DIMPLETHORPE, 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/dimplethorpe01tabo
 
 DIMPLETHORPE 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 •'ST. OLAVE'S," " JANITA'S CROSS," "ANNETTE," 
 
 "LITTLE MISS PRIMROSE," 
 
 &c, &c. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 HURST AND BLAGKETT, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
 1880. 
 
 All rights reserved.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE, 
 
 BLENHEIM STREET, OXFORD STREET.
 
 >; ofc 3& **** 
 
 * v.i 
 
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 r 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 "T\IMPLETHORPE, a parish in the 
 -*-^ Hundred of Thornilaugh ; acreage 
 5,000; population 951 ; distance from Lon- 
 don twenty miles, E.N.E. The lordship of 
 Dimplethorpe was formerly held by the De 
 Meuries, and passed from them into the 
 hands of the Saxbys, by whom it is at pres- 
 ent possessed. The living is a discharged 
 vicarage, value £840, and is in the gift of 
 the Saxby family. Dimplethorpe contains 
 the ruins of a moated castle, once occupied 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 by the De Meuries, who received the grant 
 of it from Henry the Second, a small church 
 of early English architecture, and a market 
 cross. There is also a neat place of worship 
 for Independents." 
 
 Such was the style and title of Dimple- 
 thorpe, as given in " Crawley's Gazetteer of 
 the South Eastern Counties," published in 
 1825. And fifty years later, years during 
 which England had struggled through re- 
 form bills, railway agitations, wars, panics, 
 prosperities, depressions, and " develop- 
 ments," nothing more need have been said 
 about it, except that the market cross was a 
 little rnouldier, the church services — in conse- 
 quence of ritualistic leanings on the part of 
 successive curates — more carefully carried 
 out, and the ct neat place of worship for 
 Independents" not quite so numerously 
 attended as in the former minister's time. 
 
 It was an innocent, restful old town, if
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 3 
 
 town that could be called which had but 
 one irregular street, oozing lazily along for 
 about three quarters of a mile, from the 
 Manor House at one end, where General 
 Burnaby and his sister now lived, onward 
 through all sorts of tumble-down lath-and- 
 plaster houses, buried in ivy and woodbine, 
 to the aforementioned castle at the other 
 end, once occupied by the De Meuries, and 
 surrounded by a moat which was in the 
 highest degree picturesque and unhealthy. 
 
 But there were many things in Dimple- 
 thorpe which vied with that duck weedy 
 moat in being picturesque and unhealthy. 
 Indeed, the general sanitary condition of the 
 place was a subject to be mentioned under 
 reserve. Open sewers came to the front 
 without the least regard for appearances. 
 In matters of drainage, every landlord did 
 that which was right in his own eyes, the 
 goddess of cleanliness having as yet no high 
 
 b 2
 
 4 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 priest ill the person of a Dimplethorpe In- 
 spector of Nuisances. Occupiers of garden 
 plots had long since made up their minds 
 that there could be no better disposition of 
 sewage than to let it accumulate in an open 
 tank in some secluded corner, whence, at 
 judicious intervals, it was spread over the 
 land, producing such crops of early potatoes 
 and spinach, such wealth of pinks, roses, 
 wallflowers, and scented stocks, as made 
 Dimplethorpe the envy of all the country 
 round. And what more could Dimplethorpe 
 want than that ? So it let the open tanks 
 alone. 
 
 Ventilation was treated in much the same 
 way, except that, being left to the care of 
 the womenfolk, it perhaps fared a little 
 worse. Tidy housewives, who had fireplaces 
 in their bed-rooms, looked upon them chiefly 
 as accessories with malice aforethought, to 
 the descent of rain and soot, and they
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 5 
 
 stuffed them up accordingly, summer and 
 winter alike, with bags of straw made for 
 the purpose. Because, as Mrs. Ferguson, 
 the independent minister's wife, said — and 
 Mrs. Ferguson was the best housekeeper in 
 Dimplethorpe — you might as well not put 
 up clean fire-aprons at all, and spend hours 
 and hours in blackleading your chamber 
 grates, if you were to run the risk of 
 having them spoiled for your pains every 
 time there was a shower of rain or a breeze 
 of wind, or an old owl chose to shake itself 
 in your chimney. So Mrs. Ferguson's 
 chambers always had a "stuffy feel" about 
 them, but, at the same time, her fire-aprons 
 were a marvel of snowy stiffness ; and as for 
 her grates, if they had been carved out of 
 Whitby jet one could not have said they 
 were blacker or brighter. 
 
 But the minister's house was an old- 
 fashioned place, with windows that would
 
 b DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 not shut down close, and age-shrunken 
 doors that let in a wholesome current of 
 air underneath, and so the Ferguson girls, 
 five of them, one step above another, 
 Audrey, Rose Emma, Frances Ann, Phillis, 
 and Anna Mary, grew up as rosy-faced and 
 bright-eyed as any in the parish. 
 
 Which was saying a great deal for them. 
 For you might take many a summer day's 
 journey over the country side to find bonnier 
 specimens of rustic childhood than the lads 
 and lasses who swung on the stiles, or 
 dabbled in the ponds, or delved amongst 
 the hedgebottoms of Dimplethorpe. And 
 perhaps it was because they did so much 
 swinging and dabbling and delving — School 
 Boards not having at that time penetrated 
 into the rural districts — that the open drains 
 and the closed chimneys did them so little 
 mischief. 
 
 Dimplethorpe was, as the Gazetteer pro-
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 7 
 
 foundly remarked, twenty miles E.N.E. 
 from London. And it was only forty from 
 Cratchley Cliff, a pretty and rapidly increas- 
 ing town upon the coast. And that slimy 
 octopus, the East Warrenshire railway, had. 
 had its eye fixed for some time past upon 
 Cratchley Cliff, with intent to stretch forth 
 a feeler and suck up a little nutriment from 
 the traffic which might be produced, if that 
 part of the coast could be brought within 
 easy reach of London. The nearest cut to 
 Cratchley lay through the willow-holts and 
 pasture-lands of Dimplethorpe, so the octo- 
 pus fixed a black sucker there too, en route 
 to the sea, hoping thereby to get a little 
 more nutriment, if the place could be made 
 eligible as a sort of London suburb, con- 
 veniently situate between the filth of the 
 metropolis and the health-giving influences 
 of the salt sea spray. 
 
 But nothing came of it. For, just as the
 
 8 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 line was finished, and the station built, the 
 railway bubble burst. The East Warren- 
 shire Company came to grief, and the 
 London and Cratchley Cliff scheme was 
 abandoned, leaving poor little Dimple- 
 thorpe a sort of burlesque of a terminus, at 
 the end of everything and leading to no- 
 where, and cutting such a ridiculous figure 
 on the Company's railway map, where it 
 looked, as the chairman said, like an apple 
 on the end of a toasting-fork, that the 
 shareholders ground their teeth with morti- 
 fication every time they looked at it. 
 
 Those who were very deeply involved 
 tried to console themselves with the hope 
 that the quiet beauty of the neighbourhood 
 would still make it a favourable place of 
 residence for the London merchants, even 
 though a few feet of broken and melan- 
 choly-looking tramway were all the " facili- 
 ties " it afforded for access to the sea-coast.
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 9 
 
 But in this, too, they were disappointed. 
 The lord of the manor, and the hale hearty 
 old squires who lived such a comfortable, 
 port-wine drinking life amongst their ances- 
 tral elm-trees, were chiefly of the Conserva- 
 tive sort, who kept a tight hold upon the 
 land, and had not yet been driven by stress 
 of evil fortune or unlucky speculation to 
 sell it off in eligible building sites. So 
 Dimplethorpe was left in its simplicity, and 
 the East Warrenshire shareholders dangled 
 their empty purses in despair, and a train 
 strolled leisurely in and out of the station 
 two or three times a day, just to keep up 
 appearances ; and once again things were as 
 though railways had never been. 
 
 Nay, they were not even so good as that. 
 If the railways had only let it quite alone, 
 Dimplethorpe would have been thankful. 
 For before they spread their black arms all 
 over the country, and did away with the
 
 10 DIMPLETHOEPE. 
 
 good old coaching times, it was on the great 
 east high-road, and the first posting-town 
 out of London, too, and great was the 
 traffic through the place, as four fine old- 
 fashioned inns in its one street could testify. 
 To say nothing of the King's mail which 
 passed through twice every day, with much 
 blowing of horns and shouting of little boys, 
 and running to and fro of ostlers in the 
 stable-yard of the "Bull and Crown," that 
 very stable-yard in which you might now 
 almost mow the grass down, so utterly had 
 the place fallen into disuse. 
 
 The railway was to blame for the grass in 
 the stable-yard. And it was to blame for a 
 great deal more than that. It had taken 
 away the gentlemen of the hunt, which was 
 a far worse calamity. For the coaching 
 traffic only put money into the inn-keepers , 
 pockets, whilst the people who came for the 
 hunting season spent, and spent freely too,
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. II 
 
 all over the place, to say nothing of dances 
 and dinner-parties for the gentlefolk, which 
 made Dimplethorpe almost as lively in its 
 own little way as a regular county town. 
 
 There was old Sefton, for instance, who 
 used to have his hunting-seat not a couple 
 of miles from the vicarage, and Lady Sefton 
 always came down with him for the season ; 
 and wherever my Lady Sefton was, there 
 was sure to be gaiety enough, for my lady 
 was a woman who could never be content 
 unless she had her house fall of company ; 
 and, as my lord's purse was in proportion 
 to my lady's requirements, there were fine- 
 times for the society-loving people of Dim- 
 plethorpe. 
 
 And in those days the Berry-Fontenoys 
 came down for the hunt too, with three fine 
 grown-up sons and as many daughters, and 
 took Squire Bentham's house for the season, 
 the Squire always going to Italy with his
 
 12 PIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 wife for the winter. And there were no 
 women in all the county so handsome as 
 the Berry-Fontenoy girls, nor young men so 
 gallant and daring as the lads ; and such 
 flirtations as there used to be with the 
 Sefton people and the Saxbys of Dimple- 
 thorpe Park, and such getting up of dances 
 and riding-parties, and such pleasant gossip 
 of the engagements that were likely to 
 come of them. Only the weddings, when 
 it went so far as that, which it often did, 
 always took place in London, so that Dim- 
 plethorpe never got any benefit from 
 them. 
 
 But now Dimplethorpe never got any 
 benefit from anything. For a new line of 
 rail had been opened direct to Crocking- 
 ford, which was a much more convenient 
 centre for the gentlemen of the hunt, being 
 close to the Marquis of Softland's place, 
 where the hounds were kept. So little by
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 13 
 
 little the scarlet deserted Dimplethorpe, the 
 Berry-Fontenoys going first, and the rest of 
 the people following, because, as they said, 
 there was no fun without the ladies. And 
 Squire Bentham's hall was shut up for the 
 winter, and the gouty old admiral, who 
 never went out, came to live at the Sefton 
 hunting-seat ; and if ever a view halloo was 
 heard near the place at all, it was only if 
 the hounds lost the scent down by the osier 
 flats at the moat side. 
 
 The removal of the hunt struck the final 
 blow at Dimplethorpe prosperity. After 
 that, the place looked upon itself as lost, 
 and retired into the simplicity of village life. 
 Nobody came to the market, so the market 
 was given up, or rather died of inanition. 
 Nobody came to the inns, so they were 
 given up too, except the "Bull and Crown," 
 which now was a world too wide for the 
 narrow stream of business which trickled
 
 14 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 through it. Nobody needed the shops, so 
 they followed the example of the inn, com- 
 merce narrowing itself down until it was 
 almost entirely represented by Mr. Septimus 
 Gale, who was a grocer as regarded his 
 right hand window, a draper as regarded 
 his left, and a miscellaneous dealer as 
 regarded the back premises. 
 
 And now, for a good thirty years past, 
 Dimplethorpe had been enjoying as com- 
 fortable an after-dinner nap as the laziest 
 of villages could desire, not the most inqui- 
 sitive of travellers caring to lift so much as 
 a corner of the pocket-handkerchief which, 
 after the failure of the railway and the 
 departure of the hunt, it had put over its 
 face, as it leaned back in its easy-chair to 
 sleep, and dream, and snore through the 
 remainder of its afternoon.
 
 15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 T)UT though very few visitors came to 
 -"--* Ditnplethorpe, for the sufficient reason 
 that there was nothing to do and nobody to 
 see when they got to it, a cosy enough life 
 was still lived there by people who were 
 content to have things as their fathers and 
 mothers had had them in the old times. 
 
 If your fine London merchants, who 
 build Queen Anne houses and then do not 
 know where to get proper furniture for 
 them, could but have known about Dimple- 
 thorpe ! For it was such a treasury of 
 spindly.legged tables, and Chippendale
 
 16 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 chairs, and ancient brass fenders, which had 
 descended from father to son, and from son 
 to grandson, and from grandson to great- 
 grandson, through many and many a year, 
 since the days when Beatrix came down the 
 oaken staircase of Castlewood Hall in her 
 high-heeled shoes, and her clocked stockings, 
 and all the rest of her eighteenth century 
 finery. 
 
 What quaint, old-fashioned scrutoirs 
 there were, with no end of shining metal 
 work about their locks and handles, metal 
 work which the women polished up on 
 Saturday mornings along with the rest 
 of their kitchen furniture, never thinking 
 how it would have been prized in some fine 
 lady's London drawing-room, if the fine 
 lady could only have heard about it. What 
 dozens and dozens of willow-pattern plates, 
 too, from which the Dimplethorpe Hodges 
 ate their porridge and bacon, but which might
 
 DDIPLETIIORPE. 1 7 
 
 have been framed in velvet and carried off 
 in triumph to the boudoirs of fashion, had a 
 disposing fate located them in Wardour 
 Street, instead of leaving them to shine in 
 unappreciated rows upon the delf-racks of 
 the wives and mothers of the said Dimple- 
 thorpe Hodges. What delightful old cup- 
 boards of rarest oak and walnut, black and 
 bright with a hundred years of polish, and 
 hiding behind their panelled fronts tit-bits 
 of Chelsea and Derby ware, which a West 
 End connoisseur would have given a purse 
 of gold to lay hands upon. What stores of 
 home-spun linen, guiltless, after fifty years' 
 use, of hole or darn or faulty piece, which 
 lay folded in lavender within the lids of 
 those scrutoirs. What marvellous samplers 
 and " Scripture pieces," whose faded colours 
 and almost mediaeval simplicity would have 
 been an artist's delight. What lovely frag- 
 ments of thread lace and filmy muslin 
 vol. i. c
 
 18 DIMPLETHOKPE. 
 
 embroidery lingering round withered throat 
 and cheek of ancient respectability in many 
 a tiny parlour to whose fireside no guest 
 was ever bidden, so little had the lapse of 
 time left to its owner save these faded relics 
 of her youthful days. 
 
 And old-fashioned dresses ! Little need 
 to rummage costume-books, or dive into the 
 dust of libraries, if you were wanting to get 
 up private theatricals, and had a friend at 
 Dimplethorpe. People there never seemed 
 to throw anything away. Any number of 
 them, from fifty to a hundred years of age, 
 there you might find them folded away in 
 many an old lady's walnut drawers, with 
 their amusing little short waists and puffy 
 sleeves, and scant skirts and Queen Char- 
 lotte flounces, and wonderful pipings and 
 quillings, and bindings and puffings ; from 
 the white silk which the vicar's great- 
 grandmother had worn at her wedding in
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 19 
 
 George the Second's time, down to the blue 
 dimity bed-gown which Betsy Pinnock went 
 to church in yet, and which was given to 
 her mother out of Dame Margaret Ben- 
 tham's charity, full seventy years ago. And 
 if you could get blue linen like that nowa- 
 days, either for softness or wear, Betsy 
 would undertake to eat it before your eyes, 
 and she could not go further than that ! 
 
 Yes, all these things were to be found in 
 Dimplethorpe, even after the railway and 
 the hunt had alike deserted it. But none 
 of them, lace nor linen, Derby china nor 
 Chelsea ware, spindly-legged tables nor 
 Chippendale chairs, brass-mounted scrutoirs 
 nor century-old dresses, were comparable 
 with those which might be seen amongst Miss 
 Burnaby's stores. Miss Burnaby was just 
 upon fifty years of age, and every one of 
 those years, let alone chance visits to Lon- 
 don in the season, had been spent in 
 
 c 2
 
 20 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 Dimplethorpe ; and she lived now with old 
 General Burnabyin the Manor House at the 
 upper end of the village, just opposite the 
 rich pasture-lands which were part of 
 Squire Benthaun's property. 
 
 Squire Bentham was an old man now, a 
 good deal older than Miss Burnaby, and 
 since his wife, the lady who always went to 
 Italy for the winter, died, he had shut him- 
 self up and kept no company. It was his 
 ground which some speculators wanted to 
 buy when the East Warrenshire Company 
 projected that new line of rail to the place, 
 the speculators thinking that, when Dimple- 
 thorpe was brought within such easy reach 
 of London, a few genteel villa residences, 
 built on that pasturage, might be a paying 
 investment. But the old Squire would 
 none of their gingerbread Gothic, and shook 
 his crutches in the face of the enterprising 
 speculator who dared to hint at such a dis-
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 21 
 
 grace as Bentham land passing out of the 
 family. However, he was on his last legs 
 now, and, when the young Squire came 
 into the property, he might not be so un- 
 willing to part with a few acres of it. In- 
 deed, some people said that, if he went on 
 much longer as he had been going on for 
 
 O DO 
 
 the last half-dozen years, he would be 
 obliged to part with more than a few acres 
 of it, whether he was willing or not. 
 
 The Manor House was the prettiest old 
 place imaginable, though its drainage was 
 conducted on very loose principles, and its 
 bed-room chimneys were, one and all, stop- 
 ped up with bags of straw, that being 
 the way Miss Burnaby's mother and grand- 
 mother, who lived all their lives in the same 
 house, had behaved to them ; and Miss 
 Burnaby would not, for all the fresh air 
 that new-fangled notions could give her, 
 have done things other than as her mother
 
 22 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 and grandmother had done them before 
 her. The house was tangled over, to the 
 topmost peaks of its many gables, with vine 
 and ivy, through which, in all sorts of un- 
 expected nooks, casement windows, with 
 stone mullions, peeped out. There was a 
 yew-tree of at least three centuries' growth 
 on the north side 5 and a laurel walk leading 
 up to the front door ; and there were box 
 hedges cut into all manner of curious shapes, 
 and the beds were full of sweet old-fashion- 
 ed English flowers, descendants of those 
 which the Burnabys of a hundred years 
 ago had planted. And there was a terrace 
 in front of the drawing-room window, on 
 which, in summer time, a peacock used to 
 walk up and down, admiring his own tail, 
 or listening respectfully to the words of 
 wisdom uttered by Polly, the General's 
 parrot, who could say anything you liked to 
 teach her.
 
 DIMPLETHOKPE. 23 
 
 Miss Burnaby was as pretty as the house 
 she lived in, which was enough praise for 
 anyone. And she was pretty in the same 
 way, too, being tangled over with an ivy- 
 like growth of old-fashioned habits and no- 
 tions, which only grew stronger for being 
 occasionally clipped and trimmed by her 
 brother, who, having knocked about in his 
 early days over most of the habitable globe, 
 had not only kept himself clear of ivy, but 
 was very fond of tearing it down from 
 other people's property. She had opin- 
 ions about duty and honour and obedience, 
 sturdy as the yew-tree which guarded her 
 home from the north winds. And, mean- 
 dering quietly about in the background of 
 her character, were a few harmless old- 
 world prejudices against dissent, liberalism, 
 and progress, which had a certain untoward 
 influence upon her behaviour, though not to 
 the extent of making it to the slightest extent
 
 24 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 disagreeable, just as those little peculiarities 
 of drainage and ventilation might have 
 proved a slight drawback to the profitable 
 re-letting of the Manor House, whilst, at 
 the same time, they did not detract in the 
 least from its delightfully picturesque ap- 
 pearance. 
 
 And the foremost of these prejudices 
 being against dissent, it rather troubled her, 
 good, kind-hearted woman as she was, that 
 her brother, the General, all she had of 
 kith or kin, would "forgather" so cordially 
 with Mr. Ferguson, the independent minis- 
 ter, even to the extent of taking long walks 
 with him, and asking him over to the Manor 
 House of an evening for a friendly cigar or 
 a rubber of backgammon, after she herself 
 had retired to rest. Not that Mr. Ferguson 
 was in any way obnoxious, except so far as 
 his principles were concerned, for he was a 
 quiet, gentlemanly mau, and did paint such
 
 D1MPLETH0RPE. 25 
 
 lovely pictures in oil, besides understanding 
 about flowers and china, and all that sort 
 of thing, subjects in which the General took 
 no kind of interest whatever. But she 
 could never forget that, if the dissenters 
 had their will, the Church would be dis- 
 established, and the disestablishment of the 
 English Church was always one of the first 
 things which presented itself to her mind 
 in connection with the horrors attendant 
 upon the pouring out of the vials in Revela- 
 tion. How she came to connect the two 
 things was of no consequence, and she 
 could never account for it, but connected 
 they were, and that indissolubly, and you 
 might have argued with Miss Burnaby until 
 Doomsday without convincing her that Non- 
 conformity was not as bad a thing, only in 
 a different coloured dress, as the scarlet 
 woman of Babylon. And, even if you had 
 worked the thin end of an admission into
 
 26 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 her mind about that, you would still have 
 had to convince her that dissent was not 
 radically vulgar, which to a woman brought 
 up as she had been was just as bad as being 
 radically wicked, if not worse. 
 
 The General had once or twice said to 
 her that it would only be kind to ask little 
 Audrey Ferguson over to play in the 
 Manor House garden, or to look at the 
 pretty Indian and Chinese things in the 
 Manor House drawing-room. For the child 
 was like her father, quiet, subdued, retiring, 
 with an air of unconscious refinement about 
 her, and melancholy too, as if pressed down 
 by circumstances. A different sort of child 
 altogether from her four sisters, who had 
 more of their mother's side of the family 
 about them. But Miss Burnaby had not as 
 yet been able to bring herself to that. She 
 loved the little grey-eyed girl at a distance, 
 and would occasionally go the length of
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 27 
 
 giving Mr. Ferguson a sweet biscuit to take 
 home in his poeket for her ; but dissent was 
 not a thing to be encouraged to the extent 
 of letting it play about, in the person of the 
 minister's daughter, on the domains of free- 
 hold Conservatism, or allowing it to look 
 at the pretty china and handle the Oriental 
 baubles collected in years gone by, by ances- 
 tors who had always stood bravely up for 
 Church and State, and paid their tithes and 
 Easter dues like gentlemen. 
 
 So Audrey only got the biscuit, and 
 sometimes she did not even get that. For 
 Mr. Ferguson had a bad memory, and more 
 than once Miss Burnaby's gift lay drying in 
 the pocket of his best coat, which he always 
 wore when he went to see the General, 
 until next Sunday, when Mrs. Ferguson, 
 putting his clean handkerchief ready for 
 service, and examining carefully to see that 
 there were no crumpled-up ones left behind
 
 28 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 — for in that case he would be sure to pull 
 them out in the pulpit — lighted upon a col- 
 lection of fragments far down in the corner 
 of the lining. Which fragments she care- 
 fully laid upon a piece of newspaper, and 
 then she took them down to the minister's 
 study, and, breaking in upon him as he was 
 deep in the mysteries of election and free 
 will, asked him if ever any woman in this 
 world was blessed with a husband who re- 
 quired so much looking after as hers.
 
 29 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " rpHERE is also a neat place of worship 
 
 -*■ for Independents." 
 
 That was the raison d'etre of Mr. Fer- 
 guson, so far as Diinplethorpe was con- 
 cerned. 
 
 He gave one the impression of not being 
 exactly a successful man, though, so far as 
 outward things went, he had a great deal to 
 be thankful for. And his wife never failed 
 to remind him of his mercies, when his 
 always thoughtful grey eyes looked more 
 thoughtful than usual, or the sighs, which 
 often did duty for conversation on his part
 
 30 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 at the domestic hearth, went below a certain 
 depth of dejection. 
 
 Indeed, if William James — Mrs. Ferguson 
 always called her husband by both his 
 names — if William James had had the most 
 serious of crimes upon his mind, he could 
 scarcely have sighed over it more deeply ; 
 and, as she said to her cousin Tholthorpe 
 sometimes, it was no wonder his ministra- 
 tions were not more acceptable to the peo- 
 ple, for what could you expect in the way 
 of spiritual comfort or edification from a 
 man who sighed like that? It was as much 
 as allowing that religion was a failure, and, 
 when a man's bread and cheese depended 
 on it, there was no need to go quite so far 
 as that. 
 
 But Mr. Ferguson had nothing upon his 
 mind, save that which weighs down many a 
 man who, nevertheless, has to go about his 
 work with a cheerful face: the consciousness
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 31 
 
 that circumstances, or, still worse, other's 
 misinterpretation of them for him, have 
 forced him into a position for which nature 
 never intended him. Some men, knowing 
 this, can fight with the circumstances and 
 conquer them, and so bring out better 
 things from the mistakes and follies of the 
 past ; but others are so pressed down by the 
 misery of failure that even the longing for 
 success deserts them, and they are content 
 to weary on in the groove to which folly 
 has consigned them, thankful if they can 
 but slip through life without overmuch 
 blame, silently mourning over what might 
 have been, whilst the lesser, but more igno- 
 ble possibilities which still remain, slide 
 away unheeded. And amongst these 
 "others" was the Independent minister of 
 Dimplethorpe. 
 
 But after all, as success goes, or as other 
 people count it in this world, he had fared
 
 32 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 no worse than many men. This was his 
 history : — 
 
 His mother was a widow, and he was her 
 only child. When her husband, who was 
 also a minister amongst the Independents, 
 died, she brought her boy to London and 
 settled in a quiet street near the Kensington 
 Art Schools, and took in lodgers. The first 
 who came to her was one of the masters in 
 those schools, and so well she behaved to 
 him, and so comfortable she made him, that 
 he never left her again ; but when he mar- 
 ried he brought his bride to her, and there 
 they had lived ever since. 
 
 He would have repaid to William Fergu- 
 son some of the kindness he had received 
 from the lad's mother. William had a taste 
 for drawing, and was going to the art classes 
 of an evening. Mr. Evans — that was the 
 master's name — thought he discerned in the 
 youth a talent which was worth cultivating,
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 33 
 
 and he would fain have persuaded his 
 mother to let him be brought up an artist. 
 But Mrs. Ferguson had one desire in life, 
 and that was to see her only son what his 
 father had been before him, a minister 
 amongst the Independents. It was a work 
 which her husband had found sweet and 
 congenial. It had brought him many 
 friends. In it she hoped he had done 
 much good. What better could William do 
 than follow in his father's footsteps ? 
 
 And indeed it seemed as if he was 
 marked out for that, as much as for any- 
 thing else. He was quiet, studious, perse- 
 vering. His mind was full of thoughts and 
 questionings. He was much given to specu- 
 lations in theology and philosophy. He 
 would argue with people by the hour to- 
 gether on the topics which were agitating 
 his own denomination in those days. These 
 were indications, Mrs. Ferguson thought, 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 DIMPLETHOKPE. 
 
 providentially leading him into the path of 
 the ministry. 
 
 On the other hand, he was getting on 
 well with his studies at the School of Art. 
 He never seemed to be so happy as when 
 shut up in his own little room at the top of 
 the house, copying, with pre-Raphaelite 
 accuracy, a spray of blackberry, or the rich 
 clusters of fruit and flowers which he picked 
 up in Covent Garden Market. And so 
 much of cloud and sky as he could see from 
 his dormer window in that little room, 
 above the long rows of chimney-stacks, was 
 a joy and delight to him, more even than 
 theological studies or philosophical specula- 
 tions. This, Mr. Evans thought, pointed to 
 another path than the ministry. 
 
 However, the time came when the thing 
 must be decided one way or other, and 
 accident decided it, as accident decides, or 
 seems to decide, so many things which go
 
 D1MPLETH0RPE. 35 
 
 to the making or marring of men's lives. 
 For a friend of Mrs. Ferguson's came to 
 the house, and she told him of her difficul- 
 ties, and he advised her to write to the 
 Principal of one of the Independent Col- 
 leges. And the Principal happened to be 
 passing through London just at that time, 
 and had a talk with young Ferguson, the 
 result of which talk was that his mother 
 decided to send him to Walnut College as 
 a theological student. Probably, if the 
 head master of the School of Art had hap- 
 pened to call instead, and have a talk with 
 William, the result would have been entirely 
 different, as William himself said to his 
 mother, not feeling quite sure about the 
 matter in his own mind. But his mother 
 said these things did not go by chance. 
 And, with just a pang as he looked his last 
 upon the little room where he had copied 
 the blackberries and lilies, William Ferguson 
 
 d 2
 
 36 DIMPLETHOKPE. 
 
 started to commence his training for the 
 ministry. 
 
 And really it did seem as if the right 
 path had been chosen for him. He applied 
 himself with such success to every subject 
 required, and built up such a reputation for 
 steadiness, originality, and perseverance, 
 that when the Dimplethorpe minister fell 
 ill. and the Dimplethorpe deacons wrote to 
 the Principal of Walnut College, asking 
 him to send down a young man, to act 
 for a few Sundays, until poor Mr. Miller 
 made up his mind whether he would get 
 better or die, William Ferguson, who had 
 just then completed a three years' course of 
 divinity, was sent to the vacant post, the 
 professors, one and all, saying there was no 
 one else in the college whom they could so 
 confidently recommend, as possessing at 
 once the talent and self-respect needed for 
 such a position.
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 37 
 
 So he went. Two or three months later 
 Mr. Miller died. The congregation liked 
 Mr. Ferguson so well that they offered him 
 the vacant pulpit. After due consultation 
 with his friends and the professors, he ac- 
 cepted it, everyone saying what a fine open- 
 ing it was for him. Most young men, they 
 remarked, had to wait for years before they 
 found themselves settled over a suitable con- 
 gregation; andherewas he, at two and twenty, 
 with a place prepared for him, and success 
 assured, if he only w T ent on as he had begun. 
 If Mrs. Ferguson wanted any other assur- 
 ance that she had chosen the right path for 
 her son, she had it now, and, with tears in 
 her eyes, she thanked God for all His good- 
 ness to them both. 
 
 William took to the old minister's house 
 next door to the chapel, standing a little 
 way back from the street. It had a big 
 rambling garden behind, stretching down to
 
 38 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 the moat which surrounded the ruins of the 
 castle, and from that the place took its 
 name of the Moat House. It was the very 
 house for a young man who wanted to be 
 much alone, to think and reflect, and shape 
 out plans and purposes for the future ; and 
 in it William might have lived a comfort- 
 able life enough, preparing his sermons in 
 the roomy old study at the back, with its 
 big bow-window opening into the some- 
 what untidy garden ; or pacing up and down 
 the path by the moat-side, where the daffo- 
 dils and flag-flowers made such a golden 
 splendour in springtime ; or perhaps doing 
 a bit of sketching now and then, for his 
 early tastes still clung to him, and the pleas- 
 ant woodland beauty of Dimplethorpe gave 
 him better subjects for a picture than even 
 Covent Garden could afford. And there the 
 future might have unfolded itself at leisure, 
 and what the young student had to say
 
 DIMPLETHOKPE. 39 
 
 might have been said to purpose, when it 
 had had time to ripen in the sunshine of re- 
 flection. 
 
 But the congregation were unanimous in 
 their opinion about one thing. They said it 
 was a shame their minister should occupy a 
 house like that, all by himself, and spend 
 so much time mooning up and down that 
 reedy path by the moat-side, as he would be 
 sure to spend if he had no one to shake 
 him up. He ought to marry. That was 
 just what he ought to do. 
 
 It was old Deacon Poison who said this 
 to him first. And, as Deacon Poison had 
 neither chick nor child belonmn^ to him, 
 he could not be suspected of sinister motives 
 in saying it. There were two ways of 
 marrying a wife, the old deacon said. The 
 first way was to be quite sure that a wife 
 was a good thing, and that you wanted 
 one ; and then to look about, steadily and
 
 40 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 industriously, until you found the right one, 
 making up your mind beforehand as to the 
 qualities which were necessary in the lady. 
 Those qualities were religion, good temper, 
 health, and an active disposition. If in 
 addition the lady had good looks and a 
 little money, all the better ; but if not, and 
 she had the other qualities, it would be wise 
 to secure her. 
 
 The second way was to devote yourself 
 to your work, and think nothing about 
 matrimony, until you drifted into it by 
 accident. Of course, in that case it zvas an 
 accident, and, whether you were happy in 
 it or not, was an accident too. Whereas, in 
 the other case, you had had your own 
 reason to guide you, unfettered, to begin 
 with, by partialities of any kind, and there- 
 fore you were much more likely to make a 
 suitable choice. And if, as Mr. Ferguson 
 admitted, he had no partialities at the
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 41 
 
 present time, he was, by all good logic, in 
 precisely the right state of mind to do well 
 for himself, common sense having room to 
 work, as it seldom had in such cases. 
 
 Deacon Poison said this as they sat to- 
 gether in that bow-windowed study, Wil- 
 liam Ferguson watching the white clouds 
 drift past behind the ruins of the castle 
 keep, and wishing that his duties as pastor 
 of the Dimplethorpe congregation would 
 allow him a little more time for painting 
 pictures in oil, to say nothing of those other 
 pictures which a young man naturally likes 
 to paint upon the canvas of the future, and 
 from which gleams out the sweet face, be it 
 fair or be it dark, of 
 
 '•'That not impossible she, 
 Who shall command my heart and me." 
 
 He was rather given to following the 
 guidance of other people in matters that 
 touched his own daily life. Otherwise, Mrs.
 
 42 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 Ferguson and the Principal of Walnut Col- 
 lege would not have had so much weight in 
 deciding the course of that life. And, 
 having begun to let other people decide for 
 him, it was easy to go on, so long as he 
 kept what, after all, was his real true life, 
 that interior one of thought and speculation, 
 free. It would, perhaps, be better, for the 
 sake of the congregation, that he should 
 marry. It would save him at any rate 
 from many little annoyances which beset 
 the path of a single and eligible man, and it 
 would increase his opportunities of useful- 
 ness amongst the people. 
 
 Having been brought into that frame of 
 mind, it was easy to dwell in imagination 
 upon first one young lady and then another, 
 who might turn out to be the wife for him, 
 though as yet he had no special preference. 
 And that stage being reached, and old 
 Deacon Poison representing to him now
 
 DIMPLBTHOEPE. 43 
 
 and then the advantages of the first theory 
 of matrimony, the looking steadily for a 
 wife until you found one, it was easier still, 
 when one particular young lady crossed his 
 path more frequently than the rest, to think 
 about her as the companion destined by a 
 disposing Providence to advance his useful- 
 ness in that state of life to which he had 
 been appointed. 
 
 That young lady happened to be Miss 
 Priscilla Cardwell, only daughter of a 
 widow in the congregation. And as Pris- 
 cilla herself was quite ready to be thought 
 about, there were no difficulties to be over- 
 come in that direction. She was a brisk, 
 active, practical, wide-awake young lady, 
 considerably more wide-awake than the 
 minister, and troubled with none of that 
 maidenly hesitation which stays the foot- 
 steps of girls sometimes as they near the 
 shoals and quicksands of womanhood. She
 
 44 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 meant to be married some time, of course 
 
 and to be a minister's wife was her ideal of 
 such importance as was likely to fall to her 
 lot. Besides, she did feel a little drawn to 
 Mr. Ferguson, as very practical natures 
 sometimes do towards those of more medi- 
 tative mould ; and the thought of winning 
 his affection and marrying him, and then 
 looking after him and keeping him straight 
 in a general way, presented itself to her 
 with just as much of romance as was neces- 
 sary to smooth over the rigid outlines of 
 her character, and make her appear suffi- 
 ciently feminine in the eyes of a man who, 
 whatever else he needed in a wife, would 
 certainly think of her primarily as some- 
 thing to be loved and taken care of. 
 
 So the end of it was that, within a year 
 of his settlement at Dimplethorpe, there 
 was a somewhat fussy wedding from Mrs. 
 €ardwell's house, after which Mr. and Mrs.
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 45 
 
 William James Ferguson went to the sea- 
 side for a fortnight. And during their 
 absence Mrs. Card well, who was quite as 
 practical and energetic as her daughter, 
 took possession of the Moat House, and 
 superintended the doing of it up from top 
 to bottom, Mrs. Ferguson senior not appar- 
 ently taking so much interest in her son's 
 domestic arrangements as might have been 
 expected. 
 
 Indeed, Mrs. Cardwell said to her niece r 
 Mrs. Tholthorpe, Priscilla's bosom friend, 
 and herself married to a minister up in the 
 north, she believed, if Mrs. Ferguson could 
 have had her own way, that wedding would 
 never have happened at all. For she w r as 
 rather a high-minded old lady, and wanted 
 something out of the common way for her 
 son ; and had even advised him, when she 
 heard that there was a probability of his 
 becoming engaged, to wait a few years until
 
 46 DIMPLETHQRPE. 
 
 , his opinions had had time to mature. 
 Young men, she said, sometimes made 
 great mistakes by committing themselves to 
 engagements before they really knew their 
 own minds, and then, when it was too late, 
 they were unable to draw back. 
 
 Sly, designing old woman ! But Mrs. 
 Cardwell knew what it all meant. She 
 wanted to come and keep house for Mr. 
 Ferguson herself, and have a sort of posi- 
 tion in the place, instead of slaving with 
 lodgers in one of those dreary London back 
 streets. However, Priscilla's mother had 
 been too many for her. As if a marriage 
 of the purest affection, as her daughter's and 
 William James's was, should be set aside in 
 order that the young man might have time to 
 look about him, and pick up some one with 
 a fortune, some one who had connections, 
 and, therefore, could help him on a little
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 47 
 
 more in a worldly point of view. Such 
 meanness ! 
 
 And on the very Sunday morning on 
 which Priscilla, in all the splendour of 
 bridal raiment, made her appearance in the 
 minister's pew as the minister's wife, Mrs. 
 Cardwell said to her, 
 
 " Now, Priscilla, my dear, I wish you to 
 behave with the utmost respect to your 
 mother-in-law, but, at the same time, you 
 must remember that, if she could have had 
 her own way, you would never have been 
 William James's wife. Bear that in mind, 
 and hold your own. I have no wish to see 
 a daughter of mine trodden upon by her 
 husband's relations." 
 
 With which excellent piece of parental 
 advice young Mrs. Ferguson commenced her 
 married life.
 
 48 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A ND she was a good wife, too, if careful 
 -*--*- housekeeping had been all that a hus- 
 band like William Ferguson needed. For 
 there was no place in the village — Dirnple- 
 thorpe was always called a village now, spite 
 of the " Gazetteer " — more spotlessly clean 
 than that old house next door to the chapel, 
 nor any blinds that drew up so straight as 
 Mrs. Ferguson's, nor any curtains that fell 
 in such perpendicular lines, nor any grates 
 so black, nor fire-aprons so white, nor any 
 chimneys so carefully stopped up from de- 
 scent of soot or fresh air, nor any family 
 where order ruled with such a rod of iron,
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 49 
 
 and where everything and everybody, in- 
 cluding the husband himself, found it ex- 
 pedient to submit with such unquestioning 
 obedience to the managing genius of the 
 establishment. 
 
 Yes, a capital minister's wife, said those 
 who could not see just where the shoe 
 pinched. Mr. Ferguson might have sought 
 far and wide before he had found anyone 
 so completely fitted in every way to advance 
 his interests. Always looking after some- 
 thing, either her house, or her husband, or 
 her children, or her servants, or the mem- 
 bers of the congregation. Indeed, in the 
 last department, she was a wonderful help- 
 meet for her husband, he being, poor dear 
 man, with all his good qualities, not much 
 of a visitor, partly, perhaps, on account of 
 his intellectual capacities, which the Dimple- 
 thorpe Independents had found out to be 
 of a decidedly superior order, in fact almost 
 
 VOL. T. E
 
 50 DIMPLETHOKPE. 
 
 beyond their own powers of appreciation, 
 though, for that very reason, they had a sort 
 of pride in having such a man amongst 
 them. 
 
 Really he was almost too clever. Always 
 taken up with speculations and new books. 
 Mrs. Cardwell said, if he had not been 
 blessed with such a wife as Priscilla, there 
 was no telling what might have become of 
 them all. For before Mr. Ferguson had 
 been married eight years, he found himself 
 the father of five daughters, the youngest 
 twins, and all of them as bright, happy, good- 
 looking little people—Audrey, the eldest, 
 perhaps excepted — as anyone need wish to 
 see, but requiring a vast amount of manage- 
 ment on their mother's part to keep them 
 properly fed and clothed, to say nothing of 
 any provision for the future, out of the 
 modest stipend which had seemed so abund-
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 51 
 
 ant when the young couple first set up 
 housekeeping. 
 
 Mr. Femuson toiled hard at his sermons. 
 
 D 
 
 He also made a few ineffectual attempts at 
 writing for the magazines. But he said 
 nothing to anybody, not even to Mr. Poison, 
 the wealthiest and most despotic of his 
 deacons, about the difficulty which he found 
 in making both ends meet. He had been 
 very foolish. He was feeling that now, in 
 more ways than one. Priscilla was not a 
 woman who wanted loving and carino; for. 
 Still less was she a woman who could 
 sympathise with philosophy and picture- 
 painting. He was a great deal more lonely 
 now than he had been before he was mar- 
 ried, because then he could ramble about 
 in the garden, and think his own thoughts, 
 whereas now he had to think the thoughts 
 of his wife, and those thoughts turned upon 
 
 e 2 
 
 UNWERSITY OF HUNOIS
 
 52 DIMPIETHORPE. 
 
 nothing but how to manage the family and 
 the congregation. 
 
 The family, on a hundred and fifty pounds 
 a year, was the great difficulty. Mr. Fer- 
 guson was a great deal too proud to say 
 anything about that, but Priscilla had no 
 such foolish scruples. She mentioned the 
 subject over and over again, and mentioned 
 it in the right quarters, too, with such tact 
 and prudence that, at a church meeting 
 which was held nine years after Mr. Fer- 
 guson's settlement over the congregation, 
 his stipend was increased by fifty pounds, 
 bringing it up to exactly two hundred a 
 year, not too much, the deacons thought, 
 for a clever man with a wife and five 
 gro wing-up children. 
 
 That extra fifty pounds a year released 
 Priscilla's shoulders from many a burden, 
 but it added others, heavier to bear, to the 
 sensitive mind of her husband. For when
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 53 
 
 a congregation has done that sort of thing 
 for its pastor, it naturally expects to be 
 called upon, and petted, and paid attention 
 to in return. And that was the hardest 
 work of all for Mr. Ferguson. He never 
 had been active in visiting his flock, except 
 the poor, and sick, and needy members of 
 it. He could preach subtle and speculative 
 sermons. He could be gentle with those in 
 distress, and faithful with those who were 
 falling into sin. People said that, when he 
 baptised their little children, he held them 
 in his arms with more than a mother's ten- 
 derness, and his grey eyes bent over them 
 with looks of untold love and pity. And 
 for those who were mourning their dead, 
 where was there anyone who could comfort 
 them like Mr. Ferguson ? But, taken gener- 
 ally, he was not what they could call a 
 good visitor. He could not drop in and take 
 a cisar and have a comfortable chat about
 
 54 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 church affairs. He showed no particular 
 interest in the price Mr. Tewksby of the 
 Moat Farm was likely to get for his corn at 
 the next Crockingford fair, and it was evi- 
 dently a matter of quite minor importance 
 to him whether Mrs. Tewksby sent her 
 chickens to London at three and tenpence 
 a couple, or whether those miserly poultry 
 dealers beat her down, as they so often 
 tried to do, to a guinea a dozen. Of 
 course that sort of thing vexed unimagina- 
 tive people, for whom the buyings and sell- 
 ings of their own daily lives were all im- 
 portant. If a minister out of the pulpit had 
 no interest in corn, bullocks, and poultry, 
 what use was he to the agricultural part of 
 his congregation ? And if he never trou- 
 bled himself about how shares were going 
 up or down, what communion of spirit could 
 a man like Deacon Poison, however much 
 he wished it, hold with him ? The thing
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 55 
 
 was clearly impossible. And the fact that 
 he did know every week exactly how much 
 poor old Betsy Clershaw got for her butter 
 and eggs, Betsy who never gave a threepenny 
 bit to the collections, and that he could have 
 told you to a penny what blind old Jack 
 Hardy earned in a day at basket-making, 
 only made the case worse against him, for it 
 showed that he had a mind for such things 
 when he chose. 
 
 No, Mr. Ferguson was not a good visitor. 
 Mr. Poison himself, than whom no one ex- 
 pected, or had a right to, more attention from 
 the minister, had been for weeks together 
 unblessed by that minister's presence, save as 
 he had obtained it by an express invitation 
 to tea or supper. Mr. and Mrs. Tewksby 
 of the Moat Farm — though Mr. Tewksby 
 might, if he had chosen it, have been parish 
 churchwarden any time these ten years past, 
 and only was not because he liked an active,
 
 56 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 stirring ministry, such as they got amongst 
 the Independents — had not seen Mr. Fergu- 
 son inside his doors for the last three 
 months, and he was beginning to speak his 
 mind about it pretty freely. And not only 
 about that, but about the sermons too. 
 For Mr. Ferguson was too much upon, 
 speculations. What he, Mr. Tewksby, 
 wanted, was an active, stirring ministry and 
 an anecdotal style, whereas Mr. Ferguson, 
 from one year's end to another, never told 
 his congregation an anecdote at all, and that 
 made his preaching fall flat. If one could 
 not get that sort of thing amongst the Inde- 
 pendents, one might as well go to the 
 church and be a parish warden at once. 
 There would be a sort of dignity in that. 
 
 Only Mrs. Tewksby clung to the chapel. 
 For she liked a front pew, and to be shown 
 into it with proper respect, and to have the 
 officiating deacon leave his place at the
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 57 
 
 table and come out to show her the hymn, 
 if, as was sometimes the case, she failed 
 to catch the number. She might fail to 
 catch the number often enough at church 
 before anyone would do as much for her 
 there. And her cough might be as trouble- 
 some as it liked, even to the extent of 
 compelling her to get up and go out of 
 church altogether, before the clergyman's 
 wife would think of calling next day to 
 inquire after her, as Mrs. Ferguson always 
 did, if she had a worse fit than usual. That 
 calling kept Mrs. Tewksby faithful. Else 
 there was no saying what might have hap- 
 pened. But indeed, unless the minister 
 stirred himself up, and attended to his 
 pastoral duties a little more diligently, there 
 was no telling, even with all his wife's sup- 
 plementary offices, what might happen.
 
 58 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 jl/TRS. FERGUSON used to talk these 
 -L"J*- matters over with her husband some- 
 times of an evening, after the younger chil- 
 dren had gone to bed, and Audrey amused 
 herself with a pencil and paper in some 
 quiet corner of the room. And, as she said 
 it, she would fling back her cap-strings with 
 an impatient gesture which had become 
 habitual since the sense of Mr. Ferguson's 
 pastoral shortcomings had dawned upon 
 her ; and then she would renew her attack 
 upon a seemingly impregnable fortress of 
 little socks and pinafores, for with five 
 children, and four out of the five blessed
 
 DIMPLETHORPK. 59 
 
 with any amount of health and spirits, it 
 was as much as one pair of hands could do 
 to keep the mending in check. 
 
 Sometimes her husband, in a jesting man- 
 ner, which, under the circumstances, was 
 little short of insult, would compare this 
 fortification of socks and pinafores and 
 petticoats to the walls and towers of Troy, 
 and Mrs. Ferguson's efforts to those of the 
 Greeks under Achilles. Mrs. Ferguson had 
 never heard of the siege of Troy, nor how 
 it ended, nor why it was undertaken ; but 
 that her long, patient hours of darning and 
 mending could be looked upon with other 
 than the silent respect which they so richly 
 deserved, was, to say the least of it, aggra- 
 vating. 
 
 "Yes, it is all very well for you, William 
 James, when you have nothing to do from 
 morning to night but saunter about and 
 amuse yourself."
 
 60 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 This was aggravating, too, as be bad been 
 nearly the whole of that day trying to 
 tone down a rather speculative sermon, so 
 as to make it coincide with the practical 
 tendencies of his congregation. But he said 
 nothing. Mr. Ferguson had got into the 
 habit of saying nothing now, and his wife 
 went on. 
 
 "Yes, nothing to do but saunter about 
 and amuse yourself; but I do say it is too 
 bad of you to pour ridicule on those who 
 try to employ their time to a little more 
 profit. I should like to see where the poor 
 children would be, if I took things as easily 
 as you take them." 
 
 " My dear, I was not ridiculing you. 
 Nothing was farther than that from my 
 thoughts. I only meant to say that your 
 efforts to reduce that pile of unmended 
 articles resembled those of the ancient 
 Greeks on the Trojan plains. They appear-
 
 DIMPLETHOKPE. 6 1 
 
 ed hopeless, but, in the end, indomitable 
 skill and bravery carried the day. And I 
 have no doubt it will be so with you." 
 
 "Then, William James, I wish you would 
 say what you mean, so that I could not 
 misunderstand you. I am happy to say 
 that I was never brought up to know any- 
 thing about Troy, but only to make myself 
 useful in a house, which I do to the best of 
 my ability." 
 
 " Nobody more so, Priscilla." 
 
 Priscilla was not quite sure how to take 
 that. It might be uttered in the spirit of 
 humility, or again, it might only be that 
 nasty teasing way which her husband had. 
 Probably it was only the teasing way, and 
 William James must be put down. If a 
 woman who did her duty to her family 
 could not speak her mind, it was a pity. 
 
 " Yes, William James," she said, with 
 dignity, " it is done to the best of my ability,
 
 €2 DIMPLETHOKPE. 
 
 and it is a good thing for the children that 
 I am able to do it, for I am sure, with your 
 going about so little amongst the congrega- 
 tion now, there is no telling what may 
 happen to us before long." 
 
 " Priscilla, sufficient unto the day is the 
 evil thereof." 
 
 "Sufficient? Yes, I should say it was 
 more than sufficient, especially when you 
 have to manage everything and think for 
 everybody. There never was a man with 
 better prospects than you had, William 
 James, when we were first married. The 
 congregation would have done anything 
 in the world for you, if you had only 
 humoured them a little." 
 
 " My dear, it is not what the congregation 
 does for the minister, it is what the minister 
 can do for his congregation ; that is the im- 
 portant question." 
 
 " Begging your pardon, William James,
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 63 
 
 it is nothing of the sort. You are bound 
 to act so that the congregation shall respect 
 and uphold you." 
 
 "I am bound to act as an honest man, 
 Priscilla." 
 
 u Of course you are ; and you are bound 
 to earn a comfortable living for your wife 
 and children by doing so. If you had spent 
 half the time in visiting that you spend in 
 painting those foolish pictures, it would 
 have been a hundred a year, and not fifty, 
 that the congregation would have raised us, 
 and then think how differently we might 
 have lived." 
 
 " I neither have, nor ask, nor want," said 
 the minister. 
 
 "No," replied his wife; "and if you 
 could live upon neither having, nor asking, 
 nor wanting, it would be all very well to 
 leave things in that way. But when it 
 comes to five children under eight years
 
 64 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 old, and the income only two hundred, and 
 expenses increasing as they do every year, 
 you are not likely to have much unless you 
 do ask a little more industriously than you 
 have been doing lately. And as for want- 
 ing, you may not, but I am sure the children 
 will before long." 
 
 And, having thus demolished her hus- 
 band's position, Mrs. Ferguson hurled down 
 another of the battlements of Troy in the 
 shape of a little pinafore, which she ener- 
 getically turned inside out, shook, held up 
 to the light, folded, and then consigned 
 to the basket of completed articles. 
 
 "I don't want to be unreasonable, Wil- 
 liam James," she continued, "but a woman 
 has her feelings about things, especially 
 when she is the mother of a family." 
 
 "My dear, what can I do?" said Mr. 
 Ferguson, helplessly. 
 
 "Do? Why, you might make yourself
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 65 
 
 more generally acceptable amongst the 
 members. There are some of the leading 
 people that haven't seen you inside their 
 doors for a month past. Mr. Tewksby, for 
 instance." 
 
 "Priscilla, why should I put myself out 
 of the way to go and see Mr. Tewksby? 
 He is rich and increased with goods, and 
 has need of nothing ; certainly not of my 
 company. Have I neglected any of the 
 members who are poor or in trouble ?" 
 
 Mrs. Ferguson shook herself impatiently, 
 and bustled to the window to straighten the 
 blinds, upsetting Audrey on her way, who 
 meekly picked herself up and went into 
 a more retired corner. Then Mrs. Ferguson 
 began to re-arrange the fire-irons, a favour- 
 ite occupation when anything put her out, 
 for she could make as much noise over it as 
 she pleased. What could one do with a 
 man who was so utterly devoid of common 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 D1MPLETH0RPE. 
 
 sense that he only went amongst his people 
 when they were poor or in trouble ? 
 
 After a great deal of unnecessary rattling 
 she seated herself, gave her capstrings a 
 fling, and pursued her work in dignified 
 silence, a hint to her husband that he might 
 consider the conversation at an end. 
 
 He took it as such. With a sigh that 
 was more aggravating in its hopelessness 
 than anything he could have said by way of 
 contradiction, he got up, stretched himself, 
 and walked wearily out of the room, say- 
 ing, as he passed the meek little girl, who 
 was huddled up in the corner with her 
 pencil and paper, 
 
 " Come along, Audrey !"
 
 67 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 |~E put the. child's hat on and took her 
 -*-X f or a wa lk amongst the osier flats on 
 the lower side of the village. 
 
 Very few people ever went there at all, 
 and that was the reason Mr. Ferguson went 
 so often, for he could stroll up and down 
 with his hands behind him, and meditate as 
 long as he liked, without fear of meeting 
 anybody except the basketmakers who were 
 gathering osiers. Whilst he meditated, 
 Audrey would ramble about amongst the 
 long grass, gathering bunches of Lent lilies, 
 if it was the season for them, and, if not, 
 
 f 2
 
 68 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 watching the osier-gatherers as they worked 
 away amongst the silver willows. For 
 what trade lingered at all in the place now 
 was that of basket-making, the fisher-people 
 on the east coast getting most of their crab 
 and lobster-pots from Dimplethorpe. 
 
 This evening, towards the middle of a 
 cool May, there were plenty of daffodils, 
 and not many osier-boys, their work being 
 done better in the morning ; so little Andre}' 
 was soon wading about to her heart's con- 
 tent, knee-deep amongst the golden blos- 
 soms, whilst her father, his hands loosely 
 folded behind him as usual, w T as trying to 
 forget, in some train of speculative inquiry, 
 the vexing and not impertinent questions 
 which his wife had just been raising. 
 
 As he strolled along he caught sight of 
 a lad, squatted down with his back to an 
 old willow stump, apparently absorbed in 
 reading ; and, as he came nearer, he found
 
 DIMPLETIIORFE. 69 
 
 that it was Phil Hathaway, the grandson of 
 old Ben Hathaway the basket-maker. 
 
 Mr. Ferguson had never spoken to Phil, 
 but he knew the lad well enough, for he 
 had seen him many a time in the early 
 mornings gathering osiers amongst the daffo- 
 dil beds. And not gathering them very 
 industriously either; for if there chanced to 
 be a stormier sky than usual, or if the white 
 clouds were drifting in fantastic wreaths 
 before the west wind, or if the early morn- 
 ing sunshine were bathing in its pale golden 
 haze the distant hills of Warrenshire, Phil 
 would stand for a quarter of an hour to- 
 gether with his back to that willow stump, 
 his face towards the rugged old castle keep, 
 the osiers dropping from his hands. And 
 then he would pull a bit of paper out of 
 his pocket and stoop down over it, as if 
 writing. 
 
 Poetry maybe, for it was possible the lad
 
 70 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 thought himself a genius. He was untidy 
 enough for one, at any rate ; for though, in 
 a general way, Phil kept his face and hands 
 clean, his clothes looked as if they had been 
 pitchforked on to him, and, whatever else 
 the village barber made a profit by, he cer- 
 tainly did not make it by cutting Phil's 
 hair. And Phil thought he had a talent 
 for writing, did he ? Mr. Ferguson was 
 sorry for him. Better keep to the willow 
 wands and turn them into good useful 
 lobster-pots, than follow the will-o'-the- 
 wisp of literature, which would only land 
 him in a swamp and leave him there. Mr. 
 Ferguson had piles of returned magazine 
 articles lying in his own desk at home, and 
 he knew only too well how that sort of 
 thing generally turns out ; a little hope, a 
 great deal of disappointment ; foolish pride if 
 one thing out of fifty proves a success, weari-
 
 DI1IPLETH0RPE. 71 
 
 ness and dejection over the forty and nine 
 upon which such waste of paper and pocket- 
 money have been spent. And he determined 
 to find out the lad and tell him what he 
 knew. 
 
 Phil was an overgrown boy of thirteen 
 or fourteen. He lived with his grandfather 
 old Ben Hathaway, in a cottage a little way 
 down a lane turning off from the vicarage. 
 When Phil was almost a baby, his father had 
 been found drowned in the moat. Some 
 people said he had done it himself, others 
 said it had been done for him. The jury said 
 it w 7 as accidental, and returned a verdict to 
 that effect. But there was, nevertheless, an 
 uncomfortable feeling about it, so much so 
 that people kept away from that part of the 
 moat on dark nights. Phil's mother took her 
 little boy then to live with his grandfather, 
 and they were all comfortable enough for a
 
 72 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 year or two, until she died, too, and Ben was 
 left to be father and mother and everything 
 to the lad. 
 
 So it was rather a queer upbringing that 
 he had, there in the old basket- maker's cot- 
 tage, and people said that was the reason he 
 never looked like other boys. He had no 
 women folk to pet him, or hear him say his 
 prayers, or to put a bit of white collar round 
 his long neck on Sundays, or to push the 
 straight black hair off his forehead, and look 
 lovingly into the depths of the shy brown 
 eyes which shone through their dark lashes 
 underneath it. And though Phil's grand- 
 father was parish clerk, Phil scarcely ever 
 saw the inside of the church, except when 
 it was being cleaned ; for, owing to the 
 absence of white collar, he never looked 
 tidy enough even to sit with the Sunday- 
 school boys, much less stand up by old Ben's 
 side to make responses in the pew under
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 73 
 
 the pulpit, which was right in front of all the 
 respectable families. So, instead of going to 
 church, Phil used to take an old prayer- 
 book, of which his grandfather, as clerk, 
 always had plenty, and saunter away amongst 
 the osier flats, and draw pictures on the 
 blank leaves of it, just as he was doing that 
 Wednesday evening when Mrs. Ferguson 
 spoke her mind about the congregation 
 being visited more efficiently. 
 
 For when the minister got near enough — 
 and he need not have been afraid of disturb- 
 ing him, for the lad was far too absorbed in 
 his work to hear a footfall on the long 
 green grass — he found Phil making a sketch 
 of the ruined castle, which could be seen 
 from the osier flats, with the big, ragged 
 elm-trees clustered round its keep, on the 
 north side of the moat. 
 
 Not poetry, then. And he had wronged 
 the boy in thinking that at fourteen he was
 
 74 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 hankering after the magazines, instead of 
 pulling willows for his grandfather on the 
 Dimplethorpe marshes. True, it was only 
 a rude attempt, with an end of penny 
 pencil, on the thumbed leaf of an old 
 prayer-book ; but the boy had got the feel- 
 ing of his subject, and was expressing that 
 feeling with an earnestness and power 
 which onlv wanted cruidinsr to become true 
 art. 
 
 Mr. Ferguson forgot about speculative 
 inquiries, and domestic difficulties too, as he 
 watched the lad's efforts. If that boy could 
 but give his life to what he was doing now, 
 instead of wasting it amongst the osier flats. 
 Or if he could only learn enough of art to 
 make it sweeten the daily toil of such a 
 career as lay before him there, amongst the 
 rude village folk of Dimplethorpe. 
 
 Suddenly Phil pushed the hair out of his 
 eyes, and gave himself an impatient shake.
 
 DniPLETHOKPE. (O 
 
 "What's the use? Why can't one make 
 other folks see what one sees oneself?" 
 
 Mr. Ferguson came round in front of the 
 lad and put his hands on his shoulders, and, 
 looking down into his face with a more 
 comforting sense of companionship than he 
 had had with anyone in Dimpiethorpe dur- 
 ing all the ten years of his life there, 
 said, 
 
 " Because, Phil, if we could do that, 
 there would be nothing else to long after." 
 
 Phil looked quietly up now ; he neither 
 started nor seemed astonished. Only there 
 was a quaint smile upon his lips as he 
 said, 
 
 " What for, sir, did you say that to me, 
 as if I had been a gentleman ?" 
 
 " Because I believe you are one, Phil," 
 said the minister. 
 
 And with that he sat down by the boy's 
 side, and they were friends.
 
 7 b DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 He soon found out why Phil got on so 
 badly with the willow-weaving. The lad 
 had the make of an artist in him, not mere- 
 ly in the use of his eyes and fingers, but in 
 that poetical feeling for Nature, that sym- 
 pathy with her in her ever-varying moods, 
 which everyone must have who would win 
 from her what she has to give, and tell it 
 to others either by pen, chisel, brush, or 
 pencil. 
 
 Only he wanted some one to teach him 
 the grammar of this speech. There was 
 the beauty speaking from without to the 
 boy's soul, and he was longing to shape it 
 into actual form, to make other people see 
 what he saw himself. If he could but find 
 his way to that, what a new life would open 
 before him ! What a rest this new gift of 
 speech would be from the drudgery of the 
 mere handicraft which was his inherited 
 portion !
 
 DJMPLETHORPE. 77 
 
 And an idea came into the minister's 
 mind, as he sat talking with Phil amongst 
 the osier and daffodil beds. He would at 
 last be of some use in the world. This talk 
 talk, Sunday after Sunday, this watering 
 down of every noble thought which came 
 to him, to the common-place thinness which 
 his congregation had decided was best for 
 their intellectual digestions, what did it 
 lead to ? What was it all worth ? It 
 brought his wife and children a living, and 
 he must go on with it ; but, for himself, it 
 was a hollowness, if not a lie. He was not 
 telling them great truths in simple words ; 
 that would have been well enough ; but he 
 was telling them no truth at all in fine 
 words, and the finer the words were, the 
 less the people cared to have any truth in 
 them. But here, away from all the windy 
 waste of breath, was at least one good work 
 which he could do. Without taking this boy
 
 78 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 out of the track which he had been born to, 
 and in which he was to find his livelihood, 
 he could at any rate put into his hands the 
 means of brightening all his toil, if not at 
 last of lifting him away from it. 
 
 He would have Phil to his house two or 
 three times a week, and teach him what he 
 knew hi m self of painting. His own tech- 
 nical skill was not much, but his love for 
 art was genuine, and that would help him 
 to help Phil. And if he found that the lad 
 really had not only a gift in that line, but 
 enerofv and perseverance enough to work it 
 out, some way might chance of giving him 
 a definite art-training in London. 
 
 " Have you any drawings at home, 
 Phil?" 
 
 " Yes, sir, a good many." 
 
 " May I come and see them some day?" 
 
 " If you please, sir," said Phil, as quietly 
 as if it had only been bundles of osiers
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 79 
 
 that Mr. Ferguson was inquiring after. 
 
 "When, Phil?" 
 
 "Any time, sir; I'm mostly in all day, 
 after I have gathered the osiers of a morn- 
 ing." 
 
 "Then shall I come to-morrow?" 
 
 "If you please, sir; I'll just tell grand- 
 father first, or he might wonder about it." 
 
 11 All right then, Phil, I'll come to-mor- 
 row." 
 
 And with that Mr. Ferguson came away, 
 feeling more like a man than he had done 
 for many a month past. 
 
 Strange that it never occurred to him to 
 ask himself whether Priscilla would object 
 to Phil's lessons at the Moat House. And 
 even if she had done so, there was probably 
 vigour and determination enough in the 
 heart of him, now that he had really 
 entered into the spirit of his work, to put 
 her back into her right position with the
 
 80 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 same strong hand which he was reaching 
 out to help Phil. 
 
 " Come along, Audrey." 
 
 And the child, who had been gathering 
 daffodils all the time, came up and put her 
 hand into his, and they went home to- 
 gether.
 
 81 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 1VTEXT day Mr. Ferguson, according to 
 -*-* promise, went to see Phil's pictures. 
 
 Old Ben Hathaway's cottage was as pretty 
 in its way as the Manor House. Summer 
 and winter it was green with ivy, but in 
 June time one could scarcely see the 
 greenness for the roses and honeysuckles 
 which contended with each other which 
 should climb highest over its little lattice 
 windows. Ben was admirably adapted for 
 setting off the beauty of his residence, being 
 as ugly an old man as you might find in a 
 summer day's journey. He had shaggy eye- 
 
 VOL. i. G
 
 8 2 DIMPLETHORPE . 
 
 brows, which almost hid the little fiery black 
 eyes underneath, and his front teeth came 
 out like tusks, and he only shaved once in 
 a week, on Saturday evenings, to be ready 
 for church next day. Therefore, this being 
 Thursday, the beardy part of his face — and 
 for Ben that part was nearly the whole of 
 it — presented somewhat the appearance of 
 one of Mrs. Ferguson's half-worn blacklead 
 brushes. At least, that was the idea it first 
 suggested to little Audrey, as, tightly holding 
 her father's hand, and keeping well behind 
 him, the two made their way through the 
 bundles of baskets in all stages of progress, 
 which cumbered the front yard. 
 
 Ben might look dirty, but he was as clean 
 as a new pin, and so was his cottage, though 
 he and Phil had all the scouring of it to do 
 between them, it being one of Ben's cranks 
 that he would not have any " women folk 
 knocking round " about him. Another of
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 83 
 
 his cranks was ventilation. Summer and 
 winter alike, he slept with his bed-room 
 window open, a thing unheard of in Dimple- 
 thorpe, and so entirely beyond the limits of 
 propriety that the villagers never failed to 
 use it as a clinching pin for their arguments, 
 when, as was not unfrequently the case, 
 they wished to prove that Ben "was a bit 
 touched in the upper story." As if any- 
 body in his right senses would ever go to 
 bed without seeing that everything in his 
 house which could fasten was fastened down 
 as tight as bolt and lock and hasp could 
 make it. Not for fear of thieves, thank 
 goodness, they had none of them in Dirnple- 
 thorpe, but just because that was the way 
 things ought to be done. 
 
 From the little kitchen where Ben at- 
 tended to his domestic affairs, a very rickety 
 stair, with no two of its steps exactly of 
 the same height, led into a long low room 
 
 g2
 
 84 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 in the roof, with a window at each of its 
 gable ends. One of these windows looked 
 away over the osier flats to Diinplethorpe 
 Castle, and beyond that to the soft grey 
 sweep of the Warrenshire hills. This was 
 Phil's room, where, when he had done his 
 daily stint of basket-work, he could spend 
 the rest of his time as he liked. 
 
 " You'll find him up there," said Ben, 
 stripping a foam of soap-suds from his hairy 
 arms, to point in the direction of the rickety 
 stairway. " He's mostly up there when he 
 isn't at the willow-peeling. And," he con- 
 tinued, as the minister was groping his way 
 up, " perhaps you'd best take the little one 
 along with you. She'll be kind o' scared 
 down among these here things." 
 
 But Audrey had settled that for herself, 
 being in far too much terror of the old 
 man's shaggy brows and carnivorous-looking 
 teeth to risk remaining downstairs in his sole
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 85 
 
 company. She was scrambling as well as 
 she could after her father, who was now 
 nearly out of sight up the dark rift. His 
 head generally held but one thought at a 
 time, and now that thought was how he 
 could best help Phil up the hill difficulty of 
 art; so that poor little Audrey, toiling up 
 her own special hill difficulty of Ben Hatha- 
 way 's rickety stair, was having a hard time 
 of it. Not until the sound of successive 
 stumbles, and a small piping cry for help 
 reached him, did he remember that he had 
 brought the child with him at all. 
 
 But Phil had heard first, and, running to 
 the top of the stair, he caught sight of a 
 fair little head down amongst the darkness ; 
 then a little hand stretched out for help, 
 which he caught and so brought its owner 
 safe to land. 
 
 u And I have come too," said the tiny 
 maiden, with an inquiring glance towards
 
 86 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 her father to know if she had done ridit. 
 
 o 
 
 " The raan downstairs has such big teeth !" 
 
 And then she deposited her blue sash, 
 which had come off as she scrambled up the 
 stairs, on a bundle of osiers in one corner, 
 and, seating herself on another, she re- 
 mained as still as a mouse all the rest of 
 the time. Even Mrs. Ferguson, who thought 
 less of Audrey than of any of her other chil- 
 dren, was bound to confess that you might 
 always trust Audrey to sit still. She could 
 do that, whatever else she could not do. 
 
 Mr. Ferguson looked over Phil's scraps 
 of drawings, and found promise enough in 
 them to justify the plans he had made for 
 helping the boy. Before he came away, old 
 Ben was called up, Audrey drawing cau- 
 tiously back behind the osiers as the black- 
 ing brush of a face loomed up through the 
 gloom of the stairway, and it was arranged 
 that Phil should go to the ministers house
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 87 
 
 three times a week, for a couple of hours a 
 time, and have such instruction there as the 
 minister could give him. 
 
 " He'll be no worse a basket-maker, Ben," 
 said Mr. Ferguson, tentatively, not being 
 quite sure how the old man might take to 
 such a disposition of his grandson's time — 
 " no worse a basket-maker for knowing how 
 to make a picture. And if he's worth as 
 much as I think he is, you'll get ten times 
 more willow-peeling out of him now than 
 you've ever got before. Will that do ?" 
 
 " Thank you kindly, sir," said the old 
 man ; " I've no doubt but what you're doing 
 a good turn by him. I don't know as he'll 
 ever make much out of yon scraps of paper, 
 as he's always a fidgeting over 'em, but it 
 isn't nothing to me as long as the willows is 
 peeled. It's what he's got to do, is peeling 
 the willows, and when it's done I haven't 
 nothing no more to do with it. But I'm
 
 88 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 obliged to you all the same, sir, every 
 bit." 
 
 " Then you'll let him come, Ben." 
 " Oh, yes, sir, and welcome. It isn't 
 much he can do when the willows is done. 
 I don't ever let him clean up the kitchen, 
 because it's more work he makes than what 
 he does, and it's no odds to me whether he's 
 agate with his pictures up here, or along 
 with you, sir, so long as the osiers is ready. 
 It won't be me, sir, as will complain about 
 anything." 
 
 Phil said not a word, but he was trem- 
 bling all over with joy. It was as if he 
 had suddenly awakened and found the 
 brightest dream he had ever dreamed, a 
 brighter reality. If he had never peeled 
 osiers before with a will, he would do it 
 now. And in that determination, humble 
 as it seemed, Phil made his first step to- 
 wards success.
 
 DDIPLETHORPK. 89 
 
 With a bundle of drawings under his 
 arm, to examine leisurely at home, Mr. 
 Ferguson took his departure, again oblivious 
 of poor little Audrey, who stood there at 
 the top of the stairs, looking down into 
 their apparently bottomless depths of gloom, 
 as Eurydice might have gazed into those of 
 Hades before she made up her mind to 
 follow Orpheus. And the old church clerk 
 looked so very dreadful, and her father was 
 quite out of sight now. Her lip began to 
 tremble. With a brave effort she caught 
 hold of a bunch of osiers, and, planting one 
 small foot on the top of the stair, timidly 
 stretched down the other in search of a 
 landing-place, she knew T not where. Only 
 she must get down somehow. 
 
 " Shall 1 carry you, little girl?" said Phil. 
 
 With the greatest alacrity, Audrey brought 
 the wandering foot up again, and caught 
 hold of Phil instead of the osiers. When
 
 90 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 lie had carried her safely downstairs, she 
 put up her little face to be kissed. Phil did 
 not understand. 
 
 " I want to kiss you, please," she said, 
 standing on tip-toe. And how bonnie she 
 looked, with the sunlight all over her fair 
 hair! Phil just touched his lips with a 
 curl of it, but that was not what Audrey 
 wanted. 
 
 "Please kiss me properly. That is not 
 how papa kisses me." 
 
 Phil did as he was bid, and then, with 
 just one quick glance towards old Ben, who 
 was lumbering down the stairs, Audrey ran 
 after her father. 
 
 Phil found the blue sash when he went 
 back to his pictures, and folded it carefully 
 up. But he never knew what a scolding 
 poor Audrey got from her mother for leav- 
 ing it behind.
 
 91 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 /~\F course Priscilla did object, and that 
 ^-^ vehemently. 
 
 Did William James think she was going 
 to have boys of that kind coming to the 
 house and carrying the dirt upstairs on their 
 boots, and shuffling their feet about on the 
 study carpet? If William James did, he 
 was very much mistaken, for she was going 
 to have nothing of the sort. If Phil Hath- 
 away was so very clever, let the vicar find 
 it out. His grandfather was parish clerk, 
 and, therefore, if he had any talent, the 
 church ought to help it forward, not the
 
 92 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 Ditnplethorpe Independent minister. But 
 she would pass her word for it, the Rev. 
 Mr. Laxby had never so much as given the 
 boy a thought. And no need. Better 
 let him stick to his basket-making, which 
 would at any rate put bread and cheese 
 into his mouth, and keep the shuffling of 
 dirty boots from her study carpet. 
 
 Or if boys of that sort must be put for- 
 ward, let Mr. Ferguson seek them out and 
 find them amongst his own congregation. 
 
 O CO 
 
 There were doubtless enough of them and 
 to spare amongst the poorer members, if he 
 would only try to find them. Old Betsy 
 Clershaw had a grandson who could cut 
 out tissue paper lamp-shades with his thumb 
 nail, to look almost as well as if they had 
 been done with scissors ; that was cleverness 
 and perseverance, if you liked. A boy who 
 always kept himself clean and tidy, and came
 
 PIMPLETHORPE. 93 
 
 to chapel in a nice white collar on Sundays, 
 and would sit quietly on his mother's door- 
 step all through his holiday afternoons, cut- 
 ting tissue paper into pretty patterns with 
 his thumb nail, instead of roaming about at 
 a loose end with the ragged village lads, 
 really deserved encouraging, and if William 
 James would have taken him up, it would 
 have been a stone in the other pocket 
 against his shortcomings in the way of visit- 
 ing about amongst the richer members of 
 the congregation. Though she would not 
 have seen Reuben Clershaw, tidy as he was 
 in a general way, coming to the house in 
 his thick boots and treading about on her 
 carpets ; they wore out quickly enough 
 with the wear and tear of five children. 
 But Phil Hathaway, the very pick of the 
 village for looking like a scarecrow. And 
 not in any way connected with the chapel
 
 D4 BIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 either. No, things had not quite come to 
 such a pass as that, she was thankful to 
 say. 
 
 " You can just send word to him, Wil- 
 liam James, and tell him that you have 
 changed your mind. I daresay it won't 
 make any difference to him." 
 
 But who shall even begin to imagine the 
 astonishment of Mrs. Ferguson when her 
 husband quietly told her that he had no 
 intention whatever of changing his mind. 
 
 " Priscilla, I mean to have that boy come 
 to me three afternoons in every week, and 
 stay for a couple of hours each time. You 
 need not say anything, for I have quite 
 made up my mind about it." 
 
 Mrs. Ferguson was thunderstruck. 
 
 Ci I mean to teach him as much as I can 
 of drawing and painting," continued the 
 minister, looking his wife calmly in the face. 
 "And I should like Audrey to be present
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 95 
 
 during the lessons. The child is already 
 fond of her pencil. There is no telling 
 what a resourse it may be to her some 
 day." 
 
 " William James/ And when you have 
 just heard me say that, even if it was old 
 Betsy Clershaw's grandson, I would not 
 allow it." 
 
 " Priscilla, you may say what you like. 
 Phil Hathaway is coming here three times a 
 week." 
 
 "Then, Mr. Ferguson, if I might be 
 allowed to express my opinion- " 
 
 But Mr. Ferguson had gone away. And, 
 with a woman's instinct, his wife felt that 
 she might just as well not go after him. 
 
 They had been married well on to ten 
 years, and never in all that time had she 
 seen such a look of masterhood in his eyes, 
 had she heard such a quiet ring of resolu- 
 tion in his voice.
 
 96 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 To do Mrs. Ferguson credit, she never 
 loved her husband so well as at that mo- 
 ment. She was a sensible woman. She 
 might have been a loveable one, if circum- 
 stances had sent her a partner whose 
 meekness and quietness had not drawn out 
 the opposite elements in her own character. 
 There must be vigour and resolution some- 
 where in a house, and if the recognized 
 head of it does not bring these qualities 
 into play, the weaker vessel must needs 
 supplement his deficiencies, losing, as she 
 does so, the very sweetness which ought to 
 have fostered his love. And then, when the 
 love fails, as fail it almost certainly must, it 
 is a little too hard to blame her. Yet one 
 always does. 
 
 Phil came for his lesson the very next 
 day, Priscilla eating the bread of submission 
 in silence. Sometimes she thought that if 
 ever a woman had a right to speak, that
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 97 
 
 woman was herself, doing so much as she 
 did for her family, and, in looking after their 
 interests, looking also after those of the 
 congregation. But if she ever so much as 
 hinted at the boy ceasing to come, or at the 
 wear and tear which his boots caused to the 
 study carpet, straightway the minister looked 
 at her and said — that was the only subject 
 on which he ever steadfastly asserted his own 
 rights — 
 
 " Priscilla, I have begun with it, and I 
 mean to go through with it. Do not trouble 
 me. It will make no difference." 
 
 That was the beginning of a regular course 
 of instruction for Phil. Audrey was always 
 in the study during the lessons. She used 
 to look on in silence at what he was doing, 
 and, when he had gone, she w r ould pick up 
 any stray piece of paper, and try to copy 
 his pictures. Her father let her do it, not 
 taking much heed of her work, until he saw 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 that it was good of its sort, and then she 
 was allowed to take her place regularly as a 
 pupil. Later on, when Phil began to learn 
 sketching from nature, she used to go with 
 him and her father down to a little bit of 
 ragged sloping ground at the end of the 
 garden, from which there was a pretty view 
 of the castle. 
 
 Phil never began his own work there 
 until he had made a comfortable place for 
 Audrey close to himself, and there the little 
 maiden used to amuse herself with pencil 
 and paper, giving a shy look up now and 
 again into Phil's face, as he stooped down 
 to help her over some difficult part of her 
 lesson. For he was the only one, ex- 
 cept her father, who ever showed her much 
 lovingkindness now, the very fact of those 
 lessons, which she looked forward to so 
 much, being a sort of offence to her mother, 
 who could be crusty to Audrey about them,
 
 DIMPLETHOKPE. 99 
 
 -when she could not relieve herself in any 
 other way. And, in process of time, she 
 came to look upon her eldest daughter as 
 something like old Ben Hathaway himself, 
 a little touched in the upper story. For 
 that any child of hers, brought up under 
 good management, and with such an ex- 
 ample of household industry always before 
 her eyes, should yet care for nothing so much 
 as maundering about with a pencil and a 
 bit of paper, was, to say the least of it, as 
 near an approach to something odd as the 
 church clerk's notions about ventilation and 
 bed-room windows. 
 
 But if William James was bent upon 
 spoiling the girl, he must do it. She had 
 said what she could. 
 
 h 2
 
 100 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SLOWLY those following years dragged 
 on for the minister of Dimplethorpe 
 Independent church. The less interest he 
 felt in the public part of his work — and he 
 certainly was taking less and less interest in 
 that part — the more his mind was turned 
 back upon itself. Month by month the gulf 
 between what he thought, and what he 
 dared openly to express, grew wider. For 
 his people had long ago decided for them- 
 selves what truth was. They had a certain 
 number of doctrinal formulas which they 
 had arranged on their own account, like the
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 101 
 
 bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, and all that 
 they required of their pastor, in the exercise 
 of his pulpit functions, was that he should 
 turn the tube round and round twice every 
 Sunday, and show them the bits of glass in 
 different positions. They measured his skill 
 by the variety which he could produce, or 
 by the different lights which, as he shook 
 the toy, he could cause to fall upon one 
 piece of glass after another. That was their 
 manner of religious teaching. 
 
 But, if he should have ventured to 
 knock out the end of the kaleidoscope alto- 
 gether, and, as its coloured and gilded little 
 stock in trade lay scattered on the ground, 
 incapable of further manipulation, show 
 them God's fair blue sky beyond, what dis- 
 tress and tribulation would have taken hold 
 upon the people ! With what haste would 
 they have picked up the fragments, and 
 hurried with them to the nearest toy-shop,
 
 102 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 and had them re-set, and then have looked 
 about for a showman who would undertake 
 to turn the tube quietly and reverently, and 
 never think of showing them other than it 
 contained. For what could a congregation 
 need more than to have seven pieces of 
 glass presented before them twice every 
 Sunday in infinite varieties and combina- 
 tions ? 
 
 Mr. Ferguson's misery was that for him 
 the kaleidoscope had become no longer all- 
 sufficient. It was amusing sometimes to 
 take it up, and give it a turn, and to watch 
 the quaint shapes and colours. But to 
 make that bit of tin case his entire outlook 
 when there was God's great world of truth 
 to study, that he could no longer do. Yet 
 that was what Deacon Poison and the rest 
 of them asked from him. With nothing 
 more nor less than that would they be 
 content.
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 103 
 
 Then what followed ? He felt more and 
 more the weariness of the life which he was 
 living. Between what he believed to be 
 truth, and what he had bound himself to 
 declare to the people as truth, a deed of 
 legal separation, if not an actual divorce, 
 had been decreed. Man could not join 
 what God had put asunder. 
 
 Sometimes he thought he would give up 
 altogether. Surely there were churches 
 otherwhere, in which he might stand up and 
 repeat God's message as God had given it to 
 him. But, if there were, they did not send 
 him an invitation to their pulpits. And in 
 the meantime there was Priscilla darning 
 away at the everlasting stockings and petti- 
 coats ; and the five children — Audrey now a 
 studious, thoughtful girl, with his own mind 
 and his own tastes — needing to be clothed 
 and fed and educated. And with a nerve- 
 less hand he went on turning the kaleido-
 
 104 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 scope Sunday after Sunday, but turning it 
 slowly and more slowly, until at last the 
 bits of glass would scarcely fall into new 
 positions at all, or fell with a jerk and a 
 rattle which betrayed too much of the 
 machinery. Mr. Ferguson must take care 
 what he was about, or a man with more 
 power of wrist would be sent for. 
 
 This was what Mrs. Ferguson kept saying 
 to him over and over again, only she put it 
 in rather a different manner. She told him 
 that if he did not infuse more life and 
 energy into his sermons, if he did not pre- 
 sent what he had to bring before the people 
 in a more attractive form, they would begin 
 to speak seriously to him about his resigna- 
 tion. Indeed whispers, not exactly about 
 resignation, but something of the sort, had 
 been already heard. Nobody had men- 
 tioned it to her straightforwardly, but, all 
 the same, she knew as well as could be that
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 105 
 
 it had been said. She was not a woman 
 who could be blinded by a little surface 
 politeness on the part of the leading mem- 
 bers, when there was discontent under- 
 neath. And then, what was to become of 
 the children? 
 
 There had been some talk of Audrey 
 going to live with her grandmother Fergu- 
 son, in London. Mrs. Ferguson rarely 
 came to Dimplethorpe, not getting on 
 smoothlv there with her daughter-in-law. 
 but still she had a kindly feeling for the 
 children, especially Audrey, the child being 
 her father over again in appearance and 
 disposition. And Audrey had been sent to 
 London for a month, during which time she 
 had pined and wearied so that her father had 
 had to go and fetch her home again. A 
 pity, Mrs. Ferguson junior said, for she 
 could well have spared her among so 
 many.
 
 106 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 Indeed, Mrs. Ferguson used to complain 
 sometimes to her cousin Tholthorpe that 
 Providence had dealt hardly by her in giving 
 her, as an eldest daughter, a girl who had 
 so little energy or common sense as Audrey, 
 at thirteen, could boast of. What she had 
 done, she did not know, that she should be 
 let down in such a manner. If ever there 
 was a woman who tried to do her duty by 
 her family, she could stand up before the 
 whole congregation, if need be, and say she 
 was that woman. Yet here was Audrey, 
 good for nothing in the house but sewing 
 and mending. She would take things into 
 a corner, away from everyone else, and 
 darn them with patience which Job might 
 have envied ; and for seaming and back 
 stitching she was not to be complained of; 
 but when you had said that, you had said 
 all that could be said. It was Rose Emma, 
 who, at twelve, could take care of the twins,
 
 DIMPLETHOKPE. 107 
 
 and talk to people who happened to call, 
 and go errands for her mother, and 
 sort the clothes for the wash, and bring 
 home a prize regularly every half year 
 from school for something or other. And 
 it was Frances Ann, who, at ten and a half, 
 could be trusted to dust the drawing-room 
 ornaments, or to beat eggs for a pudding 
 without getting them smeared all over the 
 front of her frock, or to lay the cloth neatly 
 for dinner when the maid of all work was 
 busy cleaning. Whereas, if you set Audrey to 
 any of these things, you had to watch her 
 all the time, and, in the end, do it yourself. 
 Which was her father's fault, nothing less 
 than that, for letting her waste her time 
 these four years past with that foolish 
 drawing, when she ought to have been 
 spending every minute she could spare from 
 school over some sort of useful house- 
 work.
 
 108 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 But the drawing lessons were going on 
 
 still, not less a joy and delight to Phil 
 
 than to his master. Phil was doing good 
 
 work now, and to help him in it was the 
 
 element of satisfaction in Mr. Ferguson's 
 
 life. He was still soinsj on with basket- 
 ed o 
 
 making, that being his only means yet of 
 earning a livelihood ; but Mr. Ferguson was 
 casting about in his own mind for some 
 means of getting the lad such a regular art 
 education as should lift him out of that 
 drudgery. When he was not sketching or 
 painting, Phil was making crab and lobster 
 pots with an industry which might have 
 been a lesson to his master. Indeed, often 
 and often, the minister standing at the door 
 of old Ben Hath away 's cottage, and watch- 
 ing the lad's long lithe fingers working in 
 and out so deftly among the osiers, wished 
 he could push with half so much purpose 
 through the daily more wearisome drudgery
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 109 
 
 of his own employment. Phil's cheerfulness 
 and hearty goodwill over the turning of his 
 kaleidoscope, when all the time he was 
 longing to be with his paints and pictures, 
 made Mr. Ferguson ashamed of himself. 
 Only he justified his own want of interest 
 in the profession to which he had devoted 
 himself, by reflecting that the more rapidly, 
 under present circumstances, he turned the 
 theological kaleidoscope, the worse it was 
 really for the people who looked through it. 
 What they needed was to get rid of the toy 
 and look at God's blue heaven instead. He 
 would have shown them that, but they 
 would not. He had done his duty. At 
 least he thought he had. Yet if he could 
 have pulled off his coat and woven lobster- 
 pots with Phil Hathaway, he would have 
 been happy. 
 
 He wanted to get the lad sent to London. 
 He had written to Mr. Evans, who still
 
 110 DIMrLETIIORrE. 
 
 lived with old Mrs. Ferguson, about him, 
 and sent up some of Phil's drawings. Mr. 
 Evans had given a favourable opinion of 
 them, and, what was better still, had fur- 
 nished him with good copies, but lie was 
 Retting bevond his master's training now. 
 
 DO. *> 
 
 Unless he could go to those Art classes at 
 Kensington, and give his whole time and 
 energy to the work, he would have to stop 
 at mediocrity. All that he had already 
 done would be lost, and for his life-work 
 he must still drudge on at the basket- 
 making. 
 
 But how to meet the expense of those 
 Art classes, that was the difficulty. Old 
 General Barnaby, who was taking an inter- 
 est in the boy, had promised to think about 
 it. Mr. Ferguson's mother would be willing 
 to take him into her house, and board and 
 lodge him for nothing, since it was settled
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. Ill 
 
 that Audrey could not live with her; so 
 that, if the clothes and class-fees could be 
 provided, all would be right. The General 
 had not said anything definite yet about 
 what he intended to do, but he was not a 
 man to show friendly feeling and then let it 
 come to nothing. He had had Phil up to 
 the Manor House several times, and seemed 
 to have taken a fancy to the lad. So had 
 Miss Burnaby. She said he had the make 
 of a gentleman in him, spite of his shy, 
 awkward ways and ill-fitting clothes ; and 
 that, to the General's sister, was a great 
 deal better than cleverness, though clever- 
 ness was good enough in its way. 
 
 Perhaps too she had found out that Audrey 
 had the make of a lady in her, for her 
 friendship to the timid girl had gone farther 
 now than the sending of biscuits to her in 
 Mr. Ferguson's pocket. Audrey went every
 
 112 DrMPLETHORPE. 
 
 Saturday afternoon to the Manor House, to 
 have tea, and so far neither the Indian curi- 
 osities nor the old-fashioned English flowers 
 had been any worse for the touch and look 
 of dissent upon them. Indeed Miss Burna- 
 by looked forward to those Saturday after- 
 noons almost as much as Audrey did. There 
 was something so quiet and refined about 
 the girl. She had such pretty ways. She 
 went about with such unconscious grace. 
 Where could she have got it all ? Miss 
 Burnaby said sometimes that she did not 
 believe she belonged to Mrs. Ferguson at 
 all. She must be a changeling, cnly that 
 she was so like her father. 
 
 " But mind, Jack," she used to say to her 
 brother, " it goes no further than Audrey. 
 I am not cjoinsj to ask those others — what 
 do you call them ? Rose Emma, Frances 
 Ann, and the rest." 
 
 "All right, Jane," the old man re-
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 113 
 
 plied. " They can take care of themselves." 
 And so they could. For Mrs. Ferguson 
 
 was proud to say there were no girls in all 
 the congregation who could be compared, 
 for cleverness and management, with her 
 second and third. If only poor Audrey had 
 been like them. 
 
 At last Mr. Ferguson's doubts were set- 
 tled. The General sent to ask him up 
 one evening, and over a quiet cigar in the 
 library it was settled that Phil should go to 
 old Mrs. Ferguson, and attend the art 
 schools, his fees and other necessary ex- 
 penses being provided by the Manor House 
 people. At any rate that was to be done 
 for six months. At the end of that time, if 
 he showed himself really capable of making 
 something out, the General would go on 
 paying for him until he could get afloat. If 
 not, he must just come back to the basket- 
 making. Mr. Ferguson was to write to his 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 mother and Mr. Evans that very night, and, 
 as soon as they could be ready for him, Phil 
 was to go.
 
 115 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 II T R. EVANS did not take long to make 
 -^" up his mind. He had kept his eye on 
 Phil's work keenly enough to know that 
 there was the right sort of stuff in it. He 
 might come at once, the very next day if Mrs. 
 Ferguson could be ready for him. And 
 Mrs. Ferguson could. So that was all 
 settled. 
 
 Mr. Ferguson met the postman and 
 read Mr. Evans' letter as he went home 
 across the osier flats. On his way, he 
 called in at Ben Hath away 's cottage, to 
 tell Phil that he might pack up his things 
 
 i 2
 
 116 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 and be ready to start to-morrow. Then 
 he went up to his study to gather together 
 a few of the boy's drawings, intending to 
 show the letter to his wife at tea-time. 
 
 Priscilla never said anything about Phil. 
 If he happened to be mentioned, she 
 preserved a dignified silence. She had 
 been conquered in that matter, and she 
 submitted with the fortitude of a sensible 
 woman, but she had her feelings about it, 
 nevertheless. Sometimes she might say they 
 almost amounted to bitterness. 
 
 For it was not as if, with that sudden 
 act of independence, William James had 
 at once risen to an appreciation of his 
 duties as head of a family, and acted 
 accordingly, taking the conduct of affairs 
 in his own sphere entirely out of her hands. 
 Then she should have respected him. She 
 could even have gone to the extent of 
 sympathising with him a little about Phil,
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 117 
 
 though she should always have had a 
 private sense of injury respecting the 
 wear of the study carpet. But William 
 was as shiftless and undecided as ever, 
 except on that one point. He left every- 
 thing to her. He let her toil and slave 
 over the house accounts, whilst he was 
 sauntering about with his hands behind 
 him, up and down the garden walks. 
 It was she who had to arrange about 
 the children's schooling, bargain with Miss 
 Hart about taking the three of them at 
 a somewhat lower figure, and letting the 
 music be put in free. In addition she 
 had to be everlastingly calling upon the 
 more important members of the congre- 
 gation, by way of keeping them in a 
 good temper, alas ! a difficult matter now. 
 For, hide it from herself as she would, 
 there was a perceptible difference in the 
 way they behaved to her, and she could
 
 118 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 not talk for five minutes now with Deacon 
 Poison without hearing something which 
 she knew as well as could be meant 
 discontent. 
 
 Not that she ever allowed anyone to say 
 a word to her against her husband. She 
 was too good a wife for that. Let but 
 Deacon Poison, or Mr. Tewksby, or the 
 best and richest of them, give utterance 
 to a single thing which could be actually 
 taken hold of, and they would soon find 
 out what manner of woman they had to 
 deal with. But still she knew, all the 
 same, that something was stirring in their 
 minds, and she knew, too, that her 
 husband did not visit about amongst his 
 congregation so much as he ought to 
 have done, if he meant to keep in good 
 repute with them. And taking this in 
 connection with the great amount of 
 responsibility which he left in her hands,
 
 DIMPLETHORPE . 119 
 
 both as respected household and church 
 matters, she felt that in the privacy of 
 domestic life she had a right to express 
 her opinions pretty freely. 
 
 Of course Mr. Ferguson had been much 
 cheered by that letter from Mr. Evans. 
 His labours now for Phil were going to 
 have a successful ending. Who could tell 
 what the lad might do for himself in 
 London, if he only stuck to work there 
 as vigorously as he had done in Dimple- 
 thorpe? And from the long talk he had 
 with Phil when he went to the cottage 
 to tell him about the letter, he was sure 
 that he would. He had not felt so light 
 at heart for many a day as when he 
 called at the General's house to tell him 
 the good news, and then came briskly 
 home with the letter in his pocket, intend- 
 ing to tell his wife at the first convenient 
 opportunity.
 
 120 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 Mrs. Ferguson had not had by any means 
 so pleasant a time of it that afternoon. In 
 the first place she had been balancing her 
 household accounts, and had found that 
 the expenditure during the last quarter 
 had exceeded the income by several pounds. 
 In the next place, Tennant, the maid of 
 all work, had given warning, for she said 
 the work of the house was more than 
 one pair of hands could do, unless a small 
 girl was kept to help. And what a small 
 girl meant, Mrs. Ferguson knew well 
 enough. You never could tell where the 
 meat went to, nor the bread, nor the drip- 
 ping, nor anything else, when you had a 
 person of that sort in the house. In the 
 third place, she had made the unpleasant 
 discovery, when sorting the clean clothes 
 from the wash, that the sheets and table- 
 cloths were beginning all at once to give 
 way, and where new ones were to come
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 121 
 
 from, with a balance of already several 
 pounds on the wrong side, she should 
 like to know. 
 
 Therefore she was not in the best of 
 tempers as she brought down an armful 
 of small things to mend, and flung them 
 in a heap on the table. Audrey sorted 
 out her share, the stockings, and took 
 them into the bow-window behind the 
 curtain, where she was soon darning away, 
 as was her custom, in silence. You might 
 as well be by yourself any day, Mrs. 
 Ferguson used to say, as have Audrey for 
 company, she had so little to say for 
 herself. 
 
 Mr. Ferguson came in, looking more 
 cheery than usual. Not of course that his 
 wife would sympathise with him about Phil's 
 prospects. If he had told her that Phil 
 was elected President of the Royal Academy, 
 she would not so much as have stirred a
 
 122 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 finger, feeling that from the beginning she 
 had been an injured woman as regarded 
 that affair. Still she might be glad to 
 hear that he was going away, if only on 
 account of the study carpet. 
 
 "Towers and battlements of Troy again, 
 my dear," he said pleasantly, looking at the 
 unmended petticoats and pinafores, over 
 which his wife had been toiling for the last 
 hour and a half. 
 
 It was the very worst thing he could 
 have said. That he even looked cheerful 
 at all, was a crime, considering the state 
 of the balance-sheet ; but that he could 
 jest, and about her labours, too, and that 
 when she had once before informed him 
 that such jesting was not agreeable to her, 
 was rather too much. His words fell 
 like a spark amongst the tinder of angry, 
 impatient thoughts which had been smoul-
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 123- 
 
 dering in her mind all the afternoon. 
 She looked up severely. 
 
 "I think I have told you once before, 
 William James, that I do not understand 
 your allusions. If you want to insult 
 me, do it straightforwardly, and I shall 
 be able to reply. I am not a woman 
 of education, or I could stand up for 
 myself." 
 
 Mr. Ferguson put the letter back into 
 his pocket. 
 
 11 Priscilla, don't be angry. It was nothing 
 but a little harmless raillery." 
 
 "I don't understand raillery either, 
 William James. It takes all the intellect 
 I possess to manage my family properly. 
 And if you do not help me a little more, I 
 shall not be able to go on with that much 
 longer." 
 
 And Mrs. Ferguson flung back her cap-
 
 124 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 strings, which was equivalent to a declaration 
 of war. She had really endured this sort of 
 thing long enough. 
 
 "William James, I do not speak in a 
 spirit of anger. I wish to be reasonable. 
 But there are limits to a man's neglect of his 
 wife and family. I have been going over 
 the accounts this afternoon." 
 
 Mr. Ferguson sat down. He must make 
 up his mind to it now. To retreat, under 
 the circumstances, would have shown a 
 pusillanimous spirit. 
 
 " And I wish to say that I cannot keep 
 things together any longer. I have toiled 
 and slaved for you as few women would 
 have done, and 1 can conscientiously say 
 that I have not had a thought, except how 
 to manage my family and servants." 
 
 Mr. Ferguson could confirm that statement, 
 though he did not say so, for fear of giv- 
 ing further offence. Priscilla's " thoughts "
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 125 
 
 were indeed too exclusively of a domestic 
 character. 
 
 11 It is not what many women can truth- 
 fully declare, William James, but it is time 
 now for me to speak my mind. And I am 
 bound to tell you that, if you intend to go 
 on wasting your time with that young 
 Hathaway as you have been wasting it for 
 the last four years and more, I must give 
 up." 
 
 And Mrs. Ferguson looked fixedly at her 
 husband. She had said it, and she would 
 abide by it, He might assume, if he 
 liked, that very seldom worn air of authority, 
 but it would not affect her again, as it did 
 before. She knew now that he was not 
 capable of carrying it out. To put on the 
 master now and then, and leave your wife 
 to do the rough work, was a mean thing. 
 If William James thought she was going to 
 fall back into the ranks any more, he was
 
 126 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 mistaken. If she fell back at all, it would 
 be to leave him the generalship in every- 
 thing, not that matter of the drawing lessons 
 only; and then she should like to know 
 what would become of the family. 
 
 Mr. Ferguson sighed. 
 
 " Priscilla, what I have done for Phil 
 is the one thing in which I have not wasted 
 anytime." 
 
 " Very well, William James. If you look 
 at it in that light, I have nothing more to 
 say." 
 
 "Neither have I." 
 
 That was a^ravatincr, If a man would 
 only speak, you knew where you had him. At 
 any rate he was sure to expose some little 
 loophole, through which you might aim a 
 dart. But when he would say nothing all, 
 what could you do ? You might as well 
 shoot your arrows into feather beds, for 
 any hurt they could give him. She did
 
 PIMPLETHORPE. 127 
 
 expect that when she let the matter drop in 
 that aggrieved way, he would have come 
 forward like a man. If indeed William 
 James ever could be a man about anything. 
 But she would make one more effort. 
 
 "And Audrey, too, getting into the same 
 shiftless way." 
 
 There was a slight rustle in the bow- 
 window, but Mrs. Ferguson was too much 
 interested in her subject to notice it. 
 
 " Yes, Audrey too. What you are 
 responsible for, in encouraging her to such a 
 waste of time, I do not like to say. At 
 more than thirteen, I would not trust that 
 girl to sweep a room. And as for clear 
 starching and ironing, you might as well set 
 either of the twins to do it. I tremble 
 when I think of that girl's future." 
 
 " Audrey has talent, Priscilla. She will 
 be able to take care of her own future. I 
 intend her to be thoroughly trained in
 
 128 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 drawing. It may be very useful to her 
 some clay, in earning a livelihood for 
 herself." 
 
 "Earn a livelihood she must, goodness 
 knows, William James. But not in that way, 
 if you please." 
 
 " Yes, in that way. She ought to be 
 able to devote most of her time to painting,, 
 and I shall try to let her do so." 
 
 " Begging your pardon, William James r 
 you shall do nothing of the sort. I have not 
 toiled for my family all these years to have 
 matters taken out of my hands in that way. 
 I have spoken to Miss Hart about her, and 
 she is going there as pupil-teacher after the 
 holidays, with music lessons free. If she 
 does not begin to earn a few shillings now, I 
 do not know what is to become of us, and 
 the congregation falling away as it is, owing 
 to your negligence. I am sure I expect 
 every day that the deacons will send a
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 129 
 
 letter, asking for your resignation. And to 
 go on with that boy as you do." 
 
 " I think it is you who are going on with 
 him now, Priscilla ; but ycu need not go on 
 any longer. My mother is willing to give 
 him board and lodging in her house, and 
 General Burnaby will pay his class fees at 
 the Kensington School of Art. He is to go 
 there to-morrow. Make yourself quite 
 easy." 
 
 And with that, the minister went away to 
 his study. He felt he might retreat honour- 
 ably now, though the retreat could scarcely 
 be described as peace with honour. 
 
 When he was gone, Mrs. Ferguson 
 gathered up the mended linen, with intent 
 to carry it away and then make a raid upon 
 the study. She was in that state of mind 
 when even Phil's going away without her 
 being consulted about it was a grievance. 
 
 On the way she stumbled over the cur- 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 tain, behind which Audrey was sitting. 
 
 " You here, Audrey, child I" she said, 
 impatiently. " Dear rue ! if ever there is a 
 place where you ought not to be, one is sure 
 to find you in it. Have you run those 
 strings into Anna Mary's pinafore ?" 
 
 "No, mamma; you never said anything 
 to me about it." 
 
 "Then I meant to, which is the same 
 thing. But it's all your carelessness. I am 
 sure I don't know what I have done that so 
 much should be laid upon me. Look after 
 them at once, will you ? And another 
 time, do sit where you can be seen. One 
 might think you were always ashamed of 
 3 T ourself to go creeping into corners in that 
 way."
 
 131 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 AUDREY gathered up herself and the 
 stockings, and went out of the room, 
 feeling as cold as any stone. 
 
 Poor Audrey ! Mrs. Ferguson was quite 
 right when she said that Providence had not 
 done handsomely by her in giving her such 
 a helpless girl as the eldest of five. Audrey 
 had a brain which developed very slowly, 
 and her nature was of the brooding, retiring 
 sort which cannot rise buoyantly over any 
 shortcomings of intellect. If Rose Emma 
 or Frances Ann got into scrapes, they were 
 out of them directly. Five minutes after- 
 
 k 2
 
 132 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 wards they would come to their mamma 
 with the most complacent of smiles, and ask 
 if there was anything they could do for her. 
 Now Mrs. Ferguson was a woman who 
 liked that sort of thing. She never sulked. 
 She had a thing out and had done with it, 
 and she liked other people, her own chil- 
 dren included, to do the same. 
 
 But Audrey, if she got into trouble about 
 breaking too many eggs into a pudding, or 
 making the button-holes on the wrong side 
 of her father's shirt-collars, and received in 
 consequence a somewhat severe scolding for 
 her carelessness, would mope over it for a 
 whole day. Indeed, you might think your- 
 self well off if she got out of the sulks 
 within a week. And all she could say for 
 herself in excuse was, she did not know. 
 Did not know ! Such nonsense ! As if a 
 girl of more than thirteen ought not to 
 know by instinct how many eggs went to a
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 133 
 
 pudding for seven people, and what was the 
 right side of a shirt-collar to put the buttons 
 on. If Mrs. Ferguson, with a family like 
 hers to manage, and such a small income to 
 do it upon, was to spend her time in teach- 
 ing every single separate girl of them how 
 many eggs to put into a pudding, there 
 would be no end to it. She had never 
 been taught. She had found out, and so 
 had Rose Emma and Frances Ann. And 
 for Audrey to sulk like that because she 
 was too dull to do the same. 
 
 A queer child, a very queer child. But 
 she was her father over again. He was one 
 of the most awkward of men to s^et straight 
 with, if once you spoke a wrong word. Not 
 that he ever got into a temper. It was not 
 that sort of tiling at all ; but he had such a 
 way of shutting himself up, which she must 
 say, to a woman of her disposition, was 
 very trying. And Audrey was just the
 
 134 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 same. But it was a comfort that she and 
 her father got on so well together ; for a 
 housekeeper she was not, and never would 
 be, and so, if she could get enough book- 
 learning to be teacher in a school, it was 
 perhaps about the best thing that could be 
 done for her. 
 
 Poor Audrey knew tolerably well what 
 her mother thought about her. She had 
 been told it over and over again, in words 
 spoken with no unkindness of heart, for 
 Mrs. Ferguson loved all her children, in her 
 own active, managing sort of way ; and if 
 Audrey got more scolding than the rest, it 
 was fji ven her with the best of intentions on 
 her mother's part. And in the course of 
 these scoldings, too, she had not unfrequent- 
 ly been informed of the depressed state of 
 the family finances, as a wholesome stimulus 
 to the study of domestic economy. If they 
 had had money enough and to spare, her
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 135 
 
 mother used to say, the eggs and the button- 
 holes would not have been of so much con- 
 sequence ; but with every sixpence having 
 to be looked at on both sides before it was 
 spent, and with their father's position as 
 minister of Dimplethorpe so uncertain, it be- 
 hoved all the girls to think what they were 
 about, or there would soon be no puddings 
 to put eggs into, and no shirt collars to re- 
 quire buttonholes at all. 
 
 Audrey would listen with a vague sense 
 of uncomfortableness. But then she had 
 heard this sort of thing said so often, while 
 still the shirts and the puddings went on 
 being made as usual, that she had got into the 
 habit of taking off a considerable percentage 
 for irritation or impatience on her mother's 
 part. Mrs. Ferguson was always in a bad 
 temper when she made those alarming 
 statements as to the future. Nothing ever 
 came of them. Though they made Audrey
 
 136 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 feel miserable just at the time, because it 
 was a pain to her to hear a cross word from 
 anyone, she grieved over them more as put- 
 ting a barrier between her and her mother, 
 than anything else. But now, this after- 
 noon, she had unawares heard the same 
 thing said, and said in the seriousness of a 
 solemn conclave with her father. And her 
 father, who never got out of temper, or 
 looked at things other than calmly, had ac- 
 cepted them and sighed over them. 
 
 She herself was shiftless and unsatisfac- 
 tory. They were getting into debt. She 
 was going to be a pupil-teacher at Miss 
 Hart's. Her father and mother had quar- 
 relled. That meant gloom and silence in 
 the home for days. How dreary it all 
 was ! 
 
 But all these things fell into her heart 
 with a less chilling sense of calamity than 
 the news her father brought, that Phil
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 137 
 
 Hathaway was going to London the next 
 day, going for always. 
 
 Now almost all the sunshine that ever 
 visited Audrey's life came to it through 
 Phil. They used to draw together in her 
 father's studv, and though Phil was so far 
 in advance of her that any little productions 
 of hers were scarcely worth a word of 
 praise in comparison with his, still it was 
 pleasant to feel that she could tread, though 
 far off, in his footsteps. And Phil did 
 praise her a little now and then ; and he 
 told her that he was sure she would one day 
 be able to paint very nicely ; words which 
 helped her more than a whole afternoon full 
 of instructions. But who would praise her 
 now, and who would help her when she 
 stuck fast in her work, and who would put 
 her towers straight and her trees into 
 perpendicular, and wash in the clouds 
 for her, and help her to get the right tints
 
 138 BIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 in her foregrounds? And, above all, who 
 would ever speak kindly to her, and give 
 her that feeling of protection which some- 
 how she always had when Phil was near? 
 
 Audrey forgot about the pinafore strings. 
 Indeed she was too miserable to remember 
 anything. She went slowly towards the bit 
 of ragged ground by the moat-side, the 
 place where she was generally to be found 
 when anything had gone wrong with her, 
 for it was well away from the house, and 
 Rose Emma and Frances Ann never cared 
 to go there, because they said it was so 
 lonely. 
 
 To her surprise, Phil was sitting on the 
 grassy hillock where they came for their 
 sketching lessons, working away just as 
 industriously as if nothing had happened. 
 Perhaps he did not know. Perhaps her 
 father had not told him yet. But of course 
 he would know very soon, and then most
 
 D1MPLETH0RPE. 13D 
 
 likely he would begin to feel very impor- 
 tant, and he would not care any longer for 
 a poor little stupid thing like herself. Per- 
 haps he had only been kind to her at all 
 because he was sorry for her. What else 
 was there for anyone to be kind to her 
 about ? 
 
 This thought gave just a little coldness to 
 her manner, which Phil, quite as sensitive in 
 his way as Audrey was in hers, did not fail 
 to perceive, though he did fail to understand 
 its reason, not being quite so destitute of 
 self-appreciation as his little companion. 
 
 "I didn't know you were going to be 
 here this afternoon," she said, hesitating as 
 if undecided whether to stay or go. 
 
 "I didn't know, either," said Phil, " but 
 Mr. Ferguson has been to see grandfather, 
 and he says I am to start for London to- 
 morrow, so I'm trying to get this picture of 
 the tower finished. He has often said he
 
 140 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 should like to have a nice picture of it from 
 this place, with the gable end of grandfather's 
 cottage in there among the trees. I suppose 
 you know I'm going." 
 
 Phil, spite of his outward manners, which 
 perhaps no London society would quite wear 
 off, had interest enough in Audrey, and 
 desire enough to be of importance to her, 
 to wish that she would express some sorrow 
 at his going away. And at the same time 
 he had just so much shyness as to shrink 
 from letting her know that he had any 
 sorrow about it himself. Though anyhow, 
 for him, the sorrow must have been a very 
 secondary feeling ; for what boy with art in 
 his brain, and basket- making in hand, would 
 not gladly follow the leading which took 
 him away from the basket-making, though 
 at the same time it took him away from the 
 little maiden who had been wont to look for 
 the joy of her life from his smile, or to find
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 141 
 
 her happiness in waiting upon his needs ? 
 
 Audrey could hear no regret in the words, 
 so she naturally concluded he felt none. 
 And there crept up a faint cloud of mis- 
 understanding between them, which put the 
 finishing touch to her distress. 
 
 She was turning to go away. 
 
 u You may just as well stop, Audrey. I 
 daresay we shan't have a drawing lesson 
 here again for a good long time. Come 
 here and I'll make a place for you." 
 
 He spread his coat in a little green hollow, 
 and made her sit there whilst he went on 
 with his painting. She leaned forward with 
 her elbows on her knees, and her chin be- 
 tween her hands, watching the minnows dart 
 about under the duckweed. She was out of 
 tune with him, and for Audrey to be out of 
 tune with anyone, was for her to be simply 
 miserable. 
 
 Unawares the big tears rolled down her
 
 142 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 cheeks, and fell upon her holland apron. 
 Phil was not so absorbed in touching up a 
 bit of ivied battlement on his tower, that he 
 failed to see them drop. 
 
 " I say, Audrey, what are you crying 
 about, has Mrs. Ferguson been cross ?" 
 
 For anyone who had been in the habit of 
 spending two hours of three afternoons a 
 week in the Moat House study, could not 
 have avoided hearing Mrs. Ferguson's voice 
 frequently uplifted in accents the reverse of 
 sweet. 
 
 ''Not particularly," said Audrey. And 
 two more tears came, but she managed to 
 get up her hands in time to keep them from 
 falling on her apron. 
 
 "Then what is the matter?" 
 "Things are always being the matter." 
 " Yes, but they are not always being 
 matter enough to make you cry over them. 
 I say, Audrey."
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 143 
 
 " Well." 
 
 cc I wonder if you're sorry I'm going 
 away to London." 
 
 Audrey was very quiet. Only she began 
 to sob. 
 
 Phil put his arm round her. He was 
 half glad that his going away could make 
 Audrey sorry enough to cry, and he was 
 half grieved that he should have her no 
 more to help and take care of. And then 
 he wondered whether he should miss her 
 very much, and whether he should find 
 anyone in London who would be another 
 Audrey to him. 
 
 "Never mind," he said, warming her two 
 cold little hands in his. " I daresay I shall 
 come back to see you before very long. 
 Mind you work hard and get to draw really 
 well before then." 
 
 "How can I?" said Audrey, nestling up
 
 144 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 her finders into his. " I can't ever do any- 
 thing." 
 
 " Oh ! yes, you can if you like. Mr. 
 Ferguson says you will be able to very well, 
 if you try." 
 
 " Perhaps I could, if anybody cared for 
 it. But nobody does care." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! I care very much, Audrey. 
 And if you will make a really nice picture 
 for me, and give it to me when I come back, 
 I will keep it all my life." 
 
 "Well, I will try," said Audrey, with a 
 strange new feeling of pride and pleasure in 
 her heart. It was just what she wanted, 
 to do something for somebody. 
 
 Just then there was a voice from the top 
 of the garden. 
 
 "Audrey ! Audrey!" 
 
 "That is mamma. I must go." 
 
 And, with a vivid sense of criminality, 
 Audrey remembered the pinafore-strings.
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 145 
 
 11 But you must say good-bye to me 
 before you go." 
 
 " Well, good-bye." 
 
 And she was going to shake hands with 
 him. 
 
 "No, Audrey, not like that. You know 
 you once asked me to kiss you, and I did. 
 And now I want you to kiss me? 
 
 With a quiet, wondering look, Audrey 
 lifted her face to his, and Phil kissed her 
 forehead. 
 
 " Good-bye, Audrey. I shall never for- 
 get you. Maybe I shall come and say a 
 proper good-bye, but it won't be like this." 
 
 Again the voice called, and Audrey fled 
 up the moat-side, not even casting one 
 backward glance at Phil, and with no 
 thought but the pinafore-strings in her 
 mind. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 146 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 IV/TRS. FERGUSON had not been in the 
 -LU- best of possible tempers when she 
 carried that heap of clothes away. 
 
 Phil going to live with the old lady in 
 London. Well, to be sure ; if William 
 James's mother had so much money to 
 spare, she might have used a little of it in 
 helping the girls to school, or sending them 
 a new frock apiece, now and then. If a 
 basket-maker, and he the church clerk's 
 grandson, too, was to be considered before 
 her own flesh and blood, things had come 
 to a pretty pass. And where were the lad's
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 147 
 
 clothes to come from ? Out of William 
 James's pocket, no doubt. His own chil- 
 dren might eat porridge and dry bread, so 
 long as that shambling lad, who had worn 
 a thin place on the study carpet already, 
 could be taught to spoil good paper with 
 his daubs. Was there ever a woman who 
 had so much to put up with as herself? 
 
 And there, lying on the bed in the twins' 
 room, was Anna Mary's pinafore, with never 
 a string put into it. That was just the way 
 if you asked Audrey to do anything. But, 
 say a word to her father about the girl's 
 being so shiftless, and you could never get 
 him to do anything but encourage her in it. 
 He would find it out one day, however. 
 
 And, with the pinafore in one hand, and 
 the unattached strings in the other, Mrs. 
 Ferguson sallied into the garden. 
 
 Yes, there was Audrey, down by the 
 moat-side, and that scamp of a Phil Hatha- 
 
 l2
 
 148 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 way sitting close beside her, with his arm 
 round her. Mrs. Ferguson would like to 
 know what that meant. Probably nothing 
 at all, but it was a most unseemly thing, 
 and for a lad in his position, too, If Phil 
 had been going to stay in Dimplethorpe, he 
 should have heard about it. And then she 
 called as loudly as a good broad chest and 
 a good pair of lungs would let her call — 
 
 " Audrey ! Audrey !" 
 
 And upon that Audrey had got up, and 
 so had Phil, and he had kissed her before 
 she came away. Such impertinence ! And 
 it was no use telling her husband, either, 
 for he would be sure to justify it. There 
 was nothing William James would not 
 justify, if Audrey and Phil Hathaway were 
 in any way connected with it. 
 
 " Audrey, you will please set these strings 
 on, at once." 
 
 There was something awful in the tone
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 149 
 
 of those two last words, but Audrey's con- 
 science applied them to her forgetfulness, 
 and nothing more. 
 
 Mrs. Ferguson kept Audrey in her sight 
 the whole of that day. The next, Phil 
 called to say good-bye, but the girl was 
 away at school, and her mother said there 
 was no need for Phil to call again. 
 That same evening he went to London, 
 and Mrs. Ferguson felt that she had done 
 all a woman could be expected to do, 
 under the circumstances. 
 
 Phil was just eighteen when he came 
 to Dimplethorpe next time, to attend his 
 grandfather's funeral. The old man had 
 died suddenly. Phil had worked hard in 
 that time, quite hard enough, Mr. Evans 
 said, and with sufficient success too, to 
 warrant General Burnaby in continuing 
 the allowance for him. He had already 
 taken several prizes, and he was now
 
 150 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 competing for the most valuable one of 
 all, which would give him the privilege 
 of three years' study on the Continent. 
 Phil said nothing about that himself r 
 either to the old General or Mr. Ferguson, 
 for the thing he coveted was so great 
 that he dared not let himself think he 
 would succeed. Still, as Mr. Evans said, 
 even to try for it was a good thing. If 
 he failed, he could but try again next 
 year. But Mr. Evans did not think he 
 would fail. 
 
 For the lad had worked witli such a 
 will. He seemed to have a man's purpose 
 and a man's strength in him. Morning, 
 noon, and night he was up in that little 
 room painting; that little room in which 
 William Ferguson had once spent many 
 a pleasant, dreamful day. And when he 
 was not there, he was at the class-room, 
 or out in some quiet country place,
 
 DIMrLETHORPE. 151 
 
 working, still working, at the rustic pictures 
 he loved so well. No need, Mr. Evans 
 said, to warn him against the temptations 
 of London. No need, said old Mrs. 
 Ferguson, for anyone to sit up at nights 
 for him, or fear that he would come 
 home in other than good company. 
 Indeed, Phil's fault was that he cared 
 for no company at all, either good or 
 bad, so long as he could have a brush 
 in his right hand and a palette in his 
 left. That was Phil's idea of happiness. 
 He had just been eight months away 
 when his grandfather died. In that time 
 Mr. Ferguson and the General had heard 
 these good accounts of him, but Mrs. 
 Ferguson, with true feminine consistency, 
 held herself aloof from any sort of interest 
 in the lad, or young man as they must 
 begin to call him now. She had made up 
 her own mind about him long ago. It was
 
 152 DIMFLETHORPE. 
 
 ten to one if he ever succeeded. Deacon 
 Poison, who had seen a great deal of the 
 world, and almost every other sensible man 
 in Dimplethorpe, said the same. Of course 
 General Burnaby had plenty of money, and 
 he could afford to throw it away, if he liked. 
 And if old Mrs. Ferguson chose to waste her 
 comparatively small substance over boarding 
 and lodging a young man who was doing 
 all he could to get out of his providential 
 path, well, she could do as she liked, too, 
 more especially as her son encouraged her 
 in it. And amongst them all, Phil would 
 come to nothing, as he deserved to do. 
 
 Old Ben died suddenly. There was a 
 sort of ill luck about all those Hathaways, 
 which made her still more dubious of the 
 young man's future. The old man had been 
 at work as usual during the day, and in the 
 afternoon Harriet Brown, who used to tidy 
 up for him once a week or so, went in and
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 153 
 
 found him very ill. She got him some 
 peppermint water, sent the parish doctor to 
 him, went home to get her own tea, and 
 looked in again in the evening, just in time 
 to see him die, the doctor having been able 
 to do nothing but save the trouble of an 
 inquest. 
 
 Harriet sent to tell the vicar, who was 
 for awhile too much absorbed with the 
 question of how he should replace Ben at 
 the next Sunday morning service, to think 
 of anything else. At last, however, he did 
 recollect the long-armed, shambling youth 
 who never wore a white collar on Sundays ; 
 and as he knew General Burnaby had had 
 something to do with sending him to London, 
 he sent over to the Manor House to inquire 
 what was to be done. So that it was not 
 until the day after his grandfather's death 
 that Phil knew anything about it, and then 
 he came down at once, and made his home
 
 154 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 with Harriet Brown, who lived in the next 
 cottage, until after the funeral. 
 
 Not much altered, was Mrs. Ferguson's 
 verdict as she looked him carefully over 
 from top to toe, when he came to see them 
 before he went back to London. If she 
 was not mistaken, there was that in his face 
 which showed that he would not get on in 
 the world. And he was so very awkward 
 at expressing himself; and when what he 
 had to say did come out, it was really very 
 little worth listening to. Perhaps he might 
 be more at his ease when he went and had 
 that lorn? talk with William James in the 
 study afterwards. She could not say, for 
 she had made a point of remaining in the 
 sitting-room, and seeing that Audrey re- 
 mained there too, until the young man 
 must have been a good mile away from the 
 house. And when he said he should like to 
 go and see the moat, and asked Audrey if
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 155 
 
 she would go too, Mrs. Ferguson had stop- 
 ped it, and given the young man a look, 
 which, if he had any sense at all, he might 
 have known well enough meant that she 
 was not going to have any nonsense of that 
 sort. 
 
 And Audrey had sat all the time with 
 her sewing work, scarcely so much as say- 
 ing a word. Just like the girl ; she was so 
 curious. She might never have seen him 
 before, by the quiet way she spoke when 
 she did have to answer him a question. 
 
 But, as Mrs. Ferguson remarked after- 
 wards to her cousin Tholthorpe, there 
 would be an end of it now. For as the 
 old man was dead, and William James 
 could go to London whenever he liked, 
 there would be no need for the young man 
 to come to Dimplethorpe any more. 
 
 So Phil, quite alone in the world now, 
 went back to his painting, carrying in his
 
 156 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 heart the quiet face of Audrey as she sat 
 there with her sewing work. And he said 
 to himself as he went away, 
 
 "If ever I marry, Audrey shall be my 
 wife."
 
 157 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 QTR ANGERS scarcely ever came to live 
 ^ at Dimplethorpe, and so, since that 
 railway scheme had failed, there was no 
 need for new houses to be built in the place. 
 There were two highly respectable women 
 in the village who let lodgings. One was 
 Miss Parley. She lived in a neat little 
 house next the church, with a window look- 
 ing over into the vicarage garden, and 
 another into the churchyard ; and her 
 blinds and curtains and fire aprons and all 
 the rest of her things were only second in 
 spotlessness to those of Mrs. Ferguson her-
 
 158 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 self. The other was Mrs. Frogston, a widow 
 who lived nearly opposite the Moat House. 
 Her lodgings were not considered quite so 
 "genteel" as Miss Parley's, but they had 
 this advantage, that there was a large bow 
 window on the upper floor, and people sit- 
 ting in this bow window could look up and 
 down the street and see everything that 
 was oroincr on in it. When Mrs. Frogston 
 had no lodgers, she spent most of her own 
 time in this window; so if you wanted to 
 know all about everybody in Dimplethorpe 
 you had only to ask her and she could tell 
 you. 
 
 When a young couple were married, they 
 generally went into one or other of these 
 lodgings until one of the old residents 
 dropped off, and then the old resident's 
 house was "done up" for them. But a 
 Dimplethorpe lady rarely married in the 
 place, as there were no unattached gentle-
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 159 
 
 men to marry, so that a wedding, when 
 wedding there was amongst other than the 
 poorer folk, rather took from the population 
 than added to it. Housebuilding, therefore, 
 either as an investment or a speculation, 
 was simply a thing unheard of in the village, 
 even if there had been any spare land to 
 build houses upon. Old Squire Bentham 
 had lived in the place eight) 7 years, and 
 never a house had been built in it for all 
 that time, unless the'' Bull and Crown, "which 
 had been re-backed and re-fronted, and had 
 had new sides put to it, could be called a 
 new house. And even if it could, it did not 
 count for anything, as nobody new came to 
 live in it. 
 
 But old Squire Bentham died a few 
 months before Phil Hathaway went up to 
 London; and his son, a gentleman well 
 known for his losses on the turf, came into 
 the property. Still nobody thought he
 
 160 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 would part with the land, unless he was very 
 sorely put to it. And to judge by the way 
 things were carried on at the Hall, there was 
 money somewhere at command. 
 
 So the Dimplethorpe people were very 
 much astonished when they heard that 
 twenty acres of the Squire's land were going 
 to be sold. Indeed they would not believe 
 it at all, until in one corner of the rich green 
 pastures, just in front of the Manor House, 
 they saw a pole erected and a board on the 
 top of it, and this notice on the board — 
 
 " This eligible plot of building land to be 
 sold in sites. For particulars apply to 
 Messrs. Friston and Langley, Estate Agents, 
 Cranbourne Lane, London." 
 
 " Such an eyesore, Jack !" said little Miss 
 Burnaby, trotting downstairs one morning, 
 with her lace lappets in a perceptible state 
 of flurry. " I declare I shall never be able 
 to look out of my window in comfort again.
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 161 
 
 As if there was no place anywhere in all the 
 field for them to have stuck up their notice, 
 but in the very front of my bed-room 
 window. And now next thing we shall 
 have a row of red-brick villas staring us in 
 the face, every time we draw up our blinds. 
 
 " Not just yet, Jane," said the old General, 
 drily. " I'll plant half a dozen young sycamore 
 trees at that end of the garden, first thing 
 to-morrow, and if they don't grow up good, 
 respectable, broad-chested trees before that 
 plot of ground gets sold off in building sites, 
 my name isn't Jack Burnaby." 
 
 The saplings were planted accordingly, 
 and it seemed as if Jack's words were to 
 come true, for they grew and budded and 
 blossomed for three whole years, by which 
 time they were more than high enough to 
 hide the obnoxious board, which still pro- 
 claimed to every passer-by that a portion of 
 the land old Squire Bentham had hugged so 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 PIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 carefully, was to be sold to pay the debts of 
 his son. 
 
 But then as those passers-by were chiefly 
 agricultural labourers, or osier-gatherers, or 
 elderly ladies with plenty of Chelsea china 
 or homespun linen, and very little money, 
 they were not likely to be much interested 
 in the superscription, which was regularly 
 twice a year taken down and re-painted in 
 black and white, and then put up again. If 
 any of the Squire's creditors were waiting 
 for their money until that land was sold, 
 they would probably have to wait a long 
 time. 
 
 Those three years wrought little change 
 in Dimplethorpe, save that a few old folks 
 died, leaving their cottages for the young 
 couples who had been lodging with Miss 
 Parley or Mrs. Frogston until they dropped 
 off. Mr. Ferguson and his wife lived on, 
 with their five growing girls, in the house
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 163 
 
 next the chapel-yard. They had hard work 
 now to crowd into it comfortably, but they 
 could not afford a better one, for money 
 was scarce in Dimplethorpe, and the Squire 
 was a bad one for paying his tradespeople, 
 and it was hard enough to raise the two 
 hundred pounds which the congregation had 
 voted as their minister's salary. Too late 
 now for any amount of visiting and attention 
 on Mrs. Ferguson's part to evoke that extra 
 fifty which would have been such a blessing 
 to the family. Indeed, so far from talking 
 about an extra fifty, the congregation were 
 talking about reducing the stipend by nearly 
 one half, and inviting an unmarried man to 
 occupy the pulpit. Their present minister's 
 preaching was less and less of the popular 
 sort ; and as for his pastoral work, at least 
 amongst the rich and influential members, 
 who of course looked for it most, one might 
 almost say that he did nothing at all. The 
 
 m 2
 
 164 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 time seemed to have come for a change. 
 Unpleasant words to Mr. Ferguson, could 
 he have heard them. For it was long now, 
 years and years, since he had been invited 
 to preach an occasional sermon before any 
 congregation who were in a position to 
 offer him a permanent charge. And those 
 magazine articles which he prepared 
 with so much labour, in the intervals of 
 sermon-writing or listening to his wife's 
 worryings, had been returned to him by 
 one editor after another, until he had lost 
 all heart in preparing them any more. At 
 forty, Mr. Ferguson was besrinnincr to look 
 like a worn-out man. He felt within him- 
 self that his life had been wasted. If he 
 had only had leisure, if he had only had 
 ease of mind, if he had only had freedom 
 from family cares, he thought he could have 
 done so much. He was vaguely conscious 
 of great ideas, which he had never been
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 165 
 
 able to shape into equally great words ; or, 
 if he had so shaped them, they had fallen 
 unprofitably upon the ears of careless 
 listeners, and borne no fruit, either to him- 
 self or his people. 
 
 And there began to be written upon his 
 face the discontent of a man for whom life 
 has been a disappointment ; worse than that, 
 a failure, out of which nothing else could be 
 brought. Still he must grind on, for sermon- 
 writing, though it represented nothing of 
 his real opinions, though, instead, it had 
 come to be nothing but a string of platitudes 
 doled out at intervals three times a week, 
 was his daily bread, and only as he could 
 keep these platitudes from becoming utterly 
 wearisome to the people were his wife and 
 children to live in comfort. 
 
 The one thing that he felt any interest in 
 now was teaching Audrey. So long as he 
 had Phil, he had not cared so much for her.
 
 166 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 He liked talent to be broadly, clearly de- 
 veloped, but he had scarcely patience to 
 dig out and search for that which perhaps 
 might never, after all his trouble, come to 
 the surface. He believed that the artistic 
 faculty, if it really existed, would find its 
 own way out, somehow or other. And so, 
 though he let Audrey spoil any quantity of 
 drawing-paper, and dabble about as much 
 as she liked amongst his colour-boxes, she 
 got little instruction from him, and was too 
 shy to ask for more. 
 
 But, since Phil had gone away, it seemed 
 to her father that the girl had worked more 
 earnestly than ever. She was really turn- 
 ing out some very creditable pictures now. 
 If she could have the same advantages as 
 Phil, she might do well enough, though her 
 talent was by no means so distinct as his. 
 She ought to go to those art classes, too, 
 only who was to pay for her instruction
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 167 
 
 there ? What Mr. Ferguson could ask for 
 a stranger, he could not ask for his own 
 child. So Audrey stayed at home, struggling 
 on as pupil-teacher with Miss Hart, giving 
 what time she could to painting, helped a 
 little by good Mr. Evans, who sent copies 
 to her, as he had before sent them to Phil. 
 Mrs. Ferguson had long ago given up trying 
 to make a useful woman of her. Rose 
 Emma and Frances Ann were careering 
 along triumphantly in the housekeeping 
 department, developing at fifteen and six- 
 teen into as self-possessed and practical girls 
 as any mother could wish to see, and uni- 
 versal favourites — whatever might be said 
 of their poor father — with the congregation. 
 But as for Audrey, Miss Hart found no 
 fault with her ; she was earning a little by 
 teaching drawing at the school ; she was 
 growing up "a genteel sort of figure, that 
 looked well in anything," as Cousin Thol-
 
 168 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 thorpe remarked. And, that being the 
 case, her mother felt she must leave the 
 rest to Providence. She had done the best 
 that lay in her power for the girl. Angels 
 could do no more.
 
 169 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 rMHAT prize which gave its winner the 
 -*- privilege of three years' study on the 
 Continent had been taken a few months 
 after Phil's entrance into the art schools at 
 Kensington. The time had now come for 
 it to be adjudged again. Those three years 
 had been years of hard work for Phil. Mr. 
 Evans, who all along believed that he would 
 win, had decided how the time should be 
 spent if Phil's drawing did prove the suc- 
 cessful one. He was to 2:0 for a vear to 
 Paris, into the art schools there, and study 
 at the Louvre. Then he was to 20 to Rome,
 
 170 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 where Mr. Evans had friends who could 
 help hitn on. -After that he was to return, 
 and try what he could do for himself as an 
 artist at home. He might perhaps begin by 
 being one of the masters in the Kensington 
 School, or in some provincial town, for he 
 must be content, even if he had such a bril- 
 liant success as the winning of that prize, to 
 work his way steadily up. Phil's own idea 
 was to earn a little for himself, if he could, 
 in Eome, and then come back and live for 
 a year or two in his grandfather's old cot- 
 tage at Dimplethorpe, and get a picture into 
 the Exhibition. That was the height of his 
 ambition, at present. And he had made up 
 his mind what the subject of that picture 
 was to be. It was to be a message to 
 Audrey. Only he hoped that long before 
 then he should have been able to tell it to 
 her in a different way. But Phil would not 
 even let himself think about that yet. He
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 171 
 
 would first win the three years' prize, and 
 then ask for the one which was to be his 
 joy and crown all through life. 
 
 Phil never came to Dimplethorpe in those 
 three years. Mr. Ferguson used to go up 
 to London sometimes, to see his old mother, 
 or to call at one editor's office after another, 
 with magazine articles which were never 
 accepted. And he came home again, 
 bringing the General very good accounts of 
 the young man's progress. As the time 
 drew nearer, Mr. Evans was more and more 
 sure that his favourite pupil would be the 
 successful competitor. It w^as to be settled 
 in the autumn, and Phil was to come over 
 to Dimplethorpe then to say good-bye to 
 his kind friends there, before starting for 
 Paris. 
 
 But Mrs. Ferguson knew as well as possi- 
 ble, in her own mind, that nothing would 
 come of it, and she told her husband so r
 
 172 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 every time he tried to cheer his uncom- 
 forted life by dwelling on the one piece of 
 good work he had done during its course, 
 the promotion of Phil's art-training. There 
 were many young men in the school, she 
 said, besides Phil, who had energy and 
 perseverance, and talent too, and she 
 thought it would be rather hard upon them 
 if a basket-maker's lad carried off the prize 
 over their heads. If he did carry it off, he 
 would be so conceited about it that proba- 
 bly he would do no good work afterwards ; 
 that was often the case with young men 
 who made a flash at first. You never heard 
 of them afterwards. And if he did not 
 get it, why, then, there would be a decent 
 lobster-pot maker spoiled, for he would 
 never care to show his face in Dimplethorpe 
 again. He would just go to the bad, sponge 
 upon his friends to support him, and finally 
 sink away out of sight, and that would be
 
 DIMPLETHOBPE. 173 
 
 all William JatDes had wasted his time for. 
 
 But, slightly to Mrs. Ferguson's disap- 
 pointment, there came a telegram from 
 Phil Hathaway to her husband one day, 
 containing a single word. That word was — 
 " Successful." 
 
 Such a conceited way of putting it ! She 
 wondered he had not spent the shilling in- 
 stead in employing the village bellman to 
 go round and spread the news. And when 
 next morning a letter arrived, saying that 
 Phil himself would come down in a day or 
 two, to say good-bye before starting for 
 Paris, she told William James that he need 
 not expect her to ask the boy to stay there. 
 They had enough to do with their money 
 without entertaining visitors. Harriet Brown 
 was living in old Hathaway's cottage, and 
 he could put up with her. Or, if that was 
 not good enough, the General might ask 
 him.
 
 174 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 " Which, if you read on to the end of the 
 letter, my dear, you will see the General has 
 done," said Mr. Ferguson, meekly. " And 
 Phil says he is going to stay at his grand- 
 father's cottage, instead." 
 
 " Just like him," replied Priscilla, 
 pushing back the letter. " No, thank you, 
 I don't care to read any farther. I always 
 said he had not a bit of the gentleman 
 about him. To go into such low places 
 when he might be improving himself by 
 associating with superior people." 
 
 " I thought you suggested Harriet 
 Brown as a suitable person to put him up," 
 said Mr. Ferguson. 
 
 " William James, I will thank you not to 
 take my own words and use them against 
 me in that manner. I have expresed my 
 opinion of young Hathaway. 1 have no 
 doubt he does not go to the General's 
 because he thinks he may be looked down
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 175 
 
 upon. All his pride and conceit. I have 
 no patience with a young man who cannot 
 take what is provided for him, and be 
 thankful. All the same, you can ask him in 
 to tea and supper if you like." 
 
 " Which is just what I mean to do, 
 Priscilla." 
 
 And Phil came accordingly. A tolerably 
 good-looking young man, Mrs. Ferguson 
 admitted to herself, but with evidently no 
 talent for getting on in the world. One could 
 tell that from the way he fidgeted about 
 on his chair, and the difficulty he felt in 
 putting a sentence together without be- 
 ginning it two or three times. She never 
 believed in a young man's success when he 
 stumbled and hesitated in that way. Of 
 course he could draw well, but that would 
 not get him a living. Indeed, it would just 
 as likely as not be the ruin of him, by 
 taking him away from some useful re-
 
 176 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 raunerative employment. And then to 
 pretend to be so quiet and unconscious 
 about what he had done. It was all 
 pretence, she was sure it was. He was 
 brimful of conceit about it all the time, 
 if only he had been straightforward enough 
 to let it come out. 
 
 And when did he mean to go away ? For 
 the maid of all work cleared the supper- 
 table, and the girls went to bed, Audrey, 
 who had been wonderfully quiet all the 
 evening, going first. And still he sat and 
 sat and fidgeted about, and talked of first 
 one thing and then another, without being 
 able to say a word worth listening to about 
 anything, until she was as nearly as possible 
 asking him whether he was not afraid to 
 walk by the moat-side to Harriet's cottage 
 in the dark. That might stir him, if any- 
 thing would, seeing his own father had been 
 drowned in it. But it came out at last.
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 177 
 
 Who would have thought that the young 
 man had had so much conceit in him ? For, 
 after almost any amount of stumbling and 
 hesitation, he said that he had a very 
 important request to make before he went 
 away. Might he be allowed to write 
 occasionally to Audrey? Not that he 
 wished, she being so young, to bind her 
 down to any sort of engagement, but that 
 they might not lose sight of each other, and 
 that possibly she might at some time learn 
 to look favourably upon him. 
 
 Not bind her down to any sort of engage- 
 ment? Well, Mrs. Ferguson rather thought 
 not, as she remarked when talking the 
 affair over with her cousin Tholthorpe a few 
 days after. Considering that the young man 
 had been living on charity up to the present 
 time, and had no prospect of earning 
 anything for himself for years to come, it 
 would just have been going a little too far 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 to ask any young girl to bind herself down 
 to him, especially when he was going away 
 next day to Paris, and nobody knew 
 what courses he might take when he got 
 there. 
 
 And William James had acted as he 
 always did when there was anything im- 
 portant to be settled. He had said that 
 young Hathaway's proposal took him very 
 much by surprise, that he really did not 
 know what to say about it, that he must 
 ask to have a day or two for consideration, 
 and a great deal more to that effect, just as 
 if such a ridiculous proposal could not have 
 been settled at once by a quiet and decided 
 no. So young Hathaway went awa} r with a 
 promise that he should receive a reply in the 
 morning. 
 
 But Priscilla settled what that reply should 
 be. She had known too well for herself 
 what it was to marry a man with a small
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 179 
 
 income. The managing and contriving, 
 and the pinching to make both ends meet, 
 were enough to worry the life out of even 
 a clever and capable woman like herself, 
 and Audrey under such circumstances would 
 be simply good for nothing. No, she must 
 marry some one who would be able from the 
 beginning to earn a comfortable living for 
 her ; and as she was by no means a plain 
 girl, and had what people generally thought 
 were very elegant, taking ways — though 
 Mrs. Ferguson thought the cheerful prac- 
 ticality of her second and third were a 
 great deal more attractive — most likely she 
 would find some one more eligible than a 
 penniless and shiftless young artist, who was 
 only herself over a^ain as regarded ignorance 
 of all household matters. 
 
 So when Phil came very early next 
 morning, Mrs. Ferguson received him alone. 
 She said she was sorry to disappoint him, 
 
 K 2
 
 180 DIMPLETHORFE. 
 
 but both she and her husband thought it 
 would be advisable for their daughter 
 not to be entangled in any engagement of 
 that kind at present. For her own part 
 she was quite sure that Audrey had no 
 feeling in the matter herself, and it would 
 be much better, both for her studies and 
 for the gaining of proper experience 
 in life, that she should not have her mind 
 occupied with anything of the sort. 
 
 " At any rate for the present, Mr. 
 Hathaway," she said, with a natural air of 
 matronly importance. " Of course if you 
 come back after three years, and are still in 
 the same mind." 
 
 "Which I shall certainly be," said Phil, 
 with the buoyant confidence of twenty and 
 a half. 
 
 " Audrey will then be better prepared to 
 know her own mind on the subject. For 
 the present, her father and I do not wish
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 181 
 
 her to be disturbed by any such thoughts." 
 So Phil went away without hand-clasp or 
 look of farewell exchanged between himself 
 and the girl whom he had been loving all 
 these three years. And Audrey, with a 
 whole world of maiden hope and fear 
 hiding quietly away in her heart, heard 
 that he was gone, and never knew how 
 closely the angel of love had passed 
 her by.
 
 182 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 /~\LD Jack Burnaby chuckled to himself 
 ^-^ every time he passed that notice-board 
 on Squire Bentham's bit of pasture land. 
 From the Manor House garden you could 
 scarcely see it now, for the young sycamore 
 trees which were growing up so lustily at 
 the end of the garden in front of Miss 
 Burnaby's bed-room window. Yet it was 
 regularly done up, and told its story afresh 
 in black and white paint every Lady Day and 
 Michaelmas Day, just as if the information it 
 had to give was of the utmost importance to* 
 everyone in the village.
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 183 
 
 But one day, soon after Phil had got that 
 prize, Dimplethorpe in general, and Jack 
 and his sister in particular, were electrified 
 by the intelligence that Dr. Fylingdale, a 
 retired physician, who lived near the 
 vicarage, elderly and unmarried, had with- 
 drawn some of his property from the East 
 Warrenshire Bank, and bought a plot 
 of ground immediately in front of the 
 Manor House, with a view to building there- 
 upon a villa residence, not for himself, but 
 for anyone who might feel disposed to take 
 it. 
 
 " If it had been any other plot, Jack dear," 
 said Miss Burnaby ; but just to choose that 
 particular one. If he had taken a bit at 
 the other end of the pasture, it would not 
 have been of half so much importance. One 
 might think he had done it on purpose to 
 vex us." 
 
 " Put up two or three more sycamores,"
 
 184 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 said the old General. " They'll have time to 
 grow and be topped, and grow again, 
 before anybody ever gets into a house of 
 Dr. Fylingdale's on old Bentham's pasture 
 land. 
 
 " I hope you'll be right, Jack. But it 
 will be a very pretty situation, exactly over- 
 looking the laurel walk that leads up to our 
 front door." 
 
 "It will overlook nothing of the sort, 
 Jane. It will overlook nothing but sycamore 
 leaves, and I'll go bail that even if you like 
 to plant a shrub of arbutus, it will be a regu- 
 lar big tree before anybody gets a chance 
 to look over it from Dr. Fylingdale's villa. 
 My name isn't Jack Burnaby if my words 
 don't come right. You've heard me say 
 that before, you know." 
 
 " And my name isn't Jane Burnaby, Jack 
 dear, if the villa isn't built and let within a 
 twelvemonth."
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 185 
 
 "Very well. If it isn't Jane Burnaby, I 
 don't doubt it will be something better, 
 though I didn't think you had any idea of 
 changing it so soon, Miss Jenny. Only let 
 me know in time, please, that I may look 
 about for a nice wedding present for you." 
 
 "Jack! How can you talk in that way? 
 Just as if I should ever be so foolish as to 
 go and do anything of the sort." 
 
 But Jenny laughed, nevertheless. The 
 old General had never given over joking 
 her about the many times that ancient and 
 honourable name of hers might have been 
 changed, if she had only seen matters in the 
 same light as the score or so of gentlemen 
 who had at one time or another aspired to 
 the favour of her hand. And Jane liked 
 to be reminded of it, too. 
 
 However, the sycamores were planted, 
 and the Dimplethorpe bricklayers set to 
 work, and by June of the next year a neat
 
 186 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 villa of red brick, faced with stone, was 
 shutting out Miss Burnaby's favourite view 
 of the church and village of Cotsford, two 
 miles distant, just on the other side of Squire 
 Bentham's property. A very fine villa in- 
 deed, with a porch and verandah over 
 which creepers were to be planted, and a 
 new-fashioned bay window on each side of 
 the door, and three more windows on the 
 first floor, everyone of which looked right 
 over Miss Burnaby's pinks and roses, so that 
 the good little lady could not go out in the 
 morning to take a walk amongst them, 
 without the pleasing reflection that Dr. 
 Fylingdale's villa, or whoever lived in it, was 
 watching every step she took. And over 
 the right-hand bay window, which was 
 exactly opposite Miss Burnaby's bed-room, 
 a large board was reared up, similar to that 
 which surmounted the pole, only more 
 important-looking, and it bore the following
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 187 
 
 inscription, to be read of everyone who 
 passed that way : 
 
 "This extremely desirable villa residence 
 to be let, on lease or by the year. Rent 
 moderate. For particulars and cards to view, 
 apply to Mr. Cray brook, builder, Dimple- 
 thorpe, or Messrs. Friston and Langley, 
 Estate Agents, Cranbourne Lane, London." 
 
 It so happened that the very day the villa 
 was completed as to its external appearance, 
 and this legend presented to the public gaze, 
 a sharp gale of wind arose and blew down 
 the biggest and lustiest of the sycamore 
 trees, leaving an awkward gap, like a missing 
 tooth, at that end of the Manor House 
 garden, thus laying bare the board and its 
 inscription to Miss Burnaby's view every time 
 she drew up her window blinds. 
 
 " To think of the gale striking that tree, 
 above all others," said poor Jane. 
 
 "Stick in another," said her brother..
 
 188 DIMPLETHORPE 
 
 " They're cheap enough, and the soil suits 
 'em. Why, dear me, there's no need to let 
 ourselves be overlooked for the sake of a 
 sycamore." 
 
 " No, Jack. I won't. It's a token, and 
 I'll abide by it. That house will be let 
 before the Michaelmas quarter is in, take 
 my word for it, and so we must just make 
 up our minds to the worst. They may be 
 pleasant neighbours, who can tell? And 
 really, Jack, I've often wondered whom 
 I could send to first, situated as we are 
 here, away from everybody, if you were 
 seized with apoplexy in the night, or any- 
 thing of that sort." 
 
 " But I'm not seized with apoplexy yet, 
 •thank you," said the General, who did not 
 relish this casting of his horoscope. " It 
 isn't wiry old soldiers like myself who get 
 knocked off in that sort of way. For all 
 you know about it, I may be good for
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 181) 
 
 another dozen years, so we'll give the house 
 that time to get itself let — shall we, eh, 
 Jane?" 
 
 "Jack dear, don't talk in that irreverent 
 way. Something is always sure to happen 
 when we begin to boast. Don't you re- 
 member how my favourite old hen gave 
 over laying last week, just because I chanced 
 to remark to the curate's wife what an 
 excellent old creature she had always 
 been ?" 
 
 "The curate's wife, or the hen, Jane ?" 
 
 " The hen, of course, Jack. And I dare- 
 say you have noticed over and over again 
 that if I happen to make a remark about 
 the goodness of the cream, it begins to turn 
 next day, as sure as sure." 
 
 " That's because there's thunder in the 
 air, Jane." 
 
 " Perhaps it is ; but you won't make me 
 believe that the boasting hasn't something
 
 190 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 to do with it. There's a great deal we 
 don't understand about these things/' 
 
 And Miss Burnaby, somewhat relieved 
 after all to think that whenever her brother 
 did have a stroke of apoplexy in the night 
 there would be a house at hand, even if 
 there was nobody in it, went into the gar- 
 den to count her apricots, the finest apricots 
 in all the country round. 
 
 The sycamore tree was never planted, 
 and all through that summer, and all 
 through the next, Meadowfield Lodge, as 
 Dr. Fylingdale had named his new invest- 
 ment, offered its charms in vain to the 
 passer-by. Even advertisements failed to 
 bring tenants, and, before the second year 
 of its emptiness had expired, the old doctor 
 began to regret that he had not left his 
 money in the East Warrenshire Bank, 
 which, spite of all the reports so industri- 
 ously circulated about it, was still paying a
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 191 
 
 good solid dividend to the shareholders. 
 
 But when Miss Burnaby, trotting home 
 from her daily walk to High Dimplethorpe, 
 met him, as she often enough did, strolling 
 disconsolately past his empty villa, she used 
 to comfort him by the assurance that sooner 
 or later it would find a tenant. 
 
 " Because, Dr. Fylingdale," she would 
 say, " that sycamore tree of ours blew down 
 the very morning that the painters had 
 finished touching up the graining on the 
 front door, and if that isn't a token, I don't 
 know what a token is ; particularly when it 
 happened to be the very tree in front of the 
 notice-board." 
 
 "It might have been the wind," remarked 
 Dr. Fylingdale, who, being a physician, and 
 therefore a man of science, had to search 
 about for a cause for everything. 
 
 i( Well, of course, the wind might have 
 something to do with it, doctor. I don't
 
 192 DTMPLETHORPE. 
 
 dispute that, and blowing such a gale as it 
 did that day. too ; but at the same time I 
 am convinced that it was a token, and some 
 day you will see my words come true. I 
 was so sure of it myself that I wouldn't 
 have another tree planted, because it might 
 look like flying in the face of Providence. 
 And, what is more than that, doctor, Jack 
 has tried over and over again to get the 
 other sycamores to grow together over the 
 empty place, but, try as he will, he can't 
 manage it. He may push and pull and 
 spend as much string as he likes in tying 
 the branches together, but the very next 
 morning there the gap is, as wide as ever, 
 just the exact size, you know, to let me 
 read the notice when I draw up the blind 
 to open my window." 
 
 " If you should hear of anyone who wants 
 a house/' said the doctor, in a melancholy 
 way.
 
 DIMPLETHORFE. 193 
 
 "Oh, dear, yes! Because it would be 
 such a convenience to have a neighbour 
 there, in case poor dear Jack did happen to 
 be taken ill in the night, or anything of that 
 sort. Though really, doctor, I have got so 
 accustomed to the board now, that I should 
 quite miss it, if it was taken away. I look 
 for it as regularly as I look for the daylight 
 when I draw up my blind of a morning." 
 
 W I wish we could miss it, both of us," said 
 Dr. Fylingdale. " Really if nothing turns up 
 before next Michaelmas, I shall have to 
 begin to think about going into the house 
 myself. We might be pleasant neighbours, 
 you know." 
 
 And the doctor looked at pretty, trim 
 little Miss Burnaby from behind his high 
 pointed shirt collar, with just a touch of 
 tenderness in his withered old face. She 
 had a nice little property, and she was 
 blessed with excellent health and spirits, and 
 
 vol. i. o
 
 194 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 she was just a few years younger than him- 
 self, and she was as dainty as a bit of 
 Nankin china, and could make such delicious 
 cowslip and rhubarb and ginger and currant 
 wines ; and in fine there was attractiveness 
 enough about her to give a delightful touch 
 of sunshine to the prospect which lay beyond 
 those words — 
 
 "We might be pleasant neighbours." 
 " Oh, charming !" said little Miss Burnaby, 
 innocent of anything beyond the thought 
 that, if poor dear Jack was seized in the 
 night with apoplexy or anything of that 
 sort, it would be such a convenience to have 
 a neighbour, and that neighbour a doctor, 
 within reach. " I should be so delighted. 
 Do think of it, Dr. F} r lingdale. And 
 then, you know, you could come over now 
 and then and play back-gammon with Jack, 
 whilst I read the papers of an evening." 
 Dr. Fylingdale thought he would rather
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 195 
 
 the old General read the papers, whilst Miss 
 Burnaby played back-gammon with himself, 
 but his mind was scarcely sufficiently made 
 up yet for him to hazard a remark which 
 would appear so like a declaration of personal 
 feelings. So he said nothing, except that he 
 was quite sure they should be very pleasant 
 neighbours if he did really come to Meadow- 
 field Lodge, after all. 
 
 But as he pulled up his collar and shook 
 hands with Miss Burnaby, and walked slowly 
 away, he felt it might not be such a very bad 
 thing if the house did not get let before 
 Michaelmas. 
 
 o 2
 
 196 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 TN those days whilst the "new house," 
 -*- as it was called, there being no other 
 in the place under nearly a hundred years 
 old, was waiting for a tenant, Mr. Ferguson 
 cut that Gordian knot which for years and 
 years had been tightening more painfully 
 round him. And cut it in the only way 
 possible now ; for he died. 
 
 There was generally, as might have been 
 expected, a mild sort of low fever moving 
 about amongst the back lanes of Dimple- 
 thorpe. In bad seasons, when food was 
 scarce, and autumn rains had flooded the
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 197 
 
 low-lying lands to the south of the parish, 
 it carried off its dozens of strong men and 
 rosy-faced children, and a great commotion 
 about drainage followed. The beautiful old 
 moat was cleaned out. The open ditches 
 on whose banks the lilies and wild roses and 
 blue forget-me-nots blossomed so bravely, 
 were scraped and trimmed and tidied up 
 and flooded, making them look, as Miss 
 Burnaby said, as close-cropped and uninter- 
 esting as a ticket-of-leave man just out of 
 prison. Indeed, she did not know why 
 such a fuss should be made every few years 
 about draining the place. She had lived in 
 it for more than sixty years herself, and 
 neither the moat nor the open sewers had 
 ever been meddled with, all that time. 
 
 Talk about the place being unhealthy, 
 indeed! Why, let people go into the 
 churchyard and read the dates upon the 
 gravestones, scarcely anybody ever thinking
 
 198 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 of dying under sixty or eighty years of age f 
 and then let them go into your big towns,, 
 where thousands upon thousands were spent 
 upon drainage and ventilation, and read the 
 dates upon their gravestones, and then say 
 whether sanitary arrangements did not kill 
 a hundred times more people than they 
 cured. Why, the thing spoke for itself, 
 without any thinking about it. Drainage 
 indeed ! She had never troubled herself 
 about it, and, what was more, she never in- 
 tended to do so. And it was her opinion 
 that, if that sort of thing began to be fussed 
 about and worried over in Dimplethorpe, 
 their gravestones would soon have the same 
 story to tell as those of Liverpool and Man- 
 chester and Birmingham. And as for ap- 
 pointing an Inspector of Nuisances, why, 
 they might as well go back to the dark ages 
 at once. The curfew bell was still rung in 
 the parish, though nobody thought of put-
 
 r>IMPLETHOPwPE. 199 
 
 ting their fires out when it sounded so 
 prettily across the vicarage lawn. But an 
 Inspector of Nuisances ! That was simply 
 despotism. And nobody but the Liberals 
 would ever think of imposing such a thing 
 upon well-bred people. 
 
 And indeed, to do the fever justice, it did 
 behave very quietly in a general way, just 
 creeping stealthily up to some half- fed, 
 wholly dispirited man, and sucking the life 
 out of him before anyone knew what was 
 the matter. It was easy enough, when 
 things had gone so far as that, to give the 
 rest of the blame to circumstances. He had 
 got wet through, or he had taken a chill, or 
 he had sat in his damp clothes, and what 
 could one expect then but fever ? So the 
 malaria never got the credit of it, after all. 
 
 That was how it crept up to Mr. Fergu- 
 son, in the dull dreary autumn time which 
 brought him to the nineteenth anniversary
 
 200 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 of his entrance upon the Dimplethorpe 
 congregational charge. 
 
 Weary years they had been, except the 
 first two or three of them ; weary with the 
 deadening weight of good thoughts crushed 
 from want of time to think them into shape ; 
 weary with the slowly deepening sense of 
 failure and mistake ; weary with the inabil- 
 ity to make the best of what that mistake 
 had left possible. Then, worse than all, 
 was the consciousness that, having made this 
 mistake himself, having chosen the lower 
 level of comfort close at hand, instead of 
 toiling for it through years of self-denial, 
 having taken what he thought was ease, 
 and so put for ever from him the superiority 
 of mind and character which once was pos- 
 sible, he had not bravely made the best of 
 that mistake, instead of making it still more 
 a mistake by his selfish brooding over it. 
 He might have done so much more for
 
 DIMPLETHORPE 201 
 
 his children. He might have put a little 
 cheerfulness into his own home. He might 
 have gone about amongst the people and 
 met them on their own level, if he could 
 not lift them to his. His life for these nine- 
 teen years had been a poor, broken, unman- 
 ly thing. And if everyone in his congrega- 
 tion did not think of him as he thought of 
 himself, it was only because they did not 
 know him for what he was. In the begin- 
 ning of his career it had been his one am- 
 bition that men should know him for what 
 he was. It was now his shame and humil- 
 iation that he dared not let them do it. 
 
 And Audrey, the one of all his children 
 who could have appreciated both his capa- 
 bilities and his disappointments, who could 
 have been a true companion to him in high 
 thoughts, had grown up almost a stranger 
 to him, because he had never sought for her 
 sympathy ; and the rest were basking in the
 
 202 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 hopeless level of self-complacent common- 
 place. And Priscilla, loud-tongued, authori- 
 tative, with a soul that never rose above 
 clean fire-aprons and balancing of accounts, 
 was for ever chiding him for his want of 
 spirit, and the people were slumbering in 
 their pews, not caring now for any new 
 figure into which he could shake those 
 ancient fragments of glass. And his own 
 vision was dim and feeble, too dim to 
 search any more for God's blue heaven 
 beyond. 
 
 William Ferguson brooded over it all 
 until his life became a burden to him, until 
 the vitality which had been slowly leaking 
 out of him for the last nineteen years reached 
 its final drop. Then the malaria, which 
 was alwavs lurking about under the lilies 
 and irises by the moat-side, had nothing to 
 do but fasten upon him, and quietly push 
 open the door which led into another life.
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 203 
 
 He was not ill very long, at least not 
 very long confined to his room, for he had 
 looked dreary and out of sorts for so many 
 months past, and nothing had ever come of 
 it, that Mrs. Ferguson naturally thought 
 nothing would come of it this time, either. 
 And so she only scolded him a little more 
 impatiently, especially as he began to com- 
 plain just about the autumn cleaning season, 
 and it was such an inconvenience having a 
 man mooning about the house and hanging 
 
 o no 
 
 over the fire when she wanted to have 
 everything cleared out and tidied up, ready 
 for anniversary day. For if ever people 
 called in a friendly way upon the minister 
 — and goodness knew they called seldom 
 enough in that way now — it would be to- 
 wards anniversary day, and it would be all 
 she and the girls could do to get the house 
 thoroughly overhauled by then. 
 
 And she grew perceptibly out of patience.
 
 204 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 and spoke her mind more emphatically to 
 him about the sluggishness which had been 
 such a barrier to the prosperity of the 
 family. It was nothing less than sinful, she 
 said, and those five poor girls growing up. 
 He ought to rouse himself and try to inter- 
 est the members a little more, and then the 
 members would interest themselves in him. 
 
 But it was too late. Instead of shaking 
 off his bad spirits, he let them take more 
 and more entire possession of him, until, as 
 his wife remarked to one and another of 
 her friends, it was almost impossible to get 
 him to stir out of his study: and, as for 
 sitting down and enjoying his food, if you 
 -could make him pick as much as would 
 keep body and soul together, it was a 
 wonder. And, as for a smile upon his face, 
 why, that was a thing you never saw. 
 
 It was Audrey who took thought for him 
 now. As the damp autumn days crept on,
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 205 
 
 each taking from him a little of his remain- 
 ing strength, it was Audrey's care to 
 surround him with such comfort as was 
 possible in the busy, bustling household, 
 where to keep the blinds straight, and the 
 curtains clean, and the chimneys carefully 
 stopped up, was so much more important 
 than any ministry to the poor decaying life 
 wasting there from week to week. 
 
 "Your papa just wants to rouse himself, 
 Audrey child," was what Mrs. Ferguson 
 used to say, as the poor girl, who saw 
 better than her mother did how things were 
 going now, returned from the study with 
 some little dainty dish of her own preparing, 
 untasted. It was wonderful what talent 
 Audrey had developed in the cooking line 
 lately. " If he would just put on his great- 
 coat, and go out and pay a round of visits 
 amongst the congregation, it would do him 
 a world of good. That's what I always do
 
 206 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 when I feel myself a bit upset with the 
 worry of the family. Dear me ! I wonder 
 what we should all have come to, long ago, 
 if I had given up every time I felt the chil- 
 dren and that sort of thing too much for 
 me. I am sure the way I have gone on 
 sometimes, when I have scarcely had 
 strength to put one foot before the other, 
 might be a lesson to anyone." 
 
 And then she would bustle in and " rouse 
 up " her husband, as she called it, by telling 
 him how one and another of his more promi- 
 nent members had been seen lately at the 
 parish church, or how Mr. Tewksby had 
 been visiting his married daughter in Lon- 
 don, and what a splendid man they had at 
 Mr. Batesford's chapel. If they could only 
 get such a man in Dimplethorpe, it would 
 be the making of the congregation, which 
 was dwindling down sadly now. 
 
 st Doctors indeed, and medicine, William
 
 DBIPLETHORPE. 207 
 
 James, it isn't anything of the sort that you 
 want ; you only want to bestir yourself and 
 take an interest in things. Why, a man is 
 bound to be ill if he stops in the house from 
 morning to night, as you do, to say nothing 
 of what is sure to go wrong when he lets 
 himself do like that. You will see that Mr. 
 Tewksby will be parish churchwarden before 
 another year is out, and you will have nobody 
 but yourself to blame. I can't say more 
 than that." 
 
 Once even less than that would have 
 stirred Mr. Ferguson to almost any exertion. 
 For, as an animal of the lower vertebrate 
 order, fully developed as to its fins and tail, 
 and careering in scaly splendour through 
 the upper regions of its ocean world, 
 looks down upon the helpless mollusc whicli 
 crawls along the floor of that same ocean 
 world, and reflects, with a thankfulness not 
 unmixed with pride, supposing it to be
 
 208 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 capable of such feelings, on the infinite 
 stages of growth which separate them ; so 
 once did William James, disporting himself in 
 the limpid depths of his own denominational 
 waters, look down with pitying superiority 
 on the Church of England molluscs, who 
 swayed helplessly about, incapable of sight or 
 motion, amongst the tangled seaweed below. 
 And as a vertebrate might regard with horror 
 the idea of one of its own species being so 
 lost to all sense of dignity as to wish — 
 having once known the glories of fins and 
 a tail — to make a descent into the pre-back- 
 bone period, and fraternise with oysters and 
 periwinkles again, amongst the slime of the 
 ocean floor, so would Mr. Ferguson have felt 
 his soul stirred within him, had one of the 
 fully developed fishes of his own flock, Mr. 
 Tewksby for instance, shown signs of leaning 
 towards the molluscousness of the Establish. 
 ment.
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 209 
 
 But the time was past for any such 
 feeling now. Was there, then, so great a 
 difference, after all, the helpless periwinkle 
 and the happy possessor of fins and a tail 
 being alike debarred from the pure atmo- 
 sphere of absolute certainty ? 
 
 Nay, indeed, might not the mollusc, inca- 
 pable, as one might say, of directing its own 
 movements, be from time to time borne by 
 oceanic currents into that atmosphere, and 
 by reason of the very elementary nature of 
 its respiratory apparatus, be enabled to exist 
 there, under conditions which would have 
 been fatal to its vertebrate or nonconformist 
 relative? It was all a wonder and a 
 mystery, and one could but let it alone. 
 Mollusc and vertebrate alike might one day, 
 by faithfully doing their present duty, 
 struggle upward into a better development, 
 and have air to breathe and an apparatus to 
 breathe it with. And compared with the 
 VOL. I. p
 
 210 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 infinite ether which stretched above them 
 both, the ocean in which they looked up or 
 down upon each other, dwindled into such 
 pitiful sraallness. To sway amongst its 
 tangled sea-weed, or to career through its 
 petty currents, was of little consequence, so 
 that they reached the upper world at last. 
 
 " Mr. Tewksby may do as he likes, Priscilla. 
 It is no concern of mine." 
 
 And, with a weary sigh, Mr. Ferguson 
 turned himself over in his easy-chair, and 
 Priscilla bustled out of the study again. 
 Things had come to a pretty pass if a man 
 like Mr. Tewksby could go off to the Estab- 
 lished Church, and the minister of the de- 
 serted denomination say it was no concern 
 of his. At that rate the two hundred a 
 vear would not be forthcoming much 
 longer. 
 
 After awhile Audrey went on her own 
 responsibility to the doctor, and Mrs. Fergu-
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 211 
 
 son was very much astonished to find that 
 her husband was suffering from an attack of 
 low fever, which might or might not develop 
 into something else. Probably it would not 
 develop into anything else, if he got good 
 nursing and generous diet ; but a great deal 
 in such cases depended upon these things. 
 
 So the minister was put into Audrey's 
 care, and there came for him a few days of 
 the utmost peace he had ever known since 
 the beginning of his Dimplethorpe life. 
 For he soon became too weak to trouble 
 himself about external things, and Mrs. 
 Ferguson was too busy with her autumn 
 cleaning to thrust them much upon him. 
 He might, perhaps, have got round again, 
 for the doctor said, to the last, it was by 
 no means a serious case, if he had only 
 had interest enough in life to care to live. 
 But it was easier to die, and so he let him- 
 self slip away, as many another, in the same 
 
 r 2
 
 2 J 2 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 condition, has done before him. And after 
 a week or two in that quiet sick-room, 
 during which he and Audrey drew near to 
 each other, heart to heart, as they could 
 never have done before, the minister of 
 Dimplethorpe Independent chapel, greatly 
 to the surprise of his wife and all the con- 
 gregation, departed this life, in the forty- 
 second year of his age, and was buried, with 
 a good deal of ceremony, as became one 
 who was in some sort a public character, by 
 one of his college professors who came to 
 Dimplethorpe for the purpose. And, at a 
 church meeting held shortly afterwards, the 
 deacons drew up an address of condolence, 
 and sent it to the widow of the man to 
 whom, had he had the ill-fortune to live a 
 few months longer, they would doubtless 
 have forwarded a letter suggesting his 
 resignation. For indeed, as they said to 
 each other, his pulpit teaching was no longer
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 213 
 
 of that active, practical, stirring sort which 
 his first years of ministration amongst them 
 had led the congregation to expect.
 
 214 
 
 M 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 RS. FERGUSON was not a woman to 
 be crushed by even " the sudden and 
 unexpected blow," as the letter of condol- 
 ence called it, which had fallen upon her. 
 At any rate, her righteous soul was never 
 troubled by questionings as to whether she 
 had put all the sweetness she could into the 
 life which had now passed beyond power of 
 hers to vex or soothe. She felt that every- 
 thing a good wife could have done had been 
 done by herself for William James. It was 
 she who had, to speak Scripturally, held up 
 the hands that hung down, and confirmed
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 215 
 
 the feeble knees. Where would he have 
 been, long ago, but for her vigorous incite- 
 ments to energy in the discharge of his 
 duties? Who was it that took, to such a 
 great extent, the burden of visiting from his 
 shoulders ? Who was it that discerned 
 signs of weariness or impatience amongst 
 the congregation, and communicated them 
 to him, to the intent he might be stirred 
 up to make his sermons more of the popular 
 sort? Who managed everything for him, 
 in order that he might have more time for 
 the making of those sermons ? No ; there 
 might be, there doubtless were, women 
 who, in the circumstances under which she 
 found herself now, had bitter cause for self- 
 reproach ; but she could only say that such 
 self-reproaches never visited her own breast. 
 She had done her duty. And, though the 
 blow was severe, she would not deny that 
 it was unmixed with any sting which the
 
 2 1 (> DIMPLETHORPE . 
 
 sense of wifely shortcomings might have 
 brought. 
 
 On the Sunday after the funeral, she 
 appeared with her five orphan daughters 
 in the minister's pew, clad of course in the 
 deepest mourning, but with not at all the 
 air of a crushed woman. Mrs. Tewksby, 
 who, sitting in the front seat, was near 
 enough to take notice, observed that, though 
 a black-bordered handkerchief was held to 
 her face when, during the sermon, reference 
 was made to the virtues of her departed 
 husband, the hand that held that handker- 
 chief was very steady, and the handkerchief 
 itself, when removed, showed no trace of 
 tears. 
 
 But that was no criterion. Mrs. Tewksby 
 said Mrs. Ferguson had been an excellent wife. 
 The humblest members of the congregation 
 could testify to that. And having for nineteen 
 years done her duty in that state of life to
 
 DIMFLETHORFE. 217 
 
 which it had pleased Providence to appoint 
 her, she could afford to be calm and collect- 
 ed when it pleased Providence to remove her 
 from the same. 
 
 To show their respect for her, the 
 congregation raised a purse of fifty guineas, 
 which was presented to her by Deacon 
 Poison. Mr. Tewksby, through the influence 
 of his son-in-law, got the twins Phillis and 
 Anna Mary into an orphanage ; and having 
 done as much as that, and printed a tribute 
 to Mr. Ferguson's memory in the leading 
 organ of the denomination, the people 
 thought that their departed minister, to- 
 gether with his wife and family, were hand- 
 somely disposed of. 
 
 Mrs. Tewksby thought they — the widow 
 and family — would probably leave the place 
 and go into a ready-made linen business 
 somewhere. People generally got on 
 wonderfully well in that way. Or else
 
 218 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 taking lodgers. And if it was taking 
 lodgers, she must certainly leave Dimple- 
 thorpe, because Miss Parley and Mrs. 
 Frogston were already more than sufficient 
 for the requirements of the place. Indeed 
 Mrs. Frogston had had no lodgers for the 
 last three months, during which time she 
 might have been seen, from morning to night, 
 sitting in her own first floor bow-window, 
 watching everything that went on in the 
 street; and it was from her that Mrs. 
 Tewksby had learned a great deal respecting 
 the Ferguson family, especially the way in 
 which the funeral was managed. 
 
 But Mrs. Ferguson had made her own 
 plans, and though they had something to do 
 with lodgers, they had nothing to do with 
 ready-made linen. First of all, she proposed 
 to her cousin Tholthorpe, who was now, 
 like herself, a widow, that she should come 
 and live with her; to which cousin Tholthorpe
 
 DIMPLETHORPE . 219 
 
 gladly assented. Then, when she found 
 that the members had chosen a Mr. Vincent 
 as successor to her husband, and that Mr. 
 Vincent was unmarried, and had no 
 prospects, so far as the congregation could 
 ascertain, of a matrimonial nature, she 
 wrote to him and suggested that, as she was 
 remaining in the Moat House, next door to 
 the chapel, she thought it might be a 
 convenience to him to board with her, as he 
 would then be so nicely situated for the 
 services, besides being in a central part of 
 the village, and within easy reach of the 
 people. 
 
 Mr. Vincent saw it in the same light, so 
 it was arranged that he should board witli 
 her, occupying Mr. Ferguson's study. Rose 
 Emma and Frances Ann, now good-looking, 
 substantial girls of eighteen and seventeen, 
 staid at home to help their mother. The 
 twins were disposed of at the orphanage,
 
 220 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 and Audrey went to Miss Hart's school as 
 principal teacher, receiving a salary good 
 enough to enable her to go to London twice 
 a week and take drawing-lessons from Mr. 
 Evans. She meant to make that, and not 
 teaching, her employment, as soon as she 
 was sufficiently experienced. 
 
 Two months after Mr. Ferguson's death, 
 anyone going into the Moat House could 
 scarcely tell that sorrow had so lately visited 
 it. If anything, the place looked more 
 cheerful, for it had been newly painted, and 
 clean blinds were put up, and the study 
 cleared out and made tidy for Mr. Vincent; 
 and Mrs. Ferguson herself bustled about 
 with, if possible, more activity than ever, 
 the only difference being that now she wore 
 a widow's cap, and flung back the strings of 
 that, instead of the coloured ribbons in which 
 she had been wont to look so fierce in Mr. 
 Ferguson's time.
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 221 
 
 And indeed she said sometimes, in the 
 strictest confidence, to cousin Tholthorpe, 
 there was a certain satisfaction in knowing 
 that things had passed the worst. She could 
 do exactly as she chose now, and there 
 was nobody to interfere with her. In poor 
 dear William James's time, there was really 
 never any telling what was going to happen 
 next. One month he talked about resign- 
 ing the pulpit altogether, and devoting him- 
 self to literary pursuits, than which a more 
 foolish thing for a person in his position 
 could not have been imagined, as a man 
 who wrote for the press ought always to 
 have a little income to fall back upon, and 
 whilst old Mrs. Ferguson was living, he had 
 not a penny but what his profession brought 
 in. Then, scarcely had she recovered from 
 the fever which such a proposition as that 
 threw her into, when he began to talk about 
 taking pupils, which was just as bad, seeing
 
 222 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 that there was a flourishing Academy already 
 kept in Dimplethorpe, by one of the leading 
 members of the congregation, and he would 
 be certain to withdraw from the church if 
 anything was set up in opposition to him. 
 Perhaps the next week both literature and 
 pupils were given up, and he was going to 
 write to the principal of his old college, to 
 ask if there was a vacant charge anywhere, 
 to which he could be recommended. Which 
 there never was, for a man with a wife and 
 five children wanted more stipend than 
 most of the congregations in the small towns 
 were disposed to give. 
 
 So that there was always so much un- 
 certainty, and she supposed that preyed 
 upon his mind. She was sure that, taking 
 all things into consideration, there never 
 were two people more comfortable together 
 than herself and her husband, and she felt 
 it a very great loss when they were called
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 223 
 
 upon to part ; but still she was enabled to 
 look upon it in the light of a merciful release 
 for him, situated, as he often said he was, 
 amongst people who could not appreciate 
 him properly, and with a mind so much 
 above the common. 
 
 And now she did not believe she could 
 show her respect for his memory in a more 
 satisfactory way than by doing her best for 
 the poor dear children he had left behind 
 him. She could not have wished anything 
 more providential than that orphanage for 
 the twins ; and Rose Emma and Frances 
 Ann were just the sort of girls to marry and 
 settle early, which would be a great comfort; 
 to her. And so lon^ as Audrev was doimr 
 well for herself at Miss Hart's — and she 
 did not hear any complaints at present — she 
 thought no one could say other of her than 
 that she had proved herself everything that 
 a widowed mother could be to her fatherless 
 children.
 
 224 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 And with that Mrs. Ferguson smoothed 
 down her crape, and went to make some 
 little arrangements for Mr. Vincent, who was 
 expected that very evening.
 
 225 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 IV/fRS. FERGUSON had not taken such 
 -L'-L a critical step as that of asking the 
 young minister to board and lodge in her 
 house, without careful inquiry first, as to 
 who and what manner of man he was. 
 
 That inquiry had been quite successful. 
 Mr. Vincent was a young man of good 
 character and attainments, and his father and 
 mother were dead, and he had a comfortable 
 little property in the East Warrenshire Bank. 
 The deacons had ascertained that beforehand, 
 for they had decided on putting back their 
 minister's stipend to its original level of a 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 hundred and fifty pounds, and therefore it 
 was a satisfaction to know that, in the event 
 of his speedily marrying and burdening him- 
 self with a family, as his predecessor had 
 done, there would be no need for an im- 
 mediate addition to his income. 
 
 That extra fifty pounds had been a great 
 burden on them for eight or ten years past, 
 with trade slackening as it was doing in 
 Dimplethorpe, and some of the foremost 
 members falling off; though probably Mr. 
 Vincent would set that last difficulty right 
 very soon, for, if report spoke correctly of 
 him, he was just the man to build up a 
 congregation ; active both in the pulpit and 
 out of it, and with none of those vague 
 speculative notions, so far as they could 
 make out, which had been so destructive to 
 the interests of the church in the late 
 minister's time. And a most delightful man 
 in social intercourse. Mrs. Ferguson might
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 227 
 
 congratulate herself upon such a pleasant 
 addition to her home circle, unless, as was 
 probably the case, he was picked up before 
 long by one or other of the young ladies of 
 the congregation. 
 
 That contingency had entered Mrs. Fergu- 
 son's mind as well ; but entered it, coupled 
 with another, equally probable. 
 
 If Mr. Vincent had no young lady in his 
 mind, why should he not fix upon Rose 
 Emma or Frances Ann? True, there were 
 other girls in the congregation who had the 
 advantage of them, both in looks and for- 
 tune — indeed, as regarded that latter quali- 
 fication, it was very easy to have the 
 advantage of them — but then her girls had 
 the advantage of knowing what was required 
 from a minister's wife, having been brought 
 up to it, as she might say, from their cradles. 
 And they had, too, what was of still more 
 importance, the opportunity of daily, inti-
 
 228 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 mate home association with the minister, 
 which might, under judicious supervision, 
 result in a sincere attachment. 
 
 Mrs. Ferguson could not say, for her own 
 part, which of the two girls would be most 
 suitable. Rose Emma had a good com- 
 plexion and a nice open disposition, and a 
 pleasant way of going about amongst the 
 people, which, in her poor dear papa's time, 
 had made her a great favourite with them. 
 But Frances Ann was far the best house- 
 keeper of the two. Indeed, for managing 
 servants and cooking up nice little dishes, 
 and seeing that nothing was wasted in the 
 house, she did not know where her equal 
 was to be found, and that sort of thing was 
 of great importance for a minister's wife. 
 It went farther, sometimes, than an attrac- 
 tive way amongst the congregation. For it 
 made such a difference to a man's temper 
 having his food put down before him pro-
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 229 
 
 perly, and knowing that, whilst he gave him- 
 self to the work of the ministry, the money 
 affairs would not be going to rack and ruin 
 at home. Though, even for that, Rose 
 Emma was not wasteful. She could keep 
 house on as little as anybody, if there was 
 a need for it. Still, being good-looking and 
 that sort of thing, she did naturally think a 
 little more about setting herself off than 
 Frances Ann, whose gifts were in the 
 domestic line. 
 
 As for Audrey, Mrs. Ferguson might say, 
 metaphorically, that she was out of the 
 running altogether. Mrs. Ferguson could 
 not tell why or wherefore, but that girl 
 did not really seem as if she belonged to 
 the family at all. So very shiftless and un- 
 practical. The only common-sense thing 
 she had ever done was setting en^a^ed as 
 Miss Hart's head-teacher, and remaining in 
 the situation as she did, with a promise that
 
 230 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 she should get the drawing too, as soon as 
 she could produce the necessary certificates 
 from her master at Kensington. But for 
 shyness, except with Miss Burnaby, who 
 had begun to take a wonderful interest in 
 her, and for never knowing how to put her- 
 self forward, or make the best of herself, 
 Mrs. Ferguson did not believe any woman 
 ever had such a daughter. 
 
 ''She's just her father over again, cousin 
 Tholthorpe. Poor man, how he used to 
 try me, to be sure, with his awkward ways 
 amongst the people ! The times and times 
 I used to speak my mind to him about it ; 
 but you might as well have opened out to a 
 stone wall. You never could get him to 
 understand. However, poor dear, he is at 
 rest now. I wouldn't breathe a word 
 against him." 
 
 Mrs. Ferguson sighed. It was a tribute 
 she paid occasionally to her husband's
 
 DIMPLETHOBPE. 231 
 
 memory, though she was thankful to say 
 she had been wonderfully sustained ever 
 since his death. She might almost say she 
 was quite herself again. Still there were 
 times when she had, as she expressed it, a 
 sense of bereavement, and then she com- 
 forted herself by remembering what an 
 excellent wife and mother she had been, 
 under circumstances which, to most women, 
 would have been not a little trying. 
 
 The months went on. The family at the 
 Moat House got over their first Christmas 
 better than might have been expected, 
 owing very much, Mrs. Ferguson said, to 
 Mr. Vincent's kindness, for he was such a 
 very pleasant, thoughtful young man, quite 
 a privilege to have him in the house, and 
 scarcely any trouble, though he could enjoy 
 his meals, as every man ought to do, which 
 made her think that of the two perhaps 
 Frances Ann would be most suitable for
 
 232 DIMPLETHORPE 
 
 him. And then the snowdrops and crocuses 
 peeped forth in Miss Burnaby 's garden, and 
 a golden splendour of iris blossoms shot up 
 by the moat side. And in Audrey's scant 
 holiday time — for she had got the certificates 
 now, and was teaching drawing in addition 
 to her other sorts of teaching at Miss Hart's 
 school — she used to go down to that bit of 
 sloping ground and work away at the picture 
 she was making of the old Castle ; the 
 picture which was to tell Phil Hathaway, 
 some of these days, how hard she had 
 toiled, through loss and difficulty and pain, 
 whilst he had been working with none of 
 these things to vex him. 
 
 She never heard of him now, except 
 through Miss Burnaby, with whom she 
 still spent her Saturday afternoons. Miss 
 Burnaby had quite got over that little 
 prejudice about Dissent, and could 
 afford to acknowledge, without a pang of
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 233 
 
 wounded pride, that Dimplethorpe parish 
 church did not embrace within its high 
 panelled oaken pews all of good breeding, 
 intellect, worth, and refinement that the 
 village possessed. She was willing to own, 
 too, that she received as much as she gave, 
 in her companionship with the quiet, gentle 
 girl, who, in her own home and amongst 
 her own people, seemed so little needed. 
 
 And indeed, now, Audrey was less needed 
 at home than ever. Mr. Vincent had 
 acted upon Mr. Poison's theories of matri- 
 mony. He had first satisfied himself that a 
 wife would be a good tiling for him, and 
 
 DO 3 
 
 then he had looked about him in a 
 systematic, common-sense way, for the right 
 lady. Under these circumstances, consider- 
 ations of romance or sentiment not enter- 
 ing into the subject, where was he so likely 
 to find her as in Mrs. Ferguson's own house ? 
 And there accordingly he did find her,
 
 234 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 though for some time he was unable to 
 decide between the respective merits of Rose 
 Emma and Frances Ann. Providence, 
 however, helped him to a selection. For 
 young Mark Tewksby, only son of Mr. 
 Tewksby, of the Moat Farm, was in search 
 of a wife too ; and fate or fancy, or manage- 
 ment, led him, as the latter had led Mr. 
 Vincent, into the family of the late 
 minister. And he, having always a leaning 
 towards a fair complexion, decided, without 
 much preliminary weighing of other 
 qualifications, in favour of Rose Emma. 
 Whereupon Mr. Vincent appropriated 
 Frances Ann, and so the matter was 
 settled. 
 
 But neither of the young couples were to 
 be married just yet. Mr. Vincent thought he 
 had better wait until he had been at least 
 a year settled over the congregation; and 
 young Tewksby 's father was making arrange-
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 235 
 
 mentsfor placing him in a farm, of which he 
 could not take possession until the Larlv Day 
 twelvemonth after his engagement to Rose 
 Emma. So, considering the amount of 
 courtship which was going on in the house, 
 Audrey's presence could well be dispensed 
 with, particularly as Mrs. Ferguson had 
 society after her own heart in the com- 
 panionship of cousin Tholthorpe, a thorough- 
 ly practical, managing, housekeeping sort of 
 woman. 
 
 " It isn't that I don't love her as much as 
 any of the others," Mrs. Ferguson said to 
 her cousin, about six months after the late 
 minister's death. "I'm thankful to say I'm 
 a deal too sfood a mother to have anv feel- 
 ing of that sort, but it stands to reason that, 
 when there's such a difference, you can't 
 help seeing it. And Miss Burnaby taking 
 such a fancy to her as she does, sets the 
 house at liberty nicely for the rest of the
 
 236 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 young people. Or else nobody should have 
 it to say of me that I was partial. It's a 
 thins; I hate." 
 
 " Yes, Priscilla," said cousin Tholthorpe, 
 solemnly, "you were always a person that 
 did your duty, let you be situated as you 
 might, and I don't deny but what you had 
 a deal to go through in your poor husband's 
 time. It is curious what a difference there 
 is in people. It's a mercy, Priscilla, you've 
 only one in the family of that sort. But 
 Providence has come forward handsomely 
 for you, I must say, seeing how you were 
 circumstanced." 
 
 And Mrs. Tholthorpe looked down the 
 road to where Mr. Vincent and Frances 
 Ann were coming along, with the brisk and 
 important air of newly-engaged people, who 
 have not the least wish to conceal their 
 satisfaction from the public. Indeed, there 
 never had been any nonsense of that kind
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 237 
 
 about Frances Ann, from the very first. 
 Nor with Rose Emma, either. They were 
 common-sense, straightforward girls, and 
 Providence had blessed them according to 
 their deservings, so their mother said. 
 
 " Yes," she replied, following Mrs. Thol- 
 thorpe's cousinly gaze down the road. <l I'm 
 sure I may say that goodness and mercy 
 have followed me, and it's a satisfaction to 
 think that poor dear William James is safe. 
 It was a great anxiety to me, having every- 
 thing to manage for the family as I did. 
 And you can testify, cousin Tholthorpe, 
 that I did manage everything to the best of 
 my ability." 
 
 Priscilla Tholthorpe said she could testify 
 to that, no one better. 
 
 " Yes, and where we should have been if 
 I hadn't moved about amongst the members, 
 and made them agreeable to that increase 
 of salary, I don't know. For, as I tell
 
 238 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 Frances Ann, there's no limit to what a 
 minister's wife ma) 7 do, if she knows how 
 to fill her place properly." 
 
 "She need only look to you, Priscilla, if 
 she wants teaching how to do that." 
 
 Mrs. Ferguson adjusted her weepers, with 
 the calm of a woman upon whose conscience 
 there never rested the weight of an unful- 
 filled duty. 
 
 "Thank you, cousin Tholthorpe. I won't 
 say that you're not justified in speaking 
 from your heart. But Frances Ann won't 
 be put to it as I was, and that's a mercy, with 
 that nice little property of Mr. Vincent's 
 secure to him in the Bank ; but still, if she 
 has the ability, it will be sure to come out 
 somewhere. It's a great deal to keep well 
 with the congregation, even when there 
 isn't an increase to be desired, and I'm con- 
 fident Frances Ann will see it her duty to 
 be careful of that. They're a joy and a
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 239 
 
 pleasure to me, are both my girls, cousin 
 Tholthorpe. A mother can't say more than 
 that." 
 
 "No, nor needn't to," said appreciative 
 Priscilla, number two.
 
 240 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 rnHE snowdrops came as aforetime, and 
 -*- the primroses, and the Lent lilies, and 
 the yellow flag flowers. And Dimplethorpe 
 blossomed into pink and white loveliness as 
 regarded the wild roses in her hedgerows ; 
 and then came reddening briony berries, 
 and the bloomy purple sloes, and bramble 
 sprays with touches of sunset crimson upon 
 them, and the spikes of the speckled orchis 
 shot up, coral-like, amongst the fallen leaves 
 by the moat-side ; and Mr. Vincent and 
 Frances Ann went boldly in broad daylight 
 to the Dimplethorpe upholsterer's shop to
 
 DIMPLETHORPE . 241 
 
 buy furniture ; for why shouldn't they, and 
 so what was the use of making a fuss about 
 it ? And Rose Emma and young Tewksby 
 walked arm-in-arm to chapel every Sunday 
 morning, and he sat with her in the minis- 
 ter's pew — Mrs. Ferguson, under the circum- 
 stances, still occupying it — and found the 
 places for her in her hymn-book, or in 
 various other ways proclaimed his attach- 
 ment. And Audrey worked on bravely at 
 her teaching — now principally of drawing — 
 and brought home, term after term, certifi- 
 cates of merit from the art-school at Ken- 
 sington, and went over every Saturday 
 afternoon to the Manor House, where it 
 would be hard to tell whether she or Miss 
 Burnaby had a pleasanter time of it. And 
 Meadowfield Lodge was unlet still. 
 
 As Dr. Fylingdale said, he had had serious 
 thoughts of going into it himself, if Michael- 
 mas brought him no tenant. For the house 
 
 VOL. i. R
 
 242 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 had now been standing finished and empty 
 for exactly two and a half years, during 
 which time the creepers had grown up 
 beautifully round the columns of the veran- 
 dah on the village side, and the ivy — there 
 never was such a place as Dimplethorpe for 
 ivy — had crept as nearly as possible to the 
 notice-board on the top of the bay-window. 
 It really was a pretty place, and it was a 
 thousand pities nobody seemed to want it. 
 Dr. Fylingdale certainly would have gone 
 into it, only, unfortunately, with a haste 
 and disregard of consequences which could 
 scarcely have been expected from a man of 
 his age, he had pushed matters to a crisis 
 with Miss Burnaby, and the pretty little 
 lady had given him an answer which effectu- 
 ally barred him from that end of Dimple- 
 thorpe, unless he could previously find a 
 Mrs. Fylingdale somewhere else. 
 
 For Miss Burnaby had told him that she
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 243 
 
 had not the least thought of leaving her 
 brother. They were exceedingly happy 
 and comfortable together, and she had no 
 other wish than to spend the remainder of 
 her days with him. She was very sorry 
 that anything had induced Dr. Fylingdale 
 to make such a proposal. She hoped that 
 he would endeavour to forget as speedily 
 as possible that anything of the sort had 
 ever been said, though at the same time it 
 need not interfere with the friendly feeling 
 which had subsisted between them ever 
 since he came to the place. 
 
 Dr. Fylingdale hoped it would not, for there 
 wasn't a pleasanter house in Dimplethorpe 
 to eat one's dinner in, once a month or so. 
 At the same time, it would scarcely be pos- 
 sible, even if it had been seemly, the very 
 week after Miss Burnaby's courteous refusal, 
 to go and plant himself right opposite her 
 front-door, and so perhaps offend her, and 
 
 r2
 
 244 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 make her break off the intimacy altogether. 
 He was fain, therefore, to remain at the 
 other end of the village, disappointed both 
 in heart and purse ; and the notice-board 
 on the top of the bay-window of Meadow- 
 field Lodge still proclaimed to high and 
 low, rich and poor, that if anyone did want 
 a genteel family residence, here it was ready 
 for them. 
 
 But one morning, late in March, when 
 that unfortunate villa was nearly accom- 
 plishing its third year of emptiness, Miss 
 Burnaby turned out as usual, first thing 
 after breakfast, to take a tour round her 
 garden, and was suddenly aware of some- 
 thing missing amongst the familiar objects 
 upon which her eyes had been accustomed 
 so long to rest. 
 
 Spring opened cheerlessly that year, but 
 now a burst of sunshine had come after east 
 wind and rain, and everything was getting
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 245 
 
 ready to rush into bud and blossom as fast 
 as possible. But Miss Burnaby had watched 
 that sort of thing before, and it had not 
 smitten upon her with the sense of strange- 
 ness she felt now. 
 
 She took off her spectacles and rubbed 
 them, and put them on again, and trotted 
 round the garden to find out where the 
 difference could be. It was not like that 
 sudden — silent change which comes some- 
 times, when Xature, after a long sleep, 
 makes one great bound, and before one can 
 tell where one is, the trees are all bursting 
 into leaf, and the lilacs, which were brown 
 twigs one day, have put on their beautiful 
 April raiment the next. Miss Burnaby went 
 to look at those lilacs. They were brown 
 twigs, nothing more. Then she examined 
 her apricots. Could the change be in them ? 
 No, for not a blossom had opened since, 
 the day before, she had counted them so
 
 246 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 carefully. Nor was it that a blight had 
 come, such as cut off all the peaches last 
 year, for she rubbed her spectacles again, 
 and went across the garden to make sure 
 that that was not the case. The blossoms 
 were all there, as right as a fiddle, to use the 
 old gardener's words. Then what was it ? 
 
 Miss Burnaby, after one more round of 
 investigation, decided that she had better 
 go into the house and consult her brother 
 about it. 
 
 "Jack, do just come out a minute, will 
 you ? There is something wrong in the 
 garden, and I can't, for the life of me, make 
 out what it is. There's something that 
 doesn't look a bit like itself somehow. It 
 caught me as soon as ever I went out at the 
 front door. We'll go out that way now, 
 and perhaps you will find what it is. 
 Everybody says you have such a wonder- 
 fully quick eye."
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 247 
 
 " All right, Jane," said the old General, 
 laying down his morning pipe, and dislodg- 
 ing a couple of fine tabby cats who were 
 stretching themselves before the fire, one 
 on each knee. " If it's anything that's been 
 stolen out of the garden, I warrant it 
 doesn't escape me" 
 
 To the front door they went, and, keenly 
 as though he had been reconnoitring a 
 battle-field, the old man's eye swept round 
 that trim, tidy, well-kept little plot of 
 garden-ground. 
 
 " Why, Jane !" he exclaimed, " as sure as 
 my name is Jack Burnaby, old Fylingdale's 
 board is down. What on earth's the 
 matter ? The old simpleton can't be com- 
 ing to live at it himself." 
 
 A dainty blush overspread Miss Burnaby's 
 cheek. If he did, it would be exceedingly 
 annoying. 
 
 And she began, there and then, to con-
 
 248 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 sider how she might most conveniently 
 migrate to a bedroom at the back of the 
 house, or at any rate have her toilet-table 
 removed from its present place in front of 
 the window. For of course Dr. Fylingdale 
 would occupy a room to the front himself, 
 and in that case she could not slip upstairs 
 to adjust her cap without running the risk 
 of seeing him perform the same kind 
 office for his own wig, at the dressing-table 
 of that very window which, for the last 
 three years nearly, had been half hidden by 
 the notice-board. It was a most thought- 
 less thin^ of him to do. Unless he meant 
 to insult her. 
 
 Because, of course, it never occurred to 
 either of them that Meadowfield Lodge 
 could really be let. 
 
 "Ill tell you what I'll do, Jane," said 
 the General, at last. "I'll go down to 
 Craybrook, the builder, and hear what he
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 249 
 
 says about it. Perhaps, after all, they've 
 only carried off the board to paint it up a 
 bit. It's coming about to the time of year 
 for that, you know. You'll see it up again 
 to-morrow morning, same as usual, for 
 another six months." 
 
 Jack started, and Miss Burnaby went up- 
 stairs to consider the matter of the toilet- 
 table. Her brother might say what he 
 liked, just to set her mind at rest, but she 
 had a firm conviction that Dr. Fylingdale was 
 coming to the Lod^e himself. It was most 
 annoying. She must say she had given him 
 credit for more gentlemanly feeling. And 
 when he might have recollected how fre- 
 quently they must encounter each other, for 
 there was no back way to the Lodge. 
 Everybody, from the butcher's boy to the 
 vicar himself, who went to the house at all, 
 must go to it by that carriage-gate, exactly 
 opposite her own. She must move her
 
 250 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 looking-glass to the side of the window, and 
 have a short muslin blind put up — short 
 muslin blinds were her abomination, next 
 to open chimneys, — and never draw the 
 Venetians until she was properly dressed, 
 instead of being able, as she had been up 
 to the present time, to peep out at any stage 
 of her toilet and see what sort of a morning 
 it was. Very annoying of Dr. Fylingdale, 
 very annoying indeed. 
 
 But the General came back with a differ- 
 ent story. Dr. Fylingdale was not coming 
 to live at the Lodge at all. 
 
 " It's somebody else, Jane. I didn't 
 think he would make such a donkey of 
 himself. He has done that quite enough 
 already." 
 
 "Jack!" said his sister, with a slight show 
 of dignity. 
 
 It did not argue a man quite a donkey to 
 have so appreciated herself. One must
 
 DIMPLETHORrE. 251 
 
 allow him the possession of a little sense, if 
 only in that one particular. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Jane. I meant, 
 you know, that he needn't have wanted to 
 fly his kite quite so high. But I'm very 
 glad, at the same time, that he is not coming 
 to live at Meadowfielcl Lodge." 
 
 "Then who is it, Jack?" 
 
 u Well, you're not quite out of the bush, 
 Jane, though I don't think you've any reason 
 to be alarmed. You remember poor Charley 
 Haythorne ?" 
 
 " Well, yes, Jack," said Miss Burnaby. 
 with another little blush, not of annoyance, 
 but of what might almost be called self- 
 reproach. " But he must be dead ever so 
 long ago. Indeed, I'm sure he is." 
 
 " Yes, and so am I, and this is his son. 
 A Major and Mrs. Haythorne have taken the 
 Lodge. He is home on leave from Bombay, 
 and I suppose his wife and little boy are
 
 252 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 going to stay in the house after he returns 
 to his regiment. So you will have to call, 
 you know." 
 
 " Of course I shall call, Jack. You never 
 knew me wanting in respect, either to the 
 army or navy." 
 
 "Except when you sent poor Charlie 
 about his business, let me see, how many 
 years ago, eh, Jane ? Getting on for fifty, 
 I should think." 
 
 " Well, perhaps I was a little hard upon 
 him, Jack, but what can you do when a 
 man worries you so ?" 
 
 " I don't know. No one ever did worry 
 me in that way. But it is curious that we 
 should light upon the family again." 
 
 " I don't believe it is the same, Jack. At 
 least, I almost hope it isn't." 
 
 "Oh ! yes, it is. Haythorne isn't such a 
 common name. I remember hearing about 
 Charlie afterwards. He married somebody
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 253 
 
 with a lot of inoney, and Squire Bentham 
 told me he sent his son into the artillery. 
 It's the very same, Jane, so there's an intro- 
 duction for you at once, if you like to men- 
 tion the circumstance." 
 
 And the old General went back to his 
 pipe and the tabbies. He enjoyed a joke 
 with his sister, and she did not mind it 
 either, especially when it had reference to 
 her conquests in the olden time.
 
 254 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 7T1HE very next morning a fly drove up to 
 -*- the garden gate of Meadowfield Lodge. 
 Miss Burnaby was out amongst her apricot 
 blossoms when she heard the sound of 
 wheels, and, as soon as they stopped, she 
 hurried up as fast as her feet would carry 
 her to her own front window, in order to 
 have a view of whoever was getting out. 
 But, to her disappointment, they were inside 
 the house before she could so much as see 
 who they were. She planted herself there 
 with her knitting, determined to sit it out 
 until they made their appearance again ; but,
 
 DIMPLETHOKPE. 255 
 
 as ill-luck would have it, the vicar chose 
 that morning, of all others, to make one of 
 his longest calls, and, whilst he was making 
 it, she heard, with feelings of regret to which 
 she dared not give utterance, the cab drive 
 away again. Never had she enjoyed a 
 vicarial visit so little, because, in a general 
 way, Mr. Laxby was a most entertaining 
 man. But she did so want to see what 
 Charlie's son was like. 
 
 It was a great convenience now that that 
 sycamore-tree had blown down, for by 
 going to the window in one gable of the 
 Manor House, Miss Burnaby commanded, 
 through the gap at that end of the garden, 
 a good view of one end of the new house ; 
 and from her own bed-room she could look 
 up the gravel sweep to the front door, and 
 the bay window on the right-hand side of 
 the house. So that she had nothing to 
 do but sit first in one room and then in
 
 256 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 another, and note what went on opposite. 
 
 She did wish they could have asked old 
 Dr. Fylingdale over to a rubber of back- 
 gammon, and asked him all about every- 
 thing : what sort of a man the Major was ; 
 where his wife came from ; whether they 
 had taken the house on lease, or by the 
 year, together with a great many other little 
 matters. But, of course, under the circum- 
 stances, that was impossible. They must be 
 coming in at once though, for the very day 
 after that fly drove up the paperers arrived 
 with their steps and stretchers and paste- 
 buckets, and fires were lighted, and she 
 could see them working away from morning 
 to night, as if they were doing it for a 
 wager. 
 
 Very curious. For she was quite sure 
 Dr. Fylingdale had told her the house was 
 papered from top to bottom. But perhaps 
 Mrs. Haythorne was a lady of taste, who
 
 DIMrLETHORPE. 257 
 
 liked to choose her own patterns ; and the 
 doctor was not a man whose judgment, as 
 regarded paper-hangings, could be taken as 
 worth much, whatever might be said of it 
 when applied to the selection of a wife. If 
 she could but have stepped across and taken 
 a look round, but Dr. Fylingdale was always 
 about the place. If she saw his withered 
 old face peering behind its high shirt-collars 
 once a day in the empty rooms, she saw it at 
 least a dozen times, and she would rather 
 wait until doomsday, to know what patterns 
 Mrs. Haythorne had chosen than find out at 
 the risk of meeting the landlord of Meadow- 
 field Lodge, after what had passed between 
 them. It was a nuisance. 
 
 Then the vans, three of them. Miss 
 Burnaby spent the whole morning watching 
 those vans being emptied. Such pretty 
 pieces of old carved oak furniture, such 
 quaint oval mirrors. And the packing cases, 
 
 vol. i. s
 
 258 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 with Bombay and Calcutta in great black 
 letters upon them ; china, most likely, and 
 oriental curiosities, as the Major was just 
 home from India. And picture-cases, almost 
 any number of them, and an easel. Mrs. 
 Haythorne had artistic tendencies then, or 
 was it the Major? And a harp and a piano, 
 and then a rocking-horse. And as the 
 rocking-horse was brought out of the van, 
 a little black-haired boy, with a nurse in 
 attendance upon him, came capering out to 
 meet it, and insisted upon having a ride on 
 it there and then, before ever it was taken 
 into the house. A handsome little lad, but 
 spoiled, surely, as if the furniture men had 
 nothing to do but stand grinning at him until 
 his morning gallop, which he chose to take 
 exactly in front of the van door, was ended. 
 As if by magic, things got into shape when 
 once those vans were unloaded. Next 
 morning, when Miss Burnaby peeped out
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 259 
 
 at nine o'clock, there were pink-striped 
 holland blinds to the windows, and hanging 
 baskets, with flowers in them, were suspended 
 from the verandah, and foliage plants, with 
 the most artistic-looking terra-cotta vases, 
 were filling the space which the notice board 
 had occupied so long ; and by the end of five 
 days, one might think the house had been 
 inhabited for a year, so cosy and comfortable 
 did it look. But no sign of Major or Mrs. 
 Haythorne. However they would make their 
 appearance at church on Sunday. Miss 
 Burnaby could content herself until then. 
 
 And they did make their appearance, 
 accordingly. 
 
 To say that Miss Burnaby's attention, 
 during that Sunday morning service, was 
 scrupulously fixed upon her devotions, would 
 be saying a great deal too much. But if it 
 did wander it only wandered in common 
 with that of the rest of the female part of 
 
 s2
 
 260 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 the congregation. Indeed such wandering 
 was only natural, for as, during the last 
 twenty or thirty years, no one had voluntarily 
 chosen Dimplethorpe as a place of residence, 
 its inhabitants felt themselves bound to take 
 more than ordinary interest in the manners 
 and appearance of any tolerably well-bred 
 people who had shown such an uncommon 
 preference for their little village. 
 
 Major and Mrs. Haythorne came in very 
 early, so that Miss Burnaby, who had done 
 the same, found time enough to take notice 
 of them leisurely, before the service began. 
 The pew-opener showed them into the seat 
 next behind Squire Bentham himself, thus 
 evincing a fine perception of their social 
 position. You may always trust the pew- 
 opener of a secluded country parish church 
 for separating between the false and the true 
 in the various sorts of u quality people " who 
 come within the exercise of his function. It
 
 DDIPLETHORPE. 261 
 
 is only your vulgar town-beadle who puts 
 velvet and feathers into his front seats, and 
 relegates Norman features under a two-year 
 old bonnet to uncushioned pews at the back. 
 
 They entered quietly, taking apparently 
 no more notice of anything or anybody 
 than if they had sat in the same place and 
 looked upon the same congregation, Sunday 
 after Sunday, for a dozen years. Well-bred 
 people — Miss Burnaby could see that at a 
 glance, as well as the pew-opener. Major 
 Haythorne w r as a tall, handsome man, just 
 enough like poor Charlie to convince her 
 that he did belong to the same family, and 
 yet so different as to make the pretty old 
 lady siah as she turned over the leaves of 
 her Prayer-book, and thought what might 
 have been. 
 
 For, fifty years ago, Charlie — poor Char- 
 lie dead and done for now nearly a quarter 
 of a century, nay, much more than that —
 
 262 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 was a jolly, care-for-nothing young fellow, 
 with a shirt-collar open here, and a tie fly- 
 ing there, and loose brown curls tumbling 
 about in all directions, and an easy indiffer- 
 ence as to the cut of his coat and the shape 
 of his hat, which used to vex her a little 
 then, but which she had learned since to 
 prefer rather than otherwise in a man. 
 And this Major Haythorne, Charlie's son, 
 would have made a water- wagtail look un- 
 tidy by comparison with him. Not a hair 
 was out of place on his closely-cropped 
 head and long drooping moustache. The 
 line of starched and glossy white which 
 appeared above the collar of his morning- 
 coat, and again at its cuffs, might have been 
 measured by rule and compasses, so exactly 
 was it of the same width all along. As for 
 his black satin tie, polished marble could 
 perhaps have vied with it for immovable 
 regularity of outline, but there the marble
 
 DIMPLETHORFE. 263 
 
 must stop — the black satin would have car- 
 ried the day. And when Major Haythorne 
 stood up, and when Major Haythorne sat 
 down, and when Major Haythorne did his 
 Maker the homage of kneeling, it was with 
 the air of a man for whom comme il faut is 
 life's supreme aim. 
 
 -'Not a bit like Charlie," said Miss Bur- 
 naby to herself, and her thoughts travelled 
 back to the long-ago days when, a some- 
 what prim and particular damsel, wearing 
 her India muslin and long silk mittens, in 
 that same old Manor House where now, 
 grey-haired and spectacled, she was settling 
 down to a peaceful eventide, she had turned 
 away from the curly soldier lad because his 
 ways were too off-hand, and his collars not 
 neat enough. Poor Charlie ! And he had 
 gone with never a word more. And the 
 next she heard of him was that he was 
 married, and then that he was dead.
 
 264 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 Miss Burnaby could not bear tidy men 
 now. She said it was a sign of narrow- 
 mindedness. She would not have been 
 half so happy with her own brother Jack 
 if she had not had to look after him and 
 straighten him up a dozen times a day. 
 She might be right, or she might be wrong, 
 but the one man she remembered above all 
 others, and would remember to the day of 
 her death, was that curly soldier lad, whose 
 gloves were always anywhere but on his 
 hands, and who never knew where to find 
 his cap, and who, when he had found it, 
 could never make it stick straight on, be- 
 cause of the tossing brown hair, which she 
 told him was so irregular and unmilitary. 
 
 And this Major Haythorne, smooth and 
 starched and polished to the very pink of 
 perfection, was Charlie's son. If his father 
 ever had taught him tidiness, his own 
 want of it having cost him so dearly, the
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 265 
 
 Major at forty had bettered the lesson. 
 
 Miss Burnaby watched him, and lived 
 that little bit of her girlish life over again, 
 until the congregation stood up for the first 
 hymn ; and then Mrs. Haythorne, crossing 
 over to eret out of the wav of the sunlight 
 which came in at that corner of the square 
 pew, recalled her to the fact that there was 
 another stranger to be taken notice of. 
 
 Mrs. Haythorne was a lady-like little 
 woman, small and neat and well finished — 
 indeed the Major could have married none 
 other — with fine greyhound features, and 
 large brown eyes. Not melancholy eyes, 
 not discontented eyes; but Miss Burnaby, 
 meeting them for a moment as the two 
 ladies rose simultaneously at the commence- 
 ment of that first hymn, felt in that very 
 moment that they were the eyes of a woman 
 who had not found what she wanted in her 
 husband.
 
 266 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 And indeed, thought Miss Burnaby, how 
 could she find what she wanted, if she 
 sought for anything beyond mathematical 
 precision and regularity of outline in the 
 man she had chosen to live her life with ? 
 
 The old lady watched her more attentive- 
 ly after that. At sixty-eight, Miss Burnaby 
 had still a romantic interest in imagining 
 histories about married women, whose faces 
 did not tell either of common-place house- 
 keeperly content, or of that strange quiet- 
 ness, strange because so rare, which comes of 
 restful love. 
 
 And Mrs. Haythorne's told of neither. 
 Her husband was scrupulously attentive to 
 her, arranged her cushions, found the places 
 in her prayer-book with the tact of an 
 accomplished squire of dames. But though 
 courteously acknowledging all that he did, 
 there was no light in her brown eyes when 
 they met his, none of that unconscious
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 267 
 
 sweetness which shines through the faces of 
 people whose joy it is to be with each other. 
 It was his place to give these attentions. It 
 was hers to receive. Nothing more than 
 that. 
 
 How old was she? Had she married 
 him for a position ? Had she had a disap- 
 pointment in early life, and so taken up 
 with him, merely for the sake of being "set- 
 tled" as many women do, finding a sort of 
 jog-trot comfort in the arrangement, when 
 once the better part of their nature has 
 been laid to sleep ? Yet it could not be 
 that, for though there was no bitterness in 
 her face, neither was there any of the full- 
 fed content of the successful matron. Per- 
 haps, then, she had been forced into it, and 
 was making the best of her bargain, in a 
 courteous, half scornful fashion. Or she 
 might have married him, fancying herself in 
 love, and then, having found out her mistake,
 
 "268 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 had to bear its consequences, like many an- 
 other woman, whom her friends consider as 
 in the highest degree successful. 
 
 At any rate there was something uncom- 
 fortable. Mrs. Haythorne was not happy, 
 or, if she was, she had a curious way of 
 showing it. 
 
 Miss Burnaby let her thoughts travel into 
 all sorts of conjectures, discarding first one 
 and then another as not the correct one, 
 until a sudden uprising of the congregation 
 aroused her to the fact that Mr. Laxby had 
 come to the end of his sermon. She had 
 never been so inattentive at church in her 
 life before, at least never since those Sun- 
 day mornings, now nearly fifty years ago, 
 when Charlie used to sit beside her, and try, 
 in his simple, awkward fashion, to pay her 
 those cavalierly little acts of homage which 
 this stranger lady received so coldly from 
 Major Haythorne.
 
 269 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 mO WARDS the end of that week, Jane 
 ■*■ went across to call upon the new 
 people, taking with her her brother's card, 
 the old General not being a man who ever 
 went out on such errands. He liked well 
 enough to have a man over of an evening, 
 for a cigar or a rubber, and he did not 
 mind a leisurely stroll with a friend up 
 towards the East Warrenshire hills, to 
 catch a glimpse of the hounds, who some- 
 times had a run across that part of the 
 country ; but as for sprucing himself up and 
 setting off on a round of pasteboard non-
 
 270 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 sense, he was long past it, even if the ladies 
 to be called upon were fifty times prettier 
 or more fascinating than Mrs. Haythorne. 
 
 " I don't know for the fascination, Jack, 
 but I'm sure you never called upon any- 
 body prettier, not even in the — th, where 
 you said the officers' wives were all such 
 beauties. Mrs. Haythorne is the handsom- 
 est woman I have seen in Dimplethorpe 
 since the Berry-Fontenoys went away." 
 
 " She may be as handsome as Venus, 
 Jane, I'm not going to call upon her, at my 
 time of life. You can say something nice 
 for me. Nobody can do that better than 
 yourself, and if they seem likely to turn out 
 pleasant people, we will have them over to 
 dinner one of these evenings. But I'm not 
 going to call, and there's an end of it." 
 
 Miss Burnaby went. Before she came 
 away, she had made up her mind that her 
 second theory was the correct one, namely,
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 271 
 
 that Mrs. Haythorne had been forced into 
 marrying her husband, and that she was 
 trying to make the best of it. 
 
 Only her way of making the best of it 
 was by having everything around her as 
 beautiful and tasteful as possible. She was 
 very graceful in her manners, and courteous, 
 even to sweetness. Miss Burnaby thought 
 that, if she had been a happier woman, she 
 would have shown it in sparkling play- 
 fulness ; for there was a hint of that even 
 now, when any turn in the conversation 
 gave room for it. She was very clever, 
 there was no doubt about that, only some- 
 times there was just the least little touch of 
 satire about her, so that you could not quite 
 tell whether she meant all she said. And 
 it was that touch of satire or sarcasm 
 sometimes, which gave Miss Burnaby the 
 impression that she was a disappointed 
 woman.
 
 272 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 The house was simply lovely. Not that 
 there was anything extravagant about it, 
 but everything was arranged with such taste. 
 The rooms mi^ht have been lived in for 
 years, so cosily had each piece of furniture 
 settled down into its place, and so little 
 varnish of newness was there about the 
 house. Such pretty sketches on the walls, 
 in crayon and water-colour, and the most 
 exquisite groups of bamboo and plantain 
 leaves, arranged as panels for the doors. 
 Then the Indian and Japanese curiosities ; 
 quaint old cabinets and bronzes, and bits 
 of Bombay ebony furniture ; in short, a 
 mingled atmosphere of sandal- wood and 
 culture seemed to surround you as soon as 
 you entered the place. 
 
 If Miss Burnaby thought from the first 
 that Mrs. Haythorne's marriage was not a 
 happy one, she w 7 as still more convinced 
 of it when Major Haythorne entered the
 
 PIMPLETHOKPE. 273 
 
 room, spotless, irreproachable as one of the 
 wax figures in a London barber's shop, and 
 indeed with not much more expression in 
 his face, save that the finely chiselled nose 
 and retreating chin stamped him unmis- 
 takably as belonging to the upper classes. 
 
 A subtle change passed over his wife's 
 face as he entered, after she had been in 
 conversation with Miss Burnaby for a few 
 minutes. It was not coldness, nor dislike, 
 nor temper, nor annoyance ; it was simply 
 weariness. And when the handsome wax 
 figure broke into speech, one could quite 
 understand that weariness, for never surely 
 did the accents of Vere de Vere cover such 
 a hopeless deep of commonplace. Major 
 Haythorne evidently thought that, with such 
 an exterior as his own, nothing further 
 could possibly be required. 
 
 "My brother asked me to bring his 
 apologies," Miss Burnaby began. " He 
 
 VOL. i. t
 
 274 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 scarcely ever goes out to call now, but he 
 hopes to make your acquaintance before 
 long. I think we ought not to be quite 
 strangers. We knew Captain Haythorne of 
 the — th." 
 
 "Dear me !" said the Major, pulling one 
 of his wristbands down a little, to match 
 the line of the other. " You don't say so. 
 Curious coincidence, 'pon my word. Only 
 fancy, Delphine !" 
 
 And he turned to his wife. 
 
 " Fancy the General knowing poor Pa. 
 It really is odd how one finds somebody 
 everywhere that knew somebody else. 
 Isn't it ?" 
 
 " Most remarkable," said Mrs. Haythorne, 
 with a touch of contempt,. " It proves that 
 the world is not so very wide, after all." 
 And then she added, turning to Miss 
 Burnaby, with a less cold light in her 
 eyes, "It ought to make us better neigh-
 
 DDIPLETHORPE. 275 
 
 bours, ought it not ? For ray own part, I 
 don't know a creature here, and I was very 
 nearly saying I don't care to know one 
 either, only you know " 
 
 " Oh ! yes," said the good-hearted little 
 woman, u I know exactly what you mean. 
 I think everyone must have that sort of 
 feeling in going to a strange place, though I 
 have never experienced it myself, because I 
 have lived here all my life. But you will 
 soon get over it, Mrs. Haythorne. Dimple- 
 thorpe is such a friendly little place. You 
 will feel quite at home in it after a few 
 weeks." 
 
 11 1 daresay you are quite right. After 
 being abroad for a few years, one can make 
 oneself at home almost anywhere in England. 
 You have so much to begin with, in being 
 in your own country at all. I had a sort of 
 feeling in church last Sunday that the people 
 here were pleasant. You know how one 
 
 t2
 
 276 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 does get hold of that sort of feeling some- 
 times, without being able to account for 
 it. Though really the place does not look 
 interesting. I should think artists do not 
 often visit it." 
 
 Miss Burnaby had plenty to say now. 
 That remark opened a fine vein of conversa- 
 tion. 
 
 " Well, I don't know that many artists 
 come to the place from choice, but we are 
 beginning to be rather proud of a young 
 man who went out from here a few years 
 ago, and who promises to be quite an hon- 
 our to the village. His grandfather was a 
 basket-maker here." 
 
 " Dear me !" said the lady, carelessly. 
 " And does he still make Dimplethorpe his 
 home?" 
 
 " Well, I can scarcely say that, as he is 
 studying now on the Continent. He took a 
 scholarship in London, which gave him three
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 277 
 
 years in Rome or Paris, and the three years 
 do not expire until next autumn. I assure 
 you we are quite proud of looking at the 
 little cottage where he made his first sketches 
 amongst the osier bundles." 
 
 " I should think so. But he will scarcely 
 be wise if he comes back and establishes 
 himself in the place. It is always better for 
 a young man to get away from such sur- 
 roundings." 
 
 There was a flavour of bitterness in Mrs. 
 Haythorne's voice as she said this. But 
 evidently the Major shared her sentiments. 
 
 "You are quite right, Delphine. And 
 when a young man of that sort tries to get 
 into society, it is such a nuisance. How 
 bored we used to be in Paris with some of 
 those people !" 
 
 Mrs. Hay thorn e flung her eyes away from 
 him. 
 
 " I shall certainly try to make his ac-
 
 278 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 quaintance, Miss Burnaby, if he comes here. 
 I have no patience " — and she turned a look 
 of defiance upon her husband, which might 
 or might not be playful — " I have no 
 patience with that vulgarity which sets itself 
 above art, simply because the art does not 
 happen to have been born in its own 
 sphere." 
 
 " Exactly so," said Miss Burnaby. " I 
 am sure whenever Philip Hathaway comes 
 back here, he will be welcome in the best 
 society of the place." 
 
 And then — for she was afraid Mrs. Hay- 
 thorne might say something sharp — she 
 changed the conversation. 
 
 " I daresay you would admire our little 
 church. We are rather proud of that, as 
 well as of our artist. It is genuine Early 
 English, and not restored, either." 
 
 "Yes. I found that out. But really 
 anything looks lovely after the horrible
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 279 
 
 whitewash of Bombay. I cannot say, how- 
 ever, that I found the sermon so interesting 
 as the architecture." 
 
 " Probably not. But we are all very 
 fond of dear old Mr. Laxby. He is quite a 
 gentleman, and reads the prayers so nicely ; 
 and he is so kind to the poor." 
 
 " Oh ! yes. You can tell that at once," 
 said Mrs. Haythorne. 
 
 " Quite the air of a man of family," 
 echoed the Major, picking up a stray leaf 
 from the carpet, and then carefully wiping 
 his wristband with a cambric handkerchief. 
 For Floss, a little Pomeranian dog, labour- 
 ing under the delusion that its master had 
 meant to give it a pat when he stooped 
 down, had, in the excess of its affection, 
 licked his hand, and the pretty tongue had 
 touched that immaculate linen. 
 
 Again Mrs. Haythorne looked bored. 
 
 " And then," she continued, "what is that
 
 280 PIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 queer little building in the principal street, 
 with pointed windows, and a text over the 
 door? I should have taken it for a meet- 
 ing-house, only in a small place like this 
 you scarcely seem to need anything over 
 and above the authorised means of grace." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! we do. At any rate, we have 
 something over. That is the Independent 
 chapel. And we should never have found 
 out that we had an artist amongst us, if 
 it had not been for poor Mr. Ferguson, the 
 minister of that chapel. He was a very 
 superior man, his sermons were twice as 
 good as Mr. Laxby's, though I never went 
 to hear them, and he had a great talent for 
 painting. Indeed, everyone said it was a 
 shame he had not been allowed to become 
 an artist himself. And he happened to find 
 Philip Hathaway sketching amongst the 
 osier flats one day, and he took an interest 
 in him, and used to give him lessons three
 
 DIMPLETHOBPE. 281 
 
 times a week ; and after that he got him 
 sent to London, to attend the art-classes 
 there, and that was the beginning of Phil's 
 success. Poor Mr. Ferguson is dead now, 
 and there is some one, a Mr. somebody — I 
 really forget who — in his place, not half so 
 clever, I believe, for nobody ever hears 
 anything about him. But that is of no 
 consequence to you, for I suppose you will 
 not go to the chapel." 
 
 "Of course not," said Major Haythorne, 
 smoothing his long moustache. 
 
 Mrs. Haythorne looked him quietly in the 
 face. 
 
 " I do not see any ' of course ' in it, Fred. 
 I really cannot understand why we may not 
 take advantage of anything which rises 
 above the dead level of mediocrity. I feel 
 a very strong inclination to go over next 
 Sunday morning, and hear what the apostle 
 of this little Bethel has to say."
 
 282 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 " Oh, certainly, my dear," replied the 
 Major, who, whatever else he might be, 
 was certainly not a tyrannical husband, " so 
 long as you do not expect me to go. I — 
 well, you know, I am not exactly accus- 
 tomed to that sort of thing." 
 
 u Yes, I know that very well," said Mrs. 
 Haythorne, in a tone which implied that not 
 only with regard to little Bethels, but with 
 regard to the entire range of his mental 
 vision, her husband was not accustomed to 
 anything above the dead level of medioc- 
 rity. " You can stay at home. I don't in 
 the least mind about going alone. But I 
 quite forgot, though, Miss Burnaby, you say 
 this clever Mr. Ferguson is dead. What a 
 pity r 
 
 " Yes, poor man ! He has been dead 
 more than a year. He was too clever for 
 the place, no one could understand him, 
 and he lived a most lonely life. His eldest
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 283 
 
 daughter inherits a great deal of his talent. 
 She teaches drawing in a school here. I 
 believe she would have been rather a good 
 artist if she could have given all her time 
 to it. But she has had to earn her own 
 living since her father's death, and indeed 
 before." 
 
 "Poor thing! I wish I could help her. 
 I daresay she has not much sympathy in her 
 own home. And one could not wish a 
 drearier lot than that for any woman." 
 
 The Major stroked his moustache again, 
 but said nothing. Miss Burnaby felt quite 
 hot. She was sure, if he had any sense at 
 all, he must have taken the remark as per- 
 sonal. She was wondering what to talk 
 about next, when little Master Haythorne, 
 the only child of the house, after much re- 
 monstrance on the part of his nurse, first 
 whispered and then more distinctly audible, 
 burst into the room. A fine little fellow,.
 
 •284 DIMPLETHORPE 
 
 with bold, brown eyes and any amount of 
 determination in his face. 
 
 " Victor," said his mamma, looking 
 proudly at him, for indeed he was a pretty 
 boy. " And when I have told you you are 
 never to disturb me in an afternoon. Pray 
 what brought you here ?" 
 
 " My own inclination, Mamma," said Master 
 Victor, with great self-possession. " Mathilde 
 is such a muff." 
 
 Mrs. Haythorne looked at Miss Burnaby. 
 " Isn't he a little Pagan ? But really it is 
 more Mathilde's fault than anything else. 
 She has not the least tact with children. I 
 do w T ish I could find some clever, good- 
 tempered lady who would come to me and 
 take the entire charge of him. It would be 
 such a blessing both to me and Victor. You 
 know " 
 
 But just then the vicar, Mr. Laxby, was
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 285 
 
 announced, and as Miss Burnaby's call had 
 already exceeded the orthodox fifteen 
 minutes, she took her leave.
 
 286 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 ONE question kept asking itself in Miss 
 Burnaby's thoughts all the rest of 
 that afternoon. 
 
 " Why on earth did she marry him ?" 
 For there was something about Mrs. 
 Haythorne which stamped her as a superior 
 woman. She was very refined, very artistic 
 — the arrangements of her home betokened 
 that — and very clever, too. Not that she 
 had said anything remarkable during that 
 fifteen minutes' call, but you might gather 
 well enough from her manner that she could 
 say remarkable things if she liked, and 
 perhaps sharp ones too.
 
 DIMPLETHORPE . 287 
 
 Then the books scattered carelessly about 
 were not of the sort one generally found on 
 the tables of the Dimplethorpe ladies. And 
 if, as appeared to be the case, Mrs. Haythorne 
 did not find much companionship at home, 
 so far as intellect went, she would not be 
 likely to find it abroad. 
 
 Miss Burnaby felt very sorry for her. 
 If she had been what is called a clever 
 woman herself, she would have been 
 delighted with her new neighbour; but 
 what could she do for a lady who sketched 
 in crayons, and painted in water colours, 
 and could decorate the panels of her doors 
 with etchings of bamboo and plantain leaves, 
 and read Schiller and Goethe, and was so 
 much in advance of the prejudices of her 
 class as to talk about going to the Indepen- 
 dent chapel — that last thing showed su- 
 periority of mind, if you like — and who 
 could invest everything about her with an air
 
 288 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 of refinement and taste so different from the 
 Chippendale spindliness of upper Dimple- 
 thorpe in general ? Miss Burnaby could but 
 admire at a distance. 
 
 But she might perhaps do something more 
 to the purpose than mere admiration. Mrs. 
 Haythorne had spoken of a governess for 
 little Master Victor. Now if little Master 
 Victor had his mother's character, as well as 
 his mother's big brown eyes, he was certainly 
 considerably more than a match for the 
 moon-faced Miss Mathilde, who had the 
 management of him now. And who so 
 capable to undertake the training of him as 
 Audrey Ferguson ? 
 
 Audrey was working quite too hard for 
 her strength at Miss Hart's school. She had 
 often said how much she would prefer having 
 one or two children to teach during the day- 
 time, so that she might have her evenings for 
 painting. Quiet, retiring though she was,
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 289 
 
 she had any amount of strength of character 
 about her, and could keep Master Victor in 
 his place effectually enough, as well as be a 
 most congenial companion to his mother. 
 Miss Burnaby thought she could not do Mrs. 
 Haythorne and Audrey a greater kindness 
 than by introducing them to each other in 
 this way. But she would consult Jack first. 
 
 Jack saw it in the same light. He said he 
 didn't think there could be a better arrange- 
 ment, for if Mrs. Haythorne was as pleasant 
 and clever as Jane's description made her out 
 to be, she would be thankful enough to have 
 a lady like Audrey Ferguson in her house ; 
 and Audrey would get her afternoons thrice 
 a week for the art classes in London, and 
 have all her evenings for work at home, 
 which was just what she wanted. 
 
 "You're a real good little soul, Jane, and 
 I hope you'll be able to make it all come 
 square," said the old General, as Miss 
 
 vol. i. u
 
 290 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 Burnaby put on her bonnet next morning 
 and went off to talk the matter over with 
 Audrey at Miss Hart's. 
 
 Audrey was quite willing. She had 
 already told Miss Hart that she was only 
 remaining with her until some one could be 
 found in her place, who did not want so 
 much time for independent study. Old 
 Mrs. Ferguson had again proposed her 
 going to living in London, but then she 
 would not be earning anything, and she was 
 minded not to be a burden to her mother. 
 To get some nice quiet engagement in 
 Dimplethorpe was the very thing she 
 wanted. 
 
 "Then, my dear, I'll write to Mrs. Hay- 
 thorne to-day, as soon as ever I get home, 
 and, if I'm not very much mistaken, she 
 will find that a piece of great good luck has 
 fallen in her way. For, Audrey, I don't 
 want to flatter you, but I've thought for this
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 291 
 
 long time past that you're the cleverest girl 
 in Dimplethorpe, and, if you could be kept 
 in the place, it seems a pity for you to leave 
 it. I like clever people, though I'm as 
 blunt as a wool needle myself. I'll let you 
 know as soon as I hear from Mrs. Hay- 
 thorne." 
 
 Miss Burnaby did write, according to 
 promise, and her note brought Major and 
 Mrs. Haythorne over the very next after- 
 noon, though Mrs. Haythorne did not enter 
 upon the subject directly, the old General 
 being in the room when they arrived. She 
 at once fell into a bright, easy conversation 
 with him, leaving the Major to be enter- 
 tained by his sister. 
 
 And what a task that was ! If Miss Bur- 
 naby had said to herself, as she came home 
 from the Lodge, " Why on earth did she 
 marry him ?" she said it with fifty times 
 more wonder when she had had the privi- 
 
 u 2
 
 292 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 lege of ten minutes' undisturbed conversa- 
 tion with Mrs. Haythorne's husband. For 
 when one had finished admiring the droop 
 of his moustache, and the fine lines in the 
 bridge of his nose, and the haste with which 
 that retreating chin buried itself behind a 
 collar spotless and glossy as six pennyworth 
 of Ackerraan's superfine cardboard, there 
 was really so little else to admire. Life 
 appeared as if it would be quite too much 
 of a struggle for the Major if he were re- 
 quired to do anything but smile and adjust 
 his wristbands, and acquiesce in Miss Bur- 
 naby's pleasant little remarks about the 
 weather and the prettiness of the place. 
 
 Her brother was setting on much better 
 with Mrs. Haythorne. He did not in a 
 general way care much for ladies' society, 
 but he was evidently now falling a victim, 
 if not to his new neighbour's cleverness, at 
 least to her pretty brown eyes and sparkling
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 293 
 
 smile, and readiness to be pleased by him. 
 She was one of those women who appear 
 to their best advantage when in the society 
 of gentlemen. Not that she was not exces- 
 sively pleasant to her own sex, nothing 
 could have been more delightful than her 
 manners with Miss Burnaby during that 
 first call ; but still there was a difference, 
 and Miss Burnaby noticed it, and noticed it 
 still more because of the contrast it pre- 
 sented to the exceedingly monotonous style 
 of the conversation which was going on 
 between herself and the Major. 
 
 She did not get in a single word about 
 Audrey until she and her brother were 
 escorting their guests down the laurel walk 
 to the Manor House gate. Then Jack, for 
 the first time, began to talk to the Major, 
 and Mrs. Haythorne fell back upon Miss 
 Burnaby. 
 
 11 It was so kind of you to write to me
 
 294 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 about Miss Ferguson. I should be so glad if 
 she would come. I am only afraid, as she is 
 so clever, she would find us dreadfully dull ; 
 but I am sure I would do everything in my 
 power to make things pleasant for her. 
 Would she come over to-morrow afternoon, 
 do you think, and have a cup of tea with 
 me, and we could arrange it ?" 
 
 Miss Burnaby said she would ask her. 
 She did not think there would be any diffi- 
 culty about it. 
 
 ct Thank you so much. Victor is a positive 
 load upon my mind just now. I have so 
 little notion of managing him, and one gets 
 so tired of always having a child about. 
 The thought came into my mind the other 
 day, almost as soon as you had gone, but I 
 did not like to ask you. And very clever 
 in painting, did you not say? or something 
 of that sort." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! very clever. And as refined
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 295 
 
 and superior in her manners as possible. 
 The only thing, you know, is, that her 
 mother and sisters live in the place, and 
 being mixed up, you know, with that little 
 chapel — I thought perhaps — well, you under- 
 stand. Some people might have a feeling 
 about it." 
 
 " Yes ; but I assure you I haven't, in the 
 least. So long as people are clever and 
 companionable, it is not the slightest conse- 
 quence to me whether their friends belong 
 to the Church of England or not. If Miss 
 Audrey will be good enough to take Victor 
 in hand, I will do everything I can to make 
 her happy. I assure you she will be more 
 like a sister to me than anything else." 
 
 Miss Burnaby liked that. Not that she 
 could have said such a thing herself, having 
 still a few of those open sewers of prejudice 
 wandering about in the background of her 
 character. Perhaps no one in Dimplethorpe
 
 296 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 appreciated Audrey Ferguson more than she 
 did, but at the same time she liked Audrey 
 to know that there was a difference between 
 them. She had been brought up to consider 
 the Church of England as the only respec- 
 table religious institution afloat, and people 
 outside it needed a very exceptional amount 
 of talent and refinement to bring them up 
 to a level with even the most slenderly 
 gifted of those who dwelt within its sacred 
 enclosure. Audrey had that refinement, and 
 so one could associate with her ; but she was 
 outside of the ring fence, all the same. 
 
 At least those were Miss Burnaby's feelings. 
 They might be prejudices, as she said to Jack 
 sometimes, but if so, she could not help it ; 
 there they were. She had been brought up 
 with them, she could not cast them off. 
 Other people need not agree with them, 
 unless they chose. And so long as she held 
 her prejudices on such liberal principles, slie
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 297 
 
 thought she had a perfect right to them. 
 However before the end of the month, 
 Audrey was settled as daily governess at 
 Meadowfield Lodge. And what was more, 
 Mrs. Haythorne kept her promise of being 
 like a sister to her. For never before, since 
 her father died, had the girl known such 
 real sense of companionship as came to her 
 in those quiet afternoons when the teaching 
 was done, and she and the Major's wife sat 
 together in the little inner drawing-room, 
 painting or reading, the Major meanwhile 
 slumbering in the dining-room over his 
 London or Indian papers.
 
 298 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 " A ND the General has had a letter from 
 ^-^ Phil, Audrey, my dear." 
 
 This was another of Miss Burnaby's inno- 
 cent, old-fashioned prejudices; that with 
 people whom she did not consider as in every 
 respect on the same social level with herself, 
 her brother should be spoken of as "the 
 General." 
 
 In talking to the vicar, who was one of 
 the Laxby family, or Squire Bentham, or 
 Mrs. Lastingham the widowed daughter of 
 the late vicar, or even Dr. Fylingdale, when 
 they were more intimate with him, the old
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 299 
 
 man was simply " Jack. 1 ' With the lawyer 
 and surgeon, and the curate, and other 
 entirely well-bred people, who attended the 
 parish church regularly, he was " ray brother." 
 But beyond a line which was drawn from 
 the young curate downwards, embracing, as 
 it descended, Audrey Ferguson, Miss Hart, 
 IMiss Parley, Mrs. Frogston, and a great 
 many other persons of that kind, it was 
 "the General." And Miss Burnaby 
 would have felt that an impertinence 
 had been committed, had any of these 
 afore-mentioned ladies, when needing to 
 mention her brother's name at all, designated 
 him as other than " the General." Even 
 "General Burnaby" was not sufficient, for 
 that implied that they occasionally had to do 
 with others of the same rank, whereas she 
 knew very well that there was no one else 
 in Dimplethorpe who had a right to carry 
 the cocked hat and white plume of Her
 
 300 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 Majesty's service, and therefore the definite 
 article was the least that could be accorded 
 him. 
 
 Now Audrey, by reason of her grandfather 
 on the maternal side having conducted a 
 comfortable business in the grocery line, was 
 distinctly one of those who ought to use the 
 definite article. And her father too, though 
 head and shoulders above Dimplethorpe as 
 regarded intellect, had still never mixed in 
 what could be called the select society of the 
 place, his wife not being by any means a 
 lady. And though you might meet Audrey 
 in the street now, and not know, so far as 
 dress and carriage and appearance went, that 
 she had not the bluest of blood in her veins 
 — except that her nose had scarcely enough 
 bridge to it, and her chin was too square — 
 still Miss Burnaby never asked any of the 
 upper-class people to come in to tea on those 
 Saturday afternoons when she and Mrs.
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 301 
 
 Ferguson's daughter used to have such a 
 cosy time together in the Manor House 
 parlour. For as she said it was quite 
 necessary and proper to think about these 
 things, and if you did not think about them 
 there was no telling what society might 
 come to. 
 
 So it was "the General," when, one 
 Saturday afternoon, during the late summer 
 following Mrs. Haythorne's arriving at the 
 Lodge, Miss Burnaby told Audrey that Jack 
 had had a letter from Phil Hathaway. 
 
 " Indeed ! And I hope he is very well. 
 It is a long time since we heard anything 
 about him now. He used to write to Papa 
 sometimes, to say how he was getting on, but 
 of course we don't have those letters now." 
 
 " No, my dear, and he may perhaps think 
 that your Mamma would not care for the 
 correspondence to be continued. He is 
 getting on very well, though."
 
 302 DIMPLETHOBPE. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! one can tell that by the papers. 
 I saw the other day in one that I took up at 
 Mrs. Haythorne's, that he has two pictures in 
 the smaller London galleries this year. 
 Some of these days he will be in the Royal 
 Academy itself, and will that not be an 
 honour ?" 
 
 "I should rather think it will, Audrey. 
 He does not say much about his prospects 
 this time, however, for he hopes to come 
 soon himself and tell us all about them. 
 You know his three years on the Continent 
 come to an end in September." 
 
 " So soon ? How the time goes ! And 
 what will he do then ?" 
 
 11 Well, that is just what I was asking the 
 General, only the other day. And he said 
 he thought Phil could not do better than 
 come and settle quietly down here for a little 
 while, before he goes to London to establish 
 himself there. Of course, you know, he
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 303 
 
 must uo to London in the end. There is no 
 other place for a man of talent." 
 
 " I wonder if we shall find very much 
 difference in him," said Audrey. " Somehow 
 when anyone has been living for three whole 
 years surrounded by such beauty as Italy is 
 full of, a little of it must get into his soul 
 and shine out through his face." 
 
 "That is because you are so fond of 
 beautiful things yourself, Audrey, and they 
 have such an influence upon you. But I 
 assure you I have known people come home 
 from Italy after spending a great deal more 
 than three years there, and you could not 
 see the least sign of anything in their faces." 
 
 4i Because the eye sees only what the soul 
 gives it the power to see, I suppose." 
 
 "I don't know," said Miss Burnaby, who 
 was not speculative. " But one thing I 
 feel quite sure of, Phil will be as good and 
 simple as ever.- I don't think he will ever 
 get that rubbed off."
 
 304 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 "No, indeed." And there was a quiet 
 light in Audrey's eyes as she said it. " Phil 
 is the real thing, through and through, and 
 so for him there is nothing to rub off. He 
 is not electro-plated." 
 
 Miss Burnaby laughed. She was very 
 glad to hear Audrey say that, because 
 Audrey never did say what she did not 
 mean. And sometimes, when she did mean 
 a thing, she was slow in saying it. But Miss 
 Burnaby was glad, not only because Phil 
 w r as a pet with the General, and since Mr. 
 Ferguson's death might be considered almost 
 his own property, but because she had a 
 pleasant little plan in her own mind in 
 connection with the young artist, and that 
 was that he should marry Audrey. 
 
 What could be more natural ? She said 
 so to herself, and said it to her brother too, 
 sometimes, though she would not for the 
 world have breathed it to anyone else,
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 305 
 
 knowing that things of that kind so often go 
 wrong when talked about over-freely. But 
 amongst the weddings that could possibly 
 take place in Dimplethorpe, where the 
 opportunities of selection were almost as 
 limited as those of the crowned heads of 
 Europe, no two people could be picked out 
 more suitable to each other than Audrey 
 Ferguson and Phil Hathaway. They were 
 just right in point of age, and they had 
 tastes in common. Audrey had that sort of 
 natural refinement about her which would 
 fit itself to any position her husband might 
 achieve. And though Phil's early asso- 
 ciations in Dimplethorpe were not of the 
 choicest, still, since old Ben Hathaway died, 
 there was nobody in the place belonging to 
 him. Indeed in that respect he was better 
 off than Audrey, whose collateral branches 
 seemed likely to root themselves in all 
 directions, and produce a plentiful growth 
 vol. i. x
 
 306 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 of relationships which would be anything but 
 an advantage to her, looking at them from a 
 social point of view. Most likely Audrey 
 saw that herself, for, though quite a lady 
 now in manners and appearance, she had 
 the most perfect tact in never presuming 
 beyond her position. That being the case, 
 how pleasant it would be for her to marry 
 Phil, because she would enable him to 
 exercise the same prudence, which was so 
 important in a place like Dimplethorpe. 
 He would be done for at once if he too 
 rashly attempted to ignore the past, and 
 take his place in society like a man who 
 had everything to support him in his 
 antecedents. 
 
 Miss Burnaby laid it all out in her own 
 mind. Phil was to lodge with Miss Parley 
 in the vicarage lane. It was the very place 
 for an artist. You had only to sit at one 
 end of the upstairs bow-window, to
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 307 
 
 command a view of those beautiful East 
 Warrenshire hills, of which he used to be 
 so fond ; or, if you turned round and sat at 
 the other end, there was the most perfect 
 rustic picture which brush could paint ; the 
 grey church-tower peeping above the elm- 
 trees, and the quaint little tumble-down 
 lath and plaster cottages beyond, with the 
 ivy climbing over their lichened gables, and 
 one corner of the castle visible beyond that 
 dear old duck-weedy moat which people 
 said was so unhealthy, but which was really 
 nothing of the sort. Phil must go there ; 
 that was settled. 
 
 Then of course she would introduce him 
 at once to Mrs. Haythorne, who was almost 
 as much of an artist as himself. She was a 
 woman who would thoroughly delight in 
 his companionship ; and then at the Lodge he 
 would meet Audrey, who was really more 
 like a sister there than anything else. It 
 
 x 2
 
 308 DIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 was quite pleasant to see how she had 
 fitted into her place, and what sympathy 
 there was between them. Phil would see 
 her in quite a new light at Meadowfield 
 Lodge. She seemed to come out to so much 
 more advantage there than amongst the 
 commonplace surroundings of her home, 
 where a little of the vulgarity in which it 
 was steeped — Miss Burnaby thought she was 
 not uncharitable in calling it vulgarity — 
 could scarcely help being reflected upon 
 herself. 
 
 And then they should meet at the Manor 
 House, where, if things did show the least 
 disposition to move in the right direction, it 
 would be so easy to facilitate them. There 
 were such delightful nooks and corners in 
 the Manor House garden. There was that 
 sheltered grassy walk behind the lilac-trees, 
 and the little pasture beyond, sloping up to 
 a summer-house in a clump of trees. There
 
 DIMPLETHORPE. 309 
 
 was a fine prospect of the village and the 
 osier flats from that clump of trees, and if 
 Phil had a mind to paint it, there was no 
 earthly reason why they should not all go 
 up there together in the warm September 
 days ; and then she could amuse herself 
 collecting flowers whilst the young people 
 sketched and became attached to each other 
 to their heart's content. 
 
 Oh, it would all be so pleasant and straight- 
 forward. Little Miss Burnaby could scarcely 
 keep from telling Audrey just something of 
 what was in her mind. If only Audrey had 
 not been that sensitive sort of girl who 
 would shut up and turn away from you 
 directly if so much as a hint was given of 
 anything of the kind. Still it must surely 
 come right, for wherever in all the world 
 could two people have been found who were 
 so exactly cut out for each other? 
 
 It was all this that was shining in Miss 
 
 o 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 310 LIMPLETHORPE. 
 
 Burnaby's eyes and smiling on her lips as 
 she said to Audrey that Saturday after- 
 noon — 
 
 u And the General has had a letter from 
 Phil, my dear." 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY DUNCAN WAGDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.
 
 
 
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