never been able to discover.  But the fact remains
+that we have to get up unusually early in the morning to allow time for
+Mrs. Macdonald's absorbing occupation.  An old-fashioned Scotswoman of
+my acquaintance used to refuse all invitations to leave the house on
+Thursdays, because, as she explained, "I keep Thursdays for my creestal
+and my napery."  The rest of her week, however, was comparatively free.
+At Mrs. Macdonald's, housekeeping is never over.  And so systematic are
+the rules and regulations of the house, so many and so various are the
+lady's keys, that one finds one's self wondering if the rules of a
+prison or a workhouse can be more strict.  The <I>Times</I> newspaper
+arrives every evening after dinner; by lunch-time next day it is locked
+away in a cabinet, so that if one has not read the news by two o'clock,
+one must ask Mrs. Macdonald for the keys; this she does quite
+good-naturedly, but I have never discovered why old newspapers should
+be kept with so much care.  On Saturdays an old man from the village
+comes in to do a little extra tidying-up in the garden.  At nine
+o'clock precisely, Mrs. Macdonald is on the doorstep of her house, with
+a cup of tea in her hand, and a brisk, kindly greeting for John, and
+she stands over the old man while he drinks his tea, and then returns
+with the empty cup to the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tuesday is the day on which her drawing-room is cleaned.  At half-past
+nine precisely on Monday evenings Mrs. Macdonald says, "Monday, you
+know, is our early-closing night;" and she fetches you a candle and
+dispatches you to bed.  Mrs. Macdonald and her housemaid&mdash;there seem to
+be plenty of servants to do the work of the house&mdash;walk the whole of
+the drawing-room furniture into the hall, Mrs. Macdonald loops up the
+curtains herself, and covers some appalling pictures and the
+mantelpiece ornaments with dust-sheets.  At ten o'clock she removes a
+pair of housemaid's gloves, and an apron which she has donned for the
+occasion, and says, "There! that's all ready for Tuesday's cleaning;"
+and she briskly bids her housemaid good-night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On Tuesdays we are not allowed to enter the drawing-room all day, and
+on Wednesdays the same restrictions are placed upon the dining-room.
+Indeed, on no day in the week is the whole of the house available, and
+upon no morning of the week has Mrs. Macdonald a spare moment to
+herself.  After breakfast, when Palestrina and Thomas have gone, she
+conducts me to the morning-room, and placing the <I>Scotsman</I> (the
+<I>Scotsman</I> is used for lighting the fires, and is formally handed to
+the housemaid at six o'clock in the evening) by my chair, she says, "I
+hope you will be all right," and shuts the door upon me.  During the
+morning she pops her head in from time to time, like an attentive guard
+who has been told to look after a lady on a journey, and nodding
+briskly from the door, she asks, "Are you all right?  Sure you would
+not like milk or anything?" and then disappears again.  With a little
+stretch of imagination one can almost believe that the green flag has
+been raised to the engine-driver, and that the train is moving off.  At
+lunch-time she is so busy giving directions to her servants that she
+hardly ever hears what one says, and the most interesting piece of news
+is met with the somewhat irrelevant reply, "The bread-sauce, please,
+Jane, and then the cauliflower."  Turning to one, she explains, "I
+always train my servants myself....  What were you saying just now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I saw in the newspaper this morning," I repeat, "that H.M.S. &mdash;&mdash; has
+foundered with all hands."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the middle of the table, if you please," says Mrs. Macdonald; "and
+then the coffee with the crystallized sugar&mdash;not the brown&mdash;and open
+the drawing-room windows when you have finished tidying there....  What
+were you saying?  How sad these things are!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The house is charmingly situated, with a most beautiful view over river
+and hills; but I really think my preoccupied friend hardly ever has
+time to look out of the window, and that to her the interior of a
+store-cupboard with neatly-filled shelves is more beautiful than
+anything which the realms of Nature can offer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Palestrina is present Mrs. Macdonald gives her recipes for making
+puddings and for taking stains out of carpets, and she advises her
+about spring-cleanings and the proper sifting of ashes at the back
+door.  Mrs. Macdonald was brought up in the old days, when a young
+lady's training and education were frankly admitted to be a training
+for her as a wife.  She belonged to the period when a girl with a taste
+for music was encouraged to practise "so that some day you may be able
+to play to your husband in the evenings, my dear," and was advised to
+be an early riser so that the house might be comfortable and in order
+when her husband should descend to breakfast.  And now that that
+husband, having been duly administered to, is dead, Mrs. Macdonald's
+homely talents, once the means to an end, have resolved themselves into
+an end, a finality of effort.  Mrs. Macdonald was brought up to be a
+housekeeper, and she remains a housekeeper, and jam-pots and
+preserving-pans form the boundary line of her life and the limit of her
+horizon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eliza Jamieson would probably tell us that even though Mrs. Macdonald's
+soups and preserves are excellent, these culinary efforts should not be
+the highest things required of a wife by her husband, and that
+therefore they are not a wife's highest duty, even during the time that
+her husband remains with her.  And she would probably point out that
+servants and weekly bills, and an endeavour to render this creature
+complacent, have ruined many a woman's life.  And I laugh as I think of
+Palestrina's rejoinder, "But then it is so much pleasanter when they
+are complacent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One certainly imagined that the late Mr. Macdonald must have been well
+looked after during his life, and it was something of a shock to me to
+hear the account of his death, from the lodgekeeper's wife, one
+afternoon when she had come in to help with the cleaning, and was
+arranging my dressing-table for me.  The rest of my bedroom furniture
+was then standing in the passage, and I had found my cap in one of the
+spare bedrooms, and all the boots of the house in the hall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He was a rale decent gentleman," said Mrs. Gemmil, "and awfy patient
+with the cleaning.  But I am sure whiles I was sorry for him.  He was
+shuftit and shuftit, and never knew in the morn whichna bed in the
+hoose he would be sleeping in at nicht.  And we a' ken that it was the
+spring-cleaning, when he was pit to sleep ower the stables, that was,
+under Providence, the death o' him.  He had aye to cross ower in the
+wat at nicht-time, and he juist took a pair o' cauld feet, and they
+settled on his lungs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The day following my chat with Mrs. Gemmil was the day Palestrina found
+a house such as she had been looking for all along.  The day was
+Saturday.  Overnight she had announced her intention of being away all
+day, and Mrs. Macdonald had said delightedly that that would suit her
+admirably.  "I do like the servants to have the entire day for the
+passages on Saturday," she remarked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Even when the day dawned wet and cloudy, Palestrina had not the courage
+to suggest that she should stay at home, and thereby interfere with the
+cleaning of the passages.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The house she had found seemed to be everything that was desirable, and
+Palestrina returned in an elated frame of mind.  "It is far away from
+everything," she said, "except the village people and the minister, and
+the 'big hoose,' as they call it, which some English bodies have rented
+for the autumn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It can't be far from the Melfords," said Thomas, pulling out a map.
+"Yes, I thought so; they are just the other side of the loch."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We 'mussed the connaketion' on our way back," said Palestrina; "and I
+do believe there's nothing a Scottish porter enjoys telling one so much
+as this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope I am not unduly disparaging the railway system of my native
+land," said Thomas, "when I say that if you go by steamer and by train
+it is the remark that usually greets one, and it is always made in a
+tone of humorous satisfaction."  And Thomas, with an exaggerated
+Scottish accent, which he does uncommonly well, began to tell me of
+their adventures.  "We had a rush for the train," he said, "and I told
+an elderly Scot, who couldn't have hurried if he had had a mad bull
+behind him, to run and get us two first-class tickets.  He walked
+slowly down the platform, muttering, 'Furrst, furrst,' and then he
+opened the door of a third-class carriage and shoved us in, saying,
+'Ye've no occasion to travel furrst when there's plenty of room in the
+thurrds.'"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap17"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVII.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+To get to the house one takes a steamer to the head of the loch, and
+from there old Hughie drives one in the coach, and deposits one at the
+cross-roads where the turf, short and green, is cut into the shape of a
+heart.  On this green heart, in the old days, the girls and men of the
+glen were married.  They stood side by side on the upper part of the
+heart, which is indented, and the minister stood at the point and
+wedded the pair.  Here one leaves the coach, and a "machine" must take
+one on to the little house.  A red creeper grows up its white walls,
+and from the terrace in front of the house one looks down upon the
+little Presbyterian church and the village, and these in their turn
+look on to the loch and the hills on the other side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The people in the village afford one a good deal of amusement, but we
+have observed that the conversation is always about theology or the
+Royal Family.  There is one story of the late Queen and the crown of
+Scotland which I have heard repeated many times with the utmost gravity
+in the Highlands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A gran' wumman," say the old villagers, "but we were no gaein' tae gie
+her the croon o' Scotland.  Na, na.  She would hae liked fine tae hev
+gotten it, but we were no gaein' tae gie her the croon o' Scotland.
+Ye'll mind when she went tae Scotland, it was the foremost thing that
+she spiered tae see.  And when they showed it tae her, 'I would like
+fine tae pit it on ma heid,' said she.  But they said '<I>No</I>.'  And syne
+she says, 'Wad ye no let me haud it in ma haund?'  But they say '<I>No</I>.'
+'Weel,' she says, 'juist haud it aboon ma heid, and let me staun'
+underneath it.'  But they said, '<I>No</I>.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The villagers formed our only society until Evan Sinclair's tenants,
+who were known as "the folk at the big hoose," came to call upon us.
+It was very difficult indeed, and for some time we could hardly believe
+that these were the Finlaysons whom we had met at Clarkham, and who, we
+now remembered, had told us that they were going to take a place in
+Scotland.  The change in the Finlaysons is startling and complete.  It
+has taken them exactly two months to become Highlanders, and it is not
+too much to affirm that now the whole family may be said to reek of
+tartan.  Only Mrs. Finlayson is unaffected by her life in the
+Highlands, although she says that she knows it is fashionable to be
+Scottish.  "And so written up as it is at present," she adds; "and all
+the best people taking the deer-moors.  Papa and the girls think all
+the world of Scotland.  But no one can say it is comfortable, I'm sure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Finlaysons have a piper, and young Mr. Finlayson wears a kilt, and
+I think they are, without exception, the most strenuous supporters of
+Scottish customs I have ever met.  The young ladies, who had always
+been associated in our mind with silk dresses and thin shoes, came to
+call clad in the very shortest and roughest tweed skirts that I have
+ever seen; and old Mr. Finlayson, whose mother was a Robinson, has
+discovered that that is pretty much the same as being a Robertson, and
+that therefore, in some mysterious way, he is entitled to wear the
+Macdonald tartan.  They asked us to tea in a very polite and friendly
+way, and the old rooms were shown off to us with a good deal of pride.
+The architecture of the house seemed to throw a reflected glory on Mr.
+Finlayson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pure Early Scottish," he said, pointing to the tall narrow windows
+with their shelving ledges.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So dangerous," said Mrs. Finlayson, "for the servants cleaning the
+windows."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The drawing-room vases were all filled with heather, and the room smelt
+of damp dog and herrings.  The Miss Finlaysons came in to tea in thick
+skirts and brogues, and they wore tartan tam-o'-shanters very
+becomingly placed upon their heads, and affixed to their hair with
+ornamental bonnet-pins.  They ate cake with damp red hands, and seemed
+to pride themselves upon the fish-scales which still clung to their
+skirts, and imparted the rather unpleasant odour which I noticed in the
+room.  Young Finlayson in his kilt showed a great expanse of red knee,
+and told tales of remarks made to him by the boatmen, which he
+considered equal to anything in Ian Maclaren's books.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Finlayson took us out after tea to see the garden and tennis-court
+and the game-larder.  "I always like a walled garden," she said; "it is
+so stylish."  Mr. Finlayson found a reflected glory even in the loch
+and the hills, and he waved his fat hand towards them, and said: "We
+are able to do you a nice bit of view here, aren't we?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I tell papa," said Mrs. Finlayson, "that he will ruin the girls for
+anything else after this.  The only thing we regret is the want of
+society.  However, a few of the best people round about have called,
+and we are giving quite an informal little dinner-party to-morrow
+night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Finlayson then invited us to dinner, and when we hesitated, on the
+plea that we should have one or two friends with us, Mrs. Finlayson, in
+the most hospitable manner possible, said that she always had a
+"profusion on their own table," so there was nothing for it but to
+accept her invitation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dinner was one of those rather purposeless feasts which are given
+in the country, and the Finlaysons' neighbours who had been bidden to
+it bore upon their faces the peculiarly homeless look which one
+observes in the expressions of one's men friends especially, when they
+go out to a rural dinner&mdash;the look that says as plainly as possible
+that they are moving about in worlds not realized nor found
+particularly comfortable, and that they would infinitely prefer their
+own armchairs at home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The minister took Palestrina in to dinner, and occupied himself
+throughout the evening by putting the most searching questions to her
+of an inquisitive nature.  He asked how many servants we had, whether
+we were satisfied with our cook, where we came from, and why we had
+come.  And he did it all with such keen interest and intelligence that
+Palestrina admitted that she really had felt flattered rather than
+provoked.  His friend Evan Sinclair, who, having let his house to the
+Finlaysons, is living on a little farm close by, contradicted
+everything that the minister said, and the two quarrelled the whole
+evening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Old Tyne Drum, who lives a good many miles away, but who with his wife
+had already been to call upon us, brewed himself the very largest
+glasses of whisky-toddy that I have ever seen, even on a big night at
+mess, and he proposed healths and drank the steaming mixture throughout
+dinner in a very commendable national spirit.  His piper, who stood
+behind his chair, refused at last to pour out any further libations,
+and I heard him mutter to himself, "Ye'll no need tae say that Sandy
+Macnichol ever helpit ye tae the deil."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Young Finlayson is always very jocose upon the subject of whisky, as
+befits his ideas about the Highlands; and even the Misses Finlayson, in
+their faithful loyalty to all things Scottish, were quite pleased with
+Tyne Drum's performance, and would have scorned to look as though a
+whisky-drinking laird was a novelty to them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Finlayson told Thomas, in a very severe manner, and in her
+platform voice which I always find so impressive, that she considered
+intemperance a sin, but that that was what came of all this nonsense
+about Scotland.  She gave him quite a lecture upon the subject, as
+though he, being Scottish born, was responsible for the old laird's
+backsliding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the unfortunate old gentleman came into the drawing-room to join
+the ladies and sat down next him, Mrs. Finlayson looked at Thomas as
+though she thought he was in some sort to blame for this behaviour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tyne Drum dropped heavily on to the ottoman, and I heard him say, "Do
+you know my wife?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," replied Thomas.  "I have met her several times since we came to
+the cottage."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hoo old should ye think she was?"  (Tyne Drum is always broadly Doric
+in his speech.)  Thomas calculated that the lady must be a long way the
+wrong side of sixty, and humbly suggested that she might perhaps be
+forty-five.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Presairve us!" said the Laird.  "This lad here says my wife is
+forty-five!"  He began to sob bitterly, and, putting his handkerchief
+to his eyes, cried, "My pretty wee Jeannie, my bonnie wee wife, wha
+daurs tae say ye was forty-five!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thomas was so sorry for him and for what he had done that he did his
+best to cheer him up by telling him that what he had meant to say was
+twenty-five; but Tyne Drum was inconsolable, and went to sleep with the
+tear-drops on his cheeks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When we got home in the evening Palestrina said, "We are far behind the
+Finlaysons in all things Scottish.  I shall buy a Harris tweed skirt,
+and you and Thomas must buy something too."  So we drove down in the
+coach to the ferry on a very wet and windy day to cross over to the
+"toon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our place on the coach was shared with a Scot, who was the most
+truculent defender of the Free Kirk I have ever met.  He argued every
+single point of his creed, and became quite abusive at last, as he
+denounced the "Established" and all who belong to it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The wind was high as we drove in the coach, and the rain fell heavily
+once or twice, but the voice of the gentleman rose higher and higher as
+the rain descended.  Hughie, the coachman, chided him with no stint of
+words, and at every burst of eloquence on the passenger's part he
+remarked, "Anither worrd, and I'll pit ye in the ditch!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This method of treating the argumentative passenger suggested the
+possibility of the coach being overturned in order to punish him, and
+Palestrina grew alarmed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do hope," she said to Hughie, "that you will remember that we are
+not all Wee Frees, and that therefore we do not all require the same
+treatment meted out to us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The guard at the back of the coach here showed his head over the pile
+of boxes covered with tarpaulin on the roof, and called out, "Pit him
+inside the coach wi' Mrs. Macfadyen, and she'll sort him!  She'll gie
+him the Gaelic!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hughie chuckled and remarked, "Ay, she's the gran' wumman wi' her
+tongue!"  And during the rest of the drive his threats to the eloquent
+passenger took the form of, "Anither worrd, and I'll pit ye in wi' Mrs.
+Macfadyen!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a marked improvement in our friend's behaviour after this.
+He was in great difficulties when he came to get into the ferry-boat.
+It was easy enough to throw his first leg over the side while holding
+on by a thole-pin, but the balance required to convey the remaining
+limb into the boat was quite out of his power.  And having made one or
+two ineffectual hops on the beach with the shore-loving member, he
+turned to the boatmen, and said gravely,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lift in my leg, Angus!  Juist gie me a hand wi' ma last leg!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina chose the tweed for our coats and her skirt, and then we
+walked up to the Castle and called on the Melfords, who told us that
+Mrs. Fielden was coming to stay with them.  They sang her praises, as
+most people do; she has heaps of friends.  Then Palestrina did some
+shopping at the "flesher's" and the baker's, and we went down to the
+ferry again&mdash;a boy behind us laden with queer-looking parcels
+containing provisions, and Alloa yarn to knit into stockings, and
+paper-bags with ginger-bread cakes in them.  When we got in and sat
+down under the brown sail of the heavy boat, the two sailors remained
+in their places, and did not show the least sign of getting under way.
+Thomas said to the elder of the two men, a fine old fellow with a face
+such as one connects with stories of the Covenanters,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why don't you get off?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the old man replied unmoved, "I'm waiting for the Lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina, who is sympathetic in every matter, put on an expression of
+deep religious feeling, and we thought of the Irvingites, and wished
+that we had Eliza Jamieson with us "to look it up."  As far as we knew,
+the Irvingites wait to perform every action until inspired to perform
+it.  We had heard that in the smallest matter, such as beginning to eat
+their dinner, they will wait until this inspiration, as I suppose one
+must call it, is given to them.  The question then arose, how long
+would it be before we would be likely to get under way?  The two
+sailors sat on without moving, and the elder of them cut a wedge of
+tobacco and was filling his pipe, preparing to smoke.  We wondered if
+the Irvingites often waited for an inspiration in this contented way.
+The big red-funnelled steamer from Greenock was, meanwhile, preparing
+to depart.  It had poured its daily output of tourists for their
+half-hour's run in the town, which time they employ in buying mementoes
+of the place, and we had hurried down to the sailing-boat to escape
+this influx.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thomas endeavoured to assist inspiration by saying it didn't seem much
+use waiting any longer, and that as time was getting on, did not our
+friend (the gray-bearded Covenanter) think that it was time to be
+moving?  The Covenanter wrinkled up his nose, which already was a good
+deal wrinkled, and gazed upwards at the sail, or, as we interpreted it,
+to Heaven.  Palestrina pressed Thomas's hand, and said gently, "Don't
+urge him, dear; we shall get off in time."  And the younger sailor
+said, "We are waiting for the Lord."  So we knew that they were both
+Irvingites, and the only scepticism that intruded itself upon us was
+this: Suppose inspiration never came, how should we get home?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The steamer now began to move away from the pier, with a great churning
+and hissing of water, and seething white foam fizzing round the staples
+of the pier.  A band began to play on board, and the paddles broke the
+water with a fine sweep.  Two youngsters on shore, to whom "the
+stimmer" is a daily excitement, then called out in shrill, high voices,
+"There's the Lord!  She's aff!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The <I>Lord of the Isles</I> had moved off on her return journey to
+Greenock, and the notes on Scottish religion which Palestrina was
+carefully preparing were hastily destroyed.  The <I>Lord</I> had departed,
+and we sailed across the loch without waiting any longer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When we got home, we found the minister awaiting us in the
+drawing-room, he having suggested that as we were not at home, he had
+better stay till our return.  I found out, in the course of
+conversation, that he is a distant relation of old Captain
+Jamieson&mdash;the Jamiesons' father&mdash;so we had quite a long talk about our
+friends.  The minister is one of those Scots whose national
+characteristics are always stronger than individual character.  Take
+away his nationality from him, and Mr. Macorquodale would be nothing at
+all.  His qualities being entirely Scottish, it is only logical to
+assume that if Mr. Macorquodale were not Scottish, he would be
+non-existent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina came out on to the little terrace where we were sitting, and
+I explained to her that the minister was a cousin of the Jamiesons.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How interesting!" said Palestrina in her usual kind way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?" said the minister.  He has sandy hair and very round gray eyes,
+and looks like a football player.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I don't know," said my sister; "it's always interesting, isn't it,
+to find that people are related?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Every one must have some relations," said Mr. Macorquodale; "and if my
+choice had been given me, I do not think I should have chosen those
+five gurrls."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We like them so much," Palestrina said, smiling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that the truth?" said Mr. Macorquodale; and she replied firmly that
+it was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Um umph!" he said, as though considering a perfectly new problem, and
+then added: "Well, each man to his taste.  How many of them have got
+husbands?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I replied that Kate was married and Gracie engaged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gracie?" said the minister simply.  "Was that the one with a nose like
+a scone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We considered Grade's nose silently for a moment, and then admitted
+that perhaps the simile was not unjust.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How did she get him?" said the minister presently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The minister has a curious way of eating, which fascinates one to look
+at, while all the time there is a distinct feeling that an accident may
+happen at any moment.  When tea was brought out he accepted some, and
+filled his mouth very full of cookie, stowing into it nearly a whole
+one at a time, and then raised his tea-cup to his lips.  He persists in
+keeping his spoon in his cup as he drinks, and he prevents it from
+tumbling out by holding it with his thumb.  A long draught of tea is
+then partaken of with a gurgling sound, and the minister swallows
+audibly.  It is almost impossible to prevent one's self watching this
+process of eating and drinking during the whole of tea-time.  For it
+seems so uncertain whether the spoon will remain in its place, and the
+cookie and the tea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The minister is a very young man, with the pugnacity of an Edinburgh
+High School boy, and with the awful truthfulness which distinguishes
+his nation, but which is accentuated in such an alarming degree in a
+minister of the Kirk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I sent Kate a scent-bottle when she married," he remarked.  "I won it
+at a bazaar for sixpence, so it was not expensive.  I don't disapprove
+of raffles," he added, although he had not been asked for this piece of
+information&mdash;"that is, if ladies do not cheat over it, as they often
+do."  Palestrina bristled at the insinuation, and the minister consoled
+her by saying: "Women sin in such wee ways&mdash;that's what I can't
+understand about them.  However," he said, "I have never known a woman
+steal a thing yet that a man has not reaped some benefit by it.  I can
+quote authority for my views from Adam and Eve downwards, to the
+newspapers of yesterday.  I am engaged to be married myself, and I find
+the subject of feminine ethics absorbing.  Good-bye," he said
+presently; "I hope you will not be disappointed with the clothes I hear
+you've ordered."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Alas! the tweed coat and skirt in which my sister hoped to rival the
+Miss Finlaysons proved an utter misfit, and she drove round the loch on
+the following day to take the garments back.  Palestrina had prepared a
+severe reprimand for the tailor, but the old man took the wind out of
+her sails by stopping in amazement at the first word of annoyance which
+she uttered, and standing in the middle of the little fitting-room,
+with a yellow tape measure round his neck, and a piece of chalk in his
+hand, he shook his gray beard at us with something of apostolic
+fervour, and thus addressed us:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm amazed at ye!  Do ye ever consider the system of planets, and that
+this world is one of the lesser points of light in space, and that even
+here there are countless millions of human beings, full of great
+resolves and high purposes.  Get outside yourselves, ladies and
+gentlemen, and realize in the magnitude of the universe, and the
+immeasurable majesty of the planetary system, how small a thing is the
+ill-fit of a jacket."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We felt much humbled, Palestrina and I.  And it was only when we were
+driving home afterwards that it even dimly suggested itself to us that
+we had right on our side at all.  "After all," Palestrina said, "the
+coats did not fit; I really do not think he need have lectured us so
+severely."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the time, however, I confess that our feelings were distinctly
+apologetic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One wonders how a tailor who advanced the planetary system as a reproof
+to complaining customers would get on in London, and one realizes that
+English people have a great deal still to learn.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap18"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+When Mrs. Fielden came to stay at the Melfords we saw a good deal of
+her.  Their yacht used to steam up in the early morning, and they would
+take us off for a day's cruise on the loch or for a trip round to Oban.
+Mrs. Fielden used to sit on deck with a big red umbrella over her head
+and a white yachting gown on, and seemed serenely unconscious that she
+was looking very pretty and very smart.  My sister tells me she never
+feels badly dressed till she meets Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Melfords have very pleasant people stopping with them always, and
+there are very jolly little parties on board their yacht.  Mrs.
+Fielden, however, is in her most provoking and wilful mood.  Every day
+it is the same thing&mdash;laughter and smiles for every one.  But she has
+absolutely no heart.  All the beautiful, kindly things she does are
+only the whim of the moment.  They bespeak a generous nature, as easily
+moved to tears as to laughter; but she loves every one a little, and
+probably has no depth of affection or constancy in her.  Lately, she
+has added another provoking habit to the many she already possesses.
+She exaggerates her pretence of having no memory, and indeed it may be
+she has not any.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I left home, rather a wreck as regards health, and drove to the
+station in Mrs. Fielden's luxurious carriage, it was her hand that
+piled the cushions, as no one else can, behind me.  And the last thing
+I saw was her smile as she waved her hand to me from my own door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Last week, when we met again at the Melfords', she nodded to me in a
+little indifferent sort of way.  She sat under a big cedar-tree on one
+of the lawns, and laughed, and talked a sort of brilliant nonsense the
+whole afternoon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By-and-by I said to her&mdash;probably clumsily, certainly at the wrong
+time&mdash;"I never half thanked you for being so good to me when I was
+ill;" for she had come in like some radiant vision, day after day, in
+her beautiful summer gowns and rose-garlanded hats, and had sat by my
+couch, reading to me sometimes, talking to me at others in a voice as
+gentle as a dove's.  Why will she not allow one to admire her?  One
+only wants to do so humbly and at a distance.  It was so pleasant up
+here in the Highlands, with the dear memory of those long days to look
+back upon.  But Mrs. Fielden ruthlessly robbed me and sent me away
+empty the very first day of our meeting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was I kind to you?  I don't believe I was, really.  If I was, I'm sure
+I forget all about it.  Let me see, how long were you ill?  It can't
+have been a bit amusing for you," and so on, laughing at my dull face
+and serious ways.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And this has gone on for a whole week.  At the Melfords' parties she
+selects, quite indiscriminately, and in a royal way which she has, this
+man or that to be her escort or her companion.  Now it is a mere boy
+whom she bewilders with a few of her radiant smiles, and now one of her
+elderly colonels whom she reduces to a state of abject admiration in a
+few hours.  One man goes fishing with her, and another rows her on the
+loch.  A third, hearing that Mrs. Fielden's life will be a blank if she
+does not possess a certain rare fern which may be found sometimes on
+the hillsides of Scotland, spends a whole day scrambling about looking
+for it, and returns triumphant in the evening.  Mrs. Fielden has
+forgotten that she ever wanted it.  When we sulk she does not notice
+it.  When her colonels offer her their fatuous admiration she goes to
+sleep, and then, waking up, is so very, very sorry.  "But you can't
+have amused me properly," she says, "or I should have stayed awake."
+When any one tries by avoiding her to show displeasure, Mrs. Fielden is
+oblivious of the fact.  And when the penitence and boredom which
+immediately ensue when one has deprived Mrs. Fielden of one's company
+have led to ending the one-sided quarrel with an apology, it is only to
+find that Mrs. Fielden has been blissfully unconscious of one's
+absence.  Summer and the air of the Highlands seem to be in her veins.
+Her happiness, like the quality of mercy, is twice blessed, making her,
+through her talent for enjoyment, diffuse something beautiful and gay
+about her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After all, why should she care?  Life was evidently made to give her
+pleasure.  Why should a woman always be blamed for being loved?  Mrs.
+Fielden's charm is of the irresponsible sort.  To live and to be lovely
+are all one ought to demand of her, and at least she is without vanity.
+She seems to be entirely unconscious of the admiration she receives, or
+perhaps she is simply indifferent to it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Melfords adore her, and allow her to see it.  They say no one knows
+her as they do.  Probably we all feel that.  This is one of Mrs.
+Fielden's most maddening charms.  We have all found something in her
+that seems to belong to ourselves alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lately I have discovered that she loves to wander up the hillside by
+herself, and listen to the plover's solitary cry, and sit in the
+sunshine with no companion near her.  And one wonders why so frivolous
+a woman should care for this, and why when she comes back amongst us
+again her eyes should wear the wistful look which covers them like a
+veil sometimes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When she left the Melfords' Palestrina asked her to come and stay with
+us; and rather to my surprise, Mrs. Fielden came.  It seems to me she
+must find us a very dull lot after the Melfords' cheery house-parties.
+She arrived late one afternoon in the yacht, and the whole party came
+up to dine with us before returning to the castle.  The little house
+was taxed to its utmost capacity, even to provide teacups for our
+guests.  But the Melfords have a happy knack of seeming to find
+pleasure in everything.  Mrs. Fielden's gaiety was infectious, and her
+lightheartedness knocked all one's serious world to pieces, while her
+beauty seemed almost extravagant in the plain setting of the little
+house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She began to give us some of her experiences in Scotland.  "Do you
+know," she said, putting on a charming gravity and lifting her eyebrows
+in a provoking, childish way, "that every single person in Scotland
+gets up at five o'clock in the morning? and all the coaches and
+excursions start at daybreak, and when you want to hit off what they
+call a 'connection' anywhere, you have to get up in the middle of the
+night?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am afraid you had a horribly early start to join the yacht the other
+day," said Lord Melford, "but it was the only way we could manage to
+get to the Oban Gathering in time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was there before you," said Mrs. Fielden; "and I had to rouse up the
+people at the inn to take me in and give me breakfast.  Even they were
+not up at that hour!  But after ringing twice, such a nice boots came
+and opened the door to me, and brought me some breakfast."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The gathering was very good this year," said Lord Melford.  "Why
+didn't some of you come?  By-the-bye, your friend Mrs. Macdonald was
+there.  Indeed, it was she who insisted on taking Mrs. Fielden to the
+Gaelic concert."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gaelic is rather an alarming language," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I always
+feel as if I were being sworn at when I hear it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of Mrs. Fielden's admirers who had reached the savage and sarcastic
+stage here interposed, and said: "Poor Mrs. Fielden!  I saw you at the
+concert.  How did you manage to sit throughout a whole evening between
+Mrs. Macdonald and a wall?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Macdonald is quite a dear!" said Mrs. Fielden.  (Whom, in the
+name of Fortune, would Mrs. Fielden not find charming?)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know what you and Mrs. Macdonald can have found to talk
+about," said Palestrina, laughing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We discussed the training of servants most of the time," said Mrs.
+Fielden simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Every one laughed; and my sister, with a recollection of our visit to
+Mrs. Macdonald, said at once, "Did she give you any useful household
+recipes?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is very odd that you should have asked me that," said Mrs. Fielden.
+"Do you know, that the whole of to-day I have been puzzling over a
+letter which I received this morning?  I did not know the handwriting,
+and it was merely headed, 'Two recipes for boiling a ham, as
+requested.'  Now, I cannot really have asked Mrs. Macdonald for recipes
+for boiling a ham, can I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We thought it highly probable that she had done so, and had done it,
+too, with an air of profound interest; and I think we said this, which
+Mrs. Fielden did not mind in the least.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is something rather horrible, don't you think so," she said, "in
+knowing how a thing is cooked?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The minister, who is assiduous in calling, walked up after tea with his
+friend Evan Sinclair; and as we were already far too large a party for
+dinner, we asked them to stay too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Macorquodale has frequently described himself to us as a grand
+preacher.  He and Evan Sinclair live quite close to each other, and
+they are friends whose affection is rooted and maintained in warfare.
+For the minister and Sinclair to meet is one strenuous contest as to
+who shall have the last word.  Politeness is not a strong motive with
+either of them&mdash;indeed, one would imagine that from the first it has
+been ruled out of place.  The friendship and the warfare began at the
+Edinburgh High School years ago, and both the friendship and the
+warfare have lasted without intermission ever since.  They meet every
+day, and often twice a day; they fish together, and in the winter they
+spend every evening with each other.  Scottish people seem to have a
+sneaking liking for those who dislike them, and a certain pity mingled
+with contempt for those who show them favour and affection.  The
+friendship of Evan and the minister is based upon feelings of the most
+respectful admiration for their mutual antipathy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To keep alive this laudable and self-respecting warfare is the highest
+effort of genius of both Mr. Sinclair and the Reverend Alexander.  To
+foster it they apply themselves to what they call "plain speaking"
+whenever they meet, and they conceal as much as possible from each
+other every single good quality that they possess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The minister, who is a big man, always talks of Evan as "Wee Sinkler,"
+and sneers at "heritors;" and Evan invariably addresses Macorquodale as
+"Taurbarrels," a name which he considers appropriate to the minister's
+black clothes and portly figure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The minister," said Evan, when he had walked up the hill to see us,
+"has been reading Josephus.  We shall have some erudite learning from
+the pulpit for the next Sunday or two."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The minister was announced a moment later, and, before taking the
+trouble to shake hands with us, he looked Evan Sinclair over from top
+to toe, and remarked, "Ye're very attentive in calling upon ladies."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was just talking about your fine preaching," said Evan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I admit my gift," said the minister; "but I fear that I very often
+preach to a deaf adder which stops its ears."  He nodded triumphantly
+at us, and it then occurred to him to shake hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Evan said at once that he got a better sleep in kirk on Sundays than he
+got during the whole of the week.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Evan Sinclair," said the minister, "if I find you sleeping under me
+I'll denounce you from my pulpit, as a minister has the right to do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And we'll settle it in the graveyard afterwards," said Evan dryly.
+"And ye're not in very good training, my man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina broke in gently to discuss a theological point which had
+puzzled us for several Sundays.  On each Lord's Day as it came round we
+had prayed that we might become "a little beatle to the Lord."
+Doubtless the simile is a beautiful one, but its immediate bearing upon
+our needs was not too grossly evident.  And it seemed almost dangerous
+to those who believe in the efficacy of prayer to put up this petition
+in its literal sense.  We had decided for some time past that we should
+ask Mr. Macorquodale what it was exactly for which we made petition,
+when we prayed that we might become "a little beatle to the Lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Similes," said Palestrina in her serious way, "are beautiful
+sometimes, but we can't quite understand one of the references that you
+make in your prayers on Sundays."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have prayed so fervently," said Mrs. Fielden, "without perhaps
+entirely understanding the portent of the petition, that we might
+become 'a little beatle to the Lord.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The thing was out now, and our curiosity, we hoped, would be gratified.
+There was a pause which suggested that our hearers were puzzled, and
+then Mr. Sinclair put a large pocket-handkerchief into his mouth and
+roared with laughter, and Mr. Macorquodale turned to my sister, who was
+trembling now, and remarked in an awful voice that he wondered that we
+didn't understand plain English.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course she apologized, and an explanation came afterwards from Evan
+Sinclair, who told us that the minister's prayer was that we&mdash;the
+church&mdash;might become a little Bethel, and that Beethel was his Doric
+pronunciation of the word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It began to rain on Sunday, as it often does in Scotland&mdash;Nature itself
+seems to put on a more serious expression on the Sabbath&mdash;and it
+continued raining for four whole days.  The rain came down steadily and
+mercilessly, shutting out the view of the hills, and turning the whole
+landscape into a big damp gray blanket.  "I suppose," said Mrs.
+Fielden, who is never affected by bad weather, "that we shall all get
+very cross and quarrel with each other if the rain continues much
+longer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I shall write a number of unnecessary letters to absent
+friends," said Palestrina.  "And Mr. Ellicomb and Sir Anthony Crawshay
+will arrive to-morrow, and we must tell them to amuse us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a disappointment to find that Mr. Ellicomb's nerves and temper
+were seriously affected by the weather, and in moments of extreme
+depression his low spirits vented themselves in a rabid abuse of the
+Presbyterian Kirk.  I cannot understand why Ellicomb should elect to
+wear a brown velvet shooting-jacket, and a pale-green tie, and neat
+boots laced half-way up his legs, in Scotland.  He went to the village
+church in the rain on Sunday, and he has not been the same man since.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't call it a church!" he cried as we went homewards up the hill,
+where the road was a watercourse and each tree poured down moisture.
+He seemed to think that he had done his soul an irreparable injury by
+entering a Presbyterian kirk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Anthony said, "Oh! don't be an ass, Ellicomb."  But even on Monday
+morning poor Ellicomb was still suffering from the weather and the
+effects of his churchgoing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can he be in love?" said Palestrina; "and if so, as the Jamiesons
+would say, which is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina is prettier than ever since her marriage.  She still says,
+"Oh, that will be delightful!" to whatever Thomas and I suggest, and
+she never seems to have any occupation except to be with us when we
+want her, and to accede to everything we say, which of course, from a
+man's point of view, is a very delightful trait in a woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I rather wonder," said Palestrina, "that I have not heard from any of
+the Jamiesons lately.  They are usually such good writers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Depend upon it, there is a great bit of news coming," said Thomas.
+"The Jamiesons always maintain a dramatic silence just before
+announcing some tremendous piece of intelligence."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thomas had hardly spoken the words before a telegram was handed to
+Palestrina, containing the following enigmatical words:&mdash;-
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Engaged Cuthbertson.  Greatly surprised.  Deeply thankful.&mdash;ELIZA."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+This rather mysterious message was followed, later in the day, by a
+letter four pages in length, and marked on the outside, for some reason
+best known to Eliza, "Immediate."  The letter explained more fully the
+cause of Eliza's thankfulness, and who it was that was greatly
+surprised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you had told me," wrote Eliza, "six weeks ago that I should now be
+engaged to Mr. Cuthbertson, I should hardly have believed it.  I really
+had not a notion that he cared for me until he actually said the words.
+Is it not too strange to think that perhaps, after all, Maud may be one
+of the last of us to get married?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here followed the usual descriptive catalogue, so characteristic of the
+Jamiesons' letters.  "Mr. Cuthbertson looks like a widower, though he
+is not one."  Strangely enough, I could never think of any other words,
+when I came to know Mr. Cuthbertson, that described him so well as
+these, and I can only account for it by saying that the man's deep
+melancholy and the crape band that he habitually wore round his hat
+must have given one the feeling that at some time Mr. Cuthbertson had
+suffered a heavy bereavement.  "I have only known him," Eliza's letter
+went on, "for six weeks, but even that time has shown me his worth.  He
+has a very straight nose and a black beard, and his forehead is
+distinctly intellectual.  I met him first at Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs',
+where, as you know, I had gone to stay to catalogue their library, and
+to do a little typewriting for her.  You know, of course, that she has
+become a member of the S.R.S., and their library is a <I>mine of
+information</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At first I was afraid to say, or even to allow myself to think, he
+showed me any preference, but Maud thought from the first that he was
+struck, and I asked her not to appear at all until everything was
+settled, for you know how attractive she is.  But I really don't think
+that even then I thought that there was anything serious in it."  (For
+an intelligent woman Eliza's letter strikes one as being strangely
+lacking in concentration.)  "I have just been to the meeting of the
+Browning Society&mdash;our first appearance in public together&mdash;and I read
+my paper on "The Real Strafford," but I could hardly keep my voice
+steady all the time.  I wear his own signet-ring for the present, but
+we are going up to London next week, when he will buy me a hoop of
+pearls.  I am sure that you will be glad to hear that he is comfortably
+off.  When the right man comes preconceived objections to matrimony
+vanish, <I>but it must be the right man</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina said that she was "thrilled" to hear of Eliza's engagement,
+because an engagement was always thrilling, and she instantly went to
+tell the news to Mr. Ellicomb.  She told me afterwards that when she
+had said that one of the Jamiesons was engaged Mr. Ellicomb became
+suddenly very pale in his complexion, and exclaimed, in a most anxious
+tone of voice, "Which?"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The cold weather has set in very suddenly, and already there is a
+sprinkling of snow on some of the distant hills.  The robins still sing
+cheerily, but the gulls on the shore, flying over the yellow seaweed,
+call to each other plaintively in the gray of the early twilight.  The
+heavy-winged herons stand in an attitude of serious thought for hours
+on the cold rocks; then, as if suddenly making up their minds to
+something, they stretch out their red legs behind them, and flop with
+large wings over the waters of the loch.  The red Virginian creeper has
+begun to drop its leaves regretfully, after a night or two of white
+frost, and the dahlias hang their heads, heavy with the moisture which
+their cups contain.  The sun wakes late in the mornings now, but shines
+strong and warm when it does get up.  Cottage lights and fires burn
+cheerily o' nights, and within the cottages the old folks and the young
+ones draw round the fires and speak eerily of wraiths and whaurlochs,
+and some will tell of death-lights which they have seen on the lonely
+shore road.  The herring fishers who sail away in the early twilight
+wear good stout jerseys now, and red woollen "crauvats" which the
+"wumman at hame" has knitted.  The <I>Lord</I> has sailed away to Dunoon to
+lay up for the winter, and the shepherds have gone away down South "to
+winter the hogs."  The shepherds' wives sit alone in the little
+hillside cottages away up on the face of the brae, and "mak dae" with
+their slender money till their men come home again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old women in the village have begun their winter spinning, and the
+tap, tap, tap of the treadle on the floor gives a pleasant sound as one
+passes outside on the dark road.  Old men tell tales of snow in the
+passes in winter-time, and of death on the bleak hillsides, and some
+wife, shuddering, will say, "Ay, I mind I saw his corp-licht the very
+evening he was lost."  And then they tell tales of fantasy and signs
+and premonitions of death.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Finlaysons are going to wind up their very successful autumn in the
+Highlands by giving what they insist upon calling a gillies' dance,
+though probably the revels will mostly be indulged in by their large
+retinue of English servants.  Good-natured old Finlayson has more than
+once said that he hopes we shall all come to the gillies' dance, and
+that it will give ourselves and our guests a chance of seeing some
+Highland customs.  A good many of us come to Scotland most years, and
+have seen gillies and pipers before, but our good-natured neighbours
+certainly out-distance any one I know in their Highland sympathies.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They invited us to dine with them before the dance should begin, and
+six of us went, feeling very like the Jamiesons, and resolved that when
+we got home we should never put a limit to their numbers when we send
+them an invitation again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We talk of returning home at the end of next week, and Mrs. Fielden and
+our other two guests are leaving on Monday, I believe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden looks much prettier in the Highlands, I think, than
+anywhere else.  Young Finlayson is in love with her, and I believe has
+offered her his heart and the ironmongery business with it; but I think
+of all her lovers Anthony Crawshay is the one she likes best.  He is
+the only one for whom her moods never alter, and to whom she is always
+gracious and charming and sweet.  Perhaps it is in a quiet, less
+radiant way than that in which she treats others, but it is with an
+unvarying loving-kindness which I have not seen her bestow elsewhere.
+And Anthony Crawshay is a good fellow&mdash;one of the best.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Old Mr. Finlayson actually donned a kilt for the gillies' dance; young
+Finlayson also wore the national dress, and Thomas tells me that they
+have sported the Macdonald tartan, and wants to know why.  Old
+Finlayson met us at the door of his baronial hall in a clannish, feudal
+sort of way, and seizing his glengarry bonnet from his head he flung it
+down upon the oak settle in the hall, and exclaimed in hearty accents,
+"Welcome to the Glen."  The Misses Finlayson wore sashes of royal
+Stuart tartan put plaid-wise across their shoulders.  Mrs. Finlayson
+was dressed in a very regal manner which I cannot attempt to describe,
+and her platform voice was in use throughout the entire evening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellicomb said the dance was barbaric, but Thomas enjoyed the evening
+immensely, and so did Crawshay, who said in his hearty way, "The
+Finlaysons did us uncommonly well," and shouted out, "Not at all bad
+people, not at all bad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After dinner old Finlayson showed us all the pictures in the hall by
+the light of a long wax taper which he held above his head, and he
+pointed out the beauties of the house in a proprietary way, even to
+Evan himself, to whom the place belongs.  Evan Sinclair, in a shabby
+green doublet, accepted all Mr. Finlayson's wildest statements about
+his own house with a queer, humorous grin on his face, and submitted to
+being patronized by the Miss Finlaysons, whose commercial instincts, no
+doubt, caused them to despise a young man who was obliged to let his
+place.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of the Highland axioms which the Finlaysons have accepted is that
+"a man's a man for a' that," and they shook hands with every one in an
+effusive way, and condescended to a queer sort of familiarity with the
+boatmen and keepers about the place.  The daughters of the house, with
+flying tartan ribbons, swung the young gillies about in the intricate
+figures of the hoolichan, and talked to them with a heartiness which
+one would hardly have thought possible of the Clarkham young ladies.
+The Finlaysons had a large number of English guests staying in the
+house for the dance.  These all made the same joke when the pipes began
+to play.  "Is the pig being killed?" they asked, and looked very
+pleased with their own ready wit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Red-headed Evan Sinclair carried his old green doublet and battered
+silver ornaments very well, and his neat dancing was in pleasant
+contrast to the curious bounds and leaps of the Finlaysons.  Old Mr.
+Finlayson spent his evening strutting about in a kindly, important
+fashion, and in making Athole Brose after a recipe supplied by Tyne
+Drum, who superintended the brewing of it himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I hope I am not fanciful when I say that the pipes when I hear them
+have to me something irresistibly sad about them, and that they conjure
+up many fantasies in my head which I am half ashamed to put down on
+paper.  They seem to me to gather up in their bitter sobbings all the
+sorrows of a people who have suffered much and have said very little
+about it.  There is the cry in them of children dying in the lonely
+glens in winter-time, when the wind howls round the clachan and the
+snow fills the passes.  One almost sees the little procession of
+black-coated men bearing away a tiny burden from the cottage door into
+the whiteness beyond, with its one heaped-up patch of brown earth on
+either side of the little grave.  They wail, too, of the Killing Time,
+when the Covenanters were crushed but never broken under persecution;
+and one seems to see the defiant gray-haired old men, with their
+splendid obstinacy, unmoved by threats&mdash;not defiant, but simply
+unbreakable.  Thinking of the Covenanters as they pass slowly before
+one to the sighing of the pipes, one wonders if it is possible to
+punish by death the man who is content to die.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tuneful reeds sob out, too, the story of the Prince for whom so
+many brave men bled, and they tell again of the days of song, and of
+noble legends and deeds of daring when the nation spent its passionate
+love on its King.  "Come back! come back!"  The desolate cry of the
+times.  Almost one hears it sounding across the hills, and it seems to
+me that all that it is so hard to speak, so hard even to look, may
+perhaps be told in music.  And I think loyalty and love speak very
+beautifully in the old Jacobite airs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again, as Evan's piper marches up and down in the moonlight playing a
+lament, the romance of life seems lost in the hardness of it, its
+stress and its loss.  "Hame, hame, hame!" the pipes sob forth, crying
+for the homes that are sold to strangers, and for the hills and the
+glens which pass away from the old hands.  It is "Good-bye, good-bye,"
+an eternity of farewells.  And still, wherever life is most difficult,
+wherever comforts are fewest and work is most hard, in the distant
+parts of the world are the Scottish exiles.  But I know that all the
+world over the sons of the heather and the mist, in however distant or
+alien lands they may be, feel always, as they steer their way through
+life, that there is a pole-star by which they set their compass; and
+that some day, perhaps, they or their children may steer the boat to a
+haven on some rocky shore, where the whaup calls shrilly on the moors
+above the loch, and the heather grows strong and tough on the hillside,
+and the peat reek rises almost like the incense of an evening prayer,
+against a gray, soft sky in the land of the North.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I suppose that even in a diary I have no business to mix this up with
+an account of the Finlaysons' dance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina came up to me after conscientiously dancing reels with
+Thomas, looking very pink and pretty, and thoughtful of me, as usual.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't stay longer than you feel inclined," she said.  "I told them to
+come for you in the dog-cart, and to wait about for you between twelve
+and one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will take a turn down on the shore," I said, "and have a cigar, and
+then I will come back and see how you are getting on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina gave me my crutch, and I went down towards the loch, which
+looked like a sheet of silver in the moonlight, and I found Anthony and
+Mrs. Fielden sitting on a garden bench beneath some wind-torn beeches
+by the shore.  To-night there was not a breath of air stirring, and
+Mrs. Fielden had only thrown a light wrap round her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you come to tell me that I am to go in and dance reels with old
+Mr. Finlayson?" she said.  "It is really so much pleasanter out here.
+Do sit down and talk to Sir Anthony and me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She would never have allowed one to know that one was in the way, even
+if one had interrupted a proposal of marriage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Anthony made room for me on the bench, and said heartily, "I am awfully
+glad to see you able to sit up like this, Hugo.  Why, man, you're
+getting as strong as a horse!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh.  I'm all right again," I said.  "I'll begin to grow a new leg
+soon.  And the first thing I mean to do when that happens is to dance
+reels like the Finlaysons."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe I ought to be going in to supper now with Mr. Finlayson,"
+said Mrs. Fielden.  "Does any one know what time it is?  He said he
+would 'conduct me to the dining-hall' at twelve o'clock."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a quarter past now," said Anthony, looking at his watch in the
+moonlight.  "Don't go in, Mrs. Fielden.  Wait out here, and talk to
+Hugo and me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But old Finlayson in his kilt had tracked us to our seat underneath the
+beech-trees, and he took instant possession of our fair neighbour, and
+told us to follow presently.  He thought all the supper-tables were
+full just now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We shan't eat everything before you come," said hospitable old
+Finlayson, walking away with his beautiful partner on his arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden was dressed in white satin, with some pretty soft stuff
+about her, and she wore some white heather in her hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a good sort she is!" said Anthony in a loud voice, almost before
+Mrs. Fielden was out of hearing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It wasn't, perhaps, the most poetical way in which he could have put
+it, but one didn't want or expect Anthony to express himself poetically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Utterly spoilt!" I replied, because at that moment I happened to be
+feeling supremely miserable, and I did not want Anthony to know it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a bit," he replied; "and you know that as well as I do, old chap."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Allow me, Anthony," I said, "to be as savage as I like; it is one of
+the privileges of a cripple."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, blow cripples!" said Anthony.  "You will be shooting next autumn,
+man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what will you be doing?" I said.  After all, we have been pals all
+our lives, and I think Anthony might tell me about it if there is
+anything to tell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I'll be shooting too, I suppose," said Anthony.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We smoked for some time in silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then Anthony began, and said that he had enjoyed himself amazingly
+up here in the North, and he went on to say a good word for every one.
+Old Finlayson had been a brick about his shooting and deer-stalking,
+and it was beastly hard luck that I hadn't been able to come too.  The
+minister wasn't a bad fellow, even when he was jocose; and Evan
+Sinclair was one of the best; and so on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What shall you be doing when you go back, Anthony?" I said, harking
+back to my old question, and hoping for more information than I
+actually asked for.  "Are you going straight home?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll be at the first shoot at Stanby.  Shall you be there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm afraid not," I said.  "I haven't learned to do cross-stitch yet,
+and I'm sure all the women would think me a great bore, sitting about
+in their morning-rooms all day.  Except Mrs. Fielden, of course!  Mrs.
+Fielden would probably persuade me into thinking that the only thing
+that made her house-party successful, or saved herself from boredom,
+was the presence of a lame man in the house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think you are quite just about Mrs. Fielden, Hugo," said
+Anthony, moving rather resentfully on the garden bench.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That doesn't matter much," I replied.  "One voice will not be missed
+from the general chorus of praise that follows Mrs. Fielden wherever
+she goes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; but still&mdash;&mdash;" began Anthony; and then he stopped, and we smoked
+on for some time without speaking.  "You see," he began at last, "she
+is the best friend I ever had."  He did not lower his voice, because I
+suppose Anthony finds it impossible to do so, but went on steadily:
+"You see, I once cared for a little cousin of hers, and she died when
+she was eighteen.  I don't think anybody ever knew about it, except
+Mrs. Fielden.  But she knows how much cut up I was, and I suppose that
+is why she is so nice to me always."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm awfully sorry!" I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never meant to speak about it," said Anthony in a brisk, cheerful
+voice.  "Oh, don't you bother about it, Hugo!  I mean I'm awfully keen
+about hunting, and I have an excellent time, only I don't suppose I
+shall ever care for any one else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks for telling me, Tony."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wouldn't have said anything about it," said Anthony, "if it hadn't
+been for what you said about Mrs. Fielden.  Y'see, she has been so
+awfully good to me, and I don't think you quite understand all she is
+really."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, man," I cried, "I love her with every bit of my heart!  And I
+worship her&mdash;how does one say one worships a woman?&mdash;as if she were the
+sun!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And I think that was the very first moment that I told myself that I
+loved Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap19"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIX.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The minister and Evan Sinclair came to say good-bye; the minister has
+accepted our approaching departure with his usual philosophy.  "You
+would soon tire of this place in the winter-time," he said.  "And even
+looking at it from the other point of view, I believe that summer
+visitors should not prolong their stay above a few months.  I admit
+that we have enjoyed your sojourn amongst us; but were you and your
+sister to become residenters in the place, our intercourse would have
+to be reconstructed from the foundation."  The minister crossed his
+legs, and, without being pressed to continue the subject, he went on:
+"There is a certain conventionality, not to say forbearance, admitted
+and allowed between friends with whom one's acquaintance is to be
+short; but there is a basis stronger than that upon which any lengthy
+friendship must be made."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And that basis?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That basis, I take it," said the minister, "should be a
+straightforward disregard for one another.  I do not believe in
+politeness between near neighbours; it cannot last."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had hoped," said Palestrina, pouting a little, "that you would all
+miss us, Mr. Macorquodale."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We shall miss you," said the minister quickly, but with judgment.  "We
+shall see the merits as well as the demerits of the case.  For
+instance, one of your friends cost me a sovereign for a favourite
+charity of hers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Evan Sinclair said very kindly, blinking his fair eyelashes in a shy
+way, "Well, I know I shall miss you.  The place will seem very dull
+with only Alexander and me left in it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>I</I> shall have my wife," said the minister brutally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Sinclair; "and her mother!  You have kept that pretty dark
+from us, Taurbarrels."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is only a visit," said Mr. Macorquodale shortly.  And he went on in
+a truculent tone, "And I need not have her unless I want to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hear she is strict," murmured Evan.  "I hope you will be allowed to
+look out of the window on the Sabbath, my man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am master in my own house," said Mr. Macorquodale magnificently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Believe me," said Evan, "that's a courtesy title, supported by no
+valid claim, and still less precedent.  A man never has been master of
+his own house when there is a mistress in it.  I remember when my
+brother got married he had just your very ideas, and he gave his wife
+the keys of the linen-press and the store-cupboard, 'But the rest of
+the bunch,' he said, 'I keep to myself.'  And he put them all in his
+pocket.  It was not six months after that," said Evan, "that I went to
+stay with them, and I heard him ask my sister-in-law if she would mind
+his having two pocket-handkerchiefs on Sundays."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Palestrina and I were alone, for Ellicomb had left us a few days
+before, and we hear from the Jamiesons that he is a daily visitor at
+their house.  Thomas and Anthony were out shooting, and Mrs. Fielden
+had gone for a walk over the hills.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have a thousand things to do," said Palestrina, when Evan and the
+minister had departed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I also have a thousand things to do," I replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't tire yourself," said Palestrina.  "What are you going to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am going to re-write my diary," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, my dear," said Palestrina, "that would be the work of months."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am only going to correct all the mistakes I have made in it," I
+replied; and I took my book and a pen, and went and sat in the little
+room on the ground-floor which they call my den.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We once had an old aunt, Palestrina and I, who kept a diary all her
+life, and when any of the relatives whom she mentioned in its pages
+came to die, she used to go through all the back numbers of her journal
+and insert affectionate epithets in front of the names of the deceased.
+For instance (my aunt's existence was not marked by any thrilling
+events), the entry would perhaps be as follows: "Maria was late for
+breakfast this morning.  In the afternoon she had her singing-lesson,
+and afterwards we did some shopping, when Maria tried on her new gown."
+But the amended entry after Maria's death would be, "Our darling Maria
+was (a little) late for breakfast this morning; in the afternoon she
+had her singing-lesson"&mdash;and here would probably be a footnote praising
+Maria's voice&mdash;"afterwards we did some shopping, and"&mdash;Maria struck
+out&mdash;"my sweet girl tried on her new gown."  Any one's death, or even a
+successful marriage of one of the family, would cause her to revise and
+correct her diary in this way, and she used to fan the wet ink with a
+piece of blotting-paper to make it dry black, and thus prevent
+posterity from knowing that the words written over the lines were an
+afterthought induced by subsequent events.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was manifestly an unfair way of keeping a diary.  But I can claim
+her example and hereditary taint as an excuse for my own dishonesty
+this afternoon.  I read through my diary with a sense of utter shame,
+and wherever I found, for instance, that I had said that Mrs. Fielden
+was frivolous, or even that she raised her eyebrows in an affected way,
+I corrected the misstatement by the light of the magnificent discovery
+I had made that Mrs. Fielden was faultless, and that I loved her.  Oh,
+the beauty of this woman and her blessed kindness! the cunning with
+which she conceals her unselfishness, and her ridiculous attempts at
+pretending she is frivolous or worldly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Alas! there were so many misstatements to correct, and so many dear
+adjectives to fill in, that I was not halfway through my task before
+Mrs. Fielden herself tapped at the window and looked in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I believe I must have grinned foolishly, but what I wanted to do was to
+stretch out my arms to the beautiful vision, framed in the hectic
+Virginian creeper round the window, and call out to her to come to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden came in for a minute, and said with the adorable lift of
+the eyebrows: "I have been educating a pair of young boots by walking
+through all the bogs on the hillside.  Listen, they are quite full of
+water."  She raised herself on her toes with a squelching sound of the
+leather, and gave one of her joyous soft laughs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must change directly," I said, with an idiotic sense of
+proprietorship.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I have done so I think I shall come and have tea with you," said
+Mrs. Fielden.  And of course then I knew that she had come home early
+on purpose to have tea with me, and that probably she had given up
+something else which she wanted to do, in order that she might sit by
+me when I was alone&mdash;because of course I have found Mrs. Fielden out
+now, and exposed her hypocrisy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fortunately she took nearly a quarter of an hour to change her wet
+boots, and this gave me time to ask myself why I was behaving like a
+raving idiot, because I had found out that Mrs. Fielden was absolutely
+perfect, and that I loved her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was quite the worst quarter of an hour that I have ever spent,
+because in it I had time to remember that I was a crippled man with one
+leg, and that Mrs. Fielden was a beautiful young woman whom of course
+every one loved, and that she owned an old historical place called
+Stanby, and probably&mdash;I realized this also&mdash;that she would continue to
+come over and sit with a dull man and bewilder him with her beauty and
+her kindness only so long as he did not allow her to know the supremely
+impertinent fact that he had fallen in love with her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I must plead ill-health, and a certain weakness of nerve which no doubt
+always follows a surgical operation, for the fact that I turned round
+and put my face in the pillows for a moment and groaned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden came in in my favourite pale-blue gown which she sometimes
+wears when she changes her frock at tea-time.  She came and took a seat
+beside me, and as she never hurriedly plunges into a conversation we
+sat silent for a time.  The afternoon was darkening now, and the light
+of a blazing fire leaped and played upon her pale-blue dress, and
+turned her brown hair to a sort of red-gold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden thinks she is the only person in the world who can make up
+a fire.  And she is perfectly right.  She arranged the logs with a long
+brass poker, shifting them here and there, while her dear face glowed
+in the light of the fire.  She is not a luxurious woman, in spite of
+being surrounded always by luxury.  For instance, she stands and walks
+in a very erect way, and I have never seen her stuff a lot of sofa
+cushions at her back in a chair, nor lounge on a sofa.  Her glorious,
+buoyant health seems to exempt her from need of support or ease, and
+her figure is too pretty for lounging.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When she had finished arranging the logs she put down the poker and
+looked at me with that dear kindliness of hers, and said in her pretty
+voice, "What have you been doing with yourself this afternoon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The minister and Evan Sinclair came up to say good-bye," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And since then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I took my diary, which still lay on my knee, and hid it under the sofa
+cushions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Since then," I said, "I have been correcting&mdash;that is, writing my
+diary."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, the diary!" exclaimed Mrs. Fielden delightedly.  "I had forgotten
+about that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, you hadn't," I said to myself.  "It is only part of your wilful,
+uncomprehendable, untranslatable charm that makes you pretend sometimes
+that you have no memory.  As a matter of fact, you knew from the first
+that it would be a relief to an egotistical grumbler to get rid of his
+spleen sometimes on blue ruled essay paper, and so you set him a task
+to do, and you have often wondered since how he is getting on with it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I must see the diary," said Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That you certainly shall not," I said; and I pushed the book still
+farther under the sofa cushions&mdash;just as if it was necessary to fight
+with Mrs. Fielden for anything, or any use either!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought you promised," said Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I did I have changed my mind," I said firmly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know you mean all the time to let me see it," said Mrs. Fielden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know I do not mean to let you see it for even a minute of time," I
+replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of Mrs. Fielden's special odd little silences fell between us.
+"No," I said to myself.  "I will <I>not</I> say I am sorry.  I will <I>not</I>
+say I have been a brute, I will <I>not</I> feel a desire to comfort her,
+even if her eyes have the wistful look in them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fielden sat still and looked into the fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What unexpected thing will she do next, I wonder?  Will she suddenly
+burst out laughing, or will she turn and take every bit of manhood out
+of me by smiling?  Or shall I find, when I turn and look at her face,
+simply that she has gone to sleep?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Good heavens!  What if she should be crying?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In an agony of compunction I turned and looked at her; and Mrs. Fielden
+not only smiled, but held out her hand for the book....  I rummaged
+underneath the sofa cushions, and passed it over to her.  She bent
+forward till the firelight from the blazing logs fell full on the open
+page, and she read every one of those corrected lines.  She saw where I
+had once put "affected" I had now put "beautiful," and for "frivolous"
+I put a "lovely gaiety," and she read till she came to the last
+correction of all.  I had run a line through the words "Mrs. Fielden
+came to sit with me," and had written over it, "My darling came to see
+me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Mrs. Fielden closed the book, and left her chair where she had
+been sitting.  She crossed the hearthrug quite slowly till she reached
+my sofa.  And then she kneeled down and took both my hands in her dear
+strong ones, and looked at me with misty blue eyes, like wet
+forget-me-nots.  "But, Hugo dear," she said, "why did you not tell me
+long ago?"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="finis">
+THE END.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<HR>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap20"></A>
+
+<P CLASS="t2">
+  <I>UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME</I>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+BY Miss MACNAUGHTAN.<BR>
+<BR>
+THE FORTUNE OF CHRISTINA M'NAB.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<PRE STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+THE DUENNA OF A GENIUS.             M. E. Francis.
+OWD BOB.                            Alfred Ollivant.
+EIGHT DAYS.                         R. E. Forrest.
+LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.               Miss Braddon.
+THE OCTOPUS.                        Frank Norris.
+THE PIT.                            Frank Norris.
+MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE, Etc.            Booth Tarkington.
+WOODSIDE FARM.                      Mrs. W. K. Clifford.
+WHITE FANG.                         Jack London.
+THE PRINCESS PASSES.                C. N. & A. M. Williamson.
+THE MAN FROM AMERICA.               Mrs. H. de la Pasture.
+SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE.               "Q"
+INCOMPARABLE BELLAIRS.              A. and E. Castle.
+IF YOUTH BUT KNEW!                  A. and E. Castle.
+MATTHEW AUSTIN.                     W. E. Norris.
+HIS GRACE.                          W. E. Norris.
+THE AMERICAN PRISONER.              Eden Phillpotts.
+THE HOSTS OF THE LORD.              Mrs. F. A. Steel.
+THE LADY OF THE BARGE.              W. W. Jacobs.
+THE GOD IN THE CAR.                 Anthony Hope.
+QUISANTE.                           Anthony Hope.
+THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.            Anthony Hope.
+THE KING'S MIRROR.                  Anthony Hope.
+THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE.        Sir G. Parker.
+AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH.         Sir G. Parker.
+THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG.           Sir G. Parker.
+MARRIAGE OF WILLIAM ASHE.           Mrs. Humphry Ward
+HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE.            Mrs. Humphry Ward.
+ROBERT ELSMERE.                     Mrs. Humphry Ward.
+CLEMENTINA.                         A. E. W. Mason.
+THE RECIPE FOR DIAMONDS.            C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne.
+THE WAGES OF SIN.                   Lucas Malet.
+</PRE>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+<I>Etc., Etc.</I>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="t2">
+<I>NELSON'S LIBRARY.</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Lame Dog's Diary, by S. Macnaughtan
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Lame Dog's Diary, by S. Macnaughtan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Lame Dog's Diary
+
+Author: S. Macnaughtan
+
+Release Date: February 3, 2011 [EBook #34777]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LAME DOG'S DIARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "But, Hugo dear," she said, "why did you not tell me
+long ago?"]
+
+
+
+
+A LAME DOG'S DIARY
+
+
+S. Macnaughtan
+
+
+
+
+Thomas Nelson and Sons,
+
+London, Edinburgh, and New York
+
+1908
+
+
+
+
+A LAME DOG'S DIARY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Perhaps curiosity has never been more keen, nor mystery more baffling,
+than has been the case during the last few weeks.  There have been "a
+few friends to tea" at almost every house in the village to see if in
+this way any reasonable conclusions can be arrived at, and even
+Palestrina is satisfied with the number of people who have taken the
+trouble to walk up the hill and chat by my sofa in the afternoons.  But
+although each lady who has called has remarked that she is in the
+secret, but at present is not at liberty to say anything about it, we
+are inclined to think that this is vain boasting, or at least selfish
+reticence.
+
+The two Miss Traceys have announced to almost every caller at their
+little cottage during the last two years that they intend to build.
+
+We have all been naturally a good deal impressed by this statement, and
+although it was never plainly said what the structure was to be, we had
+had for a long time a notion of a detached house on the Common.  And
+surely enough the foundation-stone was laid last year by Miss Ruby
+Tracey with some ceremony, and the first turf of the garden was cut by
+Miss Tracey, and only last month the whole of the Fern Cottage
+furniture was removed in a van to Fairview, as the new house is
+called--the handsomer pieces placed upon the outside of the van, and
+the commoner and least creditable of the bedroom furniture within.
+Every one was at his or her window on the day that the Miss Traceys'
+furniture, with the best cabinet and the inlaid card-table duly
+displayed, was driven in state by the driver of the station omnibus
+through the town.  A rumour got abroad that even more beautiful things
+were concealed from view inside the van, and the Miss Traceys satisfied
+their consciences by saying, "We did not spread the rumour, and we
+shall not contradict it."
+
+But the mystery concerns the furniture in quite a secondary sort of
+way, and it is only important as being the means of giving rise to the
+much-discussed rumour in the town.  For mark, the drawing-room
+furniture was taken at once and stored in a spare bedroom, and the
+drawing-room was left unfurnished.  This fact might have remained in
+obscurity, for in winter time, at least, it is not unusual for ladies
+to receive guests in the dining-room with an apology, the drawing-room
+being a cold sitting-room during the frost.  But Mrs. Lovekin, the lady
+who acts as co-hostess at every entertainment in our neighbourhood,
+handing about her friends' cakes and tea, and taking, we are inclined
+to think, too much upon herself, did, in a moment of expansion, offer
+to show the Traceys' house to the Blinds, who happened to call there on
+the day when she was paying her respects to Miss Tracey.  Mrs. Lovekin
+always removes her bonnet and cloak in every house, and this helps the
+suggestion that she is in some sort a hostess everywhere.
+
+Palestrina, who was also calling on the Miss Traceys, gave me a full,
+true, and particular account of the affair the same evening.
+
+"Mind the wet paint," Mrs. Lovekin called from the dining-room window
+to the Miss Blinds as they came in at the gate, "and I'll open the
+door," she remarked, as she sailed out into the passage to greet the
+sisters.  Miss Ruby Tracey would rather have done this politeness
+herself, in order that she might hear the flattering remarks which
+people were wont to make about the hall paper.  It is so well known
+that she and her sister keep three servants that they never have any
+hesitation in going to the door themselves.  Whereas the Miss Blinds,
+who have only one domestic, would seem hardly to know where their front
+door is situated.
+
+"What an elegant paper!" exclaimed Miss Lydia Blind, stopping awestruck
+in the little hall.  Miss Lydia would, one knows, have something kind
+to say if she went to pay a call at a Kaffir hut.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Lovekin in a proprietary sort of way; "it is one of
+Moseley's which Smithson got down in his book of patterns.  The blue
+paint is what they call 'eggshell'--quite a new shade.  Come this way
+and have a cup of tea."
+
+"I am sure it is all very simple," said Miss Tracey, in a disparaging
+manner that showed her good breeding, as they sat down in the
+dining-room.  "How do you like the new carpet, Miss Belinda?"
+
+"Glory, glory, glory!" said Miss Belinda; "glory, glory, glory!"
+
+"Show Miss Lydia the new footstools, Ruby dear," said Miss Tracey; "I
+am sure she would like to see them."  For we all believe--or like to
+believe--that to praise our property must be Miss Lydia's highest
+pleasure.
+
+Mrs. Lovekin seized the opportunity to act as tea-maker to the party.
+She poured cream and sugar into the cups with the remark that there was
+no one in Stowel whose tastes in these respects she did not know, and
+she handed a plate of cake to Miss Belinda, saying,--
+
+"There, my dear, you sit comfortable and eat that."
+
+"Glory, glory, glory!" said Miss Belinda.
+
+The Miss Traceys had tea dispensed to them by the same hand, and
+accepted it with that slight sense of bewilderment which Mrs. Lovekin
+sometimes makes us feel when she looks after us in our own houses; and
+Miss Lydia Blind distributed her thanks equally between her and the
+Miss Traceys.
+
+Nothing was talked of that afternoon but the new house--its sunny
+aspect and its roomy cupboards in particular commanding the heartiest
+commendation.  Presently the ladies were taken to see all over it, with
+the exception of one of the spare bedrooms and the drawing-room.  They
+knew these rooms existed, because Miss Tracey paused at the door of
+each, and said lightly, "This is the drawing-room," and "This is
+another spare bedroom;" and although, as my sister confided to me, they
+would have given much to see the interior of the rooms, they could not
+do so, of course, uninvited.
+
+They paused to admire something at every turn, even saying generously,
+but playfully, that there were many of Miss Tracey's possessions which
+they positively coveted for themselves.  The Miss Traceys smilingly
+repudiated their felicitations, while Mrs. Lovekin accepted them and
+announced the price of everything.  She became quite breathless,
+hurrying upstairs, while she exhibited stair-rods and carpets, and with
+shortened breath apostrophized them as being "real brass" or "the best
+Brussels at five-and-threepence."  No one is vulgar in Stowel, but Mrs.
+Lovekin is, we fear, not genteel.
+
+At the close of the visit, Mrs. Lovekin again ushered the visitors into
+the hall, and opening, "by the merest accident," as she afterwards
+said--without, however, gaining any credence for her statement--opening
+by the merest accident the door of the drawing-room, she peeped in.
+
+The drawing-room was void of furniture.  The wild thought came into
+Mrs. Lovekin's mind--had the Traceys overbuilt themselves, and had the
+furniture, which had been carried so proudly through the town on the
+top of the furniture-van, been sold to pay expenses?  The suggestion
+was immediately put aside.  The Miss Traceys' comfortable means were so
+well known that such an explanation could not be seriously contemplated
+for a moment.  No; putting two and two together, a closed spare bedroom
+and an empty drawing-room, and bringing a woman's instinct to bear upon
+the question, it all pointed to one thing--the Miss Traceys were going
+to give a party, probably an evening party, in honour of the new house,
+and the drawing-room furniture was being stored for safety in the spare
+bedroom until the rout was over.  Doubtless the first rumour of the
+Miss Traceys' party was meanly come by, but it was none the less
+engrossing, all the same.  Miss Lydia hoped that no one would believe
+for a moment that she was in any way connected with the fraudulent
+intrusion that had been made into Miss Tracey's secret, and Miss Tracey
+said,--
+
+"I have known Mary Anne Lovekin for thirty years"--this was
+understating the case, but numbers are not exactly stated as we grow
+older--"but I never would have believed that she could have done such a
+thing."
+
+"Bad butter," said Miss Belinda, shaking her head in an emphatic
+fashion; "bad butter, bad butter!"
+
+"I do not want to judge people," said Miss Tracey; "but there was a
+want of delicacy about opening a closed door which I for one cannot
+forgive."  The Miss Traceys' good-breeding is proverbial in Stowel, and
+it was felt that her uncompromising attitude could not but be excused
+when it was a matter of her most honourable sensibilities having been
+outraged.
+
+"_I_ shall not say what I think," said Miss Ruby.
+
+We often find that when Miss Ruby cannot transcend what her sister has
+said, she has a way of hinting darkly at a possible brilliance of
+utterance which for some reason she refrains from making.
+
+"Bad butter!" said Miss Belinda; "bad, bad butter!"
+
+Many years ago Miss Belinda Blind, who was then a beautiful young
+woman, was thrown from a pony carriage.  The result of the fall was an
+injury to the spine, and she was smitten with a paralytic stroke which
+deprived her of all power of speech.  She was dumb for some years, and
+then two phrases came back to her stammering tongue, "glory," and "bad
+butter."  She understands perfectly what is said to her, but she has no
+means of replying, save in this very limited vocabulary.  And,
+strangely enough, these words can only be made to correspond with Miss
+Belinda's feelings.  However polite her intentions may be, if at heart
+she disapproves she can only utter her two words of opprobrium.  When a
+sermon displeases her she sits in her pew muttering softly, and her
+lips show by their movement the words she is repeating; while a
+particularly good cup of tea will evoke from her the extravagant
+phrase, "Glory, glory, glory!"
+
+"Certainly," I said to Miss Lydia on the day succeeding the famous
+visit to the Traceys, "Mrs. Lovekin's information, if so it may be
+called, has been wrongly come by, and yet so frail is human nature one
+cannot help speculating upon it."
+
+"That is what is so sad," said Miss Lydia; "one almost feels as though
+sharing in Mrs. Lovekin's deceit by dwelling upon her information, and
+yet one's mind seems incapable of even partially forgetting such an
+announcement."
+
+Perhaps some suggestion of what was forming the topic of conversation
+in the town may have reached the Miss Traceys, and hastened their
+disclosure of the mystery.  For very shortly afterwards, one morning
+when a flood of April sunshine had called us out of doors to wander on
+the damp paths of the garden, and watch bursting buds and listen to the
+song of birds in a very rural and delightful fashion, we were informed
+by a servant who tripped out in a white cap and apron, quite dazzling
+in the sunshine, that the Miss Traceys were within.
+
+I appealed to my sister to furnish me with a means of escape.  But she
+replied: "I am afraid they have seen you.  Besides, you know I like you
+to see people."  We went indoors, and Miss Ruby apologized for the
+untimely hour at which she and her sister had come, but explained it by
+saying, "We wanted to find you alone."  And then we knew that the
+mystery was about to be solved.
+
+"You are the first to hear about it," said Miss Tracey in a manner
+which was distinctly flattering.  The Miss Traceys sit very erect on
+their chairs, and when they come to call I always apologize for having
+my leg up on the sofa.
+
+"The fact is," Miss Tracey went on, "that we knew that we could rely
+upon your good sense and judgment in a matter which is exercising us
+very seriously at present."
+
+"It is a delicate subject, of course," said Miss Ruby, "but one which
+we feel certain we may confide to you."
+
+"We always look upon Mr. Hugo as a man of the world," said Miss Tracey,
+"although he is such an invalid, and we rely upon the sound judgment of
+you both."
+
+Well, to state the subject without further preamble--but of course it
+must be understood that everything spoken this morning was to be in
+strict confidence--would we consider that they, the Miss Traceys, were
+sufficiently chaperoned if their brother the Vicar were present at the
+dance, and promised not to leave until the last gentleman had quitted
+the house?
+
+I do not like to overstate a lady's age, and it is with the utmost
+diffidence that I suggest that Miss Ruby Tracey, the younger of the two
+sisters, may be on the other side of forty.
+
+"You see, we have not only our own good name to consider," said Miss
+Tracey, "but the memory of our dear and ever-respected father must, we
+feel, be our guide in this matter, and we cannot decide how he would
+have wished us to act.  If our brother were married it would simplify
+matters very much."
+
+"You would have had your invitation before now," said Miss Ruby, "if we
+had been able to come to a decision, but without advice we felt that
+was impossible.  I am sure," she went on, giving her mantle a little
+nervous composing touch, and glancing aside as though hardly liking to
+face any eye directly--"I am sure the things one hears of unmarried
+women doing nowadays ... but of course one would not like to be classed
+with that sort of person."
+
+Palestrina was the first of us who spoke.
+
+"I think," she said gravely, "that as you are so well known here,
+nothing could be said."
+
+"You really think so?" said Miss Ruby.
+
+But Miss Tracey still demurred.  She said: "But it is the fact of our
+being so well known here that really constitutes my chief uneasiness.
+We often feel," she added with a sigh, "that in another place we could
+have more liberty."
+
+"I assure you," said Miss Ruby, in a tone of playful confession, "that
+when we go to visit our cousins in London we are really quite
+shockingly frivolous.  I do not know what it is about London; one
+always seems to throw off all restraint."
+
+"I think you are giving a wrong impression, dear," said Miss Tracey.
+"There was nothing in the whole of our conduct in London which would
+not bear repetition in Stowel.  Only, in a place like this, one feels
+one must often explain one's actions, lest they should give rise to
+misrepresentations; whereas in London, although behaving, I hope, in a
+manner just as circumspect, one feels that no apology or explanation is
+needed."
+
+"There is a sort of cheerful privacy about London," said the other
+sister, "which I find it hard to explain, but which is nevertheless
+enjoyable."
+
+To say that there is a dull publicity about the country, was too
+obvious a retort.
+
+"I think we went out every evening when we were in West Kensington,"
+said Miss Tracey.
+
+"Counting church in the evening," said Miss Ruby.
+
+"Still, those evening services in London almost count as going out,"
+said Miss Tracey; "I mean, they are so lively.  I often blame myself
+for not being able to look upon them more in the light of a religious
+exercise.  I find it as difficult to worship in a strange pew as to
+sleep comfortably in a strange bed."
+
+The Miss Traceys' morning call lasted until one o'clock, and even then,
+as they themselves said, rising and shaking out their poplin skirts,
+there was much left undiscussed which they would still have liked to
+talk over with us.  The ball supper, as they called it, was to be
+cooked at home, and to consist of nothing which could not be "eaten in
+the hand."
+
+Claret-cup was, to use Miss Tracey's own figure of speech, to be
+"flowing" the whole evening, both in the dining-room with the
+sandwiches and cakes, and on a tray placed in a recess behind the hall
+door.
+
+"Gentlemen always seem so thirsty," said Miss Tracey, making the remark
+as though speaking of some animal of strange habits which she had
+considered with the bars of its cage securely fixed between herself and
+it at the Zoo.
+
+"We have bought six bottles of Essence of Claret-cup," said the younger
+sister, "which we have seen very highly recommended in advertisements;
+and although it says that three tablespoonfuls will make a quart of the
+cup, we thought of putting four, and so having it good."
+
+"As regards the music," went on Miss Tracey, "we have come, I think, to
+a very happy decision.  A friend of ours knows a blind man who plays
+the piano for dances, and by employing him we feel that we shall be
+giving remunerative work to a very deserving person, as well as
+ensuring for ourselves a really choice selection of the most
+fashionable waltzes.  Ruby pronounces the floor perfect," said Miss
+Tracey, glancing admiringly at her younger sister's still neat figure
+and nimble feet; "she has been practising upon it several times----"
+
+"With the blinds down, dear," amended Miss Ruby, simpering a little.
+"We understand," she continued, "that some chalk sprinkled over the
+boards before dancing begins is beneficial.  You should have known
+Stowel in the old days, when there was a county ball every winter at
+the Three Jolly Postboys--such a name!" continued Miss Ruby, who was in
+that curiously excited state when smiles and even giggles come easily.
+
+"Now remember," said Miss Tracey to Palestrina, as she took leave of
+her, "you must come and help with the decorations on the morning of the
+dance.  You can rest in the afternoon, so as to look your best and
+rosiest in the evening."
+
+In Stowel it is ingenuously admitted that a young lady should try and
+look her best when gentlemen are to be present, and rosy cheeks are
+still in vogue.
+
+The Miss Traceys' drawing-room is not a very large room, even when
+empty of furniture, but it certainly had a most festive appearance when
+we drove up to the famous house-warming.  Every curtain was looped with
+evergreens, and every fireplace was piled with ivy, while two large
+flags, which were referred to several times as "a display of bunting,"
+festooned the little staircase.  Several friends in the village had
+lent their white-capped maids for the occasion, and these ran against
+each other in the little linoleum passage in a state of great
+excitement, and called each other "dear" in an exuberance of affection
+which relieved their fluttered feelings.
+
+A palm had been ordered from London and placed triumphantly in a
+corner--the palm had been kept as a surprise for us all.  In the course
+of the evening it was quite a common thing to hear some girl ask her
+partner if he had seen The Palm; and if the reply was in the negative,
+the couple made a journey to the hall to look at it.
+
+And here I must note a curious trait in the conversation prevalent in
+our select circle at Stowel.  We all speak in capitals.  The definite
+article is generally preferred to the "a" or "an" which points out a
+common noun; and so infectious is the habit, that when writing, for
+instance, of the Jamiesons, I find myself referring to The Family, with
+a capital, quite in a royal way, so perspicuously are capital letters
+suggested by their manner of speech.  In the same way, the Taylors'
+uncle is never referred to by any of us except as The Uncle, and I feel
+sure that I should be doing the Traceys' plant an injustice if I did
+not write it down The Palm.
+
+This, however, is a digression.
+
+The calmness of the Miss Traceys was almost overdone.  They stood at
+the door of their drawing-room, each holding a small bouquet in her
+hand, and they greeted their guests as though nothing could be more
+natural than to give a dance, or to stand beneath a doorway draped with
+white lace curtains, and with a background of dissipated-looking
+polished boards and evergreens.  The elder Miss Tracey, who is tall,
+was statuesque and dignified; the younger lady was conversational and
+natural almost to the point of artificiality--so determined was Miss
+Ruby to repudiate any hint of arrogance this evening.  And it may be
+said of both sisters that they were strikingly well-bred and
+unembarrassed.  Those who had seen them in all the flutter of
+preparations during the day--washing china and glass, issuing packets
+of candles from their store cupboard below the stairs, and jingling
+large bunches of keys--could admire these outward symbols of ease, and
+appreciate the self-restraint that they involved.
+
+I do not remember before, at any dance, seeing so many old young
+ladies, or so few and such very juvenile young men.  The elderly young
+ladies smiled the whole time, while their boy partners looked
+preternaturally grave and solemn.  They appeared to be shyly conscious
+of their shirt collars, and these, I fancy, must have been made after
+some exaggerated pattern which I cannot now recall; I only remember
+that they appeared to be uncomfortably high and somewhat conspicuous,
+and that they gave one the idea of being the wearers' first high
+collars.
+
+The Vicar, who had promised to come at eight o'clock so that there
+should be no mistake about his being in the house from first to last of
+the dance, and who had been sent for in a panic at a quarter past
+eight, acted conscientiously throughout the entire entertainment.  He
+began by inviting Mrs. Fielden to dance, and afterwards he asked every
+lady in turn according to her rank, and I do not think that during the
+entire evening his feet can have failed to respond to a single bar of
+the music.  The blind musician was a little late in arriving, and we
+all sat round the drawing-room with our backs to the new blue wallpaper
+and longed for home.  No one dared to offer to play a waltz, in case it
+should be considered an affront at a party where etiquette was so
+conspicuous, and where the peculiar Stowel air of mystery pervaded
+everything.
+
+The Jamiesons arrived, a party of nine, in the station omnibus, and
+chatted in the hearty, unaffected manner peculiar to themselves, waving
+little fans to and fro in the chilly air of the new drawing-room, and
+putting an end to the solemn silence which had distinguished the first
+half-hour of the party.  Each of the sisters wore a black dress
+relieved by a touch of colour, and carried a fan.  Their bright eyes
+shone benignly behind their several pairs of pince-nez; and as they
+shook hands with an air of delight with every single person in the room
+when they entered, their arrival caused quite a pleasant stir.
+
+Mrs. Lovekin had already, in her character of co-hostess, begun to
+distribute the Essence of Claret-cup that, diluted with water, formed
+the staple beverage of the evening and was placed on a small table
+behind the hall-door.  There was rather a curious sediment left at the
+bottom of the glasses, and the flavour of cucumber suggested vaguely to
+one that the refreshment might be claret-cup.  Very young men in split
+white kid gloves drank a good deal of it.
+
+At last the blind musician was led solemnly across the room, and took
+up his position at the piano.  He always left off playing before a
+figure of a quadrille or lancers was finished, and then the dancers
+clapped their hands to make him continue, and the elderly young ladies
+smiled more than ever.  At the second or third waltz my sister was in
+the proud position of being claimed in turn by the Vicar as his
+partner; and the position, besides being prominent, was such an
+enviable one that Palestrina, who is not more given to humility than
+other good-looking young women of her age, was carried away by popular
+feeling so far as to remark in a tone of gratitude that this was very
+kind of him.
+
+He replied, "I have made up my mind to sacrifice myself for the night;"
+and one realized that a lofty position and a prominent place in the
+world may carry with them sufficient humiliations to keep one meek.
+
+The conscientious Vicar did not allow his partner to sit down once
+throughout the entire waltz, and I think the blind musician played at
+greater length than usual.  I began to wonder if her partner regarded
+my excellent Palestrina as a sort of Sandow exerciser, and whether he
+was trying to get some healthy gymnastics, if not amusement, out of
+their dance together.
+
+"There!" he said at last, placing her on a chair beside me as a
+fulfilled duty; and feeling that she was expected to say "Thank you,"
+Palestrina meekly said it.
+
+"I have only danced once in the last twenty years," said the Vicar,
+"and that was with some choir boys."  And the next moment the blind man
+began to play again, and he was footing it with conscientious energy
+with Miss Lydia Blind.
+
+Young ladies who had sat long with their empty programmes in their
+hands now began to dance with each other with an air of overdone
+merriment, protesting that they did not know how to act gentleman, but
+declaring with emphasis that it was just as amusing to dance with a
+girl-friend as with a man.
+
+The music, as usual, failed before the end of each figure of the dance,
+and the curate, who wore a pair of very smart shoe-buckles, remarked to
+me that the lancers was a dance that created much diversion, and I
+replied that they were too amusing for anything.
+
+The Jamiesons' youngest brother, who is in a shipping-office in London,
+had come down to Stowel especially for this occasion.  Once, some years
+ago, Kennie, as he is called, made a voyage in one of the shipping
+company's large steamers to South America.  He landed at Buenos Ayres
+armed to the teeth, and walked about the pavement of that
+highly-civilized town, with its wooden pavements and plate-glass shop
+windows, in a sombrero and poncho, and with terrible weapons stuck in
+his belt.  At the end of a week he returned in the same ship in which
+he had made the outward voyage, and since then he has had tales to tell
+of those wild regions with which any of the stories in the _Boys' Own
+Paper_ are tame in comparison.  In his dress and general appearance he
+even now suggests a pirate king.  His tales of adventure are always
+accompanied by explanatory gestures and demonstrations, and it is not
+unusual to see Kennie stand up in the midst of an admiring circle of
+friends and make some fierce sabre-cuts in the air.  He was dressed
+with a red cummerbund round his waist, and he drew attention to it by
+an apology to every one of his partners for having it on.  "One gets
+into the habit of dressing like this out there," he said in a tone of
+excuse.  The Pirate Boy was in great demand at the dance.
+
+Pretty Mrs. Fielden, who had driven over from Stanby, beautifully
+dressed as usual, and slightly amused, ordered her carriage early, and
+had merely come to oblige those quaint old dears, the Miss Traceys.
+
+Even at the house-warming Mrs. Fielden would have considered it quite
+impossible to sit out a dance.  She brought an elderly Colonel with
+her, and she conducted him into a corner behind The Palm, and talked to
+him there till it was her turn to dance with the Vicar.  Had it not
+been Mrs. Fielden, whose position placed her above criticism, the
+breath of envy might have whispered that it was hardly fair that one
+couple should occupy the favourite sitting-out place--two drawing-room
+chairs beneath The Palm--to the exclusion of others.  But Mrs. Fielden
+being whom she was, the young ladies of Stowel were content to pass and
+repass the coveted chairs and to whisper admiringly, "How exquisite she
+is looking to-night!"
+
+"Is there anything of me left?" she said to me, looking cool and
+unruffled when her dance with the Vicar was over.  She had only made
+one short turn of the room with him, and her beautiful dress and her
+hair were quite undisturbed.
+
+"You haven't danced half so conscientiously as his other partners
+have," I said.
+
+"I wanted to talk about the parish," said Mrs. Fielden, "so I stopped.
+I think I should like to go and get cool somewhere."
+
+"I will take you to sit under The Palm again, as Colonel Jardine did,"
+I replied, "and you shall laugh at all the broad backs and flat feet of
+our country neighbours, and hear everybody say as they pass how
+beautiful you are."
+
+Mrs. Fielden turned her head towards me as if to speak, and I had a
+sudden vivid conviction that she would have told me I was rude had I
+not been a cripple with one leg.
+
+We sat under The Palm.  Mrs. Fielden never rushes into a conversation.
+Presently she said,--
+
+"Why do you come to this sort of thing?  It can't amuse you."
+
+"You told me the other day," I said, "that I ought to cultivate a small
+mind and small interests."
+
+"Did I?" said Mrs. Fielden lightly.  "If I think one thing one day, I
+generally think quite differently a day or two after.  To-night, for
+instance, I think it is a mistake for you to lean against the Miss
+Traceys' new blue walls and watch us dance."
+
+"I'm not sure that it isn't better than sitting at home and reading how
+well my old regiment is doing in South Africa.  Besides, you know, I am
+writing a diary."
+
+"Are you?" said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"You advised it," I said.
+
+"Did I?"
+
+When Mrs. Fielden is provoking she always looks ten times prettier than
+she does at other times.
+
+"A good many people in this little place," I said, "have made up their
+minds to 'do the work that's nearest' and to help 'a lame dog over
+stiles.'  I think I should be rather a brute if I didn't respond to
+their good intentions."
+
+"I don't think they need invent stiles, though!" said Mrs. Fielden
+quickly; "wood-carving, and beating brass, and playing the zither----"
+
+"I do not play the zither," I said.
+
+"--are not stiles.  They are making a sort of obstacle race of your
+life."
+
+"Since I have begun to write the diary," I said, "I've been able to
+excuse myself attempting these things, even when tools are kindly
+brought to me.  And, so far, no one has so absolutely forgotten that
+there is a lingering spark of manhood in me as to suggest that I should
+crochet or do cross-stitch."
+
+"You know I am going to help to write the diary," said Mrs. Fielden,
+"only I'm afraid I shall have to go to all their tea-parties, shan't I,
+to get copy?"
+
+"You will certainly have to go," I said.
+
+"I'm dreadfully bored to-night; aren't you?" she said confidentially,
+and in a certain radiant fashion as distant as the Poles from boredom.
+"No one can really enjoy this sort of thing, do you think?  It's like
+being poor, or anything disagreeable of that sort.  People think they
+ought to pretend to like it, but they don't."
+
+"I wish I could entertain you better," I said sulkily; "but I'm afraid
+I never was the least bit amusing."
+
+Mrs. Fielden relapsed into one of her odd little silences, and I
+determined I would not ask her what she was thinking about.
+
+Presently Colonel Jardine joined us, and she said to him: "Please see
+if you can get my carriage; it must be five o'clock in the morning at
+least."  And the next moment I was made to feel the egotism of
+imagining I had been punished, when she bade me a charming
+"good-night."  She smiled congratulations on her hostesses on the
+success of the party, and pleaded the long drive to Stanby as an excuse
+for leaving early.  The Colonel wrapped her in a long, beautiful cloak
+of some pale coloured velvet and fur--a sumptuous garment at which
+young ladies in shawls looked admiringly--and Mrs. Fielden slipped it
+on negligently, and got into her brougham.
+
+"Oh, how tired I am!" she said.
+
+"It was pretty deadly," said the Colonel.  "Did you taste the
+claret-cup?" he added, making a grimace in the dark.
+
+"Oh, I found it excellent," said Mrs. Fielden quickly.
+
+Margaret Jamieson now took her place at the piano, to enable the blind
+man to go and have some supper; but, having had it, he slept so
+peacefully that no one could bear to disturb him, so between them the
+young ladies shared his duties till the close of the evening.
+
+Palestrina had suggested, as a little occupation for me, that I should
+write out programmes for the dance, and I had done so.  Surely
+programmes were never so little needed before!  Every grown man had
+left the assembly long before twelve o'clock struck, the feebleness of
+the excuses for departing thus early being only equalled by the gravity
+with which they were made.  Even the lawyer, who we thought would have
+remained faithful to the end, pleaded that since he ricked his knee he
+is obliged to have plenty of rest.  The Pirate Boy had had some bitter
+words with the lawyer at a previous stage in the evening about the way
+in which the lancers should be danced, and had muttered darkly, "I
+won't make a disturbance in a lady's house, but I have seen a fellow
+called out for less."  He considered that the lawyer was running away,
+unable to bear his cold, keen eye upon him during the next lancers, and
+he watched him depart, standing at the head of the tiny staircase,
+beneath the display of bunting, with his arms folded in a Napoleonic
+attitude.
+
+All good things come to an end, and even the Vicar of Stowel must have
+felt that there are limits to the most conscientious energy.  And
+girls, dancing with each other, learn perhaps that the merriment caused
+by acting as a man is not altogether lasting; while elderly young
+ladies, although agreed in smiling to the very end, must be aware how
+fixed in expression such a smile may become towards the end of a long
+evening.
+
+Good-nights were said, and carriages were called up with a good deal of
+unnecessary shouting, while the Pirate Boy insisted upon going to the
+heads of the least restive horses and soothing them in a way which he
+said he had learned from those Gaucho fellows out there.
+
+I have never been able to tell what the Miss Traceys thought about
+their dance.  If they were disappointed, the world was not allowed to
+probe that tender spot.  Possibly they were satisfied with its success;
+the proprietary instinct of admiration applies to entertainments as
+well as to tangible possessions.  But that satisfaction, if it existed,
+was modestly veiled--the house-warming was less discussed by them than
+by any one else.  Miss Ruby spoke rather wistfully one day about simple
+pleasures being the best and safest after all, and she alluded with a
+sigh to the time which must come some day when she would be no longer
+young.  Miss Tracey drew herself up and said: "A woman is only as old
+as she looks, my dear," and glanced admiringly at her sister.
+
+The diluted Essence of Claret-cup was bottled, and formed a nice light
+luncheon wine at the Miss Tracey's for many weeks afterwards.  The
+furniture was brought down from the spare bedroom by the maids, who
+walked the heavier pieces in front of them with a curious tip-toeing
+movement of the castors of the several easy-chairs.  The art tiles in
+the grate were cleared of their faded burden of evergreens, and The
+Palm was carried into the bay-window, where it could be seen from the
+road.
+
+I drove over to see Mrs. Fielden and to ask her if she thought I had
+been a sulky brute at the dance.
+
+"Were you?" said Mrs. Fielden, lifting her pretty dark eyebrows; "I
+forget."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Palestrina and I live in the country, and whenever we are dull or sad,
+like the sailors in Mr. Gilbert's poem, we decide that our
+neighbourhood is too deadly uninteresting, and then we go and see the
+Jamiesons.  They are our nearest neighbours, as they are also amongst
+our greatest friends, and the walk to their house is a distance that I
+am able to manage.  I believe that our visits to the Jamiesons are most
+often determined by the state of the weather.  If we have passed a long
+wet day indoors I feel that it is going to be a Jamieson day, and I
+know that my sister will say to me after tea, "Suppose we go over and
+see the Jamiesons;" and she generally adds that it is much better than
+settling down for the evening at five o'clock in the afternoon.
+
+I do not think that Palestrina was so sociable a young woman, nor did
+she see so much of her neighbours, before I came home an invalid from
+South Africa--I got hit in the legs at Magersfontein, and had the left
+one taken off in the hospital at Wynberg--but she believes, no doubt
+rightly, that the variety that one gets by seeing one's fellow-men is
+good for a poor lame dog who lies on a sofa by the fire the greater
+part of the day, wishing he could grow another leg or feel fit again.
+
+Acting upon this unalterable conviction of my sister, we drive about in
+the afternoon and see people, and they come and see me and suggest
+occupations for me.  In Lent I had a more than usual number of callers,
+which says much for the piety of the place, as well as for the goodness
+of heart of its inhabitants.
+
+There is a slight coolness between what is known as the "County" and
+the Jamiesons, and their name is never mentioned without the
+accompanying piece of information, "You know, old Jamieson married his
+cook!"  To be more exact, Mrs. Jamieson was a small farmer's daughter,
+and Captain Jamieson fell in love with her when, having left the army,
+he went to learn practical farming at old Higgins's, and he loved her
+faithfully to the day of his death.  She is a stout, elderly woman who
+speaks very little, but upon whom an immense amount of affection seems
+to be lavished by her family of five daughters and two sons.  And it
+has sometimes seemed to my sister and me that her good qualities are of
+a lasting and passive sort, which exist in large measure in the hearts
+of those who bestow this boundless affection.  Mrs. Jamieson's form of
+introducing herself to any one she meets consists in giving an account
+of the last illness and death of her husband.  There is hardly a
+poultice which was placed upon that poor man which her friends have not
+heard about.  And when she has finished, in her flat, sad voice, giving
+every detail of his last disorder, Mrs. Jamieson's conversation is at
+an end.  She has learned, no doubt unconsciously, to gauge the
+characters of new acquaintances by the degree of interest which they
+evince in Captain Jamieson's demise.  It is Mrs. Jamieson's test of
+their true worth.
+
+Of the other sorrow which saddened a nature that perhaps was never very
+gay, Mrs. Jamieson rarely speaks.  Possibly because she thinks of it
+more than of anything else in the world.  Among her eight children
+there was only one who appeared to his mother to combine all perfection
+in himself.  He was killed by an accident in his engineering works
+seven years ago, and although his friends will, perhaps, only remember
+him as a stout young fellow who sang sea-songs with a distended chest,
+his mother buried her heart with him in his grave, and even the voice
+of strangers is lowered as they say, "She lost a son once."
+
+The late Captain Jamieson, a kindly, shrewd man and a Scotchman withal,
+was agent to Mrs. Fielden, widow of the late member for Stanby, and
+when he died his income perished with him, and The Family of
+Jamieson--a large one, as has been told--were thankful enough to
+subsist on their mother's inheritance of some four or five hundred a
+year, bequeathed to her by the member of the non-illustrious house of
+Higgins, late farmer deceased.  It is a hospitable house, for all its
+narrow means, and there live not, I believe, a warmer-hearted or more
+generous family than these good Jamiesons.  The girls are energetic,
+bright, and honest; their slender purses are at the disposal of every
+scoundrel in the parish; and their time, as well as their boundless
+energy, is devoted to the relief of suffering or to the betterment of
+mankind.
+
+Mrs. Fielden is of the opinion that nothing gives one a more perfect
+feeling of rest than going to Belmont, as the Jamiesons' little house
+is called, and watching them work.  She calls it the "Rest Cure."
+Every one of the five sisters, except Maud, who is the beauty of the
+family, wears spectacles, and behind these their bright, intelligent
+small eyes glint with kindness and brisk energy.  The worst feature of
+this excellent family is their habit of all talking at the same time,
+in a certain emphatic fashion which renders it difficult to catch what
+each individual is saying, and this is especially the case when three
+of the sisters are driving sewing-machines simultaneously.  They have a
+genius for buying remnants of woollen goods at a small price, and
+converting them into garments for the poor; and their first question
+often is, as they hold a piece of flannel or serge triumphantly aloft,
+"What do you think I gave for that?"  Palestrina always names at least
+twice the sum that has purchased the goods, and has thereby gained a
+character for being dreadfully extravagant but sympathetic.
+
+"I do not believe," I said to Palestrina the other day, "that these
+good Jamiesons have a thought beyond making other people happy."
+
+"That and getting married are the sole objects of their existence,"
+said Palestrina.
+
+"It is very odd," I said, "that women so devoid of what might be called
+sentiment are yet so bent upon this very thing."
+
+"Eliza told me to-day," said Palestrina, "that as Kate has not
+mentioned one single man in her letters home, they cannot help thinking
+that there is something in it."
+
+The Jamiesons have the same vigorous, energetic ideas about matrimony
+that they have about everything else, and almost their sole grievance,
+naively expressed, is that Maud, "who gets them all"--meaning, I
+believe, offers of marriage--is the only one of the family who is
+unable to make up her mind clearly on this momentous question.
+
+"We should not mind," say the conclave of sisters during one of the
+numerous family discussions on this subject, "even if she does get all
+the admirers--for of course she is the pretty one--if only she would
+accept one of them.  But she always gets undecided and silly as soon as
+they come to the point."
+
+It should be observed in passing that the different stages of
+development in love affairs are shrewdly noted and commented upon by
+the Jamiesons.  The first evidence of a man's preference is that he "is
+struck;" and the second, when he begins to visit at the house, is known
+as "hovering."  An inquiry after Maud's health will sometimes elicit
+the unexpected reply that another admirer is hovering at present.  The
+third stage is reached when the lover is said to be "dangling;" and the
+final triumph, when Maud has received a proposal, is noted as having
+"come to the point."
+
+If Maud's triumphs are watched with small sighs of envy by her sisters,
+they are a source of nothing but gratification to them to retail to the
+outside world.  There is a strict account kept of Maud's "conquests" in
+the letters sent to relatives, and the evening's post will sometimes
+contain the startling announcement that Maud has had a fourth in one
+year.
+
+"Of course, you know how fond we all are of each other," said Eliza
+Jamieson to me one day with one of those unexpected confidences which
+the effeminacy of sickness seems to warrant, if not actually to invite,
+"but we can't help thinking that, humanly speaking, we should all have
+a better chance if only Maud would marry.  No one would wish her to
+marry without love, but we fear she is looking for perfection, and
+_that_ she will never get; and it was really absurd of her to be so
+upset when she discovered, after nearly getting engaged to Mr. Reddy,
+that he wore a wig.  After all, a man may be a good Christian in spite
+of having no hair."
+
+"That is undoubtedly a fact," I said warmly.
+
+"And Mr. Reddy had excellent prospects," said Eliza, "although perhaps
+nothing very tangible at present.  Then there was Albert Gore, to whom,
+one must admit, Maud gave every encouragement, and we had begun to
+think it quite hopeful; but just at the end she discovered that she
+could not care for any one called Albert, which was too silly."
+
+"She might have called him Bertie," I suggested.
+
+"Yes," said Eliza eagerly; "and you see, none of us hope or expect to
+marry a man who has not some of these little drawbacks, so I really do
+not see why Maud should expect it."
+
+Five matrimonial alliances in one house are, perhaps, not easily
+arranged in a quiet country neighbourhood, yet there is always a
+hopeful tone about these family discussions, and it is very common to
+hear the Miss Jamiesons relate at length what they intend to do when
+they are married.
+
+And there is yet another maiden to be arranged for in the little house;
+Mettie is the Jamiesons' cousin who lives with them, and I believe that
+what appeals to me most strongly in this unknown provincial family is
+their kindness to the little shrunken, tiresome cousin who shares their
+home.  Mettie is like some strange little bright bird, utterly devoid
+of intelligence, and yet with the alertness of a sparrow.  Her beady
+eyes are a-twinkle in a restless sort of way all day long, and her
+large thin nose has always the appearance of having the skin stretched
+unpleasantly tightly across it.  The good Jamiesons never seem to be
+ruffled by her presence among them, and this forbearance certainly
+commands one's respect.  Mettie travesties the Jamiesons in every
+particular.  She has adopted their matrimonial views with interest, and
+she utters little platitudes upon the subject with quite a surprising
+air of sapience.  One avoids being left alone with Mettie whenever it
+is possible to do so, for, gentle creature though she is, her remarks
+are so singularly devoid of interest that one is often puzzled to
+understand why they are made.  Yet I see one or other of the Jamiesons
+walk to the village with her every day--her little steps pattering
+beside their giant strides, while the bird-like tongue chirps gaily all
+the way.
+
+Every one in our little neighbourhood walks into the village every day;
+it is our daily dissipation; and frivolous persons have been known to
+go twice or three times.  On days when Palestrina thinks that I am
+getting moped she steals the contents of my tobacco-jar, and then says,
+without blushing, that she has discovered that my tobacco is all
+finished, and that we had better walk into the village together and get
+some more.  When I am in a grumpy mood, I reply: "It's all right, thank
+you; I have plenty upstairs."  But it generally ends in my taking the
+walk with my sister.
+
+Our house is pleasantly situated where, by peeping through a tangle of
+shrubs and trees, we can see the lazy traffic of the highroad that
+leads to the village.  Strangers pause outside the screen of evergreens
+sometimes and peep between the branches to see the quaint gables of the
+old house.  Its walls have turned to a soft yellow colour with old age,
+and its beams are of oak, gray with exposure to the storms of many
+winters.
+
+"This old hall of yours is much too dark," Mrs. Fielden said, when she
+came to call the other day muffled up in velvet and fur.  She lighted
+the dull afternoon by something that is radiant and holiday-like about
+her, and left us envying her for being so pretty and so young and gay.
+"Oh, I know," she said in her whimsical way, "that it is Jacobean and
+early Tudor and all sorts of delightful things, but it isn't very
+cheerful, you know.  I'm so glad it is near the road; I think if I
+built a house I should like it to be in Mansion House Square, or inside
+a railway station.  Don't you love spending a night at a station hotel?
+I always ask for a room overlooking the platform, for I like the
+feeling of having the trains running past me all night.  I love your
+house really," she said, "only I'm afraid it preaches peace and
+resignation and all those things which I consider so wrong."
+
+Since I have been laid up I have been recommended to carve wood, to
+beat brass, to stuff sofa-cushions, and to play the zither; but these
+things do not amuse me much.  It was Mrs. Fielden who suggested that I
+should write a diary.
+
+"You must grumble," she said, raising her pretty eyebrows in the
+affected way she has.  "It wouldn't be human if you didn't; so why not
+write a diary, and have a real good grumble on paper every night before
+you go to bed.  Of course, if I were in your place I should grumble all
+day instead, and go to sleep at night.  But I'm not the least bit a
+resigned person.  If anything hurts me I scream at once; and if there
+is anything I don't like doing I leave it alone.  Palestrina," she said
+to my sister, "don't let him be patient; it's so bad for him."
+
+Palestrina smiled, and said she was afraid it was very dull for me
+sometimes.
+
+"But if one is impatient enough, one can't be dull," said Mrs. Fielden.
+"It's like being cross----"
+
+"I am constitutionally dull," I said.  "I used to be known as the
+dullest man in my regiment."
+
+"You studied philosophy, didn't you?" said Mrs. Fielden.  "That must be
+so depressing."
+
+I was much struck by this suggestion.  "I dare say you are quite
+right," I said, "although I had not seen it in that light before.  But
+I'm afraid it has not made me very patient, nor given me a great mind."
+
+"Of course, what you want just now," said Mrs. Fielden gravely, "is a
+little mind.  You must lie here on your sofa, and take a vivid interest
+in what all the old ladies say when they come to call on Palestrina.
+And you must know the price of Mrs. Taylor's last new hat, and how much
+the Traceys spend on their washing-bill, and you must put it all down
+in your diary.  I'll come over and help you sometimes, and write all
+the wicked bits for you, only I'm afraid no one ever is wicked down
+here.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, holding out the smallest, prettiest, most
+useless-looking little hand in the world.  "And please," she added
+earnestly, "get all this oak painted white, and hang some nice muslin
+curtains in the windows."
+
+Kindly folk in Stowel are always ingenuously surprised at any one's
+caring to live in the country; and although it is but a mile from here
+to the vestry hall, and much less by the fields, they often question us
+whether we do not feel lonely at night-time, and they are of the
+opinion that we should be better in "town."  They frequently speak of
+going into the country for change of air, or on Bank Holidays; but
+considering that the last house in the village--and, like the City of
+Zoar, it is but a little one--is built amongst fields, it might be
+imagined that these rural retreats could readily be found without the
+trouble of hiring the four-wheeled dog-cart from the inn, or of taking
+a journey by train.  Yet an expedition into the country is often talked
+of as being a change, and friends and relations living outside the town
+are considered a little bit behindhand in their views of
+things--"old-feshioned" they call it in Stowel--and these country
+cousins are visited with just a touch of kindly condescension by the
+dwellers in a flower-bordered, tree-shadowed High Street.
+
+One is brought rather quaintly into immediate correspondence with the
+domestic concerns of every one in Stowel, and Palestrina has been
+coaching me in the etiquette of the place.  It is hardly correct to do
+any shopping at dinner-time, when the lady of the house, busy feeding
+her family, has to be called from the inner parlour, where that family
+may all be distinctly seen from the shop.  Driving or walking through
+Stowel at the hour thus consecrated by universal consent to gastronomy,
+one might almost imagine it to be a deserted village.  Even the dogs
+have gone inside to get a bone; and one says, as one walks down the
+empty streets, "Stowel dines."
+
+When a shop is closed on Thursday, which is early-closing day, one can
+generally "be obliged" by ringing at the house-bell, and, under conduct
+of the master of the place, may enter the darkened shop by the side
+door, and be accommodated with the purchase that one requires.  For the
+old custom still holds of living--where it seems most natural for a
+merchant to live--in the place where he does his business.  There is a
+pleasurable feeling of excitement even in the purchase of a pot of
+Aspinall's enamel behind closed shutters, and this is mingled with a
+feeling of solemnity and privilege, which I can only compare, in its
+mixed effect upon me, to going behind the scenes of a theatre, or being
+permitted to enter the vestry of a church.
+
+Any purchases except those which may be called necessaries are seldom
+indulged in in our little town.  A shop which contains anything but
+dress and provisions has few customers, and its merchandise becomes
+household fixtures.  I called at the furniture shop the other day; the
+place looked bare and unfamiliar to me, but I did not realize what was
+amiss until my sister exclaimed, "Where is the sofa?"  The sofa had
+been for sale for fifteen years, and had at last been purchased.  There
+are other things in the shop which I think must have been there much
+longer, and I believe their owner would part with them with regret,
+even were a very fair profit to be obtained for them.  Palestrina tells
+me she ordered some fish the other day, and was met with the objection
+that "I fear that piece will be too big for your fish-kettle, ma'am,"
+although she had never suspected that the size of her fish-kettle was a
+matter known to the outside world.
+
+And yet Stowel prides itself more upon its reserve than upon anything
+else, except perhaps its gentility.  There is a distinct air of mystery
+over any and every one of the smallest affairs of daily life in the
+little place, and I hardly think that our neighbours would really enjoy
+anything if it were "spoken about" before the proper time.  There is
+something of secrecy in the very air of the town.  No one, I am told,
+has ever been known to mention, even casually, what he or she intends
+to have for dinner; and the butcher has been warned against calling
+across the shop to the lady at the desk, "Two pounds of rumpsteak for
+Miss Tracey," or, "One sirloin, twelve two, for the Hall."  Mr.
+Tomsett, who was the first butcher to introduce New Zealand mutton to
+the inhabitants of Stowel, lost his custom by this vulgar habit of
+assorting his joints in public.  And Miss Tracey, who knew him best (he
+was still something of a stranger, having been in Stowel only five
+years), warned him that that was not the sort of thing we were
+accustomed to.  "If you must make our private concerns public in this
+way," she said, "at least it cannot be necessary to mention in what
+country the mutton was raised."
+
+It is even considered a little indelicate to remain in the post-office
+when a telegram is being handed in.  And parcels addressed and laid on
+the counter at the grocer's, although provocative of interest, are not
+even glanced at by the best people.
+
+On the authority of my sister, I learn that when the ladies of Stowel
+do a little dusting in the morning the front blinds are pulled down.
+And keen though the speculation may be as to the extent of our
+neighbours' incomes, the subject is, of course, a forbidden one.  Poor
+though some of these neighbours are, a very kindly charity prevails in
+the little town.  When the elder Miss Blind was ill--as she very often
+is, poor thing!--it might seem a matter of coincidence to the
+uninitiated that during that week every one of her friends happened to
+make a little strong soup, a portion of which was sent to the
+invalid--just in case she might fancy it; while the Miss Traceys, who,
+as all the world knew, had inherited a little wine from their father,
+the late Vicar of the parish, sent their solitary remaining bottle of
+champagne, with their compliments, to Miss Belinda.  The champagne
+proved flat after many a year of storage in the lower cupboard of Miss
+Tracey's pantry, but the two sisters to whom it was sent, not being
+familiar with the wine, did not detect its faults, and they left the
+green bottle with the gilt neck casually standing about for weeks
+afterwards, from an innocent desire to impress their neighbours with
+its magnificence.
+
+Palestrina, with the good intention, I believe, of providing me with
+what she calls an object for a walk, asked me to call and inquire for
+Miss Blind on the day that the bottle of champagne was drawn and
+sampled.  Miss Lydia was in the sick-room, and Mrs. Lovekin, who had
+called to inquire, was sitting in the little parlour when I entered.
+"How do you do?" she said.  "I suppose you have heard about Belinda and
+the champagne?"
+
+The reproachful note in Mrs. Lovekin's voice, which seemed to tax the
+invalid with ingratitude, subtly conveyed the impression that the flat
+champagne had not agreed with poor Miss Belinda.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+It is a subject of burning curiosity with every woman in Stowel to know
+whether it is a fact that the Taylors have taken to having late dinner
+instead of supper since Mrs. Taylor's uncle was made a K.C.B.  There
+was something in a remark made by Miss Frances Taylor which distinctly
+suggested that such a change had been effected, but Stowel, on the
+whole, is inclined to discredit the rumour.  A portrait of the General
+has been made in London, from a photograph in uniform which Mrs. Taylor
+has of him, and it has been framed, regardless of expense, by the
+photographer in the High Street.  Mr. Taylor at one time had thought of
+having the whole thing done in London, but it had been decided by an
+overwhelming majority that it would be only fair to give the commission
+to provide the frame to some one in our own town; and Mr. and Mrs.
+Taylor have granted a permission, which amounts to a command, that the
+portrait of "Sir John" shall be placed in the window for a week before
+it is sent home, so that Stowel may see it--for the Taylors, it should
+be remembered, do not receive every one at their own house.
+
+To-day I met the younger Miss Blind--Miss Lydia, she is generally
+called--at the window of the photographer's, to which she had made a
+pilgrimage, as we all intended to do, to see the famous picture.
+Probably she had stood there for some time, for she turned nervously
+towards me, and said in a tone of apology and with something of an
+effort in her speech, "I used to know him."
+
+"Ah!" I replied.  "I suppose he has often been down to stay with the
+Taylors?"
+
+"He has not been once in twenty years," said Lydia.  I was thinking of
+other things, and I do not know why it suddenly struck me that there
+was a tone of regret, even of hopelessness, in Miss Lydia's voice, and
+that she spoke as one speaks, perhaps, when one has waited long for
+something.
+
+Lydia Blind is a tall woman with a slight, stooping figure.  Sometimes
+I have wondered if it is only her sister's constant ill-health that has
+made Miss Lydia stoop a little.  There is something delicately precise
+about her, if so gentle a woman can fitly be described as precise.
+Perhaps her voice explains her best, as a woman's voice will often do;
+it is low and of a very charming quality, although broken now and then
+by asthma.  Each word has its proper spacing, and does not intrude upon
+the next; each vowel possesses the rare characteristic of its proper
+sound.  I have never heard her use an out-of-the-way expression; but
+her simple way of speaking has an old-fashioned gracefulness about it,
+and her manner, with all its simplicity, is dignified by reason of its
+perfect sincerity.  Her eyes are large and gray, and set somewhat far
+apart; her hair is worn in a fringe so demure and smooth, so primly
+curled, that it has the appearance of plainly-brushed hair.  It is Mrs.
+Fielden who says that no good woman can do her hair properly, and she
+wonders if St. Paul's recommendations as to plain braids has for ever
+stamped the hairdresser's profession as a dangerous art.
+
+To-day when I met Lydia it struck me suddenly to wonder how old she is.
+Perhaps something in the insolent youthfulness of the springtime
+suggested the thought, or it may have been because Miss Lydia looked
+tired.
+
+When one meets a friend in Stowel High Street, it is considered very
+cold behaviour merely to bow to her.  Not only do we stop and chat for
+a few minutes, but it is the friendly fashion of the place for ladies
+to say to each other, "Which way are you going?" and to accompany their
+friend a little way along the sunny, uneven pavement, while offers to
+come in and rest are generally given and accepted at the end of the
+promenade.  Of course it is quite unusual for gentlemen to be detained
+in this way, and I am sure it cost Miss Lydia an effort to suggest to
+me that I should come in and sit down for a little while, and that she
+only did so because I seemed tired.  Also I think that a man with a
+crutch and with but one leg--and that one not very sound--is not
+considered such a source of danger to ladies living alone as a strong
+and hale man is supposed to be.  We stopped at the little green gate in
+the village street, with its red flagged pathway beyond, bordered with
+spring flowers--wall-flowers, early blooming in this warm and sheltered
+corner, forget-me-nots and primroses, while a brave yellow jasmine
+starred with golden flowers covered the walls of the cottage.  I asked
+after her sister's health, and Miss Lydia begged me to come in and rest
+for a few minutes; which I did, for I was horribly tired.  But this was
+one of Miss Belinda's bad days, and her sister, who watches every
+variation in colour in the hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes of the
+invalid, saw that she was unable to speak, and motioned me out of the
+room.  She showed me into her own little sanctum, and gave me a
+cushioned chair by the window, and said: "Do wait for a few minutes and
+rest.  I can see that my sister wants to say something to me, but she
+is always more than usually inarticulate when she is in one of these
+nervous states."
+
+I have been thinking a good deal about old maids lately--one has time
+to think about all manner of subjects when one is lying down most of
+the day.  Mrs. Fielden is of opinion that an old maid may have an
+exaggerated sense of humour.  To my mind her danger may be that she is
+always rather pathetically satisfied with everything.  She prefers the
+front seat of a carriage and the back seat of a dog-cart, and the leg
+of a chicken and a tiny bedroom.  Doubtless this is a form of
+self-respect.  This suitability of tastes on the part of an old maid
+enables her to say, as she does with almost suspicious frequency, that
+she gets dreadfully spoiled wherever she goes.  Adaptability to
+environment is the first law of existence, and yet there may have been
+times, even in the life of an old maid, when she has yearned for the
+wing of a chicken.
+
+The little room into which Miss Lydia ushered me was plainly furnished,
+but Miss Lydia says that she is always getting something pretty given
+to her to add to her treasures.  Her room is, indeed, rather suggestive
+of a stationer's shop window, where a card with "Fancy goods in great
+variety" is placed.  It would not be unkind to hint of some of the
+articles on the table and on the wall-brackets that they must have been
+purchased more as a kindly remembrance at Christmas-time or on
+birthdays than from any apparent usefulness to the recipient.  There
+are three twine-cases from which the scissors have long since been
+abstracted by unknown dishonest persons; and there are four ornamental
+thermometers, each showing its own fixed and unalterable idea
+respecting the temperature of the room.  A large number of unframed
+sketches which children have given her are fastened to the wall by
+pins, or hung on tacks whose uncertain hold bespeaks a feminine hand on
+the hammer.  There are several calendars, and there is quite an
+uncountable collection of photograph frames, which fall over unless
+they are propped against something.  Most of the photographs are old
+and faded, and they are nearly all of babies.  Babies clothed and
+unclothed; babies with bare feet and little nightshirts on; babies
+sucking their thumbs; babies lying prone on fur carriage-rugs; babies
+riding on their mammas' backs, or sitting on their mammas' knees;
+babies crowing or crying.  No one who has a baby ever fails to send
+this maiden lady a photograph of it.
+
+Miss Lydia settled me with some cushions in my chair, and shut the
+doorway leading to her bedroom beyond, where I caught sight of a
+painted iron bedstead, and a small indiarubber hot-water bottle hanging
+from one of its knobs.  It is Miss Lydia's most cherished possession,
+and she generally speaks of it reverently as "the comfort of my life."
+
+Poor Miss Lydia!  Hers must be, I think, a lonely life, sacrificed
+patiently to an invalid and almost inarticulate sister, and yet it is
+the very solitude of this little chamber which is one of the few
+privileges to which she lays claim.  It is to this little room, with
+its humble furnishings, that all her troubles are taken, and it is here
+by the window that she can sit with folded hands and think perhaps of
+something in life which surely poor Lydia has missed.  It is here she
+prays for those whose sins weigh far more heavily upon her than they do
+upon themselves, and it is here that she can pause and question with
+gentle faith the perplexities of life.
+
+Miss Lydia tells my sister that she makes a thorough examination of her
+room every night before she goes to bed, to see if there is a burglar
+concealed anywhere.  The movable property in the tiny house is probably
+not worth many pounds, as a pawnbroker appraises things, and it would
+be a hardened thief that could deprive the sisters of their small
+possessions; but the dread remains--the dread of burglars and the dread
+of mice.  Were it not for the look of the thing, she would almost
+rather discover a burglar than a mouse--"for at least burglars are
+human," she explains, "and one might be able to reason with them or
+pray for them, but who shall control the goings of a mouse?"
+
+Sometimes these fears become quite a terror to Lydia Blind, and she
+once said that she felt so defenceless that she thought it would be a
+great comfort to have a male defender to protect her.
+
+It is the only unmaidenly remark she ever made, and it makes her blush
+in the dark when she thinks of it.  She believes every one remembers it
+with as vivid a distinctness as she does, and she trembles to think
+what sort of construction may have been put upon her words by
+ill-natured or thoughtless persons.  It is a real trouble to her; but
+then all her troubles are real, and so are her bitter repentances over
+perfectly imaginary sins.  But she has her little room and her faded
+photographs--life has its consolations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Kate Jamieson, who is the independent member of The Family, and has
+been in a situation for some years as companion to a lady at Bath, has
+written home what she calls a "joint-letter" to apprise the whole of
+her family at one and the same time that she is engaged to be married.
+The excitement which this letter produced in the little household is
+hardly possible to describe.  The news arrived when the Jamiesons were
+at breakfast.  Perhaps I should mention, before going any further, that
+the Jamiesons' only extravagance is to take in three daily papers.  One
+is an evening paper, which arrives at breakfast-time, and the other two
+are morning publications, which arrive at the same hour.  It is
+customary for the members of this family each to read his own
+particular paper aloud during the entire meal, the rest of the party
+read their letters to each other, and there are still left several
+voices to demand what you will have for breakfast, to inquire how you
+have slept, and to comment upon the weather.  So that from half-past
+eight until nine a cross-fire of conversation is going on all the
+time....
+
+"I see Hearne has scored sixty-eight at cricket, not out.  That's not
+bad, you know.  Kent ought to be looking up.  The Australians are doing
+well.  Yorkshire might do better.  Extraordinary!  Here's this chap who
+promised so well bowled for a duck!"  This from the eldest son of the
+House of Jamieson; while at precisely the same moment may be heard the
+voice of Maud: "I must say I am rather astonished at the way boleros
+have remained in.  This is one of the prettiest designs I have seen
+this year.  How soon one gets accustomed to small sleeves.  Well, I
+cannot say I like these Chesterfield fronts."
+
+Mrs. Jamieson is meanwhile reading aloud the columns of births, deaths,
+and marriages from beginning to end.  Her limited acquaintance with the
+outside world might seem to preclude her from any vivid interest in
+those who must necessarily only be names to her, yet she finds
+subject-matter for comment through the entire perusal of the column.
+Needless to say, Mrs. Jamieson inclines to regard only the sadder
+aspects of these natural occurrences, and her comments thereupon are
+full of a sort of resigned melancholy.  From her corner of the table
+may be heard the plaintive words: "Here's a young fellow of twenty-four
+taken," or, "Fourscore years, well, well, and then passed away!"  While
+the happier news of birth provokes her to hark back to an announcement
+of a similar nature in the family, perhaps only a year ago, and to talk
+of the responsibilities and the expense that the poor young couple will
+have to undergo.  Mettie, who spends the greater part of every day
+writing letters, and whose chief joy in life is to receive them, reads
+the whole of her correspondence aloud from beginning to end; while
+Margaret Jamieson, behind the teapot, is letting off rapid volleys of
+questions respecting individual tastes about cream and sugar, and the
+Pirate Boy offers ham-and-eggs or sausages in a deep stentorian bass.
+
+In the midst of this confusion of noise, when only a Jamieson, whose
+ear is curiously trained to it, can possibly hear what is being said,
+Mrs. Jamieson bursts into tears and, in the strong Kentish dialect of
+her youth, exclaims: "Here's our Kate going to be married!"
+
+After the first burst of delighted surprise, there is a family feeling
+of apology towards Maud.  That Kate should marry first is surely a
+little disloyal to the beauty of Belmont, and Mrs. Jamieson goes so far
+as to say: "Never mind, Maud; it will be your turn next."
+
+After that, they all, singly and severally, recall their
+previously-expressed opinion that they knew something was up, and that
+certainly Kate could not have given them a more pleasant or more
+unexpected surprise.
+
+The letter is then read aloud, and it is so long that one is glad to
+think that the absent Kate did not attempt to duplicate it, but
+contented herself with the Pauline method of one general epistle.  With
+the Jamieson characteristic of telling everything exhaustively, Kate
+writes:--
+
+
+"Mr. Ward is not at all bad-looking; a little hesitating in his manner,
+and inclined to be untidy--you see, I am telling you everything quite
+candidly--but of course I can remedy all these defects when we are
+married.  He has a short brown moustache, and rather a conical-shaped
+head."  (This is a fault that one feels Kate will not be able to
+remedy, even when she has married him.)  "He looks clever, though I do
+not think he is, very; he is well-connected, but does not know all his
+best relations.  Poor, but with generous instincts"--one feels as
+though a chiromancist were reading a client's palm--"well-read, but
+without power of conveying intelligence to others; hair rather thin,
+and (I am afraid) false teeth; very religious, but I consider this in
+him more temperament than anything else.  He has had a hard life, and
+not always enough to eat, until his uncle died; but now he could be
+quite independent if he liked, but he prefers the position which a
+Government appointment gives him.
+
+"I hope to bring him down to stay when I return; please let him have
+the south bedroom, as that is the warmest, and I do not think James is
+very strong.  I should like him to have a fire at night--I can arrange
+that with mother, as I feel quite well off now.  We are to be married
+in July, and I am giving up my post here at once, so as to see
+something of you all before I go away."
+
+
+At this point the letter referred once more to Mr. Ward's personal
+appearance, and the description was of so great length that when
+Margaret Jamieson, who had run all the way from her home to ours to
+give it to us to read, asked me breathlessly what I thought about it, I
+determined to leave unread the remaining paragraphs, and to judge for
+myself of the bridegroom when he should come to Belmont and we should
+be invited to meet him.
+
+"There is one thing," said Mrs. Jamieson when, at the request of The
+Family, Palestrina went to sit with her one afternoon a few weeks
+later, to support her through the trying ordeal of waiting for Kate and
+"James," as he is now familiarly called, to arrive; "the girls have
+nothing to be ashamed of in their home."  She looked with a certain
+amount of pardonable pride at the clean white curtains, and we gathered
+that we were meant to comment upon their early appearance.  The white
+curtains, Palestrina says, are not usually put up at Belmont until the
+first week in May.
+
+"They look very handsome," I said.  It was a Jamieson afternoon--very
+wet, but clearing up about sundown, and Palestrina had suggested my
+escorting her as far as Belmont.  But the rain came down in torrents
+again when I would have started to return home, and the good Jamiesons
+begged me to stay, to avoid the chance of a chill, and to meet James.
+
+"It is the first break in the family," said Mrs. Jamieson tearfully,
+"since poor Robert died.  But, as James says, he hopes I am gaining a
+son and not losing a daughter."  From which I gathered that James was a
+gentleman given to uttering rather a stale form of platitude.
+
+All were waiting in a state of great trepidation the arrival of the
+engaged couple, and it was quite hopeless to avoid the encounter, for
+the rain descended in sheets outside, and preparations for supper
+seemed to be going on in the dining-room at Belmont.  It was decided,
+by universal consent, that only Mrs. Jamieson and Palestrina and I
+should be in the drawing-room at the moment when they should enter.
+The presence of strangers, it was thought, would make it easier for
+James at the meeting where all were kinsfolk except himself.  With
+their usual consideration The Family decided that the rest of their
+large number should afterwards drop in casually, two by two, and be
+introduced to the new brother-in-law without ceremony.  Mrs. Jamieson,
+who had not left the house that day, nor for many days previously,
+having been absorbed in preparations for the expected guest, was
+dressed in a bonnet and her favourite jacket with the storm-collar,
+which, as she explained to my sister, took away from the roundness of
+her face and gave her confidence.
+
+Her habitual shyness, added to her fears of the unknown in the shape of
+the future son-in-law, had wrought her into a sort of rigid state in
+which conversation seemed impossible, and although we did our best to
+divert her attention I am doubtful if she heard a word we said.
+
+"They should be here soon," I remarked presently.
+
+Mrs. Jamieson, following some line of thought of her own, remarked that
+the first marriage in a family was almost like a death; and to this
+mournful analogy I gave assent.
+
+"Kate says he is quite a gentleman," hazarded Mrs. Jamieson, still
+rigid, and now white with anxiety and shyness.
+
+I found myself replying, without overdone brilliance, that that seemed
+a good thing.
+
+The sands of Mrs. Jamieson's courage were running very low.  "I hope he
+is not one of your grandees," she said apprehensively; "I would not
+like to think of Kate not being up to him.  But their father was a
+gentleman--the most perfect gentleman I ever knew, and I have always
+that to think of.  Still, a gentlemanly man is all I want for any of my
+girls, with no difference between the two families."
+
+Sometimes in this way Mrs. Jamieson gives one an unexpected insight
+into the difficulties of her life, and one feels that even her
+admiration for her daughters may be tinged with a slight feeling of
+being their inferior.  I have heard her say, making use of a French
+expression such as she hazards so courageously, that there is something
+of the "_grawn dam_ about Maud;" and perhaps the loyal admiration thus
+expressed may have been mingled with another sensation not so
+pleasurable to the farmer's daughter.
+
+I endeavoured to follow the intricacies of her train of thought, but
+the station omnibus had stopped at the gate, and the moment of supreme
+excitement had arrived.
+
+Kate entered first.  This was probably the crowning moment of her life.
+She came in with a little air of assurance that already suggested the
+married woman, and having kissed her mother she said in a proprietary
+sort of way: "This is Mr. Ward, mamma."
+
+Mr. Ward had a curious way of walking on his toes; he came into the
+room as though tip-toeing across some muddy crossing on a wet day, and
+shook hands with a degree of nervousness that made even Mrs. Jamieson
+appear bold.  One can hardly be surprised at Kate for having mentioned
+that he has a conical-shaped head, for it is of the most strange
+pear-shape, and the sparse hair hangs from a ridge behind like a
+fringe.  He sat down and locked his knees firmly together, with his
+clasped hands tightly wedged between them, while Kate made inquiries
+about the rest of the family, and I plunged heavily into remarks about
+the weather and the state of the roads.  It was a great relief when two
+of the sisters entered, in their best silk blouses, even although they
+repeated exactly what I had said a moment before about the weather and
+the mud.  Five minutes later, according to preconceived arrangement,
+two other sisters came in and were kissed by Kate, and introduced by
+her to James.  We had unconsciously taken up our position in two
+straight lines facing James, and it is no exaggeration to say that by
+this time shyness was causing great beads of perspiration to stand out
+on poor James's pear-shaped head.  "Surely they will spare him any more
+introductions before supper," I thought; but the door had again opened,
+and Mettie and the Pirate Boy entered, and some unhappy chance was
+causing these last comers to comment upon the weather and the state of
+the roads, and to extend the line of chairs now facing James.  We began
+to make feverish little remarks to each other, as though we were all
+strangers, and Palestrina asked Eliza if she were fond of dancing.
+George Jamieson, the eldest brother, was the last to enter the room,
+and Kate said: "George, I am sure James would like to unpack before
+supper;" and the unhappy James tip-toed out between the two lines of
+chairs, with his eyes fixed upon the carpet.
+
+"_Well?_" said Kate.  And as The Family was The Family of Jamieson,
+that of course was a signal for each member of it to say the kindest
+thing that could possibly be said for the new arrival.  Margaret found
+that he had kind eyes.  And Eliza said: "Not intellectual, but a good
+man."  Eliza, it must be remarked in passing, is the intellectual
+sister, with a passion for accurate information, and for looking up
+facts in the "Encyclopedia Britannica."  Maud found that even his
+shyness was in his favour, and disliked men who made themselves at home
+at once.  Mettie remarked that marriage was a great risk.  This is one
+of poor little Mettie's platitudes, which she makes with faithful
+regularity upon all occasions.  The Pirate Boy preferred, perhaps, a
+more robust development, and throwing out his own chest, he beat it
+with a good deal of violence, and said he would like to put on the
+gloves with Mr. Ward.  Mrs. Jamieson could be got to say nothing but
+"Poor fellow, poor fellow!" at intervals.  But Gracie, the youngest
+daughter, remarked that she was sure that they would all get to like
+him immensely in time.
+
+Kate looked grateful, and spoke with her usual fine common sense.
+"What I say is," she remarked, "that of course no one sees James's
+faults more clearly than I do, but then I don't see why any of us
+should expect perfection.  We haven't much to offer: I am sure I have
+neither looks, nor money, nor anything.  And, after all, it's nice to
+think of one of us getting married--and I was no bother about it," said
+the independent Kate.  "I mean, The Family had not to help, or chaperon
+me, or ask James down to stay."
+
+The sisters assented to this in a very hearty, congratulatory sort of
+way; and then, as the rain had ceased, I took my leave, but Palestrina
+was persuaded to stay and have supper.  Kennie offered, in a doughty
+fashion, to see me home.  The boy's kindness of heart constitutes him
+my defender upon many occasions, and he always looks disappointed if I
+do not take his arm.  I do not think that the peaceful country road in
+the waning twilight could be considered a dangerous one, even to a
+cripple like myself; but Kennie, armed with a large stick and wearing a
+curious felt hat turned up at one side, appeared a most truculent
+defender, and regarded with suspicion all the pedestrians whom we met.
+Did but a country cart pass us, Kennie made a movement to ward off the
+danger of a collision with his arm.  There is something in my helpless
+condition which, quite unconsciously I believe, produces a very
+valorous frame of mind in the Pirate, and he beguiled the whole of the
+way home with stories of his own prowess, and of the hair-breadth
+escapes which he had had.
+
+"I only once," he said, "had to take a human life in self-defence.
+Curiously enough"--Kennie's voice deepened, and he spoke with the air
+of a man who will spare a weak fellow-mortal all he can in the telling
+of his tale, and he enunciated all his words with a measured calm which
+was very impressive--"curiously enough, it was on the Thames
+Embankment!"  Kennie cleared his throat, and dropping the deep bass
+voice of reminiscence, he began the history in a high-pitched tone of
+narrative.  "I was walking home alone one night from the City, when a
+very strange, low fellow accosted me, and asked me for some money.  The
+man's destitute appearance appealed to me, and unfortunately I gave him
+threepence.  I suppose the action was about as dangerous a thing as I
+could have done.  It showed that I had money, and I was practically
+defenceless while feeling in my pockets.  The Embankment at that time
+of the evening was almost deserted; I could see the shipping in the
+river and the lights, and even passing cabs, but I was strangely alone,
+and still the man followed me.  At last, in desperation, I raised my
+stick to drive him from me, and the next moment he had grappled with
+me!  Instantly my blood was up!"  The Pirate Boy stood still in the
+middle of the highroad, and went through a series of very forcible
+pantomimic gestures, and with awful facial contortions, indicative of
+violent exertion, he raised some imaginary object above his head and
+flung it from him.  "The next moment," said Kennie, "I heard a splash.
+I had vanquished the man, and flung him far from me, straight from the
+Thames Embankment into the river."
+
+I was prepared to make an exclamation, but was prevented by Kennie, who
+said in a dramatic sort of way, "Wait!" and went on with his story.
+"My instinct was to plunge after him, but I heard no sound, no cry, and
+from that day to this that struggle by the water's edge remains as one
+of the most vivid experiences of my life--in England, at least.  But
+the man's end remains a mystery: I can tell you nothing more of him."
+
+"I think I would have fished the poor wretch out," I said, and moved
+onwards on our walk, our pause in the public highway having lasted a
+considerable time.
+
+"One learns rough justice out there," said Kennie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Miss Taylor was really responsible for the formation of the Stowel
+Reading Society, but Eliza Jamieson was her staunch supporter.  Eliza
+drew the line at poetry and metaphysics, "Neither of which," she said,
+"I consider an exact science."
+
+Miss Taylor said: "But it is not a scientific course that I propose; it
+is English literature in its fullest sense.  I do think that Stowel is
+getting behind the rest of the world in its knowledge of the best
+literature, and I am sure that if a Reading Society were founded The
+Uncle would be pleased to choose books and send them to us from London."
+
+To no one, perhaps, is the specializing definite article felt to be
+more appropriate than to Sir John.  It seems to distinguish him from
+ordinary human beings; and it is felt to be indicative of a
+considerable amount of good taste and good feeling on the part of the
+Taylors to drop the General's title when conversing with their intimate
+friends, and to refer to him merely as "The Uncle."  When we call upon
+the Taylors we always ask how The Uncle is.
+
+Eliza Jamieson became the Society's secretary and treasurer in one, and
+she it was who in her neat hand transcribed the letter, which all had
+helped to compose, to ask The Uncle what works in English literature it
+would be advisable for the Reading Society to get.  His reply was read
+aloud at one of the first meetings, and each eulogized it in turn as
+being "courtly," "gentlemanly," "manly," and "concise."  It could not
+but be felt, however, that as a guide to a choice of literature the
+letter was disappointing:--
+
+
+"DEAR MADAM" (it ran),
+
+"I much regret that I am unable to help you in any way about your
+books.  I read very little myself, except the newspapers, though I
+occasionally take a dip into one of my old favourites by Charles Lever.
+I think a cookery-book is the most useful reading for a young lady, and
+she would be best employed studying that, and not filling her head with
+nonsense.  This is the advice of a very old fellow, who remembers many
+charming girls years ago who knew nothing about advanced culture...."
+
+
+It was a distinct salve to the Society's feelings to note that the
+letter was written on paper stamped with the address of a military
+club, and instead of copying it, and making an entry of it in the
+minutes of the Reading Society, it was pasted into the notebook, as it
+was thought the autograph and the crest were "interesting."
+
+Since the foundation of the Reading Society there has followed a period
+during which the young ladies of Stowel have written essays, and have
+met in each other's drawing-rooms to read poetry aloud, to their own
+individual satisfaction and to the torture of other ears.
+
+Mrs. Fielden did not join the Society, her plea being that poetry is
+merely prose with the stops in the wrong places, and therefore very
+fatiguing to read, and very obscure in its meaning.  But Eliza has worn
+us out with books of reference, and we have become so learned and so
+full of culture that it is impossible to say where it will all end.  My
+own library has been ransacked for books--I think it is the fact of my
+having a library that has made our house a sort of centre for the
+Reading Society.  We criticize freely all contemporary literature, and
+base our preference for any book upon its "vigorous Saxon style."
+
+Eliza has written two reviews for the local newspaper, pointing out
+some mistakes in grammar in one of the greatest novels of the day, and
+this naturally makes us feel very proud of Eliza.  Those of us who
+plead for an easy flowing style consider that she has an almost
+hypersensitive ear for errors in the use of the English accidence.  A
+split infinitive has heretofore hardly arrested our attention; now we
+shudder at its use: while the misuse of the word to "aggravate," which
+up to the present we believed in all simplicity to mean to "annoy,"
+causes the gravest offence when employed in the wrong sense.  Books
+from the circulating library have been known to be treated almost like
+proof-sheets, and corrections are jotted down in pencil on the margin
+of the leaves.  Even the notes which ladies send to each other are
+subject to revision at the hands of the recipient.  Ordinary
+conversation is now hardly known in Stowel, and tea-parties take the
+form of discussions.  The spring weather is so warm that I generally
+have my long chair taken on to the lawn in the afternoons, and tea is
+sometimes brought out there when the meetings of the Reading Society
+are over.  But tea, and even pound-cake, are thrown away upon young
+ladies who partake of it absently, and to whom all things material and
+mundane--these words are often used--must now be offered with a feeling
+of apology.
+
+Major Jacobs rode over to see me this afternoon, and we had not long
+enjoyed the repose of deckchairs and cigarettes under the medlar-tree,
+and the songs of birds which have begun nesting very early this year,
+and the quiet rumbling of heavy wagons that pass sometimes in the
+highroad beyond the garden, when the Reading Society in a body joined
+us from the house, and I heard my sister give directions for tea to be
+brought out on to the lawn.  The other day I heard Palestrina tell a
+friend of hers that she nearly always contrived to have some one to
+tea, or to sit with Hugo in the afternoon, and my sister's satisfaction
+increases in direct proportion to the number of people who come.
+
+We had hardly finished tea when Frances Taylor said suddenly, yet with
+the manner of one who has risen to make a speech on a platform, "Was
+Coleridge a genius or a crank?"
+
+Eliza, assuming the deep frown of learning which is quite common
+amongst us nowadays, was upon her in a moment, and said emphatically,
+"How would you define a genius?"  The Socratic habit of asking for a
+definition is one that is always adopted during our discussions, and it
+is generally demanded in the tone of voice in which one says "check"
+when playing chess.  Frances Taylor was quite ready for Eliza, and
+said, "Genius, I think, is like some star----"
+
+"Analogy is not argument!"  Eliza pounced upon her in the voice that
+said, "I take your pawn."
+
+It will be noticed, I fear, that in Stowel we are not altogether
+original in our arguments--many of them can be traced, alas! to the
+"Encyclopaedia Britannica," and they are not often the outcome of
+original thought.
+
+Frances Taylor's king was once more in check, and she became a little
+nervous and irritable.  "I do not think we need go into definitions,"
+she said; but Eliza had gone indoors to "look it up."  She returned
+presently with a dictionary, walking across the lawn towards us with
+its pages held close to her near-sighted eyes.  "A genius," she began,
+and then she glanced disparagingly at the title of the book, and said,
+"according to Webster, that is--but I do not know if we ought to accept
+him as a final authority--is explained as being 'a peculiar structure
+of mind which is given by Nature to an individual which qualifies him
+for a particular employment; a strength of mind, uncommon powers of
+intellect, particularly the power of invention.'  A crank," she went
+on, "in its modern meaning, seems hardly to have been known to the
+writer of this dictionary; the word is rendered literally, as meaning
+'a bend or turn.'"
+
+"Then I submit," said Miss Taylor, "that Coleridge was a genius."
+
+Miss Tracey said in a very sprightly manner--she often astonished us by
+showing a subtle turn of mind, and a graceful aptitude for epigram
+which, it was believed, could only have found its proper field in those
+salons which are now, alas! things of the past--"Let us write him down
+a genius _and_ a crank!  The two"--she advanced her daring view
+bravely--"the two are often allied."  She had a volume of Coleridge on
+her bookshelves, and prided herself upon her appreciation--unusual in a
+woman--of the "Ancient Mariner."
+
+"A genius in italics, and a crank followed by a mark of interrogation!"
+said Eliza in a brilliant fashion; and Miss Taylor, not to be beaten in
+a matter of intellect, said at once, "Did Bacon write Shakespeare's
+plays?"
+
+Mrs. Gallup and Mr. Lee were quoted extensively.
+
+Miss Taylor could only suggest, with a good deal of quiet dignity, that
+she could write to The Uncle and find out who is right.  This of course
+closes the controversy for the present.
+
+George Jamieson, who goes to town every day, gains advanced views from
+the magazines which he reads during his dinner-hour in the City, and he
+is a great assistance to the Reading Society.  I contribute the use of
+my library, and I have heard the members of the Reading Society say
+that "women are the true leaders of the present movement, and already
+their influence is being felt by the male mind."
+
+George brought with him the current number of the Nineteenth Century
+when he came home last Friday, instead of Pearson's or the Strand, and
+already there are whispers of a Magazine Club in Stowel.  Miss Frances
+Taylor received nothing but books on her last birthday, and Palestrina
+told me a pathetic little story of how Gracie Jamieson went without a
+pair of shoes to buy a copy of Browning.  Perhaps the climax of culture
+and learning was felt only to have been reached when Eliza introduced
+the expression "Hypothesis of Purpose" into an ordinary conversation at
+the conclusion of one of the meetings of the Reading Society.
+
+After this, as Palestrina remarked, it was quite refreshing to hear
+that the curate's wife had got a new baby.  It was born on Sunday, and
+the anxious father spent his days bicycling wildly to and fro between
+his own house and the church, hopelessly confusing his reading of the
+service, and then flying back to inquire about his wife's health.  Led
+by him we prayed successively for fine weather and for rain, while the
+Sunday-school teachers' meeting was announced for 2 a.m. on the
+following Saturday, and the Coal Club notices were inextricably
+confused with the banns of marriage.  After each service the distracted
+little man would leap on his bicycle again, and, scattering the
+departing congregation with his bicycle bell, he was off down the hill
+to his house.  His perturbation was nothing compared with the confusion
+at home, where, so far as I could make out, the bewildered household
+did nothing but run up and down stairs, and madly offer each other cups
+of tea.
+
+My sister's kind heart suggested that we should have Peggy, the eldest
+child, to stay with us until her mother should be better.  Is it
+necessary to mention the fact that Palestrina is fat and very pretty,
+and that she spoils me dreadfully?  Do I want a book, I generally find
+that Palestrina has written for it, almost before I had realized that
+life was a wilderness without it.  I have never known her out of
+temper, nor anything else but placid and serene.  And she has a low,
+gurgling laugh, and a certain way of saying, "Oh, that will be very
+nice!" to any proposal that one makes, which one must admit makes her a
+very charming and a very easy person to live with.  She is fond of
+children, and she announced to Peggy with a beaming smile this morning
+that she had a new little brother.
+
+Peggy went on quietly with her breakfast for some time without making
+any remark; then she gave a little sigh, and said: "Mamma thought she
+had enough children already, but I suppose God thought otherwise."
+
+Peggy has been in low spirits all day, and closely following some line
+of reasoning of her own she has flatly refused to say her prayers at
+bedtime.
+
+
+Mrs. Fielden rode over to see us this morning, in her dark habit and
+the neat boots which she loves to tap with her riding-crop.  She came
+into the dim hall like the embodiment of Spring or of Life, and sat
+down in her oddly-shaped habit as though she were at home and in no
+hurry to go off anywhere else.  This gives a feeling of repose to a
+sick man.  One knew that she would probably stop to luncheon, and that
+one would not have to say to her half a dozen times in the morning,
+"Please don't go."
+
+Presently Margaret Jamieson, who had been doing the whole work of the
+curate's household during the late trying time, came with the baby in
+her arms to show him to Palestrina.  Her manner had a charming air of
+matronliness about it, and she threw back the fretted silk of the veil
+that covered the face of the little creature in her arms with an air of
+pride that was rather pretty to see.  But Eliza, who had raced over to
+our house in the usual Jamieson headlong fashion, to say something to
+us on the subject of textual criticism, looked severely at the infant
+through her glasses, and remarked that she had no sympathy whatever
+with that sort of thing.  Margaret hugged the baby closer to her, and
+Mettie, who had pattered over to see us with her cousin Eliza, remarked
+that children and their upbringing were doubtless among the great risks
+of matrimony.
+
+"I am sure," said Eliza, "when one sees how happy Kate is with James,
+it makes one feel that marriage is not so very great a risk after all."
+
+That there should be an element of sarcasm in this remark did not even
+suggest itself to Eliza.
+
+"We should all be thankful," piped forth Mettie, who is always ready to
+talk, "that it has turned out so well.  Kate's courage and independence
+of mind seem exactly suited to Mr. Ward.  But that is what I think
+about us all at Belmont; our characteristics are so different that any
+gentleman coming amongst us might find something to attract him in one,
+if not in the others.  Margaret is our home-bird, and Eliza is so
+cultured, and Kate----"
+
+The two Miss Jamiesons were looking very uncomfortable, and Margaret
+said, "O Mettie, dear!" while Mrs. Fielden made an excuse for walking
+over to the piano.  There was a piece of music open upon it.  "Do sing
+it," she said to Palestrina.
+
+
+THE GAY TOM-TIT.
+
+  "A tom-tit lived in a tip-top tree,
+  And a mad little, bad little bird was he.
+      He'd bachelor tastes, but then--oh dear!
+      He'd a gay little way with the girls, I fear!
+
+  "Now, a Jenny wren lived on a branch below,
+  And it's plain she was vain as ladies go,
+      For she pinched her waist and she rouged a bit.
+      With a sigh for the eye of that gay tom-tit.
+          She sighed, 'Oh my!'
+          She sighed, 'Ah me!'
+  While the tom-tit sat on his tip-top tree-tree-tree.
+          And she piped her eye
+          A bit-bit-bit
+  For the love of that gay tom-tit-tit-tit.
+
+  "She saw that her rouge did not attract,
+  So she tried to decide how next to act:
+      She donned a stiff collar and fancy shirt,
+      And she wore, what is more, a divided skirt.
+  Then she bought cigarettes and a big latch-key,
+  And she said, 'He'll be bound to notice me!'
+      But she found her plan did not work one bit,
+      For he sneered, as I feared, did that gay tom-tit.
+          He sneered, 'Oh my!'
+          He sneered, 'Oh lor!
+  What on earth has she done that for-for-for?'
+          And he winked his eye
+          A bit-bit-bit,
+  That giddy and gay tom-tit-tit-tit.
+
+  "'Alas! no more,' said the poor young wren,
+  'Will I ape the shape of heartless men!'
+      So she flung cigarettes and big latch-key
+      With a flop from the top of the great green tree.
+  And she wouldn't use rouge or pinch her waist,
+  But she dressed to the best of a simple taste;
+      Then she learned to cook and sew and knit--
+      'What a pearl of a girl!' said the gay tom-tit.
+          Said he, 'Good day!'
+          Said she, 'How do?'
+  They were very soon friends, these two-two-two.
+          And I'm bound to say
+          In a bit-bit-bit
+  She married that gay tom-tit-tit-tit."
+
+
+Thus sang Palestrina.
+
+"Ethically considered, my dear Palestrina," said Eliza, "that song is
+distinctly unmoral."
+
+"Don't let us consider it ethically," said Palestrina tranquilly; and
+she went over and sat in the corner of the sofa with several pillows at
+her back.
+
+"Ethically considered," repeated Eliza, "that song, if one pursues its
+teaching to a logical conclusion, can only mean that all female social
+development is impossible, and that the whole reason for a woman's
+existence is that she may gratify man."
+
+"They are really not worth it," murmured Mrs. Fielden, who was in a
+frivolous mood.
+
+"And mark you," said Eliza, in quite the best of the Reading Society
+manner: "it does not suggest that that gratification may be inspired
+either by our beauty or by our intellect; indeed, it proves that such
+powers are worthless to inspire it.  It postulates the
+hypothesis"--Eliza is really splendid--"that man is a brute whose
+appreciation can only be secured by ministering to his desire for food
+and suitable clothing, and that woman's whole business is to render
+this creature complacent."
+
+"Don't you think things are much pleasanter when people _are_
+complacent?" said my sister easily.
+
+Eliza fixed her with strong, dark eyes.  "Were I describing you in a
+book," she said--one feels as though Eliza will write a book, probably
+a clever one, some day--"I should describe you as a typical woman, and
+therefore a pudding.  A dear, tepid pudding, with a pink sauce over it.
+Very sweet, no doubt, but squashy--decidedly squashy.  Some day," said
+Eliza triumphantly, "you will be squashed into mere pulp, and you will
+not like that."
+
+This did not seem to be a likely end for Palestrina.  Eliza continued:
+"Who will deny that men are selfish?"
+
+"But they are also useful," said Mrs. Fielden in an ingenuous way.
+"They open doors for one, don't you know, and give one the front row
+when there is anything to be seen, even when one wears a big hat; and
+they see one into one's carriage--oh! and lots of other useful little
+things of that sort."
+
+"Admitted," said Eliza, "that women have certain privileges--have they
+any Rights?"
+
+Mrs. Fielden admitted that they had not.  "But," she said, "I don't
+really think that that is important.  The men whom one knows are always
+nice to one, and I don't think it matters much what the others are."
+
+"Rank individualism," said Eliza.  And she said it without a moment's
+hesitation, which gave us a very high opinion indeed of her powers of
+speech.  "It is the fashion to say that each woman has only one man to
+manage, and she must be a very stupid woman if she cannot manage him;
+but there are thousands of women who, being weaker morally and
+physically than their particular man, can do nothing with him, and it
+is not fair to leave their wrongs unredressed because you are
+comfortable and happy."
+
+"Still, you know," said Mrs. Fielden thoughtfully, "one cannot help
+wishing that they could get what they want without involving us in the
+question.  You see, if they got their rights we should probably get
+ours too, and then I'm afraid we should lose our privileges."
+
+"You are like the man," said I, "who could do quite well without the
+necessaries of life, but he could not do without its luxuries."
+
+"What a nice man it must have been who said that!" exclaimed Mrs.
+Fielden.  "It would be quite easy to do without meat on one's table,
+but it would be impossible to dine without flowers and dessert."
+
+It must be admitted that Eliza had the last word in the argument after
+all.
+
+"Just so," she said; "and all life shows just this--that a woman has,
+with her usual perverseness, chosen a diet of flowers and dessert with
+intervals of starvation, instead of wholesome meat and pudding."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+"We shall have to ask the engaged couple to dinner," I said to
+Palestrina one morning a few days later.  "And I suppose one or two
+more of the rest of The Family would like to be asked at the same time."
+
+"I never know in what quantities one ought to ask the Jamiesons," said
+my sister, "nor how to make a proper selection.  It seems invidious to
+suggest that Kate and Eliza and Margaret should come, and not Maud and
+Gracie; and yet what is one to do?  The last time that you were away
+from home I wrote and said, 'Will a few of you come?'  And Mrs.
+Jamieson, the Pirate Boy, and four sisters came."
+
+"One feels sure," I replied, "that the Jamiesons thought that was quite
+a modest number to take advantage of your invitation.  One knows that
+had they been inviting some girls from a boarding-school they would
+have included the entire number of pupils."
+
+Palestrina protested that as the meal to which our friends were to come
+was dinner, it would be only reasonable to invite the same number of
+ladies and gentlemen; and to this I assented.  She suggested asking the
+Darcey-Jacobs, whom we had not seen for a long time.
+
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is a woman who always affords one considerable
+inward amusement, being herself, I believe, more conspicuously devoid
+of humour than any one else I have ever met.  Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs has
+never been known to see a joke.  That she herself should appear to any
+one in a humorous light would, I know, appear an inconceivable
+contingency to her.  She has a high Roman nose, and rather faded yellow
+hair, which was her principal claim to beauty when a girl.  It is even
+now thick and long, and is always worn in a sort of majestic coronet on
+the top of her head.  Her manner is somewhat formidable and emphatic,
+and the alarm which this engenders in timid or diffident persons is
+increased by the habit she has of accentuating many of her remarks by a
+playful but really somewhat severe rap over the knuckles of the person
+she is addressing, with her fan or lorgnettes.  She dresses handsomely
+in expensive materials somewhat gaudy in colour, and she has an erect
+carriage, of which she is very proud.  Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs has a good
+deal to say on the subject of the feeble-mindedness of the male sex,
+and when something has been proved impossible of attainment by them she
+always says, "A woman could have done it in five minutes."
+
+At the time of her marriage, Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs (Miss Foljambe she was
+then) was a dowerless girl with two admirers, Major Jacobs and Mr.
+Morgan.  Not being, it would seem, a young lady of very deep
+affections, her choice of a husband was decided entirely by the extent
+of the worldly prospects he could offer, and the Major, being the
+better match of the two, was accepted.  But how cruel are the tricks
+that fate will sometimes play!  Not long after her marriage Mr. Morgan
+not only inherited a large fortune, but shortly afterwards left this
+world for a better, and Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is in the habit of
+remarking, with a good deal of feeling, "If I had only chosen the other
+I might have been a happy widow now!"
+
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs lives in our quiet country neighbourhood during the
+greater part of the year, on the distinct understanding that she
+loathes every hour of it.  When she goes abroad or to London she talks
+quite cheerfully of having had one breath of life.  So fraught with
+happy successes are these pilgrimages in her brocaded satin gowns into
+the outer world that she often says that were she but free she might
+have the world at her feet to-morrow.  And she has been known to refer
+to the Major, still in the tone of cheerful resignation and with her
+emphasizing tap of the fan, as "a dead weight round her neck."
+
+The Major himself is a guileless person, whose very simplicity causes
+his wife more exquisite suffering than even a husband of keen,
+vindictive temper could inflict.
+
+Does Mrs. Jacobs give a dinner-party, it is not unusual for the master
+of the house to remark in a congratulatory tone from his end of the
+table, "What has Mullens been doing to the silver, my dear? it looks
+unusually bright;" while his greeting to his friends as they arrive at
+his house, though distinctly cordial, often takes the form of a hearty
+"I had no idea that we were going to see you to-night."  As Mrs.
+Darcey-Jacobs always sends some kind message from the Major in her
+notes of invitation, this of course is most disconcerting, both for her
+and for her guests.  This year when they were in Italy a friend of ours
+in the same hotel overheard a lady ask the Major if he were related to
+the Darceys of Mugthorpe.  "I really can't tell you," said the Major;
+"the Darcey was my wife's idea."
+
+"Four Jamiesons," I said, "and the Darcey-Jacobs, and our two selves.
+Isn't it humiliating to think that we have invariably to invite the
+same two men to balance our numbers at a dinner-party?  I can't help
+remarking that Anthony Crawshay and Ellicomb are present at every
+dinner-party in this neighbourhood, as surely as soup is on the table."
+
+"We might ask Mrs. Fielden," said Palestrina; "she is sure to have some
+colonels with her.  Besides, I love Mrs. Fielden, though people say she
+is a flirt.  I think most men are in love with her; some propose to
+her, and some do not, but they all love her."
+
+"Even when she refuses to marry them?"
+
+"I have heard Mrs. Fielden say that an offer of marriage should be
+refused artistically," said Palestrina.  "She says young girls hardly
+ever do it properly, and that they are brusque and brutal.  I suppose
+she herself has some charming way of her own of refusing men which does
+not hurt their feelings.  I believe," said Palestrina, "that she would
+marry Sir Anthony Crawshay if he could play Bridge."
+
+"Anthony is an excellent fellow," I said.
+
+Mr. Ellicomb is a young man of High Church principles and artistic
+tastes who has taken an old Tudor farmhouse in the neighbourhood, and
+has furnished it very well.  He waxes eloquent on the monstrous
+inelegance of modern dress, and the decadence of Japanese art, and he
+says he would rather sit in the dark than burn gas in his house, and he
+dusts his own blue china himself.  In his house it is a sign of art to
+divert anything from its proper use, and to use it for another purpose
+than that for which it was originally intended.  Poor Ellicomb uses a
+cabbage-strainer as a fern-pot, a drain-tile for an umbrella-stand, his
+mother's old lace veils as antimacassars, bed-posts as palm-stands, a
+linen press as a book-case, and a brass spittoon for growing lilies.
+It is almost like playing at guessing riddles to go over his house with
+him, and to try and discover for what purpose some of his things were
+originally created.  Their conversion to another use is, I am sure, a
+very high form of art.
+
+"There are the Jamiesons," said my sister, as we sat in the hall ready
+to receive our guests.
+
+It does not require any occult power to sit indoors and to be able to
+distinguish the Jamiesons' carriage-wheels from those of the other
+arrivals, for the Jamiesons have, as usual, employed the "six-fifty"
+bus on its return journey from the station to set them down at our
+gate.  It is quite a subject of interest with our neighbours to find
+themselves fellow-passengers with the young ladies, in their black
+skirts and their more dressy style of bodice concealed beneath tweed
+capes.  And it generally gets about in Stowel circles before the
+evening is over, or certainly soon after the morning shopping has
+begun, that the Miss Jamiesons have been dining at such or such a
+house.  Even the bus conductor has a sympathetic way of handing the
+young ladies into his conveyance when they are going out to dinner, and
+he fetches a wisp of straw and wipes down the step if the night is wet.
+
+Mr. Ward piloted the independent Kate up the short carriage-drive with
+quite an affectionate air of solicitude, frequently inquiring of her if
+she did not feel her feet a little damp; and Kate answered cheerfully
+and kindly, feeling, no doubt, that this sort of fussing was one of the
+drawbacks of prospective matrimony, but that it was only right to
+accept the little attentions in the spirit in which they were made.
+The Pirate Boy, who followed with his sister Maud, begged her to take
+his arm in a burly fashion, and fell a little distance behind.  The
+Pirate Boy thinks that it is etiquette to place himself at a distance
+from any engaged couple, even during the shortest walk.  He does so
+even when he makes the untoward third in a party.  On these occasions
+he falls behind and puts on an air of abstraction a little overdone.
+The Jacobs arrived next, and then Anthony Crawshay, who drove over in
+his high dog-cart, with its flashing lamps and glittering wheels--a
+very good light-running cart it is; Anthony and I used often to drive
+in it together--and Ellicomb arrived in a brougham, in which we have a
+shrewd suspicion that there is a foot-warmer.
+
+Maud began to flirt with Mr. Ellicomb directly.  I have never known her
+to be for long in the society of a gentleman without doing so, and her
+sisters are wont to say of Maud that she certainly has her
+opportunities, while the criticism of an unprejudiced observer might be
+that she certainly makes them.  Mr. Ellicomb, it is believed, has
+written an article in one of the magazines on the reformation of men's
+clothing, and it is hoped he will become a member of the Reading
+Society.  He ate very little at dinner, and talked in a low, cultured
+voice about Church matters the whole of the evening, and uttered some
+very decided views upon the subject of the celibacy of the clergy.
+
+"I must say," said Major Jacobs, "that I also approve of celibacy in
+the Church, and I may say in the army and in the navy.  If I had my
+life to live over again----"
+
+"William!" said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs in an awful voice.
+
+William was about to retreat precipitately from his position, but
+catching sight perhaps of a sympathetic eye turned upon him from that
+good comrade of his, Anthony Crawshay, he blundered on,--
+
+"If Confession, now, became more general in the English Church," he
+said, "secrets confided to the clergy could hardly be kept inviolate.
+A clergyman's wife might almost--well, not to put too fine a point on
+it--wring from him by force the secret that had been committed to him."
+
+"I hope so, indeed," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs.
+
+"The Anglican Church," said Mr. Ellicomb, "recognizes that difficulty,
+and has met it in the persons of the Fathers of the Church."
+
+Maud Jamieson raised soft eyes to his, and said that a woman might be a
+help and a comfort to a man.
+
+Mr. Ellicomb seemed disposed to admit that it might be so.  "I have
+been in retreat at Cowley for some weeks," he said, "and the cooking
+was certainly monstrous, and, would you believe it, they did not allow
+one to bring one's own servant with one."  There is nothing monkish
+about Ellicomb, nor is his asceticism overdone.
+
+"I have been reading a book on sects and heresies," said Mrs. Fielden,
+"and I find I belong to them all."
+
+Mr. Ellicomb interposed eagerly by saying, "If I had to state my own
+convictions exactly, I should certainly say that I was a Manichaean,
+with just a touch of Sabellianism."
+
+"I think," said Mrs. Fielden gravely, "that I am a Rosicrucian heretic."
+
+Mr. Ellicomb was interested and delighted.  "I know," he said, "that
+many people would think that I had not exactly stated my position.  For
+instance, a lady to whom I described my symptoms the other day, told me
+at once that I was a Buddhist by nature and an Antinomian by education,
+and I felt that in part she was right."
+
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs here interposed, and gave it as her opinion
+emphatically that man was a contemptible creature whatever his beliefs
+might be, and that he required a woman to look after him.  "To look
+after him," she repeated, in a tone that said as plainly as possible,
+"to keep him in order," and she tapped Mr. Ellicomb sharply on the
+knuckles.
+
+The Pirate Boy had some brave notions about what he called The Sex, and
+here plunged into a long description of how he had rescued a fair
+creature out of the hands of cut-throats out there, and he illustrated
+his action of saving the fair one by holding an imaginary six-shooter
+to Palestrina's head in a very alarming way.  He talked of man as The
+Protector, and thrust his hand into his cummerbund--the action, I
+suppose, being intended to show that the six-shooter had been
+replaced--and glanced round the table with an air of defiance.  "There
+is not a man," he remarked, "I don't care who he is, if he fail in
+respect to a woman when I am present, that shall not get a decanter
+hurled straight at his head--straight at his head.  I have said it!"
+He laid his hand impetuously upon one of two heavy cut-glass bottles
+that had been placed in front of me, and one trembled for the safety of
+one's guests.  "I remember," he said, "in one of those gambling-hells
+in the Far West, where there was about as unruly a set of fellows and
+cut-throats as ever I came across----"  The rest of the story was so
+evidently culled from the last number of the _Strand Magazine_ that it
+hardly seemed rude of Palestrina to interrupt it by bowing to Mrs.
+Fielden, and suggesting that they should adjourn.  Maud Jamieson drew
+my sister aside as they stood grouped round the fire-place in the hall
+drinking their coffee, and thanked her for introducing Mr. Ellicomb to
+her.  "He is perfectly charming," she said.  But Maud's sisters have
+confided to us that this is her invariable conclusion about the last
+man she has met, and it is intended as a sort of previndication of
+herself.  Maud, it seems, intends to flirt with every one she sees, but
+if she pretends that her affections are really touched there can be no
+upbraidings on the part of The Family.
+
+Kate Jamieson sat on the sofa, and twisted her engagement ring
+complacently round her finger.  She thought that Mr. Ward had carried
+himself very well this evening.  His quietness throughout the dinner
+compared favourably with the conversation of other guests.  Kate said
+once to Palestrina: "He is a man that I shall feel the utmost
+confidence in taking about with me everywhere."  And the remark
+conveyed the suggestion that Mr. Ward would always be an appendage to
+Kate Jamieson.
+
+Anthony Crawshay is a very good fellow indeed.  The most advanced and
+cultured young lady will never get him to talk about metaphysics in the
+crush of a ballroom, nor to concern himself about the inartistic shape
+of the clothes we wear nowadays.  "If I didn't like them, I shouldn't
+wear them," says Anthony.  He is a short, spare man, with a voice
+somewhat out of proportion to his size, and the best cross-country
+rider in the county.  The habit he has of shouting all his remarks
+seems rather pleasantly in accordance with his honest nature.  Anthony
+very seldom speaks of any one of whom he has not a good word to say;
+but if he does mention any one whom he dislikes, he does so in a very
+hearty manner, which is almost as good as many other people's praise.
+He is as obstinate, as straightforward, and as good a fellow as a
+country neighbour ought to be.  "We have been hunting a May fox, by
+Gad, Hugo," said Anthony, and he began to tell me about the run--a
+thing I can hardly get any one to do nowadays.
+
+The Pirate Boy, upon whom the word "horse" had a rousing effect,
+condemned the whole breed of English horses in one short speech.  "I
+assure you," he said, getting up and sawing the air with his hand,
+"there are some of those wild mustangs out there which would knock
+spots out of any horses in your stables."
+
+Thus challenged, Anthony, who was standing on the hearthrug, turned,
+and stooping towards me asked, in what he intended to be a whisper, who
+the young fellow was, and shouted abroad, "Rum chap that, very rum
+chap!"
+
+By-and-by Maud Jamieson went to the piano and began to sing ballads to
+Mr. Ellicomb; and we have an inward conviction--Palestrina and I--that
+this evening's report to the Jamieson family will be that Mr. Ellicomb
+is "struck."  Major Jacobs considers himself musical because he likes
+hearing the words of a song distinctly pronounced.  He was charmed with
+Maud's singing, and Kate encouraged the girl in a little matronly way
+which she has lately assumed.  She called forth Maud's best efforts by
+saying, "What was the pretty Irish song you sang the other night?" or
+"You haven't given us 'We'd better bide a wee' yet, dear."  Maud
+responded with several ballads, and wished she had some of Lord Henry
+Somerset's songs with her, Mr. Ellicomb having expressed a fondness for
+them.  An opportunity was thus given for suggesting a call at
+Belmont--Maud knows mamma will be delighted--she wished Kennie were
+better at that sort of thing; the invitation to come in some afternoon
+might perhaps have come more properly from a brother.
+
+It was very gratifying to find that Mr. Ward, fortified by dinner,
+became more courageous than I have ever known him to be before.  He
+tip-toed almost boldly across the room, and sitting down beside my
+sister began to make a series of deliberate remarks to her, mostly in
+the form of interrogation: "Do you care for Scotch songs?"  "Have you
+ever been in Ireland?"  "Do you know Wales at all?"  And to these
+important questions Palestrina made suitable replies.  "That is _most_
+interesting," I heard her say from time to time, using the formula of
+those who are bored to the extent of complete absence of mind.
+
+Mrs. Fielden crossed the room suddenly with a shimmer of silken skirts.
+In spite of her frivolity she has a way of making herself necessary to
+every party to which she goes.  There used to be an old saying long ago
+in Scotland that wherever The Macgregor sat was the head of the table.
+Mrs. Fielden is always the centre of every party, although she has a
+childish habit, which in another woman might be ascribed to shyness, of
+taking the least conspicuous seat in the room.  Consequently, when she
+dispersed the little group that was standing or sitting about her,
+applauding everything she said, and came across the room in pink satin
+and roses and diamonds, and sat down beside my sofa, the action had
+something regal about it, as though she had left a throne and come to
+speak to me.
+
+"I am going to teach you to play Bridge," she said.
+
+"That is most kind of you."
+
+"I am going to carry you off to Stanby next week to give you lessons,"
+she went on.
+
+I have a strong conviction that if Mrs. Fielden were to give a beggar a
+halfpenny he would probably stoop down and kiss the edge of her skirt,
+or do something equally unconventional and self-abasing.  She might, as
+a great favour, give a courtier who had risked his life for her, her
+hand to kiss.  When she smiles men become foolish about her.
+
+"It is very kind of you to want us," I said.
+
+"I want Bridge," said Mrs. Fielden, and, as usual when she is going to
+be provoking, she looked prettier than ever, and began to smile.
+
+"Any one will do to make up a rubber, I suppose?" I said.
+
+"Oh yes, any one," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"Consequently, my sister and I need not feel particularly distinguished
+by being asked," I continued.
+
+"I am so glad Palestrina is coming," said Mrs. Fielden, "because
+several men have written to tell me they are coming to stay, just when
+my sisters-in-law are leaving, and I suppose I oughtn't to entertain a
+houseful of men alone, ought I?"
+
+Mrs. Fielden does exactly as she pleases upon all occasions, but this
+does not prevent her from pretending to have acute attacks of propriety
+sometimes.
+
+"We will play Bridge and chaperon you with pleasure," I said.
+
+"I thought of drowning myself yesterday," said Mrs. Fielden, "because
+it rained all day, and I had no one to amuse me, and then I thought I
+would ask you to come over and play Bridge instead.  When I am bored I
+never can make up my mind whether I shall commit suicide, or go into a
+convent, or get married.  Which do you advise?"
+
+"I should advise you to marry," I said.  "As far as I can gather, a
+great source of discord and danger in our neighbourhood would be
+removed if you did so."
+
+Mrs. Fielden said with her eyes, "Hugo, you are very cross."  But being
+the most good-natured woman in the world, and sharing that forbearance
+which most people extend to an invalid, she smiled instead.
+
+"Why do you stay here when you are feeling so tired?" she said to me
+presently.
+
+"Because," I replied, "my sister lies awake half the night and thinks I
+am going to die, if I show any signs of fatigue, or go to bed early.
+Besides, for us, you know, this is quite an exciting evening.  We have
+thought about our dinner-party for days past."
+
+"If you were nice," said Mrs. Fielden after a pause, "you would ask me
+to come into your library and smoke."
+
+"Do you smoke?"
+
+"No," said Mrs. Fielden, "I don't."
+
+"I'm glad you don't," I said.
+
+"For years," said Mrs. Fielden, "I tried to think it was wrong, and
+then I quite enjoyed smoking; but there is a certain effort involved in
+trying to raise an innocent occupation to the level of a crime."
+
+"It is a very unfeminine habit," I said; partly because I was in a
+contradictious mood, and partly because I wanted to snub Mrs. Fielden
+for being so beautiful and young and charming.
+
+"The last man," said Mrs. Fielden gravely, "who made that remark died
+shortly afterwards."
+
+She was gathering up my cushions and pillows as she spoke, and she
+turned to my sister as she crossed the hall, and said, "We are going to
+study philosophy in the library."
+
+The library was lit by a single lamp, and the fire burned low in the
+grate; but the room was illumined suddenly by a pink dress and roses
+and diamonds, and Mrs. Fielden was arranging cushions, in the very
+skilful way she has, on my sofa by the fire.  She handed me my
+cigarette-box and matches, and spread a rug over my leg.  For some
+occult reason the rustling pink dress only whispered softly over the
+carpet now, like a woman's hushed voice in a sick-room, and Mrs.
+Fielden, by the simple act of drawing up a chair to the fire and
+sitting in it, took the head of the table again, and became the centre
+of the room.
+
+"May I really smoke," I asked, "after being such a brute as to say you
+mustn't?"
+
+"I look upon smoking as a purely feminine habit, like drinking tea, or
+having headaches, or anything of that sort," said Mrs. Fielden.  "It
+was simply because it was so expensive that men took to it in the first
+place.  Ethics should not be based upon accident, should it?"
+
+I handed Mrs. Fielden my cigarette-box.
+
+"If you are quite sure you disapprove, I will have one," she said.
+
+From the hall came the sound of Maud's singing.  Her voice is not of
+great compass, nor very strong, but it is clear and fresh, with a
+tuneful cadence in it.
+
+"You spend nearly all your days here?" said Mrs. Fielden, looking round
+the room.
+
+"Until the afternoon," I said; "and then Palestrina and I go for a
+little walk, and at tea-time I go to the hall sofa, and she asks people
+to come up and sit with me."
+
+"I am glad you like books," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"But really," I said, "the good folks in Stowel are all extraordinarily
+kind to me, and some of the Jamiesons are up nearly every day."
+
+"I like the Jamiesons," said Mrs. Fielden; "they are so intelligent.
+Have you ever noticed that their watches all keep exact time, and that
+they tell you the hour to the very second?  And they always know what
+day of the month it is, and when Easter falls, and how much stuff it
+takes to make a blouse."
+
+"You wrong Eliza Jamieson," I said; "she studies philosophy."
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Fielden eagerly, "I forgot to tell you, I have begun to
+study philosophy.  I began last week.  Will you lend me some books,
+please?  I want to be very wise and learned."
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"I think," said Mrs. Fielden, "that it might be nice if people did not
+always call one frivolous; and that if I studied philosophy----"
+
+"I shall not lend you any books," I said.
+
+"That is rather disobliging of you."
+
+"Because," I said, "our lives should always show a perfect equation.
+If you are a frivolous person you should behave frivolously."
+
+"You mean _as_ I am a frivolous person," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"As you are a frivolous person," I repeated.
+
+"And after all," said Mrs. Fielden with a contemplative air, "how silly
+philosophy is!  I asked somebody the other day the meaning of a
+syllogism, and really I don't think I ever heard anything quite so
+foolish."
+
+"It is quite beneath your notice," I said.
+
+"I did think of asking you if I might come over sometimes and read
+these musty volumes of yours."
+
+"You would probably find them as uninteresting as I am," I said.
+
+Mrs. Fielden looked as if she thought that might be possible, and did
+not press the matter.
+
+I dislike being disloyal to my books, for they are such good friends of
+mine.  But a great wish came to me then to get up and do something,
+instead of for ever reading the doings and the thoughts of other
+people.  I thought how much I should like to live again, and just for
+once sleep on the veldt with the stars overhead, or longed that I could
+get astride of a horse, and follow a burst of the hounds over the wet
+fields in England.  And so thinking I turned on the sofa and said
+petulantly, "I wish Maud Jamieson would not sing that song."
+
+"Oh, that we two were maying," she sang, in the song that tells of love
+and separation, and the longings and heartbreaks which it is much
+better not to speak about, and the things which we want and cannot have.
+
+"I hate yearners," I said.  "Why can't she sing something cheerful?"
+
+Mrs. Fielden rose from her chair by the fire and crossed the hearthrug,
+and came and sat down on my sofa.  She took my hand in hers and said:
+"Poor boy! is it very hard sometimes?"
+
+
+"Of course," said Palestrina, as we went upstairs to bed after our
+guests had departed, "you are sure to feel tired.  The little party has
+been too much for you, I'm afraid.  It was very tiresome for you having
+to leave us all."
+
+"I felt rather a crock after dinner," I said, "and I think the hall
+gets hot in the evening."
+
+"I wish I could make you better," said Palestrina affectionately; "it
+is horrid for you being ill."
+
+"Every one," I said, "makes far too much fuss about health.  Why, ten
+officers of our regiment are buried in South Africa.  I suppose half
+the pensioners in Chelsea Hospital have had wounds as bad as mine, and
+a cripple more or less in the world does not matter very much.  Women
+are kind enough to pity me.  They even confide their troubles to me
+sometimes, because I am a poor thing lying on a sofa.  I am really
+quite happy hobbling about with you, Palestrina; and when I am older, I
+shall probably take an interest in the garden.  There is a proper and
+philosophical attitude of mind in respect of these things."
+
+"O Hugo," said Palestrina, "I always know you are not happy when you
+begin to be philosophical."
+
+"Life is very easily explained without the assistance of philosophy
+when everything goes all right," I replied.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Have I ever mentioned that Palestrina is engaged to be married?  If I
+have not done so, it is because it seems an obvious fact that all
+Palestrinas are engaged to be married.  Her _fiance_, who is called
+Thomas, is stationed with his regiment in Ireland.  A few weeks ago he
+sent her, as a token of his affection, a yellow dog with long hair.
+Palestrina does not like dogs, but she is trying to love Down-Jock for
+Thomas's sake.  She says his name is Jock.  The dog is a curious
+creature, with a passion for hurling himself at those who wear clean
+flannel trousers or light skirts.  Thomas says he is full of
+intelligence.  He appears to be quite a young animal, but he can affect
+the airs of extreme old age, sleeping in a basket a great part of the
+day, or standing on the doorstep to bark at visitors in an asthmatical
+manner, as though he would say, "I am too old and too feeble to give
+chase, but while I am alive this house shall not lack a defender."  At
+other times he is wildly juvenile, and rolls himself over and over in
+an exuberance of youthful fun.  This is chiefly on Sundays, when (his
+best joke) he pretends he wants to come to church with us.  Sunday is
+Down-Jock's happiest day in all the week.  No Christian in the land
+loves it more than he does.  He begins his religious exercises early in
+the morning by barking outside the doors of all those people who have
+determined to take an extra half-hour's rest, and he continues barking
+without ceasing until the sleeper awakes and gets out of bed to open
+the door for him.  He bustles in and wags his tail cheerfully, saying
+as plainly as a dog can say it, "I am an early riser, you see--and a
+teetotaler," he adds, trotting across the room to the water-jug, and
+lapping full red tonguefuls of its contents.  Then he stands in the
+middle of the room and barks at you; runs to the door and barks at it;
+barks at the servants as they go downstairs, promising--the little
+tell-tale!--that their lateness shall be reported in the proper
+quarter.  Finally, he climbs on to the bed, and goes to sleep upon your
+feet.
+
+During breakfast he is attentive to every one, and sits on the skirts
+of those ladies who most dislike dogs, and pulls them down
+uncomfortably from the waist.  He watches every mouthful of food that
+is eaten, and grudges it to the eater; and his eyes are saying all the
+time, "How can you be so greedy?"  After breakfast his most boisterous
+juvenile mood begins.  He jumps on every one, or rolls himself over and
+over under every one's feet.  He wags his tail, barks in a piercing
+manner--the bark of the gay young dog--and madly rushes after imaginary
+rats.  All gloves and shoes become his playthings, and he frolics
+blithely with the hat-brush.
+
+On weekdays he pleads old age as an excuse, and refuses to come
+anywhere with us; but on the Sabbath morning who so ready as Down-Jock
+to take his walks abroad?  He flies after us to the gate, his long hair
+streaming in the wind, and his short legs racing like a clockwork dog.
+
+Palestrina says: "Oh dear, what shall we do?  Down-Jock! down, sir!
+Oh, he has spoilt my dress!  Good doggie, mustn't go to church!  Go
+home! go home!  Oh, Jock, do get down!--Look, he is following us still,
+and the church door is always open; he is sure to come in in the middle
+of the service, and trot up to us in our pew.  Do you think Thomas
+would mind if I were to look as if he didn't belong to us?"
+
+Jock flies back with an old bone in his mouth and deposits it at
+Palestrina's feet, dares her to touch it, and makes flying snatches at
+her shoes when she kicks the treasure aside.
+
+"I must take him back," says Palestrina.  "It will make me late of
+course, but I must go and shut him up."
+
+"He won't follow you," I say.  "He is quite determined to go to church."
+
+Palestrina lifts the heavy beast in her arms, and in an exuberance of
+joy Down-Jock makes a doormat of her dress, and rubs his paws
+affectionately against it and licks her hand.
+
+Of course he escapes presently and runs after us; that is his best and
+most killing joke.  Inwardly one feels he is in a state of
+hardly-suppressed laughter as he tears down the road again, barking
+with glee.  And then he gets a sober fit, walks demurely in front of us
+in the narrow field-path, changes his mind suddenly about going to
+church, stops dead short, and trips us up; thinks after all he ought to
+go to the morning service as an example to the servants; toddles on
+again, and stops to say (with the air of extreme old age again assumed)
+that, after all, he is not up to the exertion, and would have to sit
+down at the Psalms, so perhaps it really would be better to stay
+quietly at home.  Another stop.  A rapid toilet performed by scratching
+his head with his hind-leg, "just in case I meet any one coming out of
+church whom I know;" and then Down-Jock meets a boy friend strolling
+off to the fields, and running up to him, says: "One must conform to
+conventionalities, but between you and me I never had the remotest
+intention of going to church."
+
+Down-Jock, in his moments of most restless activity, always reminds me
+of a servant of ours who has occasional fits of the most intense
+energy.  It begins quite early in the morning, when she gets up some
+hours before her usual time, and gives a sort of surprise party to the
+rest of the household.  These parties take place two or three times a
+year, and we do not get over them for weeks afterwards.  Every room in
+the house is visited in turn, and delinquencies of a twelvemonth are
+laid bare.  During the morning cupboards are turned out in a
+magisterial sort of way, and dusty corners are triumphantly displayed.
+The most cherished rubbish is freely consigned to the waste-paper
+baskets, and collections of all sorts are contemptuously swept away.
+We hastily gather up books and precious oddments, and hurry off with
+them to my den, where we take refuge till the whirlwind is past.
+Curtains and tablecloths are shaken with a sort of vindictive energy at
+the back-door; all windows are flung open, and rugs are rolled up,
+making a sort of obstacle race in every passage and room.  Down-Jock,
+who never recognizes a superior in any one, is the only member of the
+party who is not rendered an abject coward.  He unrolls rugs, and runs
+away with dusters, and snaps at the heels of the housemaid in a way
+that provokes one's wonder at his temerity.  My sister and I, having
+locked away our most cherished possessions, generally contrive to be
+out of the house as much as possible on one of these tempestuous days.
+And following the line of reasoning, not of the highest order, which
+suggests that if one cannot be happy one had better try and be good,
+Palestrina always visits her old women at the workhouse on these days.
+
+"I wish," she said to me, "that you would walk into the village and
+meet me on my way home.  I don't think anybody is coming up to see you
+this afternoon, and the house is so uncomfortable when Janet is in one
+of her whirlwind moods.  Come as far as the corner, and go in and sit
+down at old Pettifer's if you get tired."
+
+"Shadrach Pettifer tells me," I said, "that his affection for you is
+based on the fact that you are so like his poor old mother.  Perhaps
+while I am waiting at his cottage he may give me further interesting
+facts about you."
+
+Shadey is an old man with a bent back and curious bright eyes that
+gleam under a heavy thatch of eyebrow.  His wife is the very thinnest
+old woman that I have ever seen; her cheeks have fallen in and are so
+very wrinkled that they always remind me of a toy balloon that a child
+has pricked with a pin.  She is always ill and never complaining.  Any
+expression of sympathy seems foreign to her comprehension, and the
+"Poor thing!" or "I am so sorry," so eagerly accepted by more fortunate
+folk, is received by her with a certain air of independence.  Last
+winter Mrs. Pettifer was dangerously ill with internal gout, but
+expressions of condolence were always met with the rather curious
+reply, "Well, you see, sir, we must have something to bring us to our
+end."  There is a whole world of philosophy in this.
+
+To-day the old couple spent the time while I waited for Palestrina in
+their cottage in describing to me the last days in the life of their
+tortoise, an old friend, and an animal of evidently strange and unusual
+qualities.  Towards the close of its life it was, on the testimony of
+the Pettifers, taken with screaming fits, and, it even had to be held
+down "when the high-strikes was wuss."  Later it used to run round and
+round as never was.  And at last Shadey determined to release it from
+this earthly tabernacle.  He asked his friend Bridgeman, Anthony
+Crawshay's head-keeper, to come round some evening and administer
+poison to the unfortunate beast, and the effect of the dose was as
+strange as it was unexpected.  The poison was the first thing for weeks
+that poor Toots the tortoise had seemed to enjoy.  It seemed, to quote
+again from the testimony of those most intimately acquainted with the
+animal, to "put new life into Toots," and the more poison that was
+administered the livelier did he become, "until he was that gay it
+seemed as if he would ha' laughed at yer!"  Finally, I understood that
+when poison sufficient to kill two cart-horses had been given, the
+afflicted animal yielded to treatment, and its shell now adorns the
+kitchen dresser.
+
+We returned home to find the house smelling of furniture polish, and
+permeated with a certain cold primness which succeeds a tidying-up, and
+which can only be dispelled by a glowing fire.  One by one things were
+brought back to the hall, and we felt like snails creeping out in the
+evening after a day of rain.  Banished property strewed the tables
+again, and Palestrina opened the piano and spread it with music.  It
+was an act of defiance, but comfortable nevertheless, to collect the
+cushions which had been dotted primly about in clean muslin covers, and
+to pile them all on to the sofa before the fire.  But Down-Jock, who
+always goes one better than any one else, contributed still more
+completely to the systematized disorganization of the house.  He gaily
+wiped his muddy feet on clean paint, and tore blithely round after
+imaginary rats wherever order reigned.  Finally, in an exuberance of
+joy, he made a hearty supper of Palestrina's manuscript book of music,
+and barked with glee.
+
+And yet some people say that dogs are not intelligent!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The Uncle, Sir John, is coming to stay at the Taylors', and the town is
+in something of a flutter over this event.  It was hoped that the
+Taylors would give a tea-party in honour of their guest, but there is a
+shrewd notion abroad that no one will be allowed to see very much of
+him except at a distance.  The Taylors had hoped that there would be
+some occasion during his visit on which The Uncle might speak in
+public, and Mr. Taylor has tried, half jestingly, to induce his brother
+townsfolk to arrange what he calls "something in the political line"
+while the august relative is staying with him.  I think we owe it to
+the fact that the political meeting was found to be an impossibility
+that we were asked to tea at the Taylors'.
+
+Invitations, instead of taking the form of a friendly note, after the
+pattern of Stowel invitations in general, were conveyed on one of Mrs.
+Taylor's visiting cards, with "At home, Thursday the 17th, four to
+seven," upon it.  "A little abrupt," ladies of Stowel were inclined to
+think, but of course the Taylors are people of some importance in the
+place.  No one quite knew how to answer the invitation, and a good many
+friendly little visits were paid on the afternoon on which it arrived,
+and the mysterious card was produced from a bag or purse, with the
+smiling apology, "I am sure fashions change so quickly that one hardly
+knows how to keep up with them."  And then ideas were exchanged as to
+the reply suitable to such a form of invitation.  Miss Tracey said that
+she always thought that an invitation was accepted in as nearly as
+possible the same manner in which it was given, and she announced that
+she and her sister meant to return one of their own visiting-cards to
+Mrs. Taylor, with the day and the hour named upon it, and "With
+pleasure" written underneath.  This was considered suitable, for the
+most part; but those who still had doubts upon the subject made
+elaborate efforts to meet Mrs. Taylor during the morning's shopping,
+and to say to her in a friendly way, "We are coming, of course, on
+Thursday.  Will you excuse our writing a note, at this busy time?"
+
+The Miss Blinds always send their thanks for a "polite invitation" in
+the old style, but on this occasion Miss Lydia was obliged to offer
+regrets as well as thanks, as she had not been very well lately.  She,
+I suppose, was the only person in Stowel who did not accept Mrs.
+Taylor's invitation.  Two parties are, of course, never given on the
+same day, and it would be considered eccentric to prefer staying at
+home to going out.
+
+"I am sorry Miss Lydia cannot come," said Mr. Taylor, when the notes of
+acceptance were being opened at breakfast-time; "after all, it is not
+every day that people have a chance of meeting so distinguished a man
+as the General."
+
+"Miss Lydia was never intrusive," said Mrs. Taylor.
+
+Mrs. Lovekin was one of those who avoided the difficulty raised by Mrs.
+Taylor's unusual form of invitation by meeting her accidentally in the
+baker's shop, where an assortment of cakes was being ordered for the
+tea-party, and signifying her intention of coming to tea.  "No need to
+write, I suppose," said Mrs. Lovekin lightly, "as I have met you?"
+Both Mrs. Taylor and the baker's wife thought it would have been in
+better taste if Mrs. Lovekin had then withdrawn, instead of remaining
+in the shop and hearing what was ordered.
+
+Mrs. Taylor had made up her mind at an early stage in the proceedings
+that she would be very firm indeed about the matter of dispensing tea
+herself in her own house.  She would appropriate one teapot, and her
+daughter should have the other, and not even to shake hands with a
+late-arriving guest would they run the risk of letting this badge of
+office fall into the hands of the co-hostess.
+
+"And if," said Mrs. Taylor, "I find that she is appropriating The Uncle
+too much, I shall not hesitate to remove him, on the plea of
+introducing him to some other and more important guests."
+
+It was in church on Sunday that we were first allowed to see The Uncle,
+and this is only following the usual custom in Stowel.  Church on
+Sunday is, as it were, the public life of the town.  After a death it
+is customary to wait until the family has appeared in church to pay
+visits of condolence--not so much to avoid intrusiveness in the first
+hour of grief as from a feeling that perhaps the crape mourning will
+not have arrived.  In the same way, if any one moves into a new
+house--a very unusual proceeding--we are made aware that the carpets
+are all down, and the drawing-room curtains are hung, when the new
+arrivals are seen in their pew on Sunday.  This, also, is accepted as a
+token that calling may now begin.  Mrs. Taylor said afterwards, in
+describing that first Sunday when The Uncle appeared in Stowel Church,
+that her heart beat so painfully at the door that she thought she would
+have been obliged to turn back.  It was a triumphal progress that the
+party of four made up the centre aisle to their pew, but the inward
+excitement of the Taylors rendered a natural deportment difficult.
+Neither Mrs. Taylor nor her daughter joined in the hymns or the
+responses that Sunday morning.  It is doubtful whether they heard a
+word of the service.
+
+Sir John is a very military-looking person, with white whiskers and a
+bald pink head.  He sat between Mrs. and Miss Taylor, who supplied him
+with hymn and prayer books in as natural a manner as they found it
+possible to assume; and Mr. Taylor sat at the end of the pew with a
+genial expression on his face, and a look of tempered pride, due no
+doubt to the fact that the General was "one of my wife's people," and
+not a blood relation of his own.
+
+It was a disappointment to Mr. Taylor that his own sister, Mrs.
+Macdonald--widow of a Scotch gentleman, whom the Taylors always talk of
+as "The Laird"--was not able to come to this family gathering.  But
+Mrs. Macdonald pleaded spring-cleaning as an insuperable objection to
+leaving home at present.
+
+As Miss Taylor, Mrs. Macdonald used to be one of Stowel's central
+figures, for she was a lady of considerable means and an indefatigable
+housekeeper; and Mr. Macdonald was considered to have done well when he
+took her as his bride to the North.
+
+The Sunday on which the Taylors appeared in church with The Uncle was
+curiously hot for the time of year.  It was very stuffy in church, and
+Miss Lydia had a slight fainting attack, and had to leave before the
+service was over.  Following the accepted custom in Stowel, my sister
+called the next day to ask how she did.  But indisposition, usually a
+matter of solemn pleasure with us, was overshadowed and shorn of its
+interest by the presence of The Uncle amongst us.  Even the Vicar
+looked keenly at him from the pulpit before his sermon began, but no
+one except Mrs. Lovekin was forward enough to address the august party
+as they left the church.  Mrs. Lovekin, who always affirmed that she
+saw no difference in rank, was the very first person in Stowel to shake
+hands with The Uncle.  She overtook the Taylors before they had even
+reached the gate of the churchyard, and was perforce introduced to
+their relative, "who," Mrs. Taylor said afterwards, "was almost more
+cordial than she could have wished him to be; but of course his manners
+were always perfect."  What annoyed every one a little in the days that
+followed was that Mrs. Lovekin constantly referred to the General as if
+he had been an old friend; whereas of course it was well known in what
+an intrusive way her precedence had been gained.  During the week,
+however, we all had an opportunity of seeing Sir John, for he was
+marched in triumph up and down the village street regularly twice a
+day.  Miss Taylor even condescended to subterfuge in the matter.  For
+having taken The Uncle as far as the baker's at the end of the town,
+with a view to continuing the walk into the country at The Uncle's
+request, she pretended to have forgotten something at the draper's, and
+marched him down the street again, in the proud knowledge that all
+eyes, whether from pedestrians or from the interior of shops and houses
+in the High Street, were turned upon her.  The tobacconist from whom
+The Uncle bought some tobacco gave Miss Taylor quite a sympathetic look
+as he said, "Allow me to send it for you, Sir John."  And Miss Taylor
+said, "Do allow him to send it, uncle!  I am sure that you ought not to
+carry parcels for yourself."
+
+On Thursday, when we went to the party, we saw at once that the Taylors
+meant to make no snobbish distinction between their guests, but that
+each and every one of them was to be introduced to The Uncle.
+
+"I am no good at this sort of thing, Mary," The Uncle said before the
+party began, "and I think I will walk over and see Willie Jacobs, and
+spend the afternoon with him."  Mrs. Taylor turned pale at the
+suggestion.  "It will ruin it!" she said.  "I shall feel as if I had
+been acting on false pretences."  And though the General remained, as
+he was requested to do, he showed a most irritating tendency to slip
+away, and sometimes he was not to be found at the most critical
+moments.  Mrs. Taylor stationed him close to herself in the
+drawing-room where she received her guests.  But at the very moment
+when she turned round to effect an introduction between him and some
+particular friend, it was discovered that the General had slipped off
+to the smoking-room or the tea-room, or was wandering aimlessly about
+the garden, looking at the flower-beds.
+
+Altogether, that most successful afternoon (and the Taylors really did
+feel that it had been a success from the very highest point of view)
+had still some drawbacks to it, which they regret, and always will
+regret.  For instance, when Miss Taylor had been dispatched into what
+the Taylors call the "grounds" to see "what The Uncle is doing"
+(playfully), "and tell him to come and make himself agreeable," she had
+hardly departed to fulfil her mother's request when Mrs. Lovekin bore
+down upon the teapot, poured out several of the most distinguished cups
+of tea, and handed round macaroons as though they were her own.  Last
+of all, as the party was breaking up, and Mrs. Lovekin's vicarious
+hospitality was therefore at an end, she was actually heard inviting
+The Uncle to come and call upon her.  Even the Miss Blinds, on being
+told of the incident, admitted that this behaviour on Mrs. Lovekin's
+part could not be called anything but forward.  Miss Lydia could only
+say, in a sort of sweet distress, "Perhaps she did not mean it;" but
+Miss Blind shook her head vigorously, and said, "Bad butter, bad
+butter, bad butter!"
+
+Margaret Jamieson had, of course, been helping to prepare the party,
+for Margaret Jamieson always helps wherever there is anything to be
+done.  And Eliza, we thought, made a deep impression upon The Uncle by
+her knowledge of literature, and the perfectly easy and natural way in
+which, without a moment's preparation, she alluded to the "atomic
+theory."
+
+"Ah! you are one of the Reading Society young ladies that I heard
+about," said he.  "Sorry I couldn't do more for you in the way of
+books, but that's not in my line at all, you know.  I was educated at a
+Grammar School, and I never had the advantages that you young people
+have nowadays."  (Mrs. Taylor thought this statement unnecessary, but
+reflected that great men often make allusions of this sort.)  "However,
+if I ever can be of any use to you--getting you an order for reading at
+the British Museum, or anything of that sort--I hope you will let me
+know."
+
+For one brief day the Jamiesons were inclined to tease Eliza about
+having made a conquest, but the Taylors would not have any nonsense of
+that sort for a moment.  It made Mrs. Taylor quite nervous to think of
+such a thing, and she remarked that that was the worst of having
+distinguished people to stop with one; there was always somebody
+running after them.  Eliza Jamieson, we noticed, was treated with
+marked coldness by the Taylors for some time afterwards, and Miss
+Taylor recollected darkly that it was Eliza's suggestion, in the first
+instance, that The Uncle should be consulted on the choice of books for
+the Reading Society.  "She may," said Miss Taylor, "have had an eye on
+him from the first."
+
+A purely visionary affair of this sort, however, could not be
+considered satisfactory or exciting, even by the Jamiesons; and the
+Taylors' suspicions and anxieties were put on one side for the time
+being--ousted from their place, as it were--by the very distinct and
+exciting rumours which have reached us about Maud.  Maud has been
+staying with friends at Hampstead, and has written home in a certain
+veiled way which is very provoking, but which, nevertheless, gives the
+impression that another man has come to the point, and has proposed to
+Maud Jamieson.  Maud seems out of spirits, and has written to say that
+she is returning; and this makes the sisters think that she must have
+accepted her present suitor, and is coming home to shed a few natural
+tears.  Eliza, who walked over to tell us the news, voiced The Family's
+opinion when she said: "We have quite made up our minds that if Maud
+has said 'Yes,' she is to stick to it this time.  She is always in a
+panic directly she has accepted any one, but we know that it would be
+the same whoever it was: and doubtless, unless we are firm, she will
+treat this admirer just as she treated Mr. Reddy and Albert Gore and
+the others.  Mamma says that she will not have Maud coerced, and I am
+sure no one wants to coerce her; but why should she always get to a
+certain point, and then begin to have doubts?  It is so
+unbusiness-like."
+
+The very next day Maud Jamieson came to tea.  She looked well dressed,
+as usual, and had some pretty spring finery about her--yellow mimosa
+wreathing a broad hat, and some yellow ribbons about her tasteful
+dress--but her pretty face looked very white, and she fidgeted
+nervously for half an hour, and then told me I was so sympathetic she
+would like to ask me something.
+
+"I dare say," she said, "that you have heard something about Mr. Evans
+from The Family?"
+
+I admitted that I had, and then there was a very long pause.
+
+"How is one to know," said Maud, "when it is the real thing?"
+
+Another pause.  I wished with all my heart that I could have been more
+helpful to this young lady in such evident distress of mind; but the
+intricacies of Maud's thoughts are most difficult to follow, and I
+thought it better to wait until she had given me her entire confidence.
+
+"Little things," said Maud, "might annoy one so much if one had always
+to live with a man.  For instance, I do not think I could ever truly
+love a man who sniffs."
+
+"Our friend Mrs. Fielden says," I remarked, "that a man generally
+proposes when he has a cold in his head.  But I pointed out to her that
+these statistics do her no credit."
+
+"Mr. Evans doesn't sniff," said Maud.  "I was only citing that as an
+example of what one might find very trying in a companion for life."
+
+I assented, and could only suggest hopefully the usual Jamieson remedy
+that such a defect might be cured after marriage.
+
+"But men are so obstinate about some things," said Maud.  "For
+instance, suppose a man were well off and of really excellent
+character, do you think it would matter much if he wore a white
+watered-silk waistcoat in the evening?  Would it, for instance, appear
+an insuperable objection to most minds?"
+
+I replied that doubtless it was a serious fault, but that I did not
+consider it an incurable one; and I further remarked, with what I hoped
+showed a broad and liberal way of looking at things, that all men had
+their idiosyncrasies.  Maud admitted this, and seemed cheered by the
+reflection; but she pushed the matter further, and said she would like
+to know what sort of a man I should presume any one to be who wore a
+white watered-silk waistcoat.
+
+"If you care for Mr. Evans--" I began, and regretted that one's
+articulate expression is sometimes behindhand in the matter of
+conveying the comprehensiveness of the inner working of one's mind----
+
+"I am afraid I care for some one else," said Maud, bursting into tears.
+
+"Let me see you home," I said, unable to think of any but this very
+doubtful method of consolation; still, it seemed unkind to let her go
+home alone when she had been crying.
+
+On the threshold of the Jamiesons' house several of The Family were
+waiting for us, and they drew me into the drawing-room, while by tacit
+consent it seemed to be understood that Maud should not join in the
+conclave, but should go straight upstairs and take off her hat.
+
+"Have you persuaded her?" said Eliza.
+
+"I hope you have put a little common sense into her," said Kate.
+
+James was admitted to family discussions now, and here remarked that he
+believed that all girls were happier married.
+
+"Though, of course," said Mettie, "it is a great risk."
+
+"Did she tell you," asked Gracie, "that she cares for some one else?"
+
+I admitted that Maud had said something of the sort.  And her family
+exclaimed triumphantly that this was always Maud's plea for releasing
+herself from an engagement as soon as that engagement had been made.
+
+Mrs. Jamieson remarked that she would not like any of the girls to feel
+that they were not welcome at home, and all her affectionate daughters
+kissed her in turn, or patted her hand, and said that they knew that
+such a thought as wanting to get rid of one of them would never enter
+her head.
+
+Mrs. Jamieson here left the room to seek her banished daughter and to
+administer comfort, and the members of The Family conclave said that
+they hoped that Mrs. Jamieson did not think that they had been unkind.
+
+"If it had not happened so often!" sighed Eliza.  "However, as we do
+not know Mr. Evans, he can't ask to come down and stay with us, as Mr.
+Reddy did, so as to have an opportunity of pressing his suit."
+
+"He cried so much one afternoon," said Kate, turning in an explanatory
+sort of way to Mr. Ward, "that I really thought I should have to send
+for mamma."  James looked sympathetic, and Gracie added: "We all really
+felt quite relieved when he got engaged to some one else three weeks
+afterwards, and we hear that they are most happy, and have got a dear
+little baby."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Mrs. Fielden's motor car is still a matter of absorbing interest to the
+inhabitants of Stowel.  When it breaks down, as it frequently does,
+there is always a crowd round it immediately.  Our friends and
+neighbours in the town have an ingenuous respect for anything that
+costs a great deal of money, and they are quite congratulatory to any
+one who has been for a drive with Mrs. Fielden, and they talk about the
+motor and its owner, and who has seen it, and who has not, over their
+afternoon tea.
+
+The motor car is a noisy, evil-smelling vehicle of somewhat rowdy
+appearance, which leaves a trail behind it as of a smoking lamp.  It
+drew up at our door to-day, and kicked and snorted impatiently until we
+were ready to get into it.  The next moment, with a final angry snort
+and plunge, it started down the drive and whizzed through the village
+and up the hill on the other side without pausing to take breath.
+
+"The worst of a motor car is," said Mrs. Fielden, "that one gets
+through everything so quickly.  In London I get my shopping done in
+about a quarter of an hour, and then I take a turn round Regent's Park,
+and I find I have put away about ten minutes, so I fly down to
+Richmond, and even then it is too early to go to tea anywhere.  Talking
+of tea--isn't everybody very hungry?  I am really ravenous--and that is
+the motor car's fault, too.  Because one has learned to want one's
+meals by the amount of business one has got through, and when one has
+done a whole afternoon's work in three-quarters of an hour, one is
+dying for tea, just as if it were five o'clock."
+
+"I have always been ravenous since I was in South Africa," said one of
+Mrs. Fielden's colonels, who had driven over in the motor car to take
+care of her and to bring us back.  "I don't know when I shall satisfy
+the pangs of hunger which I acquired on the veldt."
+
+"I think I shall call on Mr. Ellicomb," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I believe
+he has excellent afternoon teas, and he is making me an enamel box
+which I should like to see."
+
+Ellicomb said once or twice, as we sat in his picturesque house with
+its blue china and old brass work, that he only wished we had given him
+warning that we were coming.  We found him with an apron on, working at
+his enamels; and when he had displayed this work to us, he showed us
+his bookbinding, and his fretwork-carving, and his type-writing
+machine.  Afterwards we had tea, which Ellicomb poured very deftly into
+his blue cups, having first warmed the teapot and the cups, and flicked
+away one or two imaginary specks of dirt from the plates with what
+appeared to be a small lace-trimmed dinner-napkin.
+
+Mrs. Fielden began to admire his majolica ware, of which she knows
+nothing whatever, and Ellicomb took her for a tour round his rooms, and
+asked her to guess the original uses of his drain-tiles and spittoons
+and copper ham-pots.  Afterwards we were taken into a very small
+conservatory adjoining his house, where every plant was displayed to us
+in turn; and we were subsequently shown his coal-cellar and his larder
+and his ash-pit before we were allowed to return to the house.
+
+Ellicomb smiles more often than any other man I know, and he had only
+one epithet to apply to his house.  "It's so cosy," he said.  "Isn't it
+cosy?"  "I do think it's a cosy little place."
+
+Mrs. Fielden was charmed with everything, and deprecated the idea that
+she might consider the little house very small after Stanby.
+
+"I always think," she said, "that I should much prefer to live in a
+place like this, and then the people who come to see one really would
+pay one a little attention, instead of talking of nothing but the
+house."
+
+The Colonel laughed and apologized.
+
+"Oh, I know I'm not half good enough for Stanby," said Mrs. Fielden,
+smiling.  "But I really can't help it!  I was brought up in a house
+with hot and cold water upstairs, and white paint, and I suppose I
+never can really appreciate anything else."
+
+The dignity of Mrs. Fielden's surroundings has never affected her in
+the very smallest degree, and I do not believe that the traditions of
+the house interest her in the very least.  I am quite aware that she
+asked me to write out the history of Lady Hylda, for instance, simply
+because it is part of her charm always to ask one to do something for
+her.  It is the fashion to wait upon Mrs. Fielden's behests, and it
+would appear almost an unkindness to her many men friends if she did
+not give them some commission to do when they go up to town.  Her
+manner of thanking one for a service is almost as pretty as her manner
+of asking for it, and I am really not surprised that she is the most
+popular woman in the country-side.
+
+Mr. Ellicomb said ecstatically that the dim twilight at Stanby was one
+of the most impressive things he knew; and he added, with a shudder,
+that he always expected to see ghosts there.
+
+Mrs. Fielden does not believe in ghosts except on those occasions when
+she has some one very charming to defend her, and she spends her
+evenings in a cheerful white boudoir in the modern part of the house.
+
+Having admired all the majolica plates in the house, and having
+completely bewildered her host by showing an interest in him and his
+possessions one minute, and complete indifference the next, Mrs.
+Fielden fell into one of those little silences which are so
+characteristic of her.  Her silence is one of the most provoking things
+about her.  She has been witty and amusing the moment before, and then
+relapses into silence in the most natural manner possible, and her face
+takes a certain wistful look, and a man wonders how he can comfort her
+or whether he has offended her.
+
+"I think we ought to go now," she said, coming out of this wistful
+reverie like a child awaking from sleep.  "Is every one ready?"
+
+We got into the motor car again, and sped onwards along the smooth
+white road.  Every turn made a picture which I suppose an artist would
+love to paint.  There were red-roofed cottages smothered in orchards of
+plum blossom, and simple palings set across gaps in the hedges, with
+gardens beyond filled with spring flowers.  Now a labourer, gray-coated
+and bent with age, passed by like a flash, as he tramped slowly
+homewards from his work; and some school children, loitering to pick
+primroses under a hedge, dropped their slates and satchels in the
+ditch, and called to each other to take care, while they clung together
+and shouted "Hurrah!" as we passed.
+
+The park gates of Stanby are lion guarded and of stone, and then a long
+carriage-drive takes one up to the house.  The park round the old gray
+pile was starred with primroses, and ghost-like little lambs were
+capering noiselessly in the fields.  The scent of wallflowers was blown
+to us from a great brown ribbon of them round the walls of the
+lodgekeeper's house as we swung through the gates.  The sheep in the
+park, bleating to their young, drew away from the palings where they
+had been rubbing their woolly sides, and made off to the farther corner
+of the field, and Mrs. Fielden's gray pony in the paddock tossed his
+heels in a vindictive fashion at us from a distance of fifty yards or
+more.  And the motor car drew up with a jerk at the great doors of the
+house.
+
+Stanby is not quite so large now as it originally was, immense though
+the house undoubtedly is, and only some ruins on the north side show
+where the chapel used to stand.  A mound within the ruin's walls marks
+the resting-place of Hylda--Hylda, whose history I wrote out at the
+request of Mrs. Fielden, and sent to her; but I don't suppose she has
+ever read it.
+
+The evening of our arrival at Stanby it pleased Mrs. Fielden to put on
+an old-fashioned dress of stiffest brocade, which she had found in some
+old chest in the house.  She wore a high comb of pearls in her dark
+hair, and she looked a very regal and beautiful figure in the great
+dining-hall and drawing-rooms of her house.  She did not play Bridge,
+as the others did, but sat on a carved high-backed chair near my sofa,
+and told me many of the old stories of the house, and asked me to write
+down some of them for her.
+
+"I sent you the story of Hylda more than a week ago," I said, "and I
+don't suppose you ever read it."
+
+"I did read it," said Mrs. Fielden gently, "and I liked it very much."
+
+She had put on an unapproachable mood with her beautiful stiff brocade
+gown, and the gentleness of her voice seemed to heighten rather than to
+lessen her royalty.  The radiance and the holiday air, which are Mrs.
+Fielden's by divine right, were not dimmed to-night so much as
+transformed.  There was a subtle aromatic scent of dried rose-leaves
+clinging to the old brocade dress, and about herself a sort of
+fragrance of old-world dignity and beauty.  The pearl comb in her hair
+made her look taller than usual.
+
+A deerhound got up from his place by the fire and came and laid his
+head on her lap, and some footmen in old-fashioned bright blue liveries
+came in to arrange the card-tables and hand round coffee.  Everything
+was stately and magnificent in the house.
+
+"And you pretend," I said, "that you do nothing; yet probably the whole
+ordering of this house devolves upon you."
+
+"I am quite a domestic person sometimes," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"It is rather bewildering," I said, "to find that you are everything in
+turn."
+
+And the next morning she wore a short blue skirt, with a silver belt
+round her waist, and spent the morning punting on the lake with Anthony
+Crawshay.
+
+"I hope I look after you all properly," she said at lunch-time, in a
+certain charming deprecating way she has of speaking sometimes.  "There
+really are punts, and horses, and motor cars, and things, if you want
+them.  Will you all order what you like?"
+
+Each man at the table then offered to take Mrs. Fielden for a ride, or
+a drive, or a row, and not one of them could be quite sure that she had
+refused to go with him.
+
+"I want to go for a turn in the garden and talk about books," she said
+to me as we left the dining-room.  And then I found that I was sitting
+in her boudoir having coffee with her, and that every one else was
+excluded from the room--how it was done I have not the slightest
+idea--and that by-and-by we left it by the open French windows, and
+were strolling in the garden in the spring sunshine.  The garden, with
+its high walls, is sheltered from every wind that blows, and there are
+wide garden-seats in it painted white, and every border was bright with
+early spring flowers.
+
+"I call this my Grove of Academe," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I think it has a nice classical sound; and it is here I come
+with my friends and discuss metaphysics."
+
+"It seems to me you have a great many friends," I said.
+
+"I was thinking," said Mrs. Fielden thoughtfully, "of adding another to
+their number."
+
+"I have a constitutional dislike to worshipping in crowded temples," I
+said.
+
+Mrs. Fielden became silent.
+
+It would be forging a sword against themselves did men allow women to
+know what a powerful weapon silence is.  A soft answer turneth away
+wrath, but a woman's silence makes a man's heart cry out: "My dear, did
+I hurt you?  Forgive me!"
+
+At the end of five minutes or so of silence Mrs. Fielden turned towards
+me and smiled, and the garden seemed to be filled with her.  There was
+no room for anything else but herself and that bewildering smile she
+gave me.
+
+"How is the diary getting on?" she said.
+
+"The diary," I answered, "continues to record our godly, righteous, and
+sober life----"
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Fielden quickly, "don't you think it is possible to be
+too good sometimes?  That is really what I wanted to say to you--I
+brought you into the garden to ask you that."
+
+"It is an interesting suggestion," I remarked, "and I think we ought to
+give it to Eliza Jamieson for one of her discussions."
+
+"I do not wish to discuss it with Eliza Jamieson," said Mrs. Fielden,
+"but with you.  You know there really is a great danger in becoming too
+good; for although I do not think that you would grow wings, or hear
+passing bells, or anything of that sort, still you might become a
+little dull, might you not?"
+
+"I don't think it would be possible to become duller than I am," I
+replied.  "You have more than once told me that I am not amusing.  So
+long as my sister is not aware of the fact, I do not in the least mind
+admitting that I find every day most horribly tedious.  I suppose I
+shall get accustomed to it in time, but I don't enjoy being an invalid."
+
+"You have watched the Jamiesons making flannel petticoats for the
+poor," went on Mrs. Fielden, "and you have had the Curate to tea, and
+you have been to the Taylors' party, and if it does not kill you, I am
+sure you will become like people in those books which one gives as
+prizes to choir-boys."
+
+"One so often mistakes monotony for virtue," I said.  "I believe I was
+beginning to think that there was almost a merit in getting accustomed
+to a sofa and a crutch."
+
+"Oh, but it is a sin!" exclaimed Mrs. Fielden.  "It is a sin to get
+accustomed to anything that is disagreeable.  But that is what comes of
+studying philosophy!"
+
+"I suppose reasoning is always bad," I said humbly.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Fielden; "and it is so unnatural, too."
+
+"I heard a man say the other day," I said, "that solitude is always
+sententious.  And he pointed out that foreigners, who are never alone,
+base their ethics upon conduct; but that English people, who simply do
+not understand the life of the boulevards and cafes and family
+affection, sit apart in the solitude of their garrets or studies, and
+decide that the right or the wrong of a thing consists in what they
+think about it."
+
+Then I recollected that this garden was the Grove of Academe, and that
+it was here that Mrs. Fielden discussed metaphysics with all her
+friends.  "What cure do you propose?" I said shortly.
+
+"Why not go to London for a little while and enjoy yourselves?" said
+Mrs. Fielden.  "Put off the conventionalities of Stowel, as the Miss
+Traceys do, and do something amusing and gay."
+
+"Did you ever hear of the man in the Bastille," I said, "who had been
+in prison so long that when he was offered his freedom he elected to
+remain where he was?"
+
+"But you must break out of the Bastille long before it comes to that!"
+said Mrs. Fielden.  "Couldn't you do something exciting?  I am sure
+nothing else will restore your moral tone."
+
+"How is it to be done?" I asked.  "We must recognize the limitations of
+our environment."
+
+"You are going to be philosophical," said Mrs. Fielden; "you are going
+to quote Protagoras, or Pythagoras, or Plato, which will not convince
+me in the least.  Philosophy tries to make people believe that things
+are exactly the reverse of what they are.  I don't think that alters
+the sum total of things very much.  Because, by the time that you have
+proved that all agreeable things are disagreeable, and all unpleasant
+things are pleasant, you are in exactly the same position as you were
+before.  I dare say it fills up people's time to turn everything upside
+down and stand everything on its head, but it is not amusing."
+
+"What do you want me to do?" I asked.
+
+"Couldn't you enjoy yourselves a little?" said Mrs. Fielden, putting on
+her wistful voice.
+
+"As we are in the Grove of Academe, let me point out that the pursuit
+of pleasure for its own sake was one of the corrupt forms of a decadent
+epicureanism," I said sternly.
+
+"I am quite sure it was," said Mrs. Fielden, smiling; "but we were
+talking about your visit to London, were we not?"
+
+And so I knew that the thing was settled, and I thought it very odd
+that Palestrina and I had not thought of the plan before.
+
+"As it is getting cold," said Mrs. Fielden, "I am going to be a
+peripatetic philosopher," and she rose from the seat where we were
+sitting and gave me her hand to help me up, for I am still awkward with
+my crutch, and then let me lean on her arm as we walked up and down the
+broad gravel pathway.
+
+"Don't you think," she began, "that it is a great waste of opportunity
+not to be wild and wicked sometimes, when one is very good?"
+
+"I am afraid I do not quite follow you."
+
+"What I mean is, what is the good of filling up years of curates and
+Taylors and flannel petticoats, unless you are going to kick them all
+over some day, and have a good time.  You see, if you and Palestrina
+were not so good you would always have to pretend to be tremendously
+circumspect.  But it seems such waste of goodness not to be bad
+sometimes."
+
+"Your argument being," I said, "that an honest man may sometimes steal
+a horse?"
+
+"Yes, that is what I mean," said Mrs. Fielden delightedly.
+
+"A dangerous doctrine, and one----"
+
+"Not Plato, please," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+... It ended in our taking a flat in London for some weeks.  It was a
+small dwelling, with an over-dressed little drawing-room, and a red
+dining-room, and a roomy cupboard for a smoking-room.
+
+"Remember, Palestrina," I said to my sister when we settled down, "that
+we are under strict orders to live a very rapid and go-ahead life while
+we are in London.  Can you suggest anything very rowdy that a crippled
+man with a crutch and a tendency to chills and malaria might undertake?"
+
+"We might give a supper-party," said Palestrina brilliantly, "and have
+long-stemmed champagne-glasses, and perhaps cook something in a
+chafing-dish.  I was reading a novel the other day in which the bad
+characters did this.  I made a note of it at the time, meaning to ask
+you why it should be fast to cook things in a chafing-dish or to have
+long-stemmed champagne-glasses?"
+
+When the evening came Mrs. Fielden dined with us, and she and
+Palestrina employed themselves after dinner in rehearsing how they
+should behave.  My sister said in her low, gurgling voice: "I think I
+shall sit on the sofa with my arms spread out on the cushions on either
+side of me, and I shall thump them sometimes, as the adventuress in a
+play does."
+
+"Or you might be singing at the piano," said Mrs. Fielden, "and then
+when the door opens you could toss the music aside and sail across the
+room, and give your left hand to whoever comes in first, and say, 'What
+a bore! you have come!' or something rude of that sort."
+
+Mrs. Fielden's spirit of fun inspired my quiet sister to-night, and the
+two women, began masquerading in a way that was sufficiently amusing to
+a sick man lying on a sofa.
+
+"Or you might continue playing the piano," Mrs. Fielden went on, "after
+any one has been announced.  I notice that that is very often done,
+especially in books written by the hero himself in the first person.
+'She did not leave the piano as I entered, but continued playing
+softly, her white hands gliding dreamily over the keys.'"
+
+"I shall do my best," Palestrina answered; "and I thought of calling
+all our guests by their Christian names, if only I could recollect what
+they are."
+
+"Nicknames would be better," said Mrs. Fielden.  "We ought to have
+found out, I think, something about this matter before the night of the
+party."
+
+"What shall we do till they arrive?" said Palestrina.
+
+"We must read newspapers and periodicals," Mrs. Fielden replied, "and
+then fling them down on the carpet.  There is something about seeing
+newspapers on a carpet which is certainly untidy, but has a distinctly
+Bacchanalian touch about it."
+
+"I wish I had a red tea-gown," sighed my sister.
+
+"Or a white one trimmed with some costly furs," said Mrs. Fielden.
+"Almost any tea-gown would do."
+
+"One thing I will have!" she exclaimed, starting in an energetic manner
+to her feet.  "I'll turn all the lamps low, and cover them with
+pink-paper shades.  Where is the crinkly paper and some ribbon?"
+
+After that we sat in a rose twilight so dim that we couldn't even read
+the evening newspaper.
+
+"I don't think they need have come quite so early," I said, as the
+first ring was heard at the door-bell.
+
+Mrs. Fielden had insisted upon it that one actress at least should be
+asked.  "What is a supper-party without an actress?" she had said.  And
+Mrs. Travers at present acting in Mr. Pinero's new play, was the first
+to arrive.
+
+"I wonder if you know any of our friends who are coming to-night?" said
+Palestrina.  "We expect Squash Bosanquet and Dickie Fenwick."
+Palestrina then broke down, because we had no idea if these two men had
+ever answered to these names in their lives.  Also she blushed, which
+spoilt it all, and Mrs. Fielden began to smile.
+
+Mrs. Travers came to the party in a very simple black evening gown, and
+Bosanquet and Charles Fenwick came almost immediately afterwards.
+Anthony Crawshay was amongst the friends whom we had invited, because,
+Palestrina said, as we did not seem to know many fast people, we had
+better have some one who was sporting.  There was an artist whom we
+considered Bohemian because he wore his hair long, but he disappointed
+us by coming in goloshes.
+
+Altogether we were eight at supper.  There was an attractive menu, and
+the long-stemmed champagne-glasses were felt to be a distinct challenge
+to quiet behaviour.
+
+Palestrina thought that if she were going to be really fast she had
+better talk about divorce, and I heard her ask Anthony in a diffident
+whisper if he had read any divorce cases lately.  Anthony looked
+startled, and in his loud voice exclaimed, "Egad!  I hope _you_
+haven't!"  Palestrina coloured with confusion, and I frowned heavily at
+her, which made it worse.
+
+Mrs. Travers seemed to have taken it into her head that Palestrina was
+philanthropic, and she talked a great deal about factory girls, and
+Bosanquet talked about methylated ether.  What it was that provoked his
+remarks on this subject I cannot now recall, nor why he discussed it
+without intermission almost throughout the entire evening, but I have a
+distinct recollection of hearing him dinning out the phrase "methylated
+ether."
+
+It was, I think, the dullest party that even Palestrina and I have ever
+given, and I blame Mrs. Fielden for this.  Mrs. Fielden refused to be
+the centre of the room.  She became an onlooker at the party which she
+had planned, and she smiled affectionately at us both, and watched, I
+think, to see how the party would go off.
+
+The long-stemmed champagne-glasses were hardly used.  Several people
+said to me jocosely, "How is South Africa?" and to this I could think
+of no more suitable reply than, "It's all right."  We longed for even
+the Pirate Boy to make a little disturbance.  Palestrina whispered to
+me that she thought I might throw a piece of bread at some one, or do
+something.  But the action she suggested seemed to me to be in too
+daring contrast to the general tone of the evening; and really, as I
+murmured back to her, there seemed to be very little point in throwing
+my bread at a guest who had done me no harm.
+
+"I wish," she said to me when we returned to the drawing-room, "that I
+knew some daring little French songs.  In books the girl always sings
+daring little French songs, and afterwards every one begins to be
+vulgar and delightful, like those people in 'The Christian.'  I think
+I'll light a cigarette."  She did so, and choked a little, and then
+wondered if Thomas would like her to smoke, and threw the cigarette
+into the fire.  The Bohemian, who had travelled considerably, asked for
+a map, and told us of his last year's journeyings, tracing out the
+route of them for us on the map with a pin.
+
+And Mrs. Fielden was smiling all the time.
+
+"I suppose," I said to my sister when the last guest had departed, and
+we sat together in the pink light of the drawing-room before going to
+bed--"I suppose we carry about with us an atmosphere of slowness which
+it is impossible to penetrate.  You are engaged to Thomas, and I am an
+invalid----"
+
+"But in books," said Palestrina wistfully, "men talk about all sorts of
+things to girls whether they happen to be engaged or not, and they ask
+them to go to see galleries with them next day, or squeeze their hands.
+Of course, I should hate it if they did so, but still one rather
+expected it.  To-night," she said regretfully, "no one talked to me of
+anything but Thomas."
+
+"Charles Fenwick," I said, "who used to be considered amusing, has
+become simply idiotic since he married.  He gave me an exact account of
+his little boy's sayings; he copied the way he asked for sugar, like
+the chirruping of a bird.  You won't believe me, I know, but he put out
+his lips and chirped."
+
+"I remember being positively warned against him," said Palestrina,
+"when I used to go to dances in London."  She sighed, and added, "Do
+you think Mrs. Fielden enjoyed it?"
+
+"I think Mrs. Fielden was distinctly amused," I replied.
+
+"Do you think," said Palestrina, still in a disappointed tone, "that
+the men would have been more--more larky if we had been alone?  Mrs.
+Fielden always looks so beautiful and dresses so well that I think she
+impresses people too much, and they are all trying to talk to her
+instead of making a row."
+
+"I think we may as well go to bed," I said.
+
+Palestrina rose slowly, and went towards the bell to ring for my man to
+help me.  She lingered for a moment by my chair.  "Yet books say that
+men require so much keeping in order," she said sadly.  "I wish people
+would not write about what does not occur."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+The Jamiesons have taken lodgings in West Kensington, which they
+describe as being "most central"--a phrase which I have begun to think
+means inexpensive--and near a line of omnibuses.  George and the Pirate
+are assiduous in taking their sisters to the Play and other places of
+amusement, and are showing them something of London with a zeal which
+speaks much for their goodness of heart.  Even Mrs. Jamieson has been
+out once or twice, and although doubly tearful on the morning following
+any little bit of dissipation, her family feel that the variety has
+been good for her.  Eliza has found that London is radio-active, hence
+enjoyable.  And Eliza had been only once to the Royal Institution when
+she said it!  Maud's engagement to the Hampstead young man has been
+finally broken off, and Maud has cried so much that her family have
+forgiven her.  Maud explains that it is such an upset for a girl to
+break off an engagement, and The Family say soothingly that she must
+just try and get over it.
+
+"We hope," said Kate, "that next time things will arrange themselves
+more happily, and at least we can all feel that Maud might have married
+many times, had she wished to do so."  There seems to be a strong
+feeling in The Family that Maud will go on having opportunities.
+Arguing from the general to the particular, they have proved, with a
+sort of tribal feeling of satisfaction, that Maud is undoubtedly very
+attractive to men, and that if one man likes her, why should not
+another?
+
+Still, we all felt that we could not have sympathized immediately with
+another love affair of Maud's, and it was refreshing, not to say most
+pleasing and surprising, to find that since her arrival in Town, it was
+Margaret who attracted the notice of a gentleman, Mr. Swinnerton by
+name, a friend of George's, who brought him to supper one Sunday
+evening.  The Jamiesons could see at a glance that Mr. Swinnerton was
+"struck," and, as he called two or three times in the following week,
+Margaret made the usual Jamieson opportunity of seeing Palestrina home,
+one afternoon when she had been to call, to embark in confidences about
+her lover in the usual Jamieson style.  Margaret was diffident,
+bashful, shy, uncertain about Mr. Swinnerton's feelings for her, and
+hopelessly nervous lest her family should have had their expectations
+raised only to be disappointed.  She implored Palestrina over and over
+again to say nothing about it to them, though it has been more than
+obvious to us all along how full of expectation every member of The
+Family is.  It was a very wet evening as Margaret and my sister left
+the Jamiesons' lodgings, but she hardly seemed conscious of the
+inclemency of the weather, and begged Palestrina not to think of taking
+a cab, as she particularly wished to speak to her.
+
+"At first," she began, "I thought it must be Maud, although she has but
+just broken off her engagement to Mr. Evans; still, one knows she is
+the pretty one, and if any one calls often, it is generally her."
+
+It was a little difficult to follow Margaret's rapid, ungrammatical
+speech, but Palestrina and I both knew that to the vigorous minds of
+the Jamiesons there must be a direct purpose in every action, and that
+therefore if Mr. Swinnerton came to call he must have a purpose,
+presumably a matrimonial purpose, for paying his visits.  After two or
+three afternoon calls from a gentleman the Jamiesons generally ask each
+other ingenuously, "Which of us is it?"  It hardly seems to them
+respectable that a man should continue to pay them visits unless he
+means to show a preference for one of them.
+
+Presuming that it was not Maud he came to see, Margaret, with modest
+hesitation and many blushes, asked Palestrina if she did not think it
+possible that these visits might be intended for her.
+
+"Please do not say anything about it to the others.  I always have
+hoped that if ever I had a love affair it would be when I was away from
+home.  Do you know at all what they think about it?"
+
+She did not pause for a reply, but began again: "You see he has called
+three times in one week, but" (hopelessly) "I am always surrounded by
+The Family, and he couldn't say anything if he wanted to.  Of course I
+don't think it has come to anything of that sort yet; still, you know,
+we could get to know each other better if there were not so many of us
+always about.  Maud doesn't mind a bit; she has had love affairs in
+front of us all, and she does not mind talking about them in the least,
+or even asking us to let her have the drawing-room to herself on
+certain afternoons.  But I don't feel as if I could bear to have this
+discussed before anything is settled.  And then we have so few
+opportunities.  Maud generally takes them to a distant church, and then
+they have the walk home together.  But I never quite know whether she
+makes the suggestion about church, or if she merely thinks it would be
+nice, and leaves the man to make it."
+
+"Maud," I remarked parenthetically to Palestrina, "has raised
+love-making to a science--an exact science."
+
+"I hope you don't think for a moment," Margaret had gone on, "that I am
+abusing Maud; you know how fond we all are of each other."
+
+Maud's experiences on matters matrimonial are always quoted as
+precedent in the Jamieson family, and she is cited whenever anything of
+the sort is afoot.  Each phase in her experience is frankly discussed,
+and conclusions are drawn from it; and I have heard the Jamiesons say,
+"Mr. So-and-so must be in love with Miss So-and-so; he looks at her in
+exactly the same way that Mr. Reddy used to look at Maud."  Maud
+herself, unconsciously as I believe, makes a sort of calendar of her
+love affairs, and it is quite usual for her to date an event by
+referring to it as having happened "in the Albert Gore days," or "when
+Mr. Evans was hovering."
+
+Margaret's voice had not ceased from the moment they left the lodgings
+together.  "It is, however, no use trying to copy other people in your
+love affairs," she said, "because it seems to come to every one so
+differently, and then of course different people must call forth
+different feelings.  I don't think I could have felt for Mr. Reddy, for
+instance, quite as I do now, even if he had been in love with me.  You
+feel so bewildered somehow."
+
+The walk had by this time become very rapid, and Margaret, in her
+short-sighted way, knocked against all the foot-passengers whom she met
+travelling in the opposite direction.  Her umbrella showered raindrops
+upon Palestrina, and she became so incoherent that my sister suggested
+taking a cab to our flat, and talking things over quietly when they
+should get there.
+
+It was about eleven o'clock that night when Margaret Jamieson took
+leave of us, and by that time I fancy the bridesmaids' dresses had been
+arranged.
+
+A few days later Palestrina received a note by the hand of a
+messenger-boy; it bore the word "Immediate" on the cover, and had
+evidently been addressed in some haste.
+
+
+"DEAR PALESTRINA (it ran),
+
+"Can you possibly come to make a fourth at a concert this afternoon?
+Do come, even if it should be rather inconvenient to you.  I want you
+so much.  Mr. Swinnerton has asked mamma and me, and he has taken
+tickets.  They are not reserved places, so we could easily arrange to
+meet at the door and sit together.  Three is such an awkward number.  I
+fear mamma does not care for him, and that is a great grief to me.  I
+will tell you everything this afternoon.
+
+"Yours affectionately,
+    "MARGARET JAMIESON.
+
+"_P.S._--It is all going to come right, I believe, but I have had
+immense difficulties.  Hardly ten minutes alone with him--you know we
+have only one sitting-room.--but the family have been sweet."
+
+
+"Hugo," said Palestrina, "this is an occasion when you could give very
+substantial aid to a deserving family."
+
+"I am sorry I am engaged this afternoon," I said, with an instinct of
+self-preservation, without, however, having any definite idea of what
+Palestrina might say next.
+
+"It is I who am engaged this afternoon," said my sister smiling, "and
+you are perfectly aware of that fact.  Thomas is taking me down to
+Richmond to introduce me to his aunt.  Besides, Hugo, you know you like
+music."
+
+"I am very sorry, Palestrina," I said, "but it is quite impossible."
+
+"Margaret is the Jamieson you like best," said Palestrina, "and I hate
+to think of your being here alone a whole afternoon.  What were you
+thinking of doing?"
+
+I had been thinking of going to this concert, and Palestrina guessed
+it, of course....
+
+I was at the door of the concert hall at two-thirty in the afternoon,
+and found Mrs. Jamieson and Margaret and the young man already on the
+pavement, looking as if they had stood there for a considerable time.
+Mr. Swinnerton is a large, rather stupid-looking man, with a red face,
+a crooked nose, and curly hair.  He wore a dark blue overcoat, so thick
+and strong that it reminded one of some encasement of plaster of Paris,
+or of some heavy coat of mail.  His hands were covered in yellow
+dogskin gloves, equally unyielding, so that Mr. Swinnerton appeared
+deprived of any agility of movement by his garments.  Mr. Swinnerton is
+in the volunteers, and has "Captain Swinnerton" printed on his cards.
+He gave me the idea of seeming to think that every action of his was
+some epoch-making event, and during the afternoon he frequently
+referred to having seen a picture then on view at one of the galleries,
+as though this were rather an up-to-date, not to say remarkable,
+proceeding.  Margaret seemed a good deal impressed by his manner, and
+the Jamiesons had decided that he was "smart," which was a further and
+quite unnecessary addition to Mr. Swinnerton's vanity, and very bad for
+a gentleman of his complacent character.
+
+He ushered us into the Queen's Hall in an important sort of way, which
+gave one the impression that the place belonged to him; and the fact
+that I was making a third in a party under his guidance convinced me
+that I was in some sort adding to his self-satisfaction.  Mr.
+Swinnerton had chosen shilling places, because, as he informed us a
+great number of times, these were in the best position for hearing the
+music.  Mrs. Jamieson was disappointed.  In her class of life a treat
+is given on a more magnificent scale.
+
+"Shall I sit next you, Mrs. Jamieson?" I said, for I believed that this
+was what I was intended to say; but Mr. Swinnerton remarked to
+Margaret, "I'll go next; I like to divide myself amongst the ladies."
+
+Mrs. Jamieson looked uncomfortable in the small amount of space a
+shilling had procured for her, and she suggested apologetically that
+she would like a programme; but the music was beginning, and Mr.
+Swinnerton put up his large, stiff-gloved hand like a slab, and said,
+"Hush!"
+
+We went faithfully through the orthodox Queen's Hall concert from the
+very first note to the "Ride of the Valkyries," and after every item on
+the programme our host turned to us, moving his whole body in his stout
+coat, and said, "Isn't that nice now?--very nice I call it!" still with
+an air of ownership.
+
+Mrs. Jamieson slept a little; but the hardness of her seat made it an
+uneasy resting-place, and it is to be feared that her mantle with the
+storm-collar was too hot; but, she whispered to me in a burst of
+confidence, she was unable to remove it owing to the fact that the
+bodice and skirt of her dress did not correspond.
+
+"I always like these places," said Mr. Swinnerton again; "they are
+exactly in the centre of the hall, and another thing is, they are near
+the door in case of fire."
+
+Margaret assented sweetly.  I always thought until to-day that Margaret
+Jamieson was a plain woman; to-day I find she is good-looking.
+
+"It is ridiculous," said Mr. Swinnerton, "to see the way people throw
+their money away on really inferior seats, just because they think they
+are fashionable."
+
+Mrs. Jamieson stirred a little on her uneasy bench, and Mr. Swinnerton
+said in self-defence, "Don't you agree with me, eh?"
+
+"I think," said Mrs. Jamieson politely, "that perhaps for a long
+concert the _fotoys_ would be more comfortable."
+
+"Ah!" cried Mr. Swinnerton, "you want to be fashionable, I see; but
+there are many of the best people who come to these seats.  I know of a
+Member of Parliament--I don't know him, I know of him" (we felt that
+some connection with the Member had been established)--"who comes
+regularly to these very places, and who declares they are the best in
+the house."
+
+"Perhaps," said Mrs. Jamieson simply, "he had never tried the _fotoys_."
+
+After the concert was over, Mr. Swinnerton suggested that Margaret and
+her mother should go and have tea at a bun-shop, qualifying the
+suggestion with the remark, "I know you ladies can never get on without
+afternoon tea."  When with Mr. Swinnerton ladies are never allowed to
+forget that he is a gentleman and they are ladies, and that a certain
+forbearance is therefore extended to them.  He offered his arm to Mrs.
+Jamieson, who gathered up her skirt and umbrella in one hand, and
+accepted the proffered support in some embarrassment.  Margaret fell
+behind with me, and whispered in a sort of excited way,--
+
+"Hasn't it been lovely?  Do tell me what you think--I mean about him."
+
+"I haven't had much chance of judging," I replied stupidly; "but he
+seems all right, although perhaps his ideas are not very large."
+
+"Still, you mean that one could always alter that," said Margaret
+quickly, with the true Jamieson optimism, as applied to the beneficial
+results of matrimony.  There is hardly, I believe, a defect that they
+think they will not be able to eradicate in a future husband, save,
+perhaps, the conical shape of Mr. Ward's head.  "But I really do not
+think there is anything that I would like altered," she added simply.
+
+"His name is Tudor," she went on.  "George calls him that now, and Maud
+is beginning to do so--Maud is being so kind; she says it promotes a
+familiar tone which is very helpful, to call him 'Tudor'--but I can't
+call him anything but Mr. Swinnerton yet."
+
+After tea Mr. Swinnerton asked us how we had enjoyed our entertainment,
+and Margaret expressed herself in the highest terms in praise of it.
+There seemed to be a lingering tendency on Mrs. Jamieson's part to
+revert to the superior comfort of seven-and-sixpenny places and
+armchairs, but we checked this by saying with emphasis that it was a
+friendly afternoon of this kind that we really enjoyed.  Mr. Swinnerton
+then put the Jamiesons into an omnibus, and directed the conductor to
+"let these ladies out at the top of Sloane Street," in a tone of voice
+that suggested that they were to be caged and padlocked until that
+place of exit was reached.  He lifted his hat with a fine air to them,
+and then, as I had called a hansom, he put me into it rather
+elaborately, and cautioned the commissionaire at the door to "take care
+of this gentleman."
+
+He will probably call me a South African hero next; I wish he would
+keep his attentions to himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Last night we dined at the Darcey-Jacobs'.  Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is
+enjoying "one breath of life" at a hotel with the Major, and she has
+left quite a pathetic number of visiting-cards on all her friends, so
+that her short London season may be as full of gaiety as possible.
+Neither of us looked forward to the dinner-party being particularly
+lively, but we were a good deal amused at the turn the conversation
+took during dinner.  I have often thought since that a certain dumbness
+which falls upon some entertainments can be dispersed if the subject of
+matrimony is started, and I will class with it a discussion on food,
+and personal experience at the hand of the dentist.  Any of these three
+subjects can be thrown, as it were, into the stagnant deep waters of a
+voiceless party, and the surface will be instantly rippled with eager
+conversation.
+
+Talk flagged a little in the private sitting-room of the hotel where
+the Darcey-Jacobs gave their dinner-party.  Major Jacobs, in his
+guileless way, gave us an exhaustive list of the friends whom they had
+invited for that evening, but who had not been able to come; and this
+had a curiously depressing effect upon us all, and within ourselves we
+speculated unhappily as to whether we had been asked to fill up vacant
+places.
+
+"Why are men always allowed to blunder?" said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs,
+looking over her high nose at the gentleman next her, and tapping him
+on the arm with her lorgnettes.
+
+Major Jacobs, from his end of the table, looked penitent but mystified.
+
+"Happy is the woman," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, "who has no men about
+her."
+
+"I should like to have been born a widow," said a pretty girl with
+beseeching blue eyes and a soft, confiding expression, who sat a little
+lower down on my side of the table.  And then the subject of matrimony
+was in full swing.
+
+"Marriage is just an experience," said a shrill-voiced American widow
+who sat opposite.  "Every one should try it, but that is no reason why
+one should not be thankful when it is over."
+
+"I am much interested in what you say," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, with a
+certain profound air suitable to so great a subject.  One felt the want
+of the Jamiesons sadly during the ensuing discussion, and I almost
+found myself, in the words of Mettie, making the suggestion that
+marriage was a great risk.
+
+"Some one once said," ventured Major Darcey-Jacobs, "that choosing a
+wife was like choosing a profession--it did not matter much what your
+choice was, so long as you stuck to it.  It was a mere figure of
+speech, no doubt----"
+
+"I hope so, indeed," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs.
+
+"Marriage is the worst form of gambling," broke in an elderly
+gentleman; "it should be suppressed by law.  Talk about lotteries!
+Talk about sweepstakes!  Why, the worst you can do, if you put your
+money into them, is to draw a blank.  Now, this is fair play, I
+consider; you either get a prize or you get nothing.  But matrimony,
+sir, is a swindle compared with which the Missing Word Competition
+appears like a legal document beside a forged bank-note."
+
+If the old gentleman had a wife present she was evidently of a callous
+disposition, for I saw no wrathful expression on any face.
+
+Mr. Ellicomb--even in London Ellicomb and Anthony Crawshay are asked to
+meet us--gave it as his opinion that a woman's hand was wanted in the
+home.  The voice was the voice of Ellicomb, the sentiment was the
+sentiment of Maud, and Palestrina and I very nearly exchanged glances.
+
+After this, several people began to describe at one and the same time,
+in quite a breathless way, their own personal experiences of the
+happiness of wedded life.
+
+"Of course," said Major Darcey-Jacobs, "a deal of forbearance must be
+exercised if married life is to be a success."  And Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs
+said quickly, "I hope you do not intend to become personal, William."
+To which William replied that no such intention had been his.
+
+Anthony said in his cheery voice, "Of course it is give and take, don't
+you know, and then it is all right."
+
+Every one volunteered ideas on the subject--not once, but several
+times.  And those who applauded the happy state shouted each other down
+by quoting examples of wedded bliss in such words as: "Look at
+Hawkins!" "Look at Jones!" "Look at the Menteiths!"
+
+Quite suddenly Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs leaned across the table, smiled at
+her husband, and remarked, "Look at us, William!"
+
+I do not think I have ever seen any one look so astonished as Major
+Jacobs.  "That was very pretty of Maria," he said in a low voice; "very
+pretty of her, by Gad!"  And we caught him looking at his wife several
+times that evening with a puzzled but delighted expression on his face.
+
+After dinner we played Bridge.  "I disapprove of the game myself," said
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, who certainly was the worst player I have ever met,
+"but Mrs. Fielden likes it, and she has promised to come in in the
+evening."
+
+Mrs. Fielden arrived at the same time as Colonel Jardine, and they
+played as partners together, with me and the American widow as
+opponents.  Colonel Jardine wore some kind of lead ring on his finger,
+which he said cured gout, and gathered up his tricks in a stiff sort of
+way.  He had a pet name for almost every card in the pack, and he
+babbled on without once ceasing throughout the rubber.  "Now we'll see
+where old Mossy Face is.  I think that draws the Curse of Scotland.
+Kinky takes that," and so on.  It was perfectly maddening, but Mrs.
+Fielden seemed quite pleased.  I don't suppose she ever feels
+irritated.  The American widow, who was my partner, was only just
+learning the game.  When I said to her, "May I play?" she always
+replied, if she had a bad hand, "No, certainly not."  And when it was
+pointed out to her that she had either to say, "If you please," or "I
+double," she replied, "Don't ask me if you may play, if you mean to do
+it whether I like it or not."  She always gave us such items of
+information as "I know what I should say if it was left to me this
+time," and she frequently doubled with nothing at all in her hand,
+because she said she liked to play a plucky game.
+
+I have tried to cure Mrs. Fielden of saying "dah-monds" when she means
+"diamonds," but it is quite useless.  She also says (with a radiant
+smile) "How tarsome!" when she has lost a rubber, although I have
+pointed out to her that that is not the phonetic pronunciation of the
+word.  When we are all wrangling over the mistakes and misdeeds of the
+last round, Mrs. Fielden looks hopelessly at us and says, "Is it any
+one's deal?"  And then we laugh and stop arguing.  She never keeps the
+score, or picks up the cards, or deals for herself, or does anything
+useful.
+
+The American widow did not stop talking most of the time, and the
+Colonel kept up his running commentary upon the cards he was playing,
+and then Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs joined us to look on, and she and the
+American widow plunged into a discussion on clothes, which they kept up
+vigorously all the time.  This necessitated a number of questions
+relating to the game from the American widow, whenever she was recalled
+to the fact that she was playing Bridge: "May I see that laast trick?
+What's trumps?  Does my hand go down on the table this time?"  Mrs.
+Fielden beamed kindly upon her, even when the widow had debated five
+minutes which card to lead, and Colonel Jardine had begun to play the
+chromatic scale of impatience up and down the table with his stiff
+fingers.
+
+"Waal," said the American widow to Mrs. Fielden, "I think you are just
+lovely, and I would like to play with you always.  I believe most
+people would like to kill me at Bridge.  Caan't think why.  Colonel
+Jardine, did you play the lost chord?"
+
+"I know the tune," said the Colonel; "but I don't play at all."
+
+The American turned bewildered eyes upon Mrs. Fielden, who said,
+smiling, "Colonel Jardine is practising the chromatic scale.  I think
+he will be a very good player some day."
+
+"How was I to know," said the Colonel, spluttering over his
+whisky-and-soda when the American widow had left, "that she meant the
+last card?  That woman would drive me crazy in six weeks."
+
+"I liked her," said Mrs. Fielden, "and she is very pretty."
+
+There is a certain large-heartedness about this pretty woman of fashion
+and of the world which constrains her to say something kind about every
+one.  With her the absent are always right, and I do not think I have
+ever heard her say an unkind word about any one.  At Stanby, when
+people who are staying there make a newly-departed guest run the
+gauntlet of criticism--not always of the kindest sort--Mrs. Fielden
+says, in that royal fashion of hers which makes her approval the final
+decision in all matters, "I liked him."  And the departed guest's
+character and reputation are safe.  Her charity is boundless and quite
+indiscriminate, save that she sends a trifle more rain and sunshine on
+the unjust than on the just.
+
+"Come to lunch with me some day," she said to me in the off-hand way in
+which she generally gives an invitation.  "I am always at home at two
+o'clock.  Why not come to-morrow?  You are leaving town almost
+immediately, are you not?"
+
+Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is also asked to lunch; every one is asked to lunch.
+When one goes to the pretty widow's house in South Street one generally
+finds a dozen people lunching with her.
+
+... She came into the room--late, of course--and found ten or twelve
+people waiting for lunch.  "I am so sorry!  Do you all know each
+other?" she asked of the rather constrained group of strangers making
+frigid conversation to each other in the flower-filled drawing-room.
+And then she began to introduce us to each other, and forgot half our
+names, and we went downstairs in a buzz of conversation and laughter,
+and filled with something that is odd and magnetic, which only comes
+when Mrs. Fielden arrives.
+
+As is always the way at her lunch-parties, her carriage drives up to
+the door before any one has finished coffee, and then we all say
+good-bye, complaining of the rush of London.
+
+"I want you to drive with me this afternoon," said Mrs. Fielden, when I
+with the others was saying good-bye.  I think she generally singles
+somebody out for a drive or a long talk, or to take her to a
+picture-gallery after lunch, and it is done in a way that makes the one
+thus singled out feel foolishly elated and flattered.
+
+"I think we are going to drive down to Richmond and see some trees and
+grass, and behave in a rural sort of way this afternoon," she announced
+as she seated herself in the carriage.
+
+"And what about all your engagements for this afternoon?" I asked.
+"And the Red Book, and the visiting-list, and the shopping-list, and
+the visiting-cards, which I see with you?"
+
+"I never keep engagements," said Mrs. Fielden; "and every one knows my
+memory is so bad that they always forgive me.  Some one gave me a
+little notebook the other day, with my initials in silver upon it--I
+can't remember who it was--and I put down in it all the tarsome things
+I ought to do, and then I lost the little pocket-book."
+
+"If I ever find it," I said, "I shall bring it to you, and read out all
+your tarsome engagements to you."
+
+"I didn't say 'tarsome,'" said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"I suppose you are whirling through the London season," I said
+presently; "and going everywhere, and having your frocks chronicled in
+the magazines, and going to a great many parties?"
+
+"No," said Mrs. Fielden; "I have been down at Stanby."
+
+"I wish," I remarked, "that you did not always give one unexpected
+replies.  Why have you been down at Stanby?  You didn't say anything
+about it when I saw you last night."
+
+"Do you know old Miss Lydia Blind?" said Mrs. Fielden.  "She is ill,
+and I got rather a pathetic letter from her, so I went down to Stanby
+to look after her."
+
+She fumbled for the pocket of her dress, raising first what seemed to
+be a layer of lace, and then a number of layers of chiffon, and then,
+after rustling amongst some silk to find her artfully-concealed pocket,
+she produced a letter and handed it to me.
+
+"Am I to read it?" I said; and Mrs. Fielden nodded.
+
+"... One so often hears," so the letter ran, "of a case of long illness
+in which the one who is strong, and who acts as nurse to the invalid,
+breaks down before the end comes.  To me it has always seemed to show
+that the strong one's courage has failed somehow, and that, had zeal
+been stronger or faith greater, she might have endured to the end...."
+And, again, in a postscript: "When I was younger I was very impatient,
+and I think I could not well have borne it had I known that life was to
+be a waiting time.  I do not say this in any discontented spirit, dear,
+and I only write to you because you always understand...."  And then
+the letter broke off suddenly, and I handed it back to Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"So this is you, as Miss Lydia knows you," I said.
+
+"I want you to go and see her when you go back to Stowel.  Will you?"
+said Mrs. Fielden.  "Miss Lydia is an angel, I think; the best woman
+really that ever lived.  Will you take her some things I am sending
+her, and ask how she is when you go back?"
+
+We drove under the trees of Richmond Park in Mrs. Fielden's big,
+luxurious carriage.  She generally drives in a Victoria, and I asked
+her why she had the landau out this afternoon.
+
+"A whim," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I am full of whims."
+
+But of course a landau is the only carriage in which a lame man, who
+has to sit with his foot up, can put it comfortably on the opposite
+seat.
+
+We drove onwards, and she stopped the carriage to look at the view from
+Richmond Hill, and the soft air blew up to us in a manner very cool and
+refreshing; and then we got out and walked about for a time, and Mrs.
+Fielden gave me her arm.
+
+"I don't really require an arm," I said, "but I like taking yours."
+
+"It is a very strong arm," said Mrs. Fielden; and she exclaimed
+quickly, "I believe I am getting fat!  My maid tells me all my dresses
+want altering.  I wish it was time to think about beginning to hunt
+again."
+
+"Do you know," I said, "I always thought, till I got back to England,
+that my leg had been taken off below the knee, and that I should be
+able to get astride of a horse again.  I never used to see it, of
+course, when they dressed it; and when I counted up the things I should
+be able to do, riding was always one of them.  I didn't sell my horses
+till just the other day."
+
+Mrs. Fielden did not sympathize, but one of her silences fell between
+us.  We did not speak again till she began to tell me an amusing story
+which made us both laugh; but when she was sitting in the carriage, and
+the footman was helping me in, and we were still laughing, I could have
+sworn that her eyes looked larger and softer than I have ever seen them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+It is always rather melancholy arriving at home alone, and I miss
+Palestrina very much at these times, and I feel ill-disposed towards
+Thomas.  Down-Jock pretended not to know me, and barked furiously when
+I drove up to the door, and then ran away on three legs, making
+believe, as he sometimes does when he wants to appeal to one's pity,
+that he is old and lame.
+
+It was still early in the afternoon, and the sunshine was blazing over
+everything when I hobbled down the hill to inquire for Miss Lydia.  The
+houses in Stowel are all roofed with red tiles, and each garden has
+flowering shrubs in it or beds full of bright-coloured flowers, so that
+the little place has a very warm and happy look on a sunny summer day.
+A great heavy horse-chestnut tree hung over the walls of the doctor's
+house, and scattered fragments of pink blossom when the soft air
+stirred gently.  The wistaria on the post-office was in full bloom.
+And the place was so full of pleasant sounds this afternoon--of singing
+birds, and heavy-rolling wagons moving up the broad street, and the
+laughter of children, and the soft rush of the summer wind through the
+trees--that one felt that a day like this gave one a very strong
+leaning in favour of the happy view that life is, after all, a good
+thing.
+
+One had, of course, to stop and speak to several old friends, who said
+they were thankful to see me back, as though a visit to London was an
+expedition fraught with many dangers.
+
+When I reached the little cottage with the green gate, and the maid
+opened the door to me, she told me that Lydia Blind had died an hour
+ago.
+
+The staircase of the little house is directly opposite the front door.
+I could not but believe that if I waited a little while Miss Lydia
+would descend the stairs, as she always did, with a smile which never
+failed to welcome every one.  Or, if she were not within doors, that I
+would only have to pass out into the little garden at the back of the
+house to find her.  I thought suddenly of the words of a boy I used to
+know at school, who, when a young playfellow died, said between his
+sobs, "It was so hard upon him dying before he had had a good time."
+Certainly ever since we knew her Lydia's life had been one long
+sacrifice to a witless invalid, and I couldn't help feeling that
+perhaps no one would ever know the extent of her patient service.
+Probably there never lived a more unselfish woman, and I cannot think
+why she never married.
+
+She was a person who lacked worldly wisdom, and in worldly matters she
+was not prosperous--she never sowed that sort of grain.  It was very
+touching to find that she had not even a few trinkets to leave behind,
+but that one by one each had been sold to pay for something for the
+invalid--a doctor's fee, or a chemist's heavy bill.  She left the world
+as unobtrusively as she lived in it.  Her last illness was very sudden
+and brief, and probably she would have been thankful that the little
+household was spared any extra expense.
+
+The news of Lydia's death was unexpected by every one.  When I turned
+and left the house and was walking home again, I met Mrs. Taylor going
+to inquire about her neighbour's health, with an offering of fruit in a
+little basket.  She begged me, in the Stowel fashion, to turn and walk
+back with her, declaring that she felt so seriously upset by the news
+that if I would only see her as far as her gate I should be doing her a
+kindness.  In the garden the General, who had run down to Stowel for a
+couple of days, was reclining in a deck-chair, Indian fashion.  He was
+reading some cookery recipes in a number of _Truth_, and he turned to
+his niece as she crossed the lawn and said, "Do you think your cook
+could manage this, Mary?  Select a fine pineapple----"
+
+"Oh, uncle," said Mrs. Taylor with a good deal of feeling, "we have had
+such bad news!  Our dear old friend in the village, Miss Lydia Blind,
+is dead."
+
+"What Lydia Blind?" said the General; and Mrs. Taylor replied,--
+
+"You never knew her, dear.  She wasn't able to come to the party;
+indeed, I think she has been ailing ever since about that time, but we
+had no idea that the end was so near."
+
+"It can't be the Lydia Blind I used to know?" said the General.
+
+"Oh no, you couldn't have known her," said Mrs. Taylor with a sob; "she
+was just a dear old maiden lady living in the village on very small
+means."
+
+"She hadn't a sister called Belinda, had she?" said the General.
+
+Mrs. Taylor said she had, and I remembered suddenly how I had seen
+Lydia Blind standing one morning in front of the General's picture in
+the photographer's shop, and had heard her say, "I used to know him."
+
+Mrs. Taylor went indoors, and I said good-bye, but the General said to
+me abruptly, "I should like to see her; will you take me there?"  And
+he did not speak again until we found ourselves in the little porch of
+the cottage.  He looked very tall standing by the low door of the
+house, and an odd idea came to me that Miss Lydia would have been proud
+of her afternoon caller.
+
+"Let me go alone," he said gruffly, when he had asked permission to go
+to her room; and I waited in Lydia's morning-room, with its twine cases
+and unframed sketches, and the photographs of babies.
+
+"I cannot see the sister," said the General irritably, when he had
+rejoined me in the darkened room.  "Is she still dumb, poor thing?  If
+ever there was a case," he went on, "of one life--and, to my mind, the
+sweeter and the better life--being sacrificed to another, it is in the
+case of Lydia Blind."  He sat down on the little green sofa, and looked
+about him with eyes that seemed to see nothing.  "I never expected such
+a thing," he said; "I couldn't have expected a thing like this ... I
+didn't even know she lived here....  Do you remember her," he said,
+"when she was very pretty?  No, no, of course you wouldn't....  It
+doesn't hurt you to walk a little, does it?  I have lived nearly all my
+life out of doors, and when anything upsets me I cannot stand being
+within four walls...."
+
+We went out and crossed the field-path into the woods beyond.  The
+paths of the wood are narrow and uneven, and at first we walked in
+single file, until we came to the broader road beyond the stream, and
+then we walked on side by side, the General suiting his pace to my
+slow, awkward gait.
+
+"... Did you ever know the Bazeleys at all?  No, you wouldn't, of
+course: that would be before your time.  They had a very pretty place
+in Lincolnshire--a charming place--with a veranda round the house, and
+wicker-chairs with coloured cushions on them--more like an Indian house
+than an English one....  Harold Bazeley was in love with Lydia too."
+(I believe the General was talking more to himself than to me.)  "It
+was one night sitting in the veranda that I heard him begin to make
+love to her for all he was worth, and I had to cut it....  Poor chap!
+he came into the smoking-room that night, where I was sitting alone,
+and he sat down by the table and put his head in his hands.  He may
+have been saying his prayers (for he was always a religious man ... he
+did a lot of good for the men under him in India), and I sat with him
+till it was time to go to bed.  I don't know if it was any comfort to
+him, but I knew from his face that Lydia must have said no, and I
+thought perhaps he wouldn't like being alone....  Well, then of course
+one didn't like to rush in and ask one's best friend's girl to marry
+one so soon after his disappointment.  One had very strict ideas about
+honour in those days; I hope one has not lost them....  It is very odd
+that I was never here before, until last spring.  Nearly all my service
+has been abroad, and I generally used to spend my leave hunting or in
+London, and my niece used to come up and stay with me there....  I
+didn't care much for Taylor in those days, but he really isn't a bad
+sort of fellow."
+
+The sun began to sink behind the trees, and the General seemed to wake
+from the reverie in which he had been talking to me, and said: "You
+oughtn't to be out after sunset, if you have still got malaria about
+you," and we began to walk slowly homewards.
+
+"It was just such an evening as this," he said, "when I bade her
+good-bye, meaning to come back in a little while and ask her to marry
+me.  She was standing by the gate--fine old gates with stone pillars to
+them, and the sun shone full in her eyes....  I suppose that gentle,
+sweet look never left them, did it?  They were closed, of course, when
+I saw them just now....  She was wearing a white dress that evening, I
+remember--a sort of muslin dress which I suppose would not be
+fashionable now, but which looked very pretty then.  It had a lot of
+pink ribbons about it, and there was a great bunch of pink moss-roses
+in the ribbon of her belt....  Do you know I never picture her except
+as the girl who stood by the gate with the sun behind her, and the
+roses in her belt.  I think I lost my head a little when it came to
+saying good-bye, and I began to say things which I had not meant to
+say--she looked so pretty with the red sunlight upon her, and her white
+muslin dress almost turned to pink in the glare....  I don't think she
+was surprised, only sweeter and gentler than before, and a curious,
+happy look was in her eyes.  But I stopped in time, and stammered like
+a fool, thinking of poor Harold Bazeley, and then I said good-bye
+rather hurriedly.  But I came back again to the gate where she was
+still standing, and asked if I might have one of the roses in her belt.
+And she gave me the whole bunch.
+
+"... It must have been after this that the father died and left them
+very poor, and then the sister (this one, Belinda) had a stroke of
+paralysis, and there was no one to look after her but Lydia....  I
+wrote and proposed to her before I went to India--asked her to come
+with me as my wife.  But she said she could not marry while her sister
+lived.  It isn't as though we could have remained in England, and she
+could have lived with us; but of course India would have been an
+impossibility for the poor thing.  We never thought in those days that
+poor Belinda would live long.  And then she made a sort of recovery,
+but was still quite helpless, and Lydia wrote and asked me to wait for
+her no longer....  I never heard that she had come to live at Stowel."
+
+The broad, wide village road was dim with twilight when we walked
+homewards along it--The Uncle and I.  The children had all gone
+indoors, and the flowers in the little garden had lost their colour in
+the dim light.
+
+As we passed by the cottage the General halted on the quiet, deserted
+road and took off his hat, then he leaned over the little green paling
+and drew towards him a branch of a moss-rose tree that Miss Lydia had
+planted there.  He plucked a bud from it and held it to his face.  Then
+he said gently, "They are the same sort, but they do not smell so
+sweet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Mrs. Fielden came to Stowel for the funeral, and did not return to
+London again.  She went to pay some visits, I believe, and afterwards
+she will go to Scotland to stay with the Melfords, as she always does
+in August.  It was a very quiet summer.  Anthony went to Ireland to
+fish, and Major Jacobs went with him instead of me: Anthony and I used
+to take the fishing together.  Even Frances Taylor went north to stay
+with Mrs. Macdonald, and the Reading Society postponed its future
+meetings till the winter should come again.
+
+Undoubtedly Kate Jamieson's wedding was a stirring event in a very dull
+time.  The festivities connected with it were carried out with the
+Jamiesons' usual energy and lavishness.  It is possible to be lavish on
+five hundred a year.  That is one of the pleasing things that
+kind-hearted people like the Jamiesons can prove.  No one was omitted
+in the list of invitations to the reception which was held on the lawn
+in front of the house.  And there the whole of the Jamiesons' wide
+circle of friends was gathered together, forming an assembly which
+surely only the censorious mind could find fault with.  The
+refreshments, these good Jamiesons informed us, with their ingenuous
+interest in discussing detail, were prepared by Margaret, and Kate
+contributed to the payment of their ingredients from her small savings.
+The group of bride and bridesmaids, which was photographed at the front
+door, each wearing an expression of acute distress upon her face, was
+George's own idea, and was nobly paid for by him.
+
+It was announced at the wedding-feast--although it had been whispered
+for a long time--that there was soon to be another break in the
+Jamieson family.  We all instantly prepared a smile of congratulation
+for Maud, and some disappointment was felt when it was discovered that
+the remark applied to Mrs. Jamieson's youngest son, Kennie.  The Pirate
+had for some time been informing his friends that the Wild West was
+"calling to him," and that he had the "go fever," and that "once he had
+known the perfect freedom of life out there" it was impossible to
+settle down to the conventionalities of English society again.  The
+Pirate had obtained a post as purser on one of the ships of the company
+to which he belonged, and he appeared at the wedding-breakfast in a
+suit of white ducks, a gold-laced cap, and the famous cummerbund.  I
+have a strong suspicion that he had a revolver concealed in a
+mysterious pocket, from the way his hand, in moments of excitement,
+occasionally moved towards it; but fortunately the wedding-party was of
+so peaceful a description that it was not necessary to produce the
+weapon.
+
+Since the exciting news of Kennie's proposed departure for Buenos Ayres
+Mettie has developed nerves and hysteria.  But so limited is the power
+of imagination or discrimination in the human mind, that I must
+honestly confess that I never once connected her indisposition and low
+spirits with the news of her cousin's departure.  Mettie has added to a
+certain helplessness which always distinguishes her a tendency to
+tears, and to sitting alone in her bedroom and sniffing dolorously; the
+big thin nose requires constant attention, and there are red rims round
+poor Mettie's eyes.  The Jamiesons, who trace every variation in life
+to a love affair, are not long of course in coming to the right and the
+sentimental--nay, from the Jamieson point of view, the only reasonable
+explanation of this change in their little cousin.  But Mettie has
+entreated them to say nothing, and to let her suffer in silence, and
+they are too loyal to betray her interesting confidences.  Kennie
+himself is, I believe, still unaware of the interest he is exciting in
+Mettie's gentle breast, but doubtless the little woman's extreme
+timidity and her clinging disposition appeal in no small measure to the
+Defender of the Sex.  Mettie raises meek, adoring eyes to the Pirate's
+ruddy face, under the gold-laced cap, and murmurs with clasped hands:
+"You will never come back to us--I know it, I feel it!  You will be
+murdered by some gang of cut-throats, and then what will I--I mean your
+mother, do?"  The Pirate plumes himself and struts, and the dangers
+that his little cousin has so powerfully depicted for him make his
+young heart swell.
+
+The village church was quite full of spectators and friends; nearly all
+our acquaintances in the village wore new gowns--or apparently new
+gowns--for the wedding.  Mrs. Lovekin, in a black-cloth mantle with
+bead-trimming, showed guests into their pews, and directed the children
+at the doorway into giving a ringing cheer as the bride drove up to the
+church.  It was whispered by a wag that Mrs. Lovekin would like to don
+a surplice and officiate at the interesting ceremony herself.  There
+was a party in white cotton gloves, who banged doors and shouted "Drive
+on!" and it was hard to realize that this was the Jamiesons' odd man
+and gardener, transformed for the occasion.  He wore a large white
+ribbon rosette in his button-hole, and all the morning he had been busy
+erecting an archway over the gate at Belmont with Union Jacks displayed
+thereon, out of consideration, as he explained, to the late Captain
+Jamieson, he being military.  The Miss Traceys were resplendent in
+brown dresses and profuse lace neckties, securely anchored to their
+chests by massive brooches; the dresses were afterwards mentioned in an
+account of the wedding in the local paper, and it was cut out and
+carefully kept by the Miss Traceys, who pasted the interesting news in
+a small album for news-cuttings which they bought for the purpose.
+
+At the Jamiesons' little house there was, I understand, a wild state of
+confusion and energy from a very early hour in the morning, and
+looking-glasses and hand-mirrors were in great demand.  The centre of
+interest there, it seems, was Kate's bedroom, where the whole of The
+Family congregated to give Kate a last kiss before the veil was put on,
+and to wish her happiness again and again.  George, who throughout the
+entire proceedings made a laudable attempt to appear calm, at last told
+his sister that it really was time to start, and the carriage rolled
+down the hill, and Kate Jamieson alighted from it, and walked up the
+aisle of the old church leaning upon her brother's arm.  Eliza Jamieson
+was busy with a note-book the whole time, and almost one seemed to
+begin to see the wedding through her journalistic eyes.
+
+Our curate's wife, who is still far from strong, asked Palestrina to
+look after Peggy, who expressed a wish to see the wedding, and I was
+interested to find how many little games Peggy had invented for herself
+by way of getting through the tedium of a service--games which, I
+imagine, she had been preparing during the many services which a
+curate's little girl is supposed to attend.
+
+"If you press your eyes to the back of your head as far as you can,"
+she whispered to me, "you can see green and red and blue spots, and
+then open them and you can see green and red and blue spots round
+father."  And again: "I can say, 'We beseech Thee!' seven times over
+while the choir are singing it, if we have Jackson's _Te Deum_."  And
+then: "Do you know what Georgie and I do, when we are sent to church
+alone?  We hide in the pew until no one thinks we are there, and then
+we pop up in the middle of the service and begin to say the responses.
+When we sit with the Sunday-school children we play at 'My husband and
+your husband,' and then we each choose in turn which husband we'll have
+in the congregation.  You see, the first man who comes in is to be the
+first child's husband, and the second the second child's, that's how we
+manage; last Sunday I got the baker's boy."
+
+Mr. Swinnerton was at the wedding, somewhat inclined to be
+consequential, as usual; but as he devoted his whole attention to
+Margaret, one could not but feel that his presence was acceptable.  (We
+are on the tip-toe of expectation to know when Mr. Swinnerton will
+"come to the point.")  Margaret Jamieson looked after the needs of the
+Higginses' relations, and attended to the wants of all the humbler of
+the guests.
+
+There was still another element of interest in the marriage-party in
+the person of Mr. Evans, who ran down from Hampstead for it.  "If Mr.
+Evans comes," Maud said, with the characteristic fine common sense of
+the Jamiesons, "I want you all to understand that it is all quite over
+between him and me.  But what I have always thought about Mr. Evans is
+this--that he is the sort of man who would like The Family, and I do
+not see why he should not take a fancy to one of the other members of
+it.  I am quite sure his affection for me was based upon my
+suitability.  He often told me, for instance, that he would like a wife
+who had been brought up to do things for herself, and could manage on a
+small income and dress cheaply, and I am sure we can all do that.  And
+after all, if that is so, one of us is as suitable as another.  He had
+very definite ideas about a wife; but I couldn't help feeling all the
+time that it was some one like ourselves that he had in his mind.  He
+seemed to have a great dread of any one who was too smart; and I said
+to him at the time--for of course we both talked about our families a
+good deal, as one does in the first stages--that we were all very
+homely sort of people.  I could always put myself in the background if
+he seemed, for instance, to take a fancy to Gracie.  And Gracie herself
+has often said that she thinks she would like a man to wear a white
+watered-silk waistcoat."
+
+Gracie looked quite pleased with the arrangement, and Mr. Evans was
+asked down "as a friend."  And I should here like to record--only of
+course it is going too far ahead--that before the summer was over, Mr.
+Evans, charmed with The Family, as Maud felt he would be, and convinced
+of their suitability, had chosen Gracie from amongst the remaining Miss
+Jamiesons who were still at the disposal of those who seek a wife.
+Gracie's energy charmed Mr. Evans.  He often said afterwards that he
+believed he had got the pick of the basket after all.
+
+It was quite evident to me, and I believe to most of the Jamiesons'
+guests, that one of the mysteries, so dear to the hearts of Stowel, was
+in preparation for the wedding afternoon.  Not even my sister and I had
+been initiated into the secret; but Mrs. Jamieson, it must be
+confessed, took away from the shock of surprise which might have been
+ours, by referring during the whole afternoon to the entertainment
+which was to take place later.  The Jamiesons had decided that the
+lawn, newly mown, was to be suddenly cleared of trestle-tables and
+garden-chairs, and that a small band of musicians was to spring up
+unexpectedly out of the ground, as it were, and that every one was to
+know suddenly that they were in the midst of an impromptu dance.  Now
+Mrs. Jamieson, nervously expectant, and half fearing from the detached
+manners of her daughters (so well did the Miss Jamiesons simulate their
+ignorance of what was before them) that they must indeed have forgotten
+about the dance, interrupted every conversation by creeping up to them
+in her melancholy, quiet way, and saying, "Shall I get them to clear
+away now?"
+
+"It's to be impromptu, mamma," entreated the Miss Jamiesons in agitated
+whispers.  It had been decided between them that Gracie, as the
+youngest of the party, should exclaim suddenly, as if by some happy
+inspiration, "I vote we dance;" and that then in a perfectly easy and
+natural manner guests and entertainers alike should, with the utmost
+friendliness, help to push back the tables and chairs into the lilac
+bushes, and that then the musicians should be hastily summoned from the
+kitchen, where they were to have tea.  Before that time arrived the
+unfortunate Mrs. Jamieson had, as one might say, almost skimmed the
+cream off the whole thing.  Her nervousness would not allow her to
+rest, and in the end she had established the musicians in the three
+chairs so artlessly prepared for them under the chestnut-tree; and
+there they were with fiddle and concertina long before Gracie had found
+an opportunity for making her impromptu suggestion.  Their sudden
+appearance, one could not but feel, detracted from the unprepared
+effect that had been intended, and they stood waiting to begin with
+quite a forlorn appearance until the Pirate, for whom the arrival of
+the hour means the arrival of the man (if the Pirate is anywhere
+about), called out in his loud tones, "Strike up, you fellows, and let
+us have a dance!" and the very next moment the white drill suit and the
+gold-laced cap of Kennie might have been seen in the middle of the
+lawn.  He gallantly seized Mettie round the waist and scattered the
+guests by the onslaught and the fierce charge he made upon them, and
+soon had cleared a space in which he footed it gaily.  The Higginses,
+who had been rather shy during the reception, hastened to find
+partners, and warmed to the occasion at once.  Young Abel Higgins, the
+handsome young farmer from Dorming, said it was the pleasantest
+entertainment he had ever been at.  "There is no cliquism about it," he
+remarked.  "You just say to a girl, 'Will you dance?' and up she comes;
+it doesn't matter if she's a lord's daughter!"
+
+Mr. Swinnerton devoted much of his attention and his conversation to me
+during the afternoon.  He discussed what he calls "military matters" at
+great length, pointing out the mistakes of every general in South
+Africa, at the same time clearly stating what Mr. Swinnerton would have
+done under similar circumstances, and lamenting the inefficiency of the
+War Office.  Later in the afternoon, however, when he found me where,
+as I hoped, I had effectually concealed myself behind a laurel bush,
+Mr. Swinnerton plunged heavily into the question of marriage; and this,
+as Maud would say, was surely a very hopeful sign.  I was disappointed,
+however, to find that his views regarding the happy state of matrimony
+seemed to have been made almost entirely from one point of view, and
+that point of view himself.
+
+"Don't you think," he began ponderously, as he seated himself beside me
+after the rather heavy fatigue of dancing on a lawn to the strains of a
+band that did not keep scrupulous time--"don't you think that a man
+ought to see a girl in her own home before he makes up his mind?"
+
+I dissented on the plea of over-cautiousness, but Mr. Swinnerton did
+not hear me.
+
+"What I think," he went on, "is that marriage is a serious undertaking
+for a man, and that one ought to be very sure of one's own mind."
+
+I admitted the seriousness of matrimony, but thought it applied equally
+to the woman.
+
+This remark also seemed to escape Mr. Swinnerton's attention.  Indeed,
+I found that what is extremely irritating about this fellow is that his
+mind never diverges from his own topic; he seems quite incapable of
+excursions into the thoughts and feelings of the persons he addresses,
+but plods steadily on his own path, pleased to give his own views, and
+quite unaffected by the differences of opinion that are offered him.
+There is a legend of my childhood that records that a man once said,
+"It is bitt----" and then went to sleep for a thousand years, and when
+he woke up he said, "--erly cold."  I am often reminded of this story
+when I listen to Mr. Swinnerton's plodding conversation.
+
+"What I feel is," he went on--and one knew that no fatigue on the part
+of the listener would be noticed by him--"what I feel is, that the man
+being the head of the woman he should always choose some one who is
+docile and good-tempered, and perhaps above all things a good cook.
+That's the very first thing I would teach a woman--to be a good cook.
+It's so important for a man to have his meals really nice and nicely
+served.  Don't you agree with me?"
+
+"It is very important," I said.
+
+"I am so glad you agree with me."  Mr. Swinnerton occasionally remarks
+on an agreeable clause in one's conversation, whereas a disagreement
+never even penetrates his mind.  "Of course, you fellows with your mess
+and all that can scarcely realize how necessary it is that a man's wife
+should be a good cook.  And then she ought to be thoroughly
+domesticated," went on Mr. Swinnerton's heavy voice; "a woman should
+not always be wanting to go out in the evening.  What I feel is that
+the home should constitute the woman's happiness."
+
+"And cooking?" I said.
+
+"Yes, and cooking," said Mr. Swinnerton.  "I do not want my wife to
+have any money; I had much rather she had to come to me for things.  I
+am not greedy about money.  I am comfortably off, but I think a man
+should have entire control of the purse.  One could knock off any
+expenditure on a wife's dress, if that is the case.  Ladies like a new
+bonnet, and I should always give my wife a new bonnet if things had
+been nice."
+
+I remarked that Mr. Swinnerton was very generous.
+
+"I know I am generous.  Of course, a man gives up a great deal when he
+marries, but I do not know that in the matter of expense it would cost
+me more to keep a small house than to pay for lodgings."
+
+"It depends," I said, "what wages you give your wife.  An occasional
+new bonnet would not be an extravagant salary, if she turned out to be
+a really good cook."
+
+For the first time Mr. Swinnerton seemed struck by the wisdom of my
+remarks.  "No, it would not," he said; "it would not.  I know that I
+would make a good husband," he remarked; "and I feel that I have a
+future before me in the volunteers."
+
+Margaret joined us at this moment, and Swinnerton smiled indulgently at
+her, without offering, however, to give her his seat.  I do not think
+that Margaret noticed this, as she did not notice any omission on Mr.
+Swinnerton's part.
+
+"I hope you are not very tired," she said.  "Your journey from London
+and then this little dance must be very fatiguing, I am afraid."
+
+"Men don't get tired," said Mr. Swinnerton grandiosely, and he looked
+towards me for applause.  He did not, however, ask her to dance, and
+Margaret moved away to attend to other guests.
+
+"She's a very nice-looking girl," said Mr. Swinnerton approvingly, "and
+a well-brought-up girl, too."
+
+So I suppose it is still hopeful, as the Jamiesons would say.  But I
+pray that Margaret Jamieson will remove Mr. Swinnerton hence when she
+has married him.
+
+Kate and Mr. Ward drove to the station in the best landau and pair of
+horses from Stowel Inn.  Mr. Ward was so upset from first to last by
+the ceremonies and the heat that his conical-shaped head, covered with
+the dew of nervous perspiration, steamed like a kettle; but his
+affection for his bride and his evident delight and pride in her were
+undeniable, and although resenting in his mild way the stinging shower
+of rice with which he was pelted, and the usual facetious jokes that
+were made on the bride and bridegroom, Mr. Ward nevertheless beamed
+with good-nature all the time.
+
+Palestrina made me laugh when she came home in the evening.  She had
+been down to the village to see the Pettifers and to show them her
+wedding finery, as she promised to do; for Mrs. Pettifer is ill in bed
+again, and was unable to stand at the church door with the rest of the
+crowd to see the wedding-party.  My sister found the old lady weeping
+bitterly, and for a long time she could not guess the cause of her
+distress, until at last a remark of her husband's explained it.  "She
+do take on like that tur'ble queer," he said, "as soon as ever the
+wedding-bells ring after a marriage is over."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Pettifer; "I always say to myself, 'She's got him, and
+he ain't disappointed her after all.'"
+
+Kennie sailed for Buenos Ayres the day after the wedding, and Mettie
+walked over to see us, being sent on some errand, I have no doubt,
+wherein she would be more usefully employed than in getting into the
+way of the staff of workers who were clearing up after yesterday's
+festivities.  Mettie brought over Mrs. Ward's first telegram received
+that morning from Dover, and said it was too funny to think of Kate
+being Mrs. Ward.  "Kate Ward," she said with one of her curious little
+chirruping laughs, "Kate Ward--do look at it!"  And we dutifully
+replied that it certainly seemed the height of drollery.
+
+Palestrina is not perfectly just to me when Mettie comes to call.  She
+always remembers something important which she has until this moment
+forgotten, and with apologies to Mettie she flies off to see to it, and
+I am left with our caller.  And then the marriage question is in full
+swing before one can prevent it.  Mettie says she would never, never
+allow a man to know that she cared for him, and that no nice girl
+would.  Did I think that if a girl never gave any evidence of her love,
+and died, it would be a very pitiful end?  And of course I said that
+the pathos of the thing would strike one directly.
+
+"After death," said Mettie, "she might still be his good angel.  It is
+very strange," she said, "to think of becoming a being with wings.  Do
+you know I often wonder what those wings can be like, and I cannot
+imagine them made of anything but white ostrich feathers, which I must
+say would look very pretty....  I am sure it is a brave thing to part
+and say nothing, but do you think that one might write?"
+
+It was only then, at that precise moment, that I in any way connected
+Mettie's remarks with the thought of the Pirate Boy, now a purser in
+the ---- Line.
+
+"My dear Mettie," I said, "I should certainly write to him--write
+often, write affectionately, send him your photograph, work him a
+housewife for his cabin, carve him a frame for your photograph.  I am
+delighted----"
+
+"Oh! but nothing is settled yet," simpered Mettie.
+
+It has sometimes struck me since, although one generally denies the
+suggestion, that the first sentiment of love-making may emanate from
+the woman's mind.  But probably the Pirate will never know that it was
+not his own idea that he should fall in love with Mettie.
+
+This evening I was looking over a lot of old letters, such as our
+fathers and mothers used to keep, put away in drawers with bits of
+ribbon tied round them in the days when there was more time for that
+sort of thing than there is now.  And I came across the following
+letter, written in ink that has grown rather faded, and dated 1845.  It
+describes a wedding, and I have saved it from a number of other letters
+which I have destroyed, to stick it into my diary as an appropriate
+sort of ending to my entries for to-day.  The letter is a genuine one,
+and I have the original of it beside me now.
+
+
+"MY DEAREST AUNT,
+
+"You wished to hear all about our doings on Thursday.  Though I dare
+say you have heard many editions of the affairs of that day, I take the
+earliest opportunity of relating to you, as I promised, my version of
+it, though how often was it wished that dear aunt and uncle had
+themselves been present to illuminate the picture.  We all assembled at
+a quarter-past ten o'clock.  The married ladies (and gentlemen, whether
+they were in that happy state or not) remained in the drawing-room
+till, at a given signal, the bride descended, followed by her
+bridesmaids--first Emily and myself, then Anne and Jane Schofield, then
+Anna and Eliza Schofield.  The four first were in pink, the two last in
+blue.  After talking over matters a little, we entered our respective
+carriages, mamma going in the first carriage, and papa and Mary
+bringing up the rear.  We went through the ceremony very well.  Mary
+responded in a perfectly clear and audible voice; but once the worthy
+bride-groom faltered, and as I stood next to him could perceive he was
+somewhat agitated.  The ceremony of kissing being finished, we returned
+from church, when numerous and costly presents were exhibited to the
+eyes, and amongst them none more beautiful than my dear uncle and
+aunt's.  But, by way of parenthesis, mamma wishes me to ask you, as
+Mary has two silver canisters, whether you would have any objection to
+change the kind and elegant expression of your feeling for Mary into a
+silver waiter.  Knowing your kindness, we sent it by Uncle Kershaw.
+Now to proceed.  We descended to breakfast--a most important business,
+which occupied us a considerable time--in the middle of which Uncle
+Ainsworth produced a bunch of grapes, and signified his intention of
+drinking Mary Schofield's health in the red juice of the grape.  He
+immediately expressed the juice and suited the action to the word.
+Robert Arncliffe made a beautiful speech--quite a gem.  We then
+proceeded to dress the bride in travelling attire.  Then came the
+dreadful moment of parting.  Mamma and papa got over it most
+wonderfully; suffice it to say our sisters' tears flowed most copiously
+on that day.  After her departure, we took a drive to restore us to
+that harmony of spirits so desirable when persons are the entertainers
+of others.  We drove through Hyde Park and Regent's Park in procession,
+and stopped to walk in the Zoological Gardens, coveting the society of
+the brute creation as well as the rational.  We then returned to
+dinner, which was at seven, when, to our indescribable horror, on
+calling over the names of certain young ladies, we discovered their
+toilet was not complete when dinner was announced.  After a small
+delay, however, the offenders appeared, and the business of dinner was
+commenced with astonishing vigour.  There is no occasion to describe to
+you the manners and customs of a dinner-table, as a sameness must
+naturally pervade all such employments.  We ladies at length signified
+our intention of leaving the gentlemen masters of the field, and Uncle
+Jesse came out with us and went to bed.  We proceeded to enjoy a small
+quadrille, till I suppose the sound of feet called the other portion of
+the community from below.  After tea and a little display of musical
+powers, we had another quadrille; but this did not occur till Emily was
+gone.  We finally separated at half-past eleven.  We have heard twice
+or three times from the newly-married people.  They are in Bath to-day.
+Will you excuse, my dear aunt, this dreadful scrawl, but I have had so
+many notes to write, added to which I have sprained my right arm, which
+is now pleading to be spared any further exertions.  Hoping that dear
+uncle and yourself, as well as dear Sarah, are well, and again begging
+to be excused this unconnected epistle, With united love to all,
+Believe me,
+
+"Your very affectionate niece,
+    "MARGARET M. NAYLOR.
+
+"MECKLENBURGH SQUARE,
+  _August_ 1845."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+My leg, "my best leg," as poor Beau Brummell used to say, has been
+hurting rather, for the last week or two.  I do not know how Palestrina
+has discovered this, but the dear little woman is looking harassed and
+anxious, and she is trying to inveigle me into going up to London
+again, to get further advice from my doctor.  She has broached the
+subject in several ways.  There is a play going on at present which she
+would much like to see, if I will be kind enough to take her to London
+for a couple of days.  Or there is some shopping which she wants to do,
+and she must have my advice on the subject.  I believe that she does
+not like to allow, even to herself, that I ought to go expressly to see
+the surgeon, but she means to throw out the suggestion when we shall be
+in town together, and in this way she has decided, with her usual
+thoughtfulness, to spare me the anticipation of hearing that I am not
+going on as well as I ought to be doing.  It is, however, much too hot
+to think of going up to London, so for the present none of Palestrina's
+deep-laid plans have been successful.  It is broiling hot weather even
+down here in the country, but the mornings are cool and fresh, and,
+after tossing about half the night, I generally get up and go for a
+feeble sort of walk before breakfast.  It is extraordinary how new and
+fresh the world feels in the early morning, while the dew is still on
+the grass, and the birds are singing without any fear that their
+concert will be stopped or disturbed by passers-by.
+
+On my way home this morning I passed the Jamiesons' little house, and
+was hailed to come in by the flutter of nearly a dozen dinner-napkins
+waved to me from the window of the breakfast-room.  It is impossible to
+pass Belmont without being asked to come in, or to leave the hospitable
+little house without an invitation to stay longer.  Monday--this was
+Monday--is what the Jamiesons call "one of our busiest mornings," and I
+think that our good friends talk almost more than usual on the days on
+which they are most engaged.
+
+As I entered the room, two of The Family had already finished
+breakfast, and were busy at a side-table, driving their
+sewing-machines.  The whirring noise, added to the amount of talking
+that was going on, had rather a bewildering effect at first.  There
+was, besides, the added confusion attendant upon what is known as
+"getting George off."  The process seems to consist of shaking George
+into his City coat, brushing it, patting him on the back, telling him
+how nice he looks, hoping he will get down in the middle of the week,
+or at least not later than Friday afternoon, and giving him messages
+and remembrances to quite half a dozen friends in London.  The Family
+chorus as I entered was something like this:--
+
+"Cream or sugar, weak or strong?"
+
+"Mettie, did you get your letters?"
+
+"Eliza, which is your napkin-ring?"
+
+"Please say what you will have; I have asked you at least half a dozen
+times."
+
+"Do you mind the window open?"
+
+"Does any one hear the bus?"
+
+"Toast or rolls?"
+
+"Which is your napkin-ring?"
+
+"Did any one hear the rain last night?"
+
+"You haven't said yet if you will have an egg."
+
+"Mother is not well, and is not coming down this morning."
+
+"Does any one mind if we go on with our machines?"
+
+Over and above this, snatches of newspaper were read, and numerous
+directions were given to a very young servant as to how things should
+be placed upon the table--a proceeding which usually goes on at every
+one of the Jamiesons' meals.  It is known as "training one of our
+village girls."
+
+Gracie and Eliza were the two who sat at the side-table before their
+whirring sewing-machines, their very spectacles nearly darting from
+their heads with energy and speed.  George said, "I wish one of you
+girls would mend my glove before I start;" and Gracie said, "Give it to
+me; I can spare five minutes off lunch-time to get this finished."
+
+Margaret remarked, "Mamma seems very much out of spirits to-day, and I
+think one of us ought to go and play draughts with her."
+
+Eliza took out her watch.  "I can play draughts for thirty-five
+minutes," she remarked--"from eleven-five to eleven-forty--and then
+Gracie must take my place, as Margaret will be baking, and I have the
+soup-kitchen accounts to make up."
+
+"I did not anticipate draughts this morning," said poor Gracie.  "I
+must just get this done when I go to bed."  This is the last refuge of
+the overdriven, and one which is so frequently alluded to by the
+Jamiesons that I often fear they deny themselves the proper amount of
+sleep.
+
+George here kissed each of his sisters in turn, and ran upstairs to say
+good-bye to his mother, while the omnibus waited at the gate.
+
+Maud, who was trimming hats for the whole family, and who was
+surrounded by a curious medley of ribbons and finery, said: "What about
+the Church Council work?  I am afraid we have forgotten it."
+
+"That's my business," said Gracie tragically; "and I must give this
+up;" and she stopped her sewing-machine, and rolled the purple cotton
+pinafore into a tight ball and placed it on the table.
+
+"Dear Gracie," said Margaret, "could I not do it?  I could get it in
+between the Kaffirs and my baking."
+
+"I would offer to do it," said Eliza, with that affectionate
+helpfulness which distinguishes The Family, "only I am so filled up
+with soup."  Eliza referred to her soup-kitchen accounts.
+
+The small servant here appeared at the door, and said that an old woman
+wanted to see Miss Gracie.
+
+"My time!  my time!" said Gracie, and went to the back door to give the
+last shilling of her quarter's dress allowance to the poor woman in
+distress.
+
+"The worst of playing draughts is," said Eliza, "that one can do
+nothing else at the same time, except it be to add up accounts in one's
+head.  Otherwise I should have been only too glad.  I tell you what I
+can do, though--I can play instead of Gracie this morning, if she won't
+mind my keeping the candle alight to do my Browning article after I
+have gone to bed."
+
+Mettie always offers to help every one, but so slow is the little
+woman's way of working that the energetic family of Jamieson are quite
+aware that probably the business will be weeks in doing; so their
+answers to Mettie's offers, given in a kindly voice, are always: "My
+dear, you have got your letters to write, and your practising--we could
+not do without your singing in the evening, you know."
+
+Mr. Evans, who was a guest in the house for a few days, was smoking his
+pipe in a leisurely way in the garden, and Gracie said: "I really do
+feel that I ought to give more attention to Mr. Evans, if only I had
+the time for it.  Could one of you run into the garden and make a few
+pleasant remarks to him until I am ready?" And this Eliza did, first
+glancing at her watch in the characteristic Jamieson fashion, and
+coming in presently to say that she had sat "for ten solid minutes
+doing nothing, and that she does wish men had more resources of their
+own."
+
+It would have been useless to suggest that the work should stop for a
+whole summer day.  A child came in with some flowers as an offering to
+the Miss Jamiesons, and Eliza said: "Would you mind putting them down
+somewhere, my dear?  I will try to get a minute to arrange them
+by-and-by."  And then the machines began again, and I walked on
+homewards, and enjoyed a long, hot morning in the garden with a book.
+
+The garden was very shady and pleasant, and one thought regretfully of
+the Jamiesons sitting indoors with their sewing-machines.  Palestrina
+came out presently in a gray dress, very soft and cool-looking, and
+with a big sunshade over her head.  She sat down beside me, and said in
+an off-hand way, and a determination to be congratulatory which was
+very suspicious: "I have got a pressing invitation for you."  And she
+handed me a letter from Kate Ward.
+
+Mrs. Ward wrote upon the almost immaculate notepaper which is affected
+by brides, I have often noticed that this superfine quality of paper is
+one of the first extravagances of young married life, as it is one of
+the first economies of a later date, and a little judgment will soon
+show how long a woman has been married by merely looking at her
+notepaper.  Cream-laid, with a gold address at the top, bespeaks the
+early days of matrimony; and a descent through white stamping, no
+stamping, Hieratica to Silurian note, marks the different stages of the
+rolling years.
+
+Kate said (on the best Court note) that she would never forgive us if
+we did not come and see her in her new home.  James had been generous
+in the extreme, and they had bought everything "plain but good" for the
+house.  And the whole expense of it had been covered by exactly the sum
+of money that they had laid by for the purpose.  Kate continued, "But I
+will not bore you with a description of the house, for I want you to
+see it for yourselves," and then entered upon the usual Jamieson
+descriptive catalogue of every piece of furniture and every wallpaper
+which she had purchased.
+
+I handed the letter back to Palestrina, who was sitting in an
+exaggerated attitude of ease and indifference on the edge of my
+deck-chair, and said to her, "Why leave Paradise?  London will be
+atrocious in this hot weather, and I believe it would be tempting
+Providence to quit this garden."
+
+"I am afraid it will give great disappointment to Kate if we do not
+go," said Palestrina, in a tone of voice which suggested that she had
+been prepared for opposition, and had rehearsed her own arguments
+beforehand.  "After all, she lives in the suburbs, and has a garden of
+her own, and we need not stay more than two or three days."
+
+"We shall have to do so much admiring," I said, smothering a yawn.  "I
+know what brides are!  You, Palestrina, probably know exactly the right
+thing to say about newly-laid linoleum and furniture which is plain but
+good, but I never do."
+
+"I think I should like to go," said Palestrina, putting the matter upon
+personal grounds, as I knew she would do when she had entirely made up
+her mind that I must go up to London.  What pressure she had brought to
+bear upon Mrs. Ward to induce her to invite us to the new house I
+cannot say, but some instinct told me that Kate had been warned to
+write a letter which might be handed to me to read.
+
+I pointed out to Palestrina that, much as I should miss her at home, I
+should not stand in the way of her paying a visit to her old friend.
+
+"I have accepted for us both from Thursday to Tuesday," said Palestrina
+firmly.  "Oh, by-the-bye," she said, rising and going indoors, "I just
+sent a line to Dr.  Fergus at the same time to say that you will look
+in and see him one morning, just to see that you are going on all
+right."
+
+"You also were up early?" I said to the diplomat, who smiled at me from
+under her big umbrella without a vestige of shame at her own cunning.
+"I don't think it is fair on a crippled man to get up early and send
+off letters by the early post.  It's a mean trick."
+
+"You were up half the night," said Palestrina, nodding her head at me,
+"for I heard you."  And she crossed the lawn and went indoors again.
+
+The following Thursday we took train for Clarkham.  I had never stayed
+in this part of the world before, till we came to visit Kate, and the
+suburb where she lives seems to me to be rather a pleasant place, with
+broad roads over whose walls and palings shrubs and red maples and
+other trees hang invitingly.  And it is so near London that a very
+short run in the train takes one to Victoria Station.  But the
+neighbourhood is not fashionable, and I cannot help remarking the
+apologetic tone in which every one we meet speaks of living here.
+
+The Wards' house is a very nice little place, with very new wall-papers
+and very clean curtains and slippery floors, upon which art rugs slide
+dangerously.  There is a small garden with a lawn and a brown hawthorn
+tree upon it, and there are two trim little maids who wait upon one
+excellently well.  Kate is a thorough good manager, and her whole
+household reminds one of those pages on household management which one
+sees in magazines, describing the perfect equipment of a house--its
+management, and the rules to be observed by a young housekeeper.
+
+There is a place for everything, and Kate says her wedding-presents are
+a great assistance in giving a home-like look to the house.
+
+Mr. Ward leaves home at half-past nine every morning, and Kate shakes
+him into his coat in exactly the same way George used to be shaken into
+his, and stands at the hall-door with a bright smile on her face, until
+James has got into the morning bus and driven away, in a manner that is
+very wifely and commendable.
+
+The unpretentious little household seems to be a very happy one, and
+Kate was quite satisfied with the praise which Palestrina bestowed upon
+everything.
+
+"Of course," she said, "the great drawback is that the place is so
+unfashionable;" and we warmly protested against that being of the least
+consequence.  But Kate said with her usual common sense: "It does
+matter, really.  No one thinks anything of you if you live here, and
+nearly every one who has enough money always leaves directly.
+Still"--cheerfully--"one must expect some drawbacks, and I do think I
+have been very lucky.  James is goodness itself, and quite a number of
+people have been to call."
+
+We found to our dismay that Kate, with the laudable intention of
+amusing us, had accepted several invitations to what are called "the
+last of the summer gaieties."  There were tea-parties and
+garden-parties given by her friends, to which we were expected to go;
+and her very nearest neighbours, who are generally known as the "Next
+Doors," actually invited us to dine.
+
+"This afternoon," Kate said, "is the day of the Finlaysons'
+garden-party.  They are frightfully rich people--ironmongers in the
+City; but you never saw such greenhouses and gardens as they have got!
+Do put on your best dress," she said to Palestrina, "and look nice;
+people here seem to dress so smartly for this sort of thing."
+
+I think, indeed, it was the very grandest party to which I have ever
+had an invitation.  Every one seemed to sail about in a most stately
+fashion, in a gown of some rich stuff, and there was such an air of
+magnificence about the whole thing that one hardly dared to speak above
+a whisper.  There was a marquee on the lawn, with most expensive
+refreshments inside, and a great many waiters handing about things on
+trays.  Mrs. Finlayson spoke habitually--at least at parties--in an
+exalted tone of voice, which one wondered if she used when, for
+instance, she was adding up accounts or saying her prayers.  It was
+difficult to imagine that the voice could have been intended for
+private use---it was such a very public, almost a platform voice, and
+the accent was most finished and aristocratic.
+
+The Miss Finlaysons, in exquisite blue dresses and very thin shoes,
+also sailed about and shook hands with their guests in a cold, proud
+way which was very effective.  Young Finlayson was frankly supercilious
+and condescending; and there was a schoolboy in a tall hat, who was
+always alluded to as "our brother at Eton."  The excellent old papa of
+the firm of Finlayson and Merritt was really the most human and the
+least alarming of the whole party.  He seemed quite pleased when
+Palestrina, in her soft gurgling way, admired his greenhouses and
+peaches, and he led her back to where his lady ("wife" is too homely a
+term) was standing in a throne-room attitude on the lawn, and remarked
+genially, "This young lady has just been admiring our little place,
+Lavinia."
+
+"Indeed," said my sister, "it seems to me very charming, and----"
+
+"Hush, hush!" said Mrs. Finlayson playfully, but with an undercurrent
+of annoyance in her party voice.  "I won't hear a word said in its
+praise--it is just a step to the West End."
+
+"What is the actual distance?" I began.
+
+It was old Finlayson who rescued me from my dilemma, and explained that
+until five years ago they had had a very tidy little 'ouse at
+'ampstead, and that this present location, although so magnificent,
+was, in the eyes of his lady, really a stepping-stone to further
+grandeur and a more fashionable locality.
+
+The Next Doors were introduced to us at this party, and we were much
+struck by the fact that, although they seemed appropriately lodged in a
+place well suited to them, and in a society certainly not inferior to
+themselves, they, too, instantly began to apologize for living at
+Clarkham.
+
+"One feels so lost in a place like this," said Mrs. Next Door; "and
+although the boys are so happy with their tennis and things on Saturday
+afternoons, I cannot help feeling that it is a great drawback to the
+girls to live here."
+
+A band began to play under the trees, and Palestrina said to me, with
+one of her low laughs: "I wonder if I shall begin to sail about soon?
+Isn't it funny!  They all do it, and now that the band has begun I feel
+that I must do it too."
+
+The Miss Finlaysons came up at intervals and introduced young men to
+her in a spasmodic sort of way.  When one least expected it, some one
+in a tall hat and a long frock-coat was placed before Palestrina, and a
+Miss Finlayson said quite sharply, "May I introduce--Mr. Smith----" and
+then as suddenly retired.  There was nothing for it but to make a
+little tepid conversation to the various Mr. Smiths, and Sonnenscheins,
+and Seligmanns who were in this way presented, and we noticed that
+almost every one of them began his conversation by saying, "Been going
+out a great deal lately?  Done the Academy?"  And then moved off to be
+introduced to some one else.
+
+The young men were very supercilious and grand, and we could only
+account for it, on discussing the matter afterwards, by supposing that
+they thought Palestrina was a Clarkham young lady, and that this was
+their way of showing their superiority to her.  One or two had
+certainly said to us with a dubious air, "Do you live in the Pork?" But
+it was not until the quieter moments that followed the stress of this
+regal party that we at all realized that this meant, Did we live in
+Clarkham Park.
+
+Kate Ward was very agreeable and pleasant to every one, and was voted a
+nobody directly, and we heard it remarked that she had "no style."  I
+think Kate must have overheard the remark, for she became a little
+nervous towards the end of the afternoon, and presently said, "Perhaps
+we ought to be going?" But young Finlayson was here suddenly introduced
+to her by one of his sisters, and Kate thought it necessary to make a
+few remarks before saying good-bye.  She said something pretty about
+his sisters, who are undoubtedly handsome girls, and Mr. Finlayson said
+bitterly, "Yes, a good many so-called beauties in London would have to
+shut up shop if my sisters appeared in the Row.  It is a beastly shame
+they have got to live down here!"
+
+Kate said, "But I suppose they go to town occasionally?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Finlayson; "but they ought to have their Park hacks,
+and do things in style.  It is a shame the governor does not take a
+house in the West End."
+
+My sister tried to look sympathetic.
+
+"However," said Mr. Finlayson more hopefully, "we have taken a bit of a
+shoot in Scotland this year, so I hope the girls will have some
+society.  Well, it is a deer forest really, and a very fine house and
+grounds," amended Mr. Finlayson, with a burst of candour.
+
+Mrs. Finlayson sailed up, and stooped to make a few remarks about the
+gaiety of the past season to us.  She said that she and her daughters
+were in demand everywhere, and that the other night in a West End
+theatre every lorgnette in the house was turned towards their box.
+"Rupert, of course, has his own chambers in St. James's, and knows
+every one."
+
+The Miss Finlaysons shook hands, and said good-bye with their usual
+lofty condescension, and each said, "Going on anywhere?" to which we
+could only reply humbly that we had no further engagements for that
+afternoon.
+
+Kate praised the party all the way home, and then said, with a burst of
+feeling: "Oh, how I do wish I were a swell!  I know it's wicked, but I
+would snub one or two people."
+
+The next morning, being Sunday, we went to church, and the feeling of
+equality with the rest of mankind which this gives one was very
+refreshing after the magnificence and social distinctions about which
+we had been learning so much during the last few days.  But even in
+church one may notice how superior some families in Clarkham are to
+others.  The pew-letting of the church seems to have been conducted on
+principles other than those recommended in Holy Writ.  Richer
+folk--those with gold chains, for whom we learn precedence should not
+be accorded--occupied the front pews, furnished with red cushions and
+Prayer-Books with silver corners, while the humbler sort were
+accommodated with seats under the gallery.  The Finlaysons sailed in
+rather late, with a rustle of their smart dresses, and kneeled to pray
+on very high hassocks, their elbows just touching the book-board in
+front of them, their faces inadequately covered with their
+tightly-gloved hands.  The Next Doors had a pew half-way up the middle
+aisle.  The day was hot, and the clergyman, a small devout-looking man,
+very earnest and really eloquent, was guilty sometimes in moments of
+excitement of dropping aitches.  This of course may have been the
+result of the hot weather.  It was something of a shock to notice that
+the little Next Doors--terrible children, of high spirits and
+pugnacious dispositions--were allowed to giggle unreproved at each
+omission of the aspirate on the part of the preacher.  The Next Doors
+overtook us on our way out of church, and two of the pugnacious
+children, having dug each other with their elbows, and fought round me
+for permission to walk home with me and talk about the war, threw light
+upon their behaviour in church by remarking with smiling
+self-satisfaction, "Papa says we ought always to giggle when Mr. Elliot
+drops his aitches, to show that we know better...."  Little brutes!
+
+We spent a lazy afternoon under the brown hawthorn tree on the little
+lawn, and Thomas drove down to see Palestrina, and good Kate Ward put
+forth her very best efforts to give us a sumptuous cold supper.  We
+found, to our surprise, that nightingales sing down here, and we sat on
+the lawn till quite late listening to them.  Mr. and Mrs. Ward slipped
+their hands into one another's in the dark, and appeared to be most
+happy and contented.
+
+"I am glad we came," said Palestrina that night, when Mrs. Ward had
+quitted the room.  "Dear old Kate!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+On Monday I went to see Dr. Fergus about my leg, and did not get a very
+good report of it.
+
+We returned from Clarkham on one of the hottest days I ever remember,
+and found Mrs. Fielden waiting for us in the hall.
+
+"Every one seems to have come over to hear about your London visit,"
+said Mrs. Fielden lightly, "for I found Mr. Ellicomb and Maud Jamieson
+here when I came in."
+
+She began pouring out tea for us both as she spoke, and she signalled
+something to Palestrina, who replied as she stooped down to cut some
+cake, "Another operation--yes, four or five weeks in bed at least."
+
+"I sent Maud and Mr. Ellicomb home together," said Mrs. Fielden,
+smiling.  "He, poor man, is in a great state of mental perturbation,
+for it seems that he has heard that in South Africa pigs are fed upon
+arum lilies, and that so delicate is the flesh of the pork thus
+produced that some flower-growers in the Channel Isles are cultivating
+arum lilies for the purpose of feeding pigs, and to produce the same
+delicious pork.  He was so agitated that he got up from his chair and
+walked up and down the room, repeating over and over again, 'Arum-fed
+pork!  Monstrous, monstrous!'  I really did not know how to comfort
+him, so I sent him home with Maud Jamieson, which seemed to please him
+very much."
+
+"And you," I said, "following the Jamieson train of thought, have been
+saying to yourself ever since, 'Is there anything in it?'"
+
+"She certainly had a soothing effect upon him," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"Then," said I, "the second stage has been reached.  When all the
+Jamiesons are married, I think I shall feel that romance is over."
+
+"I know they have been to tea at the farm," said Mrs. Fielden, "because
+Mr. Ellicomb talked so much about his blue china, and Maud said a
+woman's hand was needed in the house."
+
+"I wonder," I said, "what will be the special objection that Maud will
+raise when she becomes engaged to Mr. Ellicomb?  He is not called
+Albert; he does not wear a white watered-silk waistcoat; his hair is
+certainly his own; and his mother is dead, so it cannot be said that he
+too closely resembles her."
+
+One of the objections raised by Maud to a candidate for her hand, was
+that he was far too like his mother--a really delightful woman--but
+Maud declared, with tears, that she could never really look up to a man
+who was so like his mamma.
+
+"At present," said Mrs. Fielden, "the blue china seems to be all in his
+favour; but one cannot feel sure that it will not be an obstacle later
+on, or Mr. Ellicomb's High Church principles, perhaps, may prove a
+deterrent to her ideas of perfect happiness."
+
+"I wish," said Palestrina, "that Margaret's affairs were more settled.
+This summer has been a trying one for her."
+
+"Oh, I forgot to tell you," said Mrs. Fielden, "that that was one of
+Maud's reasons for coming over to see you.  She told me that Mr.
+Swinnerton is coming to pay them a visit.  He has written, it seems, to
+make the offer himself, and Maud says she thinks it will be all right
+now."
+
+Mrs. Fielden was in one of her most light-hearted moods.  After the
+heat of the day there came a delightful coolness, and she stayed
+chatting till nearly dinner-time, and then decided that she would
+remain to dinner if we should ask her to do so.
+
+"I have three dear old sisters-in-law staying with me," said Mrs.
+Fielden, "and they will doubtless drag all the ponds for my body."
+
+"Won't they be anxious about you?" asked Palestrina.
+
+"Perhaps," said Mrs. Fielden, raising her pretty eyebrows in the old
+affected way; "but then they will appreciate me so much more when I
+come back to them from the grave."
+
+We sat out on the lawn after dinner till it was quite dark, and only
+Mrs. Fielden's white dress was visible in the gloom.  For some reason
+best known to herself she put off her wilful mood out there in the
+gloom of the garden.  She was not regal, not even amusing, only
+charming and full of a lovely kindness.  Half the conversation between
+her and Palestrina began with the words, "Do you remember?" as they
+recalled old jokes and stories.  Then her ever-present gaiety broke out
+again, and she laughed and said: "I believe I am becoming reminiscent.
+Why doesn't some one sit upon me, or tell me they will order the
+carriage for me if I really must go?  But it is heavenly here in the
+cool--and in heaven, you know, we shall probably all be reminiscent."
+
+Ten o'clock struck from the tower of the church down below in the
+village, and Mrs. Fielden said that now she really must go, or she
+would find the sisters-in-law saying a Requiem Mass for her; and
+Palestrina went indoors to order the carriage.
+
+"To-morrow," I said, "I am going to have my last dissipation.  I am
+going to the Traceys' tea-party."
+
+"I am certainly going too," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I believe I am getting
+as gay as the Miss Traceys themselves, though I can't help remarking
+that no one who goes to these tea-parties ever seems to be amused when
+they get there."
+
+"Judging from my own standard of what I find amusing," I said, "I
+should be inclined to say that Stowel never enjoys itself
+extravagantly.  Our neighbours never refuse invitations to even the
+smallest party; but the pleasure that they get from them, if it exists
+at all, is carefully concealed."
+
+"I have felt that myself," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I really don't begin to
+enjoy them till I get home."
+
+"I believe you always enjoy yourself," I said resentfully.
+
+After a little time Mrs. Fielden said wistfully, "You don't think there
+is only a certain amount of happiness in the world, do you, Hugo?  And
+that if one person gets a great deal, it means that another will get
+less?"
+
+She asks one questions in this way sometimes, as though one were a
+superior being who could dispel her perplexities for her.
+
+"Probably," I said, "you know ten thousand times more about the subject
+than I do.  You are happy, and I philosophize about it.  Tell me which
+of us is most fitted to give a lecture on the subject?"
+
+I thought Mrs. Fielden was going to say something after that, for she
+stretched out her hand in a certain impulsive way she has got, and gave
+mine just one moment's friendly pressure in the dark.  And then
+Palestrina came back to say the carriage was at the door, and Mrs.
+Fielden said "Good-night."
+
+
+I remember two things about the Miss Traceys' party--first, that Mrs.
+Fielden was not there, for one of the old sisters-in-law was ill
+suddenly, and she could not leave her; and the other thing I remember
+about it is that it was the last occasion on which I ever saw Margaret
+Jamieson look pretty.
+
+There have been some strange innovations in tea-parties ever since Mrs.
+Taylor gave hers to meet The Uncle, and sent out visiting-cards instead
+of notes.  Instead of having tea in the dining-room, all sitting round
+the table, as used to be the custom, it seems that dressing-tables are
+often brought down from upstairs and extended across the window.  These
+are covered with white tablecloths, and behind them two maids stand and
+wait.  The dressing-tables are called the "buffet," and both tea and
+coffee are provided, suggesting the elegance and savour of London
+refreshments.  This is distinctly pleasing, though it is felt that a
+single cup of tea drunk while standing has not got the comfort of
+former old-fashioned days.  Miss Belinda lives on at the little cottage
+with the green gate; and through the kindness of the General a lady has
+been found to wait upon her, and take her out to these small gaieties
+which she loves, and she sits shaking her poor, weak head, and
+muttering, "Glory, glory, glory!"  It does not occur to her to stay at
+home during her period of mourning, and it is acknowledged on all sides
+that she does not miss Lydia much.  The General has not come to stay
+with the Taylors again.  In a long letter which he wrote to me after he
+left he said he would probably never come back to the place, and at the
+same time he thanked me in courteous, old-fashioned phraseology for
+being with him through what he called "one of the dark days that come
+sometimes."  He would never see Miss Belinda, in spite of the many kind
+things he did for her; and I always feel that he resented the poor
+creature's long illness and weak, silly ways--which was only natural,
+no doubt.
+
+The Vicar was present at his sisters' tea-party, "although," as Miss
+Ruby explained to me, "it is not as though this were an evening
+entertainment.  My sister and I often give these little routs without
+him.  Still, a gentleman is always something of an ornament at a party."
+
+There were seven Jamiesons present, and two of them, Margaret and Maud,
+offered, in their usual friendly way, to walk home with Palestrina and
+me.  Maud, one feels sure, engaged Palestrina in confidences directly;
+and Margaret whispered in a shy way to me, "Do you mind coming round by
+the post-office?  I am expecting a letter."  So we walked round by the
+High Street, and Margaret told me that Tudor had had to give up his
+visit to them, but that he was writing.
+
+So we went into the post-office, and Margaret had her letter handed to
+her across the counter by the post-mistress, upon whom she bestowed a
+radiant smile.  When we got outside she opened it and read it without a
+word; and then, quite suddenly, she gave a cry as though some one had
+struck her, and she handed the letter to me, and said, "Oh, Hugo, read
+it!"  And I read:--
+
+
+"I am sure you will be surprised when I tell you that I am going to be
+married; it will explain to you why it was that I was unable to fulfil
+my promise to come to see you.  But sudden though my engagement to Miss
+Lloyd has been--very sudden, much more sudden indeed than I ever felt
+that such a serious step as marriage would be undertaken by me--I
+cannot but feel that it is for my happiness.  Some day I hope you will
+make Miss Lloyd's acquaintance; she is staying with my mother just now,
+and she is already a great favourite.  I cannot but feel that having
+seen so much of you and of your family last summer, and during your
+stay in London, that I may have raised expectations which I find myself
+unable to fulfil; but I am quite sure that a man's first duty is to
+himself in these matters, and that he should not undertake matrimony
+until he is thoroughly convinced it is for his happiness.  Had I not
+met Miss Lloyd, I may say that my intentions to you were of the most
+serious nature, and I know that I have the power in me to make any girl
+happy.  We shall live with my mother for the first year, and then I
+hope to settle somewhere near London, where it will be nice for me to
+get into the fresh air after my work in the City.
+
+"Yours very truly,
+    "TUDOR SWINNERTON.
+
+"_P.S._--Miss Lloyd and I are to be married next month in St. Luke's
+Church, quite near here."
+
+
+I handed the letter back to Margaret, and we never spoke the whole way
+home.  And that was the last day I ever saw Margaret Jamieson look
+pretty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+After the operation on my leg, I was laid up for a long time, and when
+I got about again, Palestrina and Thomas were married.  Thomas has
+lately come into his kingdom in the shape of a lordly castle in
+Scotland, and for the life of me I can't say whether or not Palestrina
+hastened her wedding because the doctor ordered me to the North.  If it
+was so, my sister's plans were frustrated by the fact that Thomas's
+ancient Scottish seat was pronounced uninhabitable by a sanitary
+surveyor, just as we proposed entering it under garlanded archways and
+mottoes on red cotton.  Our old friend Mrs. Macdonald, hearing of our
+dilemma, very kindly invited us to stay with her while Palestrina and
+Thomas looked about for some little house that would take us in till
+their own place should be ready.  The finding of the little house
+occupied some days, owing to the powers of imagination displayed by
+people when describing their property.  One lady, to whom Palestrina
+wrote to ask if her house were to be let, replied, "Yes, madam; this
+dear, delightful, pretty house is to let;" and she pointed out in a
+letter, some four pages long, all the advantages that would accrue to
+us if we took it, ending up with the suggestion, subtly conveyed, that
+by taking the house we should be turning her into the street, but that
+she would bear this indignity in consideration of receiving ten guineas
+a week.
+
+Palestrina went to see it, and returned in the evening, almost in
+tears, to say that the house was a semi-detached villa, and that she
+had found the week's washing spread out on the front lawn.
+
+Thomas said that the railway companies ought to pay a percentage on all
+misleading advertisements which induce people to make these useless
+journeys.
+
+The following day they returned from another fruitless expedition,
+having been to see a very small house owned by the widow of a
+sea-captain, with a strong Scottish accent.  I have often noticed that
+the seafaring man's one idea of well-invested capital is house
+property--perhaps he alone knows how precarious is the life of the sea.
+And I shall like to meet the sailor who has invested his money in a
+shipping concern.  The widow's house was so very small that it was
+almost impossible to believe that it contained the ten bedrooms as
+advertised in my sister's well-worn house-list.  So small indeed were
+the rooms, that Palestrina said she felt sure that they must have been
+originally intended for cupboards.  Nevertheless, the rent of the house
+was very high, and my sister ventured gently to hint this to the lady
+of the house--the sea-captain's widow with the strong Scottish accent.
+
+"Of course, it is a very nice house," she said politely; "but the rent
+is a little more than we thought of paying for a house of this size."
+
+"I ken it's mair than the hoose is worth," said the old dame; "but, ye
+see, I'm that fond o' money--aye, I'm fearfu' fond o' money."
+
+Palestrina and Thomas spent most of their days in their search for a
+suitable house, and Mrs. Macdonald spends the greater part of her life
+house-keeping, so I was rather bored.  What it actually is that
+occupies my hostess during the hours she spends in the back regions of
+her house I have never been able to discover.  But the fact remains
+that we have to get up unusually early in the morning to allow time for
+Mrs. Macdonald's absorbing occupation.  An old-fashioned Scotswoman of
+my acquaintance used to refuse all invitations to leave the house on
+Thursdays, because, as she explained, "I keep Thursdays for my creestal
+and my napery."  The rest of her week, however, was comparatively free.
+At Mrs. Macdonald's, housekeeping is never over.  And so systematic are
+the rules and regulations of the house, so many and so various are the
+lady's keys, that one finds one's self wondering if the rules of a
+prison or a workhouse can be more strict.  The _Times_ newspaper
+arrives every evening after dinner; by lunch-time next day it is locked
+away in a cabinet, so that if one has not read the news by two o'clock,
+one must ask Mrs. Macdonald for the keys; this she does quite
+good-naturedly, but I have never discovered why old newspapers should
+be kept with so much care.  On Saturdays an old man from the village
+comes in to do a little extra tidying-up in the garden.  At nine
+o'clock precisely, Mrs. Macdonald is on the doorstep of her house, with
+a cup of tea in her hand, and a brisk, kindly greeting for John, and
+she stands over the old man while he drinks his tea, and then returns
+with the empty cup to the house.
+
+Tuesday is the day on which her drawing-room is cleaned.  At half-past
+nine precisely on Monday evenings Mrs. Macdonald says, "Monday, you
+know, is our early-closing night;" and she fetches you a candle and
+dispatches you to bed.  Mrs. Macdonald and her housemaid--there seem to
+be plenty of servants to do the work of the house--walk the whole of
+the drawing-room furniture into the hall, Mrs. Macdonald loops up the
+curtains herself, and covers some appalling pictures and the
+mantelpiece ornaments with dust-sheets.  At ten o'clock she removes a
+pair of housemaid's gloves, and an apron which she has donned for the
+occasion, and says, "There! that's all ready for Tuesday's cleaning;"
+and she briskly bids her housemaid good-night.
+
+On Tuesdays we are not allowed to enter the drawing-room all day, and
+on Wednesdays the same restrictions are placed upon the dining-room.
+Indeed, on no day in the week is the whole of the house available, and
+upon no morning of the week has Mrs. Macdonald a spare moment to
+herself.  After breakfast, when Palestrina and Thomas have gone, she
+conducts me to the morning-room, and placing the _Scotsman_ (the
+_Scotsman_ is used for lighting the fires, and is formally handed to
+the housemaid at six o'clock in the evening) by my chair, she says, "I
+hope you will be all right," and shuts the door upon me.  During the
+morning she pops her head in from time to time, like an attentive guard
+who has been told to look after a lady on a journey, and nodding
+briskly from the door, she asks, "Are you all right?  Sure you would
+not like milk or anything?" and then disappears again.  With a little
+stretch of imagination one can almost believe that the green flag has
+been raised to the engine-driver, and that the train is moving off.  At
+lunch-time she is so busy giving directions to her servants that she
+hardly ever hears what one says, and the most interesting piece of news
+is met with the somewhat irrelevant reply, "The bread-sauce, please,
+Jane, and then the cauliflower."  Turning to one, she explains, "I
+always train my servants myself....  What were you saying just now?"
+
+"I saw in the newspaper this morning," I repeat, "that H.M.S. ---- has
+foundered with all hands."
+
+"In the middle of the table, if you please," says Mrs. Macdonald; "and
+then the coffee with the crystallized sugar--not the brown--and open
+the drawing-room windows when you have finished tidying there....  What
+were you saying?  How sad these things are!"
+
+The house is charmingly situated, with a most beautiful view over river
+and hills; but I really think my preoccupied friend hardly ever has
+time to look out of the window, and that to her the interior of a
+store-cupboard with neatly-filled shelves is more beautiful than
+anything which the realms of Nature can offer.
+
+When Palestrina is present Mrs. Macdonald gives her recipes for making
+puddings and for taking stains out of carpets, and she advises her
+about spring-cleanings and the proper sifting of ashes at the back
+door.  Mrs. Macdonald was brought up in the old days, when a young
+lady's training and education were frankly admitted to be a training
+for her as a wife.  She belonged to the period when a girl with a taste
+for music was encouraged to practise "so that some day you may be able
+to play to your husband in the evenings, my dear," and was advised to
+be an early riser so that the house might be comfortable and in order
+when her husband should descend to breakfast.  And now that that
+husband, having been duly administered to, is dead, Mrs. Macdonald's
+homely talents, once the means to an end, have resolved themselves into
+an end, a finality of effort.  Mrs. Macdonald was brought up to be a
+housekeeper, and she remains a housekeeper, and jam-pots and
+preserving-pans form the boundary line of her life and the limit of her
+horizon.
+
+Eliza Jamieson would probably tell us that even though Mrs. Macdonald's
+soups and preserves are excellent, these culinary efforts should not be
+the highest things required of a wife by her husband, and that
+therefore they are not a wife's highest duty, even during the time that
+her husband remains with her.  And she would probably point out that
+servants and weekly bills, and an endeavour to render this creature
+complacent, have ruined many a woman's life.  And I laugh as I think of
+Palestrina's rejoinder, "But then it is so much pleasanter when they
+are complacent."
+
+One certainly imagined that the late Mr. Macdonald must have been well
+looked after during his life, and it was something of a shock to me to
+hear the account of his death, from the lodgekeeper's wife, one
+afternoon when she had come in to help with the cleaning, and was
+arranging my dressing-table for me.  The rest of my bedroom furniture
+was then standing in the passage, and I had found my cap in one of the
+spare bedrooms, and all the boots of the house in the hall.
+
+"He was a rale decent gentleman," said Mrs. Gemmil, "and awfy patient
+with the cleaning.  But I am sure whiles I was sorry for him.  He was
+shuftit and shuftit, and never knew in the morn whichna bed in the
+hoose he would be sleeping in at nicht.  And we a' ken that it was the
+spring-cleaning, when he was pit to sleep ower the stables, that was,
+under Providence, the death o' him.  He had aye to cross ower in the
+wat at nicht-time, and he juist took a pair o' cauld feet, and they
+settled on his lungs."
+
+The day following my chat with Mrs. Gemmil was the day Palestrina found
+a house such as she had been looking for all along.  The day was
+Saturday.  Overnight she had announced her intention of being away all
+day, and Mrs. Macdonald had said delightedly that that would suit her
+admirably.  "I do like the servants to have the entire day for the
+passages on Saturday," she remarked.
+
+Even when the day dawned wet and cloudy, Palestrina had not the courage
+to suggest that she should stay at home, and thereby interfere with the
+cleaning of the passages.
+
+The house she had found seemed to be everything that was desirable, and
+Palestrina returned in an elated frame of mind.  "It is far away from
+everything," she said, "except the village people and the minister, and
+the 'big hoose,' as they call it, which some English bodies have rented
+for the autumn."
+
+"It can't be far from the Melfords," said Thomas, pulling out a map.
+"Yes, I thought so; they are just the other side of the loch."
+
+"We 'mussed the connaketion' on our way back," said Palestrina; "and I
+do believe there's nothing a Scottish porter enjoys telling one so much
+as this."
+
+"I hope I am not unduly disparaging the railway system of my native
+land," said Thomas, "when I say that if you go by steamer and by train
+it is the remark that usually greets one, and it is always made in a
+tone of humorous satisfaction."  And Thomas, with an exaggerated
+Scottish accent, which he does uncommonly well, began to tell me of
+their adventures.  "We had a rush for the train," he said, "and I told
+an elderly Scot, who couldn't have hurried if he had had a mad bull
+behind him, to run and get us two first-class tickets.  He walked
+slowly down the platform, muttering, 'Furrst, furrst,' and then he
+opened the door of a third-class carriage and shoved us in, saying,
+'Ye've no occasion to travel furrst when there's plenty of room in the
+thurrds.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+To get to the house one takes a steamer to the head of the loch, and
+from there old Hughie drives one in the coach, and deposits one at the
+cross-roads where the turf, short and green, is cut into the shape of a
+heart.  On this green heart, in the old days, the girls and men of the
+glen were married.  They stood side by side on the upper part of the
+heart, which is indented, and the minister stood at the point and
+wedded the pair.  Here one leaves the coach, and a "machine" must take
+one on to the little house.  A red creeper grows up its white walls,
+and from the terrace in front of the house one looks down upon the
+little Presbyterian church and the village, and these in their turn
+look on to the loch and the hills on the other side.
+
+The people in the village afford one a good deal of amusement, but we
+have observed that the conversation is always about theology or the
+Royal Family.  There is one story of the late Queen and the crown of
+Scotland which I have heard repeated many times with the utmost gravity
+in the Highlands.
+
+"A gran' wumman," say the old villagers, "but we were no gaein' tae gie
+her the croon o' Scotland.  Na, na.  She would hae liked fine tae hev
+gotten it, but we were no gaein' tae gie her the croon o' Scotland.
+Ye'll mind when she went tae Scotland, it was the foremost thing that
+she spiered tae see.  And when they showed it tae her, 'I would like
+fine tae pit it on ma heid,' said she.  But they said '_No_.'  And syne
+she says, 'Wad ye no let me haud it in ma haund?'  But they say '_No_.'
+'Weel,' she says, 'juist haud it aboon ma heid, and let me staun'
+underneath it.'  But they said, '_No_.'"
+
+The villagers formed our only society until Evan Sinclair's tenants,
+who were known as "the folk at the big hoose," came to call upon us.
+It was very difficult indeed, and for some time we could hardly believe
+that these were the Finlaysons whom we had met at Clarkham, and who, we
+now remembered, had told us that they were going to take a place in
+Scotland.  The change in the Finlaysons is startling and complete.  It
+has taken them exactly two months to become Highlanders, and it is not
+too much to affirm that now the whole family may be said to reek of
+tartan.  Only Mrs. Finlayson is unaffected by her life in the
+Highlands, although she says that she knows it is fashionable to be
+Scottish.  "And so written up as it is at present," she adds; "and all
+the best people taking the deer-moors.  Papa and the girls think all
+the world of Scotland.  But no one can say it is comfortable, I'm sure."
+
+The Finlaysons have a piper, and young Mr. Finlayson wears a kilt, and
+I think they are, without exception, the most strenuous supporters of
+Scottish customs I have ever met.  The young ladies, who had always
+been associated in our mind with silk dresses and thin shoes, came to
+call clad in the very shortest and roughest tweed skirts that I have
+ever seen; and old Mr. Finlayson, whose mother was a Robinson, has
+discovered that that is pretty much the same as being a Robertson, and
+that therefore, in some mysterious way, he is entitled to wear the
+Macdonald tartan.  They asked us to tea in a very polite and friendly
+way, and the old rooms were shown off to us with a good deal of pride.
+The architecture of the house seemed to throw a reflected glory on Mr.
+Finlayson.
+
+"Pure Early Scottish," he said, pointing to the tall narrow windows
+with their shelving ledges.
+
+"So dangerous," said Mrs. Finlayson, "for the servants cleaning the
+windows."
+
+The drawing-room vases were all filled with heather, and the room smelt
+of damp dog and herrings.  The Miss Finlaysons came in to tea in thick
+skirts and brogues, and they wore tartan tam-o'-shanters very
+becomingly placed upon their heads, and affixed to their hair with
+ornamental bonnet-pins.  They ate cake with damp red hands, and seemed
+to pride themselves upon the fish-scales which still clung to their
+skirts, and imparted the rather unpleasant odour which I noticed in the
+room.  Young Finlayson in his kilt showed a great expanse of red knee,
+and told tales of remarks made to him by the boatmen, which he
+considered equal to anything in Ian Maclaren's books.
+
+Mrs. Finlayson took us out after tea to see the garden and tennis-court
+and the game-larder.  "I always like a walled garden," she said; "it is
+so stylish."  Mr. Finlayson found a reflected glory even in the loch
+and the hills, and he waved his fat hand towards them, and said: "We
+are able to do you a nice bit of view here, aren't we?"
+
+"I tell papa," said Mrs. Finlayson, "that he will ruin the girls for
+anything else after this.  The only thing we regret is the want of
+society.  However, a few of the best people round about have called,
+and we are giving quite an informal little dinner-party to-morrow
+night."
+
+Mrs. Finlayson then invited us to dinner, and when we hesitated, on the
+plea that we should have one or two friends with us, Mrs. Finlayson, in
+the most hospitable manner possible, said that she always had a
+"profusion on their own table," so there was nothing for it but to
+accept her invitation.
+
+The dinner was one of those rather purposeless feasts which are given
+in the country, and the Finlaysons' neighbours who had been bidden to
+it bore upon their faces the peculiarly homeless look which one
+observes in the expressions of one's men friends especially, when they
+go out to a rural dinner--the look that says as plainly as possible
+that they are moving about in worlds not realized nor found
+particularly comfortable, and that they would infinitely prefer their
+own armchairs at home.
+
+The minister took Palestrina in to dinner, and occupied himself
+throughout the evening by putting the most searching questions to her
+of an inquisitive nature.  He asked how many servants we had, whether
+we were satisfied with our cook, where we came from, and why we had
+come.  And he did it all with such keen interest and intelligence that
+Palestrina admitted that she really had felt flattered rather than
+provoked.  His friend Evan Sinclair, who, having let his house to the
+Finlaysons, is living on a little farm close by, contradicted
+everything that the minister said, and the two quarrelled the whole
+evening.
+
+Old Tyne Drum, who lives a good many miles away, but who with his wife
+had already been to call upon us, brewed himself the very largest
+glasses of whisky-toddy that I have ever seen, even on a big night at
+mess, and he proposed healths and drank the steaming mixture throughout
+dinner in a very commendable national spirit.  His piper, who stood
+behind his chair, refused at last to pour out any further libations,
+and I heard him mutter to himself, "Ye'll no need tae say that Sandy
+Macnichol ever helpit ye tae the deil."
+
+Young Finlayson is always very jocose upon the subject of whisky, as
+befits his ideas about the Highlands; and even the Misses Finlayson, in
+their faithful loyalty to all things Scottish, were quite pleased with
+Tyne Drum's performance, and would have scorned to look as though a
+whisky-drinking laird was a novelty to them.
+
+Mrs. Finlayson told Thomas, in a very severe manner, and in her
+platform voice which I always find so impressive, that she considered
+intemperance a sin, but that that was what came of all this nonsense
+about Scotland.  She gave him quite a lecture upon the subject, as
+though he, being Scottish born, was responsible for the old laird's
+backsliding.
+
+When the unfortunate old gentleman came into the drawing-room to join
+the ladies and sat down next him, Mrs. Finlayson looked at Thomas as
+though she thought he was in some sort to blame for this behaviour.
+
+Tyne Drum dropped heavily on to the ottoman, and I heard him say, "Do
+you know my wife?"
+
+"Yes," replied Thomas.  "I have met her several times since we came to
+the cottage."
+
+"Hoo old should ye think she was?"  (Tyne Drum is always broadly Doric
+in his speech.)  Thomas calculated that the lady must be a long way the
+wrong side of sixty, and humbly suggested that she might perhaps be
+forty-five.
+
+"Presairve us!" said the Laird.  "This lad here says my wife is
+forty-five!"  He began to sob bitterly, and, putting his handkerchief
+to his eyes, cried, "My pretty wee Jeannie, my bonnie wee wife, wha
+daurs tae say ye was forty-five!"
+
+Thomas was so sorry for him and for what he had done that he did his
+best to cheer him up by telling him that what he had meant to say was
+twenty-five; but Tyne Drum was inconsolable, and went to sleep with the
+tear-drops on his cheeks.
+
+When we got home in the evening Palestrina said, "We are far behind the
+Finlaysons in all things Scottish.  I shall buy a Harris tweed skirt,
+and you and Thomas must buy something too."  So we drove down in the
+coach to the ferry on a very wet and windy day to cross over to the
+"toon."
+
+Our place on the coach was shared with a Scot, who was the most
+truculent defender of the Free Kirk I have ever met.  He argued every
+single point of his creed, and became quite abusive at last, as he
+denounced the "Established" and all who belong to it.
+
+The wind was high as we drove in the coach, and the rain fell heavily
+once or twice, but the voice of the gentleman rose higher and higher as
+the rain descended.  Hughie, the coachman, chided him with no stint of
+words, and at every burst of eloquence on the passenger's part he
+remarked, "Anither worrd, and I'll pit ye in the ditch!"
+
+This method of treating the argumentative passenger suggested the
+possibility of the coach being overturned in order to punish him, and
+Palestrina grew alarmed.
+
+"I do hope," she said to Hughie, "that you will remember that we are
+not all Wee Frees, and that therefore we do not all require the same
+treatment meted out to us."
+
+The guard at the back of the coach here showed his head over the pile
+of boxes covered with tarpaulin on the roof, and called out, "Pit him
+inside the coach wi' Mrs. Macfadyen, and she'll sort him!  She'll gie
+him the Gaelic!"
+
+Hughie chuckled and remarked, "Ay, she's the gran' wumman wi' her
+tongue!"  And during the rest of the drive his threats to the eloquent
+passenger took the form of, "Anither worrd, and I'll pit ye in wi' Mrs.
+Macfadyen!"
+
+There was a marked improvement in our friend's behaviour after this.
+He was in great difficulties when he came to get into the ferry-boat.
+It was easy enough to throw his first leg over the side while holding
+on by a thole-pin, but the balance required to convey the remaining
+limb into the boat was quite out of his power.  And having made one or
+two ineffectual hops on the beach with the shore-loving member, he
+turned to the boatmen, and said gravely,--
+
+"Lift in my leg, Angus!  Juist gie me a hand wi' ma last leg!"
+
+Palestrina chose the tweed for our coats and her skirt, and then we
+walked up to the Castle and called on the Melfords, who told us that
+Mrs. Fielden was coming to stay with them.  They sang her praises, as
+most people do; she has heaps of friends.  Then Palestrina did some
+shopping at the "flesher's" and the baker's, and we went down to the
+ferry again--a boy behind us laden with queer-looking parcels
+containing provisions, and Alloa yarn to knit into stockings, and
+paper-bags with ginger-bread cakes in them.  When we got in and sat
+down under the brown sail of the heavy boat, the two sailors remained
+in their places, and did not show the least sign of getting under way.
+Thomas said to the elder of the two men, a fine old fellow with a face
+such as one connects with stories of the Covenanters,--
+
+"Why don't you get off?"
+
+And the old man replied unmoved, "I'm waiting for the Lord."
+
+Palestrina, who is sympathetic in every matter, put on an expression of
+deep religious feeling, and we thought of the Irvingites, and wished
+that we had Eliza Jamieson with us "to look it up."  As far as we knew,
+the Irvingites wait to perform every action until inspired to perform
+it.  We had heard that in the smallest matter, such as beginning to eat
+their dinner, they will wait until this inspiration, as I suppose one
+must call it, is given to them.  The question then arose, how long
+would it be before we would be likely to get under way?  The two
+sailors sat on without moving, and the elder of them cut a wedge of
+tobacco and was filling his pipe, preparing to smoke.  We wondered if
+the Irvingites often waited for an inspiration in this contented way.
+The big red-funnelled steamer from Greenock was, meanwhile, preparing
+to depart.  It had poured its daily output of tourists for their
+half-hour's run in the town, which time they employ in buying mementoes
+of the place, and we had hurried down to the sailing-boat to escape
+this influx.
+
+Thomas endeavoured to assist inspiration by saying it didn't seem much
+use waiting any longer, and that as time was getting on, did not our
+friend (the gray-bearded Covenanter) think that it was time to be
+moving?  The Covenanter wrinkled up his nose, which already was a good
+deal wrinkled, and gazed upwards at the sail, or, as we interpreted it,
+to Heaven.  Palestrina pressed Thomas's hand, and said gently, "Don't
+urge him, dear; we shall get off in time."  And the younger sailor
+said, "We are waiting for the Lord."  So we knew that they were both
+Irvingites, and the only scepticism that intruded itself upon us was
+this: Suppose inspiration never came, how should we get home?
+
+The steamer now began to move away from the pier, with a great churning
+and hissing of water, and seething white foam fizzing round the staples
+of the pier.  A band began to play on board, and the paddles broke the
+water with a fine sweep.  Two youngsters on shore, to whom "the
+stimmer" is a daily excitement, then called out in shrill, high voices,
+"There's the Lord!  She's aff!"
+
+The _Lord of the Isles_ had moved off on her return journey to
+Greenock, and the notes on Scottish religion which Palestrina was
+carefully preparing were hastily destroyed.  The _Lord_ had departed,
+and we sailed across the loch without waiting any longer.
+
+When we got home, we found the minister awaiting us in the
+drawing-room, he having suggested that as we were not at home, he had
+better stay till our return.  I found out, in the course of
+conversation, that he is a distant relation of old Captain
+Jamieson--the Jamiesons' father--so we had quite a long talk about our
+friends.  The minister is one of those Scots whose national
+characteristics are always stronger than individual character.  Take
+away his nationality from him, and Mr. Macorquodale would be nothing at
+all.  His qualities being entirely Scottish, it is only logical to
+assume that if Mr. Macorquodale were not Scottish, he would be
+non-existent.
+
+Palestrina came out on to the little terrace where we were sitting, and
+I explained to her that the minister was a cousin of the Jamiesons.
+
+"How interesting!" said Palestrina in her usual kind way.
+
+"Why?" said the minister.  He has sandy hair and very round gray eyes,
+and looks like a football player.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said my sister; "it's always interesting, isn't it,
+to find that people are related?"
+
+"Every one must have some relations," said Mr. Macorquodale; "and if my
+choice had been given me, I do not think I should have chosen those
+five gurrls."
+
+"We like them so much," Palestrina said, smiling.
+
+"Is that the truth?" said Mr. Macorquodale; and she replied firmly that
+it was.
+
+"Um umph!" he said, as though considering a perfectly new problem, and
+then added: "Well, each man to his taste.  How many of them have got
+husbands?"
+
+I replied that Kate was married and Gracie engaged.
+
+"Gracie?" said the minister simply.  "Was that the one with a nose like
+a scone?"
+
+We considered Grade's nose silently for a moment, and then admitted
+that perhaps the simile was not unjust.
+
+"How did she get him?" said the minister presently.
+
+The minister has a curious way of eating, which fascinates one to look
+at, while all the time there is a distinct feeling that an accident may
+happen at any moment.  When tea was brought out he accepted some, and
+filled his mouth very full of cookie, stowing into it nearly a whole
+one at a time, and then raised his tea-cup to his lips.  He persists in
+keeping his spoon in his cup as he drinks, and he prevents it from
+tumbling out by holding it with his thumb.  A long draught of tea is
+then partaken of with a gurgling sound, and the minister swallows
+audibly.  It is almost impossible to prevent one's self watching this
+process of eating and drinking during the whole of tea-time.  For it
+seems so uncertain whether the spoon will remain in its place, and the
+cookie and the tea.
+
+The minister is a very young man, with the pugnacity of an Edinburgh
+High School boy, and with the awful truthfulness which distinguishes
+his nation, but which is accentuated in such an alarming degree in a
+minister of the Kirk.
+
+"I sent Kate a scent-bottle when she married," he remarked.  "I won it
+at a bazaar for sixpence, so it was not expensive.  I don't disapprove
+of raffles," he added, although he had not been asked for this piece of
+information--"that is, if ladies do not cheat over it, as they often
+do."  Palestrina bristled at the insinuation, and the minister consoled
+her by saying: "Women sin in such wee ways--that's what I can't
+understand about them.  However," he said, "I have never known a woman
+steal a thing yet that a man has not reaped some benefit by it.  I can
+quote authority for my views from Adam and Eve downwards, to the
+newspapers of yesterday.  I am engaged to be married myself, and I find
+the subject of feminine ethics absorbing.  Good-bye," he said
+presently; "I hope you will not be disappointed with the clothes I hear
+you've ordered."
+
+Alas! the tweed coat and skirt in which my sister hoped to rival the
+Miss Finlaysons proved an utter misfit, and she drove round the loch on
+the following day to take the garments back.  Palestrina had prepared a
+severe reprimand for the tailor, but the old man took the wind out of
+her sails by stopping in amazement at the first word of annoyance which
+she uttered, and standing in the middle of the little fitting-room,
+with a yellow tape measure round his neck, and a piece of chalk in his
+hand, he shook his gray beard at us with something of apostolic
+fervour, and thus addressed us:--
+
+"I'm amazed at ye!  Do ye ever consider the system of planets, and that
+this world is one of the lesser points of light in space, and that even
+here there are countless millions of human beings, full of great
+resolves and high purposes.  Get outside yourselves, ladies and
+gentlemen, and realize in the magnitude of the universe, and the
+immeasurable majesty of the planetary system, how small a thing is the
+ill-fit of a jacket."
+
+We felt much humbled, Palestrina and I.  And it was only when we were
+driving home afterwards that it even dimly suggested itself to us that
+we had right on our side at all.  "After all," Palestrina said, "the
+coats did not fit; I really do not think he need have lectured us so
+severely."
+
+At the time, however, I confess that our feelings were distinctly
+apologetic.
+
+One wonders how a tailor who advanced the planetary system as a reproof
+to complaining customers would get on in London, and one realizes that
+English people have a great deal still to learn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+When Mrs. Fielden came to stay at the Melfords we saw a good deal of
+her.  Their yacht used to steam up in the early morning, and they would
+take us off for a day's cruise on the loch or for a trip round to Oban.
+Mrs. Fielden used to sit on deck with a big red umbrella over her head
+and a white yachting gown on, and seemed serenely unconscious that she
+was looking very pretty and very smart.  My sister tells me she never
+feels badly dressed till she meets Mrs. Fielden.
+
+The Melfords have very pleasant people stopping with them always, and
+there are very jolly little parties on board their yacht.  Mrs.
+Fielden, however, is in her most provoking and wilful mood.  Every day
+it is the same thing--laughter and smiles for every one.  But she has
+absolutely no heart.  All the beautiful, kindly things she does are
+only the whim of the moment.  They bespeak a generous nature, as easily
+moved to tears as to laughter; but she loves every one a little, and
+probably has no depth of affection or constancy in her.  Lately, she
+has added another provoking habit to the many she already possesses.
+She exaggerates her pretence of having no memory, and indeed it may be
+she has not any.
+
+When I left home, rather a wreck as regards health, and drove to the
+station in Mrs. Fielden's luxurious carriage, it was her hand that
+piled the cushions, as no one else can, behind me.  And the last thing
+I saw was her smile as she waved her hand to me from my own door.
+
+Last week, when we met again at the Melfords', she nodded to me in a
+little indifferent sort of way.  She sat under a big cedar-tree on one
+of the lawns, and laughed, and talked a sort of brilliant nonsense the
+whole afternoon.
+
+By-and-by I said to her--probably clumsily, certainly at the wrong
+time--"I never half thanked you for being so good to me when I was
+ill;" for she had come in like some radiant vision, day after day, in
+her beautiful summer gowns and rose-garlanded hats, and had sat by my
+couch, reading to me sometimes, talking to me at others in a voice as
+gentle as a dove's.  Why will she not allow one to admire her?  One
+only wants to do so humbly and at a distance.  It was so pleasant up
+here in the Highlands, with the dear memory of those long days to look
+back upon.  But Mrs. Fielden ruthlessly robbed me and sent me away
+empty the very first day of our meeting.
+
+"Was I kind to you?  I don't believe I was, really.  If I was, I'm sure
+I forget all about it.  Let me see, how long were you ill?  It can't
+have been a bit amusing for you," and so on, laughing at my dull face
+and serious ways.
+
+And this has gone on for a whole week.  At the Melfords' parties she
+selects, quite indiscriminately, and in a royal way which she has, this
+man or that to be her escort or her companion.  Now it is a mere boy
+whom she bewilders with a few of her radiant smiles, and now one of her
+elderly colonels whom she reduces to a state of abject admiration in a
+few hours.  One man goes fishing with her, and another rows her on the
+loch.  A third, hearing that Mrs. Fielden's life will be a blank if she
+does not possess a certain rare fern which may be found sometimes on
+the hillsides of Scotland, spends a whole day scrambling about looking
+for it, and returns triumphant in the evening.  Mrs. Fielden has
+forgotten that she ever wanted it.  When we sulk she does not notice
+it.  When her colonels offer her their fatuous admiration she goes to
+sleep, and then, waking up, is so very, very sorry.  "But you can't
+have amused me properly," she says, "or I should have stayed awake."
+When any one tries by avoiding her to show displeasure, Mrs. Fielden is
+oblivious of the fact.  And when the penitence and boredom which
+immediately ensue when one has deprived Mrs. Fielden of one's company
+have led to ending the one-sided quarrel with an apology, it is only to
+find that Mrs. Fielden has been blissfully unconscious of one's
+absence.  Summer and the air of the Highlands seem to be in her veins.
+Her happiness, like the quality of mercy, is twice blessed, making her,
+through her talent for enjoyment, diffuse something beautiful and gay
+about her.
+
+After all, why should she care?  Life was evidently made to give her
+pleasure.  Why should a woman always be blamed for being loved?  Mrs.
+Fielden's charm is of the irresponsible sort.  To live and to be lovely
+are all one ought to demand of her, and at least she is without vanity.
+She seems to be entirely unconscious of the admiration she receives, or
+perhaps she is simply indifferent to it.
+
+The Melfords adore her, and allow her to see it.  They say no one knows
+her as they do.  Probably we all feel that.  This is one of Mrs.
+Fielden's most maddening charms.  We have all found something in her
+that seems to belong to ourselves alone.
+
+Lately I have discovered that she loves to wander up the hillside by
+herself, and listen to the plover's solitary cry, and sit in the
+sunshine with no companion near her.  And one wonders why so frivolous
+a woman should care for this, and why when she comes back amongst us
+again her eyes should wear the wistful look which covers them like a
+veil sometimes.
+
+When she left the Melfords' Palestrina asked her to come and stay with
+us; and rather to my surprise, Mrs. Fielden came.  It seems to me she
+must find us a very dull lot after the Melfords' cheery house-parties.
+She arrived late one afternoon in the yacht, and the whole party came
+up to dine with us before returning to the castle.  The little house
+was taxed to its utmost capacity, even to provide teacups for our
+guests.  But the Melfords have a happy knack of seeming to find
+pleasure in everything.  Mrs. Fielden's gaiety was infectious, and her
+lightheartedness knocked all one's serious world to pieces, while her
+beauty seemed almost extravagant in the plain setting of the little
+house.
+
+She began to give us some of her experiences in Scotland.  "Do you
+know," she said, putting on a charming gravity and lifting her eyebrows
+in a provoking, childish way, "that every single person in Scotland
+gets up at five o'clock in the morning? and all the coaches and
+excursions start at daybreak, and when you want to hit off what they
+call a 'connection' anywhere, you have to get up in the middle of the
+night?"
+
+"I am afraid you had a horribly early start to join the yacht the other
+day," said Lord Melford, "but it was the only way we could manage to
+get to the Oban Gathering in time."
+
+"I was there before you," said Mrs. Fielden; "and I had to rouse up the
+people at the inn to take me in and give me breakfast.  Even they were
+not up at that hour!  But after ringing twice, such a nice boots came
+and opened the door to me, and brought me some breakfast."
+
+"The gathering was very good this year," said Lord Melford.  "Why
+didn't some of you come?  By-the-bye, your friend Mrs. Macdonald was
+there.  Indeed, it was she who insisted on taking Mrs. Fielden to the
+Gaelic concert."
+
+"Gaelic is rather an alarming language," said Mrs. Fielden.  "I always
+feel as if I were being sworn at when I hear it."
+
+One of Mrs. Fielden's admirers who had reached the savage and sarcastic
+stage here interposed, and said: "Poor Mrs. Fielden!  I saw you at the
+concert.  How did you manage to sit throughout a whole evening between
+Mrs. Macdonald and a wall?"
+
+"Mrs. Macdonald is quite a dear!" said Mrs. Fielden.  (Whom, in the
+name of Fortune, would Mrs. Fielden not find charming?)
+
+"I don't know what you and Mrs. Macdonald can have found to talk
+about," said Palestrina, laughing.
+
+"We discussed the training of servants most of the time," said Mrs.
+Fielden simply.
+
+Every one laughed; and my sister, with a recollection of our visit to
+Mrs. Macdonald, said at once, "Did she give you any useful household
+recipes?"
+
+"It is very odd that you should have asked me that," said Mrs. Fielden.
+"Do you know, that the whole of to-day I have been puzzling over a
+letter which I received this morning?  I did not know the handwriting,
+and it was merely headed, 'Two recipes for boiling a ham, as
+requested.'  Now, I cannot really have asked Mrs. Macdonald for recipes
+for boiling a ham, can I?"
+
+We thought it highly probable that she had done so, and had done it,
+too, with an air of profound interest; and I think we said this, which
+Mrs. Fielden did not mind in the least.
+
+"There is something rather horrible, don't you think so," she said, "in
+knowing how a thing is cooked?"
+
+The minister, who is assiduous in calling, walked up after tea with his
+friend Evan Sinclair; and as we were already far too large a party for
+dinner, we asked them to stay too.
+
+Mr. Macorquodale has frequently described himself to us as a grand
+preacher.  He and Evan Sinclair live quite close to each other, and
+they are friends whose affection is rooted and maintained in warfare.
+For the minister and Sinclair to meet is one strenuous contest as to
+who shall have the last word.  Politeness is not a strong motive with
+either of them--indeed, one would imagine that from the first it has
+been ruled out of place.  The friendship and the warfare began at the
+Edinburgh High School years ago, and both the friendship and the
+warfare have lasted without intermission ever since.  They meet every
+day, and often twice a day; they fish together, and in the winter they
+spend every evening with each other.  Scottish people seem to have a
+sneaking liking for those who dislike them, and a certain pity mingled
+with contempt for those who show them favour and affection.  The
+friendship of Evan and the minister is based upon feelings of the most
+respectful admiration for their mutual antipathy.
+
+To keep alive this laudable and self-respecting warfare is the highest
+effort of genius of both Mr. Sinclair and the Reverend Alexander.  To
+foster it they apply themselves to what they call "plain speaking"
+whenever they meet, and they conceal as much as possible from each
+other every single good quality that they possess.
+
+The minister, who is a big man, always talks of Evan as "Wee Sinkler,"
+and sneers at "heritors;" and Evan invariably addresses Macorquodale as
+"Taurbarrels," a name which he considers appropriate to the minister's
+black clothes and portly figure.
+
+"The minister," said Evan, when he had walked up the hill to see us,
+"has been reading Josephus.  We shall have some erudite learning from
+the pulpit for the next Sunday or two."
+
+The minister was announced a moment later, and, before taking the
+trouble to shake hands with us, he looked Evan Sinclair over from top
+to toe, and remarked, "Ye're very attentive in calling upon ladies."
+
+"I was just talking about your fine preaching," said Evan.
+
+"I admit my gift," said the minister; "but I fear that I very often
+preach to a deaf adder which stops its ears."  He nodded triumphantly
+at us, and it then occurred to him to shake hands.
+
+Evan said at once that he got a better sleep in kirk on Sundays than he
+got during the whole of the week.
+
+"Evan Sinclair," said the minister, "if I find you sleeping under me
+I'll denounce you from my pulpit, as a minister has the right to do."
+
+"And we'll settle it in the graveyard afterwards," said Evan dryly.
+"And ye're not in very good training, my man."
+
+Palestrina broke in gently to discuss a theological point which had
+puzzled us for several Sundays.  On each Lord's Day as it came round we
+had prayed that we might become "a little beatle to the Lord."
+Doubtless the simile is a beautiful one, but its immediate bearing upon
+our needs was not too grossly evident.  And it seemed almost dangerous
+to those who believe in the efficacy of prayer to put up this petition
+in its literal sense.  We had decided for some time past that we should
+ask Mr. Macorquodale what it was exactly for which we made petition,
+when we prayed that we might become "a little beatle to the Lord."
+
+"Similes," said Palestrina in her serious way, "are beautiful
+sometimes, but we can't quite understand one of the references that you
+make in your prayers on Sundays."
+
+"We have prayed so fervently," said Mrs. Fielden, "without perhaps
+entirely understanding the portent of the petition, that we might
+become 'a little beatle to the Lord.'"
+
+The thing was out now, and our curiosity, we hoped, would be gratified.
+There was a pause which suggested that our hearers were puzzled, and
+then Mr. Sinclair put a large pocket-handkerchief into his mouth and
+roared with laughter, and Mr. Macorquodale turned to my sister, who was
+trembling now, and remarked in an awful voice that he wondered that we
+didn't understand plain English.
+
+Of course she apologized, and an explanation came afterwards from Evan
+Sinclair, who told us that the minister's prayer was that we--the
+church--might become a little Bethel, and that Beethel was his Doric
+pronunciation of the word.
+
+It began to rain on Sunday, as it often does in Scotland--Nature itself
+seems to put on a more serious expression on the Sabbath--and it
+continued raining for four whole days.  The rain came down steadily and
+mercilessly, shutting out the view of the hills, and turning the whole
+landscape into a big damp gray blanket.  "I suppose," said Mrs.
+Fielden, who is never affected by bad weather, "that we shall all get
+very cross and quarrel with each other if the rain continues much
+longer."
+
+"I think I shall write a number of unnecessary letters to absent
+friends," said Palestrina.  "And Mr. Ellicomb and Sir Anthony Crawshay
+will arrive to-morrow, and we must tell them to amuse us."
+
+It was a disappointment to find that Mr. Ellicomb's nerves and temper
+were seriously affected by the weather, and in moments of extreme
+depression his low spirits vented themselves in a rabid abuse of the
+Presbyterian Kirk.  I cannot understand why Ellicomb should elect to
+wear a brown velvet shooting-jacket, and a pale-green tie, and neat
+boots laced half-way up his legs, in Scotland.  He went to the village
+church in the rain on Sunday, and he has not been the same man since.
+
+"Don't call it a church!" he cried as we went homewards up the hill,
+where the road was a watercourse and each tree poured down moisture.
+He seemed to think that he had done his soul an irreparable injury by
+entering a Presbyterian kirk.
+
+Anthony said, "Oh! don't be an ass, Ellicomb."  But even on Monday
+morning poor Ellicomb was still suffering from the weather and the
+effects of his churchgoing.
+
+"Can he be in love?" said Palestrina; "and if so, as the Jamiesons
+would say, which is it?"
+
+Palestrina is prettier than ever since her marriage.  She still says,
+"Oh, that will be delightful!" to whatever Thomas and I suggest, and
+she never seems to have any occupation except to be with us when we
+want her, and to accede to everything we say, which of course, from a
+man's point of view, is a very delightful trait in a woman.
+
+"I rather wonder," said Palestrina, "that I have not heard from any of
+the Jamiesons lately.  They are usually such good writers."
+
+"Depend upon it, there is a great bit of news coming," said Thomas.
+"The Jamiesons always maintain a dramatic silence just before
+announcing some tremendous piece of intelligence."
+
+Thomas had hardly spoken the words before a telegram was handed to
+Palestrina, containing the following enigmatical words:---
+
+
+"Engaged Cuthbertson.  Greatly surprised.  Deeply thankful.--ELIZA."
+
+
+This rather mysterious message was followed, later in the day, by a
+letter four pages in length, and marked on the outside, for some reason
+best known to Eliza, "Immediate."  The letter explained more fully the
+cause of Eliza's thankfulness, and who it was that was greatly
+surprised.
+
+"If you had told me," wrote Eliza, "six weeks ago that I should now be
+engaged to Mr. Cuthbertson, I should hardly have believed it.  I really
+had not a notion that he cared for me until he actually said the words.
+Is it not too strange to think that perhaps, after all, Maud may be one
+of the last of us to get married?"
+
+Here followed the usual descriptive catalogue, so characteristic of the
+Jamiesons' letters.  "Mr. Cuthbertson looks like a widower, though he
+is not one."  Strangely enough, I could never think of any other words,
+when I came to know Mr. Cuthbertson, that described him so well as
+these, and I can only account for it by saying that the man's deep
+melancholy and the crape band that he habitually wore round his hat
+must have given one the feeling that at some time Mr. Cuthbertson had
+suffered a heavy bereavement.  "I have only known him," Eliza's letter
+went on, "for six weeks, but even that time has shown me his worth.  He
+has a very straight nose and a black beard, and his forehead is
+distinctly intellectual.  I met him first at Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs',
+where, as you know, I had gone to stay to catalogue their library, and
+to do a little typewriting for her.  You know, of course, that she has
+become a member of the S.R.S., and their library is a _mine of
+information_.
+
+"At first I was afraid to say, or even to allow myself to think, he
+showed me any preference, but Maud thought from the first that he was
+struck, and I asked her not to appear at all until everything was
+settled, for you know how attractive she is.  But I really don't think
+that even then I thought that there was anything serious in it."  (For
+an intelligent woman Eliza's letter strikes one as being strangely
+lacking in concentration.)  "I have just been to the meeting of the
+Browning Society--our first appearance in public together--and I read
+my paper on "The Real Strafford," but I could hardly keep my voice
+steady all the time.  I wear his own signet-ring for the present, but
+we are going up to London next week, when he will buy me a hoop of
+pearls.  I am sure that you will be glad to hear that he is comfortably
+off.  When the right man comes preconceived objections to matrimony
+vanish, _but it must be the right man_."
+
+Palestrina said that she was "thrilled" to hear of Eliza's engagement,
+because an engagement was always thrilling, and she instantly went to
+tell the news to Mr. Ellicomb.  She told me afterwards that when she
+had said that one of the Jamiesons was engaged Mr. Ellicomb became
+suddenly very pale in his complexion, and exclaimed, in a most anxious
+tone of voice, "Which?"
+
+
+The cold weather has set in very suddenly, and already there is a
+sprinkling of snow on some of the distant hills.  The robins still sing
+cheerily, but the gulls on the shore, flying over the yellow seaweed,
+call to each other plaintively in the gray of the early twilight.  The
+heavy-winged herons stand in an attitude of serious thought for hours
+on the cold rocks; then, as if suddenly making up their minds to
+something, they stretch out their red legs behind them, and flop with
+large wings over the waters of the loch.  The red Virginian creeper has
+begun to drop its leaves regretfully, after a night or two of white
+frost, and the dahlias hang their heads, heavy with the moisture which
+their cups contain.  The sun wakes late in the mornings now, but shines
+strong and warm when it does get up.  Cottage lights and fires burn
+cheerily o' nights, and within the cottages the old folks and the young
+ones draw round the fires and speak eerily of wraiths and whaurlochs,
+and some will tell of death-lights which they have seen on the lonely
+shore road.  The herring fishers who sail away in the early twilight
+wear good stout jerseys now, and red woollen "crauvats" which the
+"wumman at hame" has knitted.  The _Lord_ has sailed away to Dunoon to
+lay up for the winter, and the shepherds have gone away down South "to
+winter the hogs."  The shepherds' wives sit alone in the little
+hillside cottages away up on the face of the brae, and "mak dae" with
+their slender money till their men come home again.
+
+The old women in the village have begun their winter spinning, and the
+tap, tap, tap of the treadle on the floor gives a pleasant sound as one
+passes outside on the dark road.  Old men tell tales of snow in the
+passes in winter-time, and of death on the bleak hillsides, and some
+wife, shuddering, will say, "Ay, I mind I saw his corp-licht the very
+evening he was lost."  And then they tell tales of fantasy and signs
+and premonitions of death.
+
+The Finlaysons are going to wind up their very successful autumn in the
+Highlands by giving what they insist upon calling a gillies' dance,
+though probably the revels will mostly be indulged in by their large
+retinue of English servants.  Good-natured old Finlayson has more than
+once said that he hopes we shall all come to the gillies' dance, and
+that it will give ourselves and our guests a chance of seeing some
+Highland customs.  A good many of us come to Scotland most years, and
+have seen gillies and pipers before, but our good-natured neighbours
+certainly out-distance any one I know in their Highland sympathies.
+
+They invited us to dine with them before the dance should begin, and
+six of us went, feeling very like the Jamiesons, and resolved that when
+we got home we should never put a limit to their numbers when we send
+them an invitation again.
+
+We talk of returning home at the end of next week, and Mrs. Fielden and
+our other two guests are leaving on Monday, I believe.
+
+Mrs. Fielden looks much prettier in the Highlands, I think, than
+anywhere else.  Young Finlayson is in love with her, and I believe has
+offered her his heart and the ironmongery business with it; but I think
+of all her lovers Anthony Crawshay is the one she likes best.  He is
+the only one for whom her moods never alter, and to whom she is always
+gracious and charming and sweet.  Perhaps it is in a quiet, less
+radiant way than that in which she treats others, but it is with an
+unvarying loving-kindness which I have not seen her bestow elsewhere.
+And Anthony Crawshay is a good fellow--one of the best.
+
+Old Mr. Finlayson actually donned a kilt for the gillies' dance; young
+Finlayson also wore the national dress, and Thomas tells me that they
+have sported the Macdonald tartan, and wants to know why.  Old
+Finlayson met us at the door of his baronial hall in a clannish, feudal
+sort of way, and seizing his glengarry bonnet from his head he flung it
+down upon the oak settle in the hall, and exclaimed in hearty accents,
+"Welcome to the Glen."  The Misses Finlayson wore sashes of royal
+Stuart tartan put plaid-wise across their shoulders.  Mrs. Finlayson
+was dressed in a very regal manner which I cannot attempt to describe,
+and her platform voice was in use throughout the entire evening.
+
+Ellicomb said the dance was barbaric, but Thomas enjoyed the evening
+immensely, and so did Crawshay, who said in his hearty way, "The
+Finlaysons did us uncommonly well," and shouted out, "Not at all bad
+people, not at all bad."
+
+After dinner old Finlayson showed us all the pictures in the hall by
+the light of a long wax taper which he held above his head, and he
+pointed out the beauties of the house in a proprietary way, even to
+Evan himself, to whom the place belongs.  Evan Sinclair, in a shabby
+green doublet, accepted all Mr. Finlayson's wildest statements about
+his own house with a queer, humorous grin on his face, and submitted to
+being patronized by the Miss Finlaysons, whose commercial instincts, no
+doubt, caused them to despise a young man who was obliged to let his
+place.
+
+One of the Highland axioms which the Finlaysons have accepted is that
+"a man's a man for a' that," and they shook hands with every one in an
+effusive way, and condescended to a queer sort of familiarity with the
+boatmen and keepers about the place.  The daughters of the house, with
+flying tartan ribbons, swung the young gillies about in the intricate
+figures of the hoolichan, and talked to them with a heartiness which
+one would hardly have thought possible of the Clarkham young ladies.
+The Finlaysons had a large number of English guests staying in the
+house for the dance.  These all made the same joke when the pipes began
+to play.  "Is the pig being killed?" they asked, and looked very
+pleased with their own ready wit.
+
+Red-headed Evan Sinclair carried his old green doublet and battered
+silver ornaments very well, and his neat dancing was in pleasant
+contrast to the curious bounds and leaps of the Finlaysons.  Old Mr.
+Finlayson spent his evening strutting about in a kindly, important
+fashion, and in making Athole Brose after a recipe supplied by Tyne
+Drum, who superintended the brewing of it himself.
+
+I hope I am not fanciful when I say that the pipes when I hear them
+have to me something irresistibly sad about them, and that they conjure
+up many fantasies in my head which I am half ashamed to put down on
+paper.  They seem to me to gather up in their bitter sobbings all the
+sorrows of a people who have suffered much and have said very little
+about it.  There is the cry in them of children dying in the lonely
+glens in winter-time, when the wind howls round the clachan and the
+snow fills the passes.  One almost sees the little procession of
+black-coated men bearing away a tiny burden from the cottage door into
+the whiteness beyond, with its one heaped-up patch of brown earth on
+either side of the little grave.  They wail, too, of the Killing Time,
+when the Covenanters were crushed but never broken under persecution;
+and one seems to see the defiant gray-haired old men, with their
+splendid obstinacy, unmoved by threats--not defiant, but simply
+unbreakable.  Thinking of the Covenanters as they pass slowly before
+one to the sighing of the pipes, one wonders if it is possible to
+punish by death the man who is content to die.
+
+The tuneful reeds sob out, too, the story of the Prince for whom so
+many brave men bled, and they tell again of the days of song, and of
+noble legends and deeds of daring when the nation spent its passionate
+love on its King.  "Come back! come back!"  The desolate cry of the
+times.  Almost one hears it sounding across the hills, and it seems to
+me that all that it is so hard to speak, so hard even to look, may
+perhaps be told in music.  And I think loyalty and love speak very
+beautifully in the old Jacobite airs.
+
+Again, as Evan's piper marches up and down in the moonlight playing a
+lament, the romance of life seems lost in the hardness of it, its
+stress and its loss.  "Hame, hame, hame!" the pipes sob forth, crying
+for the homes that are sold to strangers, and for the hills and the
+glens which pass away from the old hands.  It is "Good-bye, good-bye,"
+an eternity of farewells.  And still, wherever life is most difficult,
+wherever comforts are fewest and work is most hard, in the distant
+parts of the world are the Scottish exiles.  But I know that all the
+world over the sons of the heather and the mist, in however distant or
+alien lands they may be, feel always, as they steer their way through
+life, that there is a pole-star by which they set their compass; and
+that some day, perhaps, they or their children may steer the boat to a
+haven on some rocky shore, where the whaup calls shrilly on the moors
+above the loch, and the heather grows strong and tough on the hillside,
+and the peat reek rises almost like the incense of an evening prayer,
+against a gray, soft sky in the land of the North.
+
+I suppose that even in a diary I have no business to mix this up with
+an account of the Finlaysons' dance.
+
+Palestrina came up to me after conscientiously dancing reels with
+Thomas, looking very pink and pretty, and thoughtful of me, as usual.
+
+"Don't stay longer than you feel inclined," she said.  "I told them to
+come for you in the dog-cart, and to wait about for you between twelve
+and one."
+
+"I will take a turn down on the shore," I said, "and have a cigar, and
+then I will come back and see how you are getting on."
+
+Palestrina gave me my crutch, and I went down towards the loch, which
+looked like a sheet of silver in the moonlight, and I found Anthony and
+Mrs. Fielden sitting on a garden bench beneath some wind-torn beeches
+by the shore.  To-night there was not a breath of air stirring, and
+Mrs. Fielden had only thrown a light wrap round her.
+
+"Have you come to tell me that I am to go in and dance reels with old
+Mr. Finlayson?" she said.  "It is really so much pleasanter out here.
+Do sit down and talk to Sir Anthony and me."
+
+She would never have allowed one to know that one was in the way, even
+if one had interrupted a proposal of marriage.
+
+Anthony made room for me on the bench, and said heartily, "I am awfully
+glad to see you able to sit up like this, Hugo.  Why, man, you're
+getting as strong as a horse!"
+
+"Oh.  I'm all right again," I said.  "I'll begin to grow a new leg
+soon.  And the first thing I mean to do when that happens is to dance
+reels like the Finlaysons."
+
+"I believe I ought to be going in to supper now with Mr. Finlayson,"
+said Mrs. Fielden.  "Does any one know what time it is?  He said he
+would 'conduct me to the dining-hall' at twelve o'clock."
+
+"It is a quarter past now," said Anthony, looking at his watch in the
+moonlight.  "Don't go in, Mrs. Fielden.  Wait out here, and talk to
+Hugo and me."
+
+But old Finlayson in his kilt had tracked us to our seat underneath the
+beech-trees, and he took instant possession of our fair neighbour, and
+told us to follow presently.  He thought all the supper-tables were
+full just now.
+
+"We shan't eat everything before you come," said hospitable old
+Finlayson, walking away with his beautiful partner on his arm.
+
+Mrs. Fielden was dressed in white satin, with some pretty soft stuff
+about her, and she wore some white heather in her hair.
+
+"What a good sort she is!" said Anthony in a loud voice, almost before
+Mrs. Fielden was out of hearing.
+
+It wasn't, perhaps, the most poetical way in which he could have put
+it, but one didn't want or expect Anthony to express himself poetically.
+
+"Utterly spoilt!" I replied, because at that moment I happened to be
+feeling supremely miserable, and I did not want Anthony to know it.
+
+"Not a bit," he replied; "and you know that as well as I do, old chap."
+
+"Allow me, Anthony," I said, "to be as savage as I like; it is one of
+the privileges of a cripple."
+
+"Oh, blow cripples!" said Anthony.  "You will be shooting next autumn,
+man."
+
+"And what will you be doing?" I said.  After all, we have been pals all
+our lives, and I think Anthony might tell me about it if there is
+anything to tell.
+
+"Oh, I'll be shooting too, I suppose," said Anthony.
+
+We smoked for some time in silence.
+
+And then Anthony began, and said that he had enjoyed himself amazingly
+up here in the North, and he went on to say a good word for every one.
+Old Finlayson had been a brick about his shooting and deer-stalking,
+and it was beastly hard luck that I hadn't been able to come too.  The
+minister wasn't a bad fellow, even when he was jocose; and Evan
+Sinclair was one of the best; and so on.
+
+"What shall you be doing when you go back, Anthony?" I said, harking
+back to my old question, and hoping for more information than I
+actually asked for.  "Are you going straight home?"
+
+"I'll be at the first shoot at Stanby.  Shall you be there?"
+
+"I'm afraid not," I said.  "I haven't learned to do cross-stitch yet,
+and I'm sure all the women would think me a great bore, sitting about
+in their morning-rooms all day.  Except Mrs. Fielden, of course!  Mrs.
+Fielden would probably persuade me into thinking that the only thing
+that made her house-party successful, or saved herself from boredom,
+was the presence of a lame man in the house."
+
+"I don't think you are quite just about Mrs. Fielden, Hugo," said
+Anthony, moving rather resentfully on the garden bench.
+
+"That doesn't matter much," I replied.  "One voice will not be missed
+from the general chorus of praise that follows Mrs. Fielden wherever
+she goes."
+
+"No; but still----" began Anthony; and then he stopped, and we smoked
+on for some time without speaking.  "You see," he began at last, "she
+is the best friend I ever had."  He did not lower his voice, because I
+suppose Anthony finds it impossible to do so, but went on steadily:
+"You see, I once cared for a little cousin of hers, and she died when
+she was eighteen.  I don't think anybody ever knew about it, except
+Mrs. Fielden.  But she knows how much cut up I was, and I suppose that
+is why she is so nice to me always."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry!" I said.
+
+"I never meant to speak about it," said Anthony in a brisk, cheerful
+voice.  "Oh, don't you bother about it, Hugo!  I mean I'm awfully keen
+about hunting, and I have an excellent time, only I don't suppose I
+shall ever care for any one else."
+
+"Thanks for telling me, Tony."
+
+"I wouldn't have said anything about it," said Anthony, "if it hadn't
+been for what you said about Mrs. Fielden.  Y'see, she has been so
+awfully good to me, and I don't think you quite understand all she is
+really."
+
+"Why, man," I cried, "I love her with every bit of my heart!  And I
+worship her--how does one say one worships a woman?--as if she were the
+sun!"
+
+And I think that was the very first moment that I told myself that I
+loved Mrs. Fielden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+The minister and Evan Sinclair came to say good-bye; the minister has
+accepted our approaching departure with his usual philosophy.  "You
+would soon tire of this place in the winter-time," he said.  "And even
+looking at it from the other point of view, I believe that summer
+visitors should not prolong their stay above a few months.  I admit
+that we have enjoyed your sojourn amongst us; but were you and your
+sister to become residenters in the place, our intercourse would have
+to be reconstructed from the foundation."  The minister crossed his
+legs, and, without being pressed to continue the subject, he went on:
+"There is a certain conventionality, not to say forbearance, admitted
+and allowed between friends with whom one's acquaintance is to be
+short; but there is a basis stronger than that upon which any lengthy
+friendship must be made."
+
+"And that basis?" I asked.
+
+"That basis, I take it," said the minister, "should be a
+straightforward disregard for one another.  I do not believe in
+politeness between near neighbours; it cannot last."
+
+"I had hoped," said Palestrina, pouting a little, "that you would all
+miss us, Mr. Macorquodale."
+
+"We shall miss you," said the minister quickly, but with judgment.  "We
+shall see the merits as well as the demerits of the case.  For
+instance, one of your friends cost me a sovereign for a favourite
+charity of hers."
+
+Evan Sinclair said very kindly, blinking his fair eyelashes in a shy
+way, "Well, I know I shall miss you.  The place will seem very dull
+with only Alexander and me left in it."
+
+"_I_ shall have my wife," said the minister brutally.
+
+"Yes," said Sinclair; "and her mother!  You have kept that pretty dark
+from us, Taurbarrels."
+
+"It is only a visit," said Mr. Macorquodale shortly.  And he went on in
+a truculent tone, "And I need not have her unless I want to."
+
+"I hear she is strict," murmured Evan.  "I hope you will be allowed to
+look out of the window on the Sabbath, my man."
+
+"I am master in my own house," said Mr. Macorquodale magnificently.
+
+"Believe me," said Evan, "that's a courtesy title, supported by no
+valid claim, and still less precedent.  A man never has been master of
+his own house when there is a mistress in it.  I remember when my
+brother got married he had just your very ideas, and he gave his wife
+the keys of the linen-press and the store-cupboard, 'But the rest of
+the bunch,' he said, 'I keep to myself.'  And he put them all in his
+pocket.  It was not six months after that," said Evan, "that I went to
+stay with them, and I heard him ask my sister-in-law if she would mind
+his having two pocket-handkerchiefs on Sundays."
+
+Palestrina and I were alone, for Ellicomb had left us a few days
+before, and we hear from the Jamiesons that he is a daily visitor at
+their house.  Thomas and Anthony were out shooting, and Mrs. Fielden
+had gone for a walk over the hills.
+
+"I have a thousand things to do," said Palestrina, when Evan and the
+minister had departed.
+
+"I also have a thousand things to do," I replied.
+
+"Don't tire yourself," said Palestrina.  "What are you going to do?"
+
+"I am going to re-write my diary," I said.
+
+"But, my dear," said Palestrina, "that would be the work of months."
+
+"I am only going to correct all the mistakes I have made in it," I
+replied; and I took my book and a pen, and went and sat in the little
+room on the ground-floor which they call my den.
+
+We once had an old aunt, Palestrina and I, who kept a diary all her
+life, and when any of the relatives whom she mentioned in its pages
+came to die, she used to go through all the back numbers of her journal
+and insert affectionate epithets in front of the names of the deceased.
+For instance (my aunt's existence was not marked by any thrilling
+events), the entry would perhaps be as follows: "Maria was late for
+breakfast this morning.  In the afternoon she had her singing-lesson,
+and afterwards we did some shopping, when Maria tried on her new gown."
+But the amended entry after Maria's death would be, "Our darling Maria
+was (a little) late for breakfast this morning; in the afternoon she
+had her singing-lesson"--and here would probably be a footnote praising
+Maria's voice--"afterwards we did some shopping, and"--Maria struck
+out--"my sweet girl tried on her new gown."  Any one's death, or even a
+successful marriage of one of the family, would cause her to revise and
+correct her diary in this way, and she used to fan the wet ink with a
+piece of blotting-paper to make it dry black, and thus prevent
+posterity from knowing that the words written over the lines were an
+afterthought induced by subsequent events.
+
+It was manifestly an unfair way of keeping a diary.  But I can claim
+her example and hereditary taint as an excuse for my own dishonesty
+this afternoon.  I read through my diary with a sense of utter shame,
+and wherever I found, for instance, that I had said that Mrs. Fielden
+was frivolous, or even that she raised her eyebrows in an affected way,
+I corrected the misstatement by the light of the magnificent discovery
+I had made that Mrs. Fielden was faultless, and that I loved her.  Oh,
+the beauty of this woman and her blessed kindness! the cunning with
+which she conceals her unselfishness, and her ridiculous attempts at
+pretending she is frivolous or worldly.
+
+Alas! there were so many misstatements to correct, and so many dear
+adjectives to fill in, that I was not halfway through my task before
+Mrs. Fielden herself tapped at the window and looked in.
+
+I believe I must have grinned foolishly, but what I wanted to do was to
+stretch out my arms to the beautiful vision, framed in the hectic
+Virginian creeper round the window, and call out to her to come to me.
+
+Mrs. Fielden came in for a minute, and said with the adorable lift of
+the eyebrows: "I have been educating a pair of young boots by walking
+through all the bogs on the hillside.  Listen, they are quite full of
+water."  She raised herself on her toes with a squelching sound of the
+leather, and gave one of her joyous soft laughs.
+
+"You must change directly," I said, with an idiotic sense of
+proprietorship.
+
+"When I have done so I think I shall come and have tea with you," said
+Mrs. Fielden.  And of course then I knew that she had come home early
+on purpose to have tea with me, and that probably she had given up
+something else which she wanted to do, in order that she might sit by
+me when I was alone--because of course I have found Mrs. Fielden out
+now, and exposed her hypocrisy.
+
+Fortunately she took nearly a quarter of an hour to change her wet
+boots, and this gave me time to ask myself why I was behaving like a
+raving idiot, because I had found out that Mrs. Fielden was absolutely
+perfect, and that I loved her.
+
+It was quite the worst quarter of an hour that I have ever spent,
+because in it I had time to remember that I was a crippled man with one
+leg, and that Mrs. Fielden was a beautiful young woman whom of course
+every one loved, and that she owned an old historical place called
+Stanby, and probably--I realized this also--that she would continue to
+come over and sit with a dull man and bewilder him with her beauty and
+her kindness only so long as he did not allow her to know the supremely
+impertinent fact that he had fallen in love with her.
+
+I must plead ill-health, and a certain weakness of nerve which no doubt
+always follows a surgical operation, for the fact that I turned round
+and put my face in the pillows for a moment and groaned.
+
+Mrs. Fielden came in in my favourite pale-blue gown which she sometimes
+wears when she changes her frock at tea-time.  She came and took a seat
+beside me, and as she never hurriedly plunges into a conversation we
+sat silent for a time.  The afternoon was darkening now, and the light
+of a blazing fire leaped and played upon her pale-blue dress, and
+turned her brown hair to a sort of red-gold.
+
+Mrs. Fielden thinks she is the only person in the world who can make up
+a fire.  And she is perfectly right.  She arranged the logs with a long
+brass poker, shifting them here and there, while her dear face glowed
+in the light of the fire.  She is not a luxurious woman, in spite of
+being surrounded always by luxury.  For instance, she stands and walks
+in a very erect way, and I have never seen her stuff a lot of sofa
+cushions at her back in a chair, nor lounge on a sofa.  Her glorious,
+buoyant health seems to exempt her from need of support or ease, and
+her figure is too pretty for lounging.
+
+When she had finished arranging the logs she put down the poker and
+looked at me with that dear kindliness of hers, and said in her pretty
+voice, "What have you been doing with yourself this afternoon?"
+
+"The minister and Evan Sinclair came up to say good-bye," I said.
+
+"And since then?"
+
+I took my diary, which still lay on my knee, and hid it under the sofa
+cushions.
+
+"Since then," I said, "I have been correcting--that is, writing my
+diary."
+
+"Oh, the diary!" exclaimed Mrs. Fielden delightedly.  "I had forgotten
+about that!"
+
+"No, you hadn't," I said to myself.  "It is only part of your wilful,
+uncomprehendable, untranslatable charm that makes you pretend sometimes
+that you have no memory.  As a matter of fact, you knew from the first
+that it would be a relief to an egotistical grumbler to get rid of his
+spleen sometimes on blue ruled essay paper, and so you set him a task
+to do, and you have often wondered since how he is getting on with it.
+
+"I think I must see the diary," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"That you certainly shall not," I said; and I pushed the book still
+farther under the sofa cushions--just as if it was necessary to fight
+with Mrs. Fielden for anything, or any use either!
+
+"I thought you promised," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"If I did I have changed my mind," I said firmly.
+
+"You know you mean all the time to let me see it," said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"I know I do not mean to let you see it for even a minute of time," I
+replied.
+
+One of Mrs. Fielden's special odd little silences fell between us.
+"No," I said to myself.  "I will _not_ say I am sorry.  I will _not_
+say I have been a brute, I will _not_ feel a desire to comfort her,
+even if her eyes have the wistful look in them."
+
+Mrs. Fielden sat still and looked into the fire.
+
+What unexpected thing will she do next, I wonder?  Will she suddenly
+burst out laughing, or will she turn and take every bit of manhood out
+of me by smiling?  Or shall I find, when I turn and look at her face,
+simply that she has gone to sleep?
+
+Good heavens!  What if she should be crying?
+
+In an agony of compunction I turned and looked at her; and Mrs. Fielden
+not only smiled, but held out her hand for the book....  I rummaged
+underneath the sofa cushions, and passed it over to her.  She bent
+forward till the firelight from the blazing logs fell full on the open
+page, and she read every one of those corrected lines.  She saw where I
+had once put "affected" I had now put "beautiful," and for "frivolous"
+I put a "lovely gaiety," and she read till she came to the last
+correction of all.  I had run a line through the words "Mrs. Fielden
+came to sit with me," and had written over it, "My darling came to see
+me----"
+
+Then Mrs. Fielden closed the book, and left her chair where she had
+been sitting.  She crossed the hearthrug quite slowly till she reached
+my sofa.  And then she kneeled down and took both my hands in her dear
+strong ones, and looked at me with misty blue eyes, like wet
+forget-me-nots.  "But, Hugo dear," she said, "why did you not tell me
+long ago?"
+
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  _UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_
+
+
+  BY Miss MACNAUGHTAN.
+  THE FORTUNE OF CHRISTINA M'NAB.
+
+
+  THE DUENNA OF A GENIUS.             M. E. Francis.
+  OWD BOB.                            Alfred Ollivant.
+  EIGHT DAYS.                         R. E. Forrest.
+  LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.               Miss Braddon.
+  THE OCTOPUS.                        Frank Norris.
+  THE PIT.                            Frank Norris.
+  MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE, Etc.            Booth Tarkington.
+  WOODSIDE FARM.                      Mrs. W. K. Clifford.
+  WHITE FANG.                         Jack London.
+  THE PRINCESS PASSES.                C. N. & A. M. Williamson.
+  THE MAN FROM AMERICA.               Mrs. H. de la Pasture.
+  SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE.               "Q"
+  INCOMPARABLE BELLAIRS.              A. and E. Castle.
+  IF YOUTH BUT KNEW!                  A. and E. Castle.
+  MATTHEW AUSTIN.                     W. E. Norris.
+  HIS GRACE.                          W. E. Norris.
+  THE AMERICAN PRISONER.              Eden Phillpotts.
+  THE HOSTS OF THE LORD.              Mrs. F. A. Steel.
+  THE LADY OF THE BARGE.              W. W. Jacobs.
+  THE GOD IN THE CAR.                 Anthony Hope.
+  QUISANTE.                           Anthony Hope.
+  THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.            Anthony Hope.
+  THE KING'S MIRROR.                  Anthony Hope.
+  THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE.        Sir G. Parker.
+  AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH.         Sir G. Parker.
+  THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG.           Sir G. Parker.
+  MARRIAGE OF WILLIAM ASHE.           Mrs. Humphry Ward
+  HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE.            Mrs. Humphry Ward.
+  ROBERT ELSMERE.                     Mrs. Humphry Ward.
+  CLEMENTINA.                         A. E. W. Mason.
+  THE RECIPE FOR DIAMONDS.            C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne.
+  THE WAGES OF SIN.                   Lucas Malet.
+
+_Etc., Etc._
+
+_NELSON'S LIBRARY._
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Lame Dog's Diary, by S. Macnaughtan
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