Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The Carbonels

By Charlotte M. Yonge

THE CARBONELS

BY CHARLOTTE M. YONGE

CHAPTER ONE.

FRENCH MEASURE.

  "For thy walls a pretty slight drollery."
  _The Second Part of King Henry IV_.

"A bad lot.  Yes, sir, a thoroughly bad lot."

"You don't mean it."

"Yes, ma'am, a bad lot is the Uphill people.  Good for nothing and
ungrateful!  I've known them these thirty-years, and no one will do
anything with them."

The time was the summer of 1822.  The place was a garden, somewhat gone
to waste, with a gravel drive running round a great circle of
periwinkles with a spotted aucuba in the middle.  There was a low,
two-storied house, with green shutters, green Venetian blinds, and a
rather shabby verandah painted in alternate stripes of light and darker
green.  In front stood a high gig, with a tall old, bony horse trying to
munch the young untrimmed shoots of a lilac in front of him as he waited
for the speaker, a lawyer, dressed as country attorneys were wont to
dress in those days, in a coat of invisible green, where the green
constantly became more visible, brown trousers, and under them drab
gaiters.  He was addressing a gentleman in a blue coat and nankeen
trousers, but evidently military, and two ladies in white dresses,
narrow as to the skirts, but full in the sleeves.  One had a blue scarf
over her shoulders and blue ribbons in her very large Leghorn bonnet;
the other had the same in green, and likewise a green veil.  Her bonnet
was rather more trimmed, the dress more embroidered, the scarf of a
richer, broader material than the other's, and it was thus evident that
she was the married sister; but they were a good deal alike, with the
same wholesome smooth complexion, brown eyes, and hair in great shining
rolls under their bonnet caps, much the same pleasant expression, and
the same neat little feet in crossed sandalled shoes and white stockings
showing out beneath their white tambour-worked gowns.

With the above verdict, the lawyer made his parting bow, and drove off
along a somewhat rough road through two pasture fields.  The first gate,
white and ornamental, was held open for him by an old man in a short
white smock and long leathern gaiters, the second his own servant
opened, the third was held by half a dozen shock-headed children, with
their backs against it and hands held out, but in vain; he only smacked
his driving-whip over their heads, and though he did not strike any of
them, they requited it with a prolonged yell, which reached the ears of
the trio in front of the house.

"I'm afraid it is not far from the truth," said the green lady.

"Oh no; I am sure he is a horrid man," said her blue sister.  "I would
not believe him for a moment."

"Only with a qualification," rejoined the gentleman.

"But, Edmund, couldn't you be sure that it is just what he would say,
whatever the people were?"

"I am equally sure that the exaction of rents is not the way to see
people at their best."

"Come in, come in!  We have all our settling in to do, and no time for
you two to fight."

Edmund, Mary, Dorothea, and Sophia Carbonel were second cousins, who had
always known one another in the house of the girls' father, a clergyman
in a large country town.  Edmund had been in the army just in time for
the final battles of the Peninsular war, and had since served with the
army of occupation and in Canada.  He had always meant that Mary should
be his wife, but the means were wanting to set up housekeeping, until
the death of an old uncle of his mother's made him heir to Greenhow
Farm, an estate bringing in about 500 pounds a year.  Mary and her next
sister Dora had in the meantime lost their parents, and had been living
with some relations in London, where their much younger sister Sophy was
at school, until Edmund, coming home, looked over the farm, decided that
it would be a fit home for the sisters, and retired from the army
forthwith.  Thus then, after a brief tour among the Lakes, they had
taken up Dora in London, and here they were; Sophy was to join them when
the holidays began.  Disorder reigned indeed within, and hammers
resounded, nor was the passage easy among the packing-cases that
encumbered the narrow little vestibule whence the stairs ascended.

Under the verandah were the five sash windows of the three front rooms,
the door, of course, in the middle.  Each had a little shabby furniture,
to which the Carbonels were adding, and meant to add more; the
dining-room had already been papered with red flock in stripes, the
drawing-room with a very delicate white, on which were traced in tender
colouring-baskets of vine leaves and laburnums.

Dora gave a little scream.  "Look!  Between the windows, Mary; see, the
laburnums and grapes are hanging upward."

"Stupid people!" exclaimed Mary, "I see.  Happily, it is only on that
one piece, but how Edmund will be vexed."

"Perhaps there is another piece unused."

"I am sure I hope there is!  Don't you know, Edmund fell in love with it
at Paris.  It was his first provision for future housekeeping, and it
was lying laid up in lavender all these years till we were ready for
it."

"It is only that one division, which is a comfort."

"What's the matter?" and the master of the house came in.

"Senseless beings!  It must be covered directly.  It is a desight to the
whole room.  Here!" and he went out to the carpenter, who was universal
builder to the village, and was laying down the stair carpet.  "Here,
Hewlett, do you see what you have done?"

Hewlett, a large man with a smooth, plump, but honest face, came in, in
his shirt sleeves, apron, and paper cap, touched his forehead to the
ladies, stood, and stared.

"Can't you see?" sharply demanded the captain.

Hewlett scratched his head, and gazed round.

"See here!  How do grapes grow?  Or laburnums?"

An idea broke in on him.

"What! they be topsy-turvy?" he slowly observed, after looking from the
faulty breadth to the next.

"Of course they are.  Find the rest of the paper!  We must have a piece
put on at once, or the whole appearance of the room is spoilt," said
Captain Carbonel.  "It will make a delay, but it must be done at once.
Where is the piece left over?"

Hewlett retreated to find it, while the captain said something about
"stupid ass."

Presently his gruff voice was heard demanding, "Dan, I say, where's the
remnant of that there fancy paper?"

Dan's answer did not rise into audible words, but presently Hewlett
tramped back, saying, "There ain't none, sir."

"I tell you there must be," returned the captain, in the same angry
tones.  And he proceeded to show that the number of pieces he had
bought, and the measure of which he had ascertained, was such that there
ought to have been half-a-piece left over from papering the room, the
size of which he had exactly taken.  Hewlett could do nothing but
stolidly repeat that "there weren't none left, not enow to make a
mouse's nest."

"Who did the papering?  Did you?"

"Daniel Hewlett, sir, he did the most on it.  My cousin, sir."

The captain fell upon Daniel, who had more words at command, but was
equally strong in denial of having any remnant.  "They had only skimped
out enough," he said, "just enough for the walls, and it was a close fit
anyhow."

The captain loudly declared it impossible, but Mary ran out in the midst
to suggest that mayhap the defect was in the French measure.  Each piece
might not have been the true number of whatever they called them in that
new revolutionary fashion.

Dan Hewlett's face cleared up.  "Ay, 'tis the French measure, sure, sir.
Of course they can't do nothing true and straight!  I be mortal sorry
the ladies is disappointed, but it bain't no fault of mine, sir."

"And look here, Edmund," continued Mary, "it will not spoil the room at
all if Mr Hewlett will help move the tall bureau against it, and we'll
hang the `Death of General Wolfe' above it, and then there won't be more
than two bits of laburnum to be seen, even if you are curious enough to
get upon a chair to investigate."

"Well, it must be so," returned Captain Carbonel, "but I hate the idea
of makeshifts and having imperfections concealed."

"Just like you, Edmund," laughed Dora.  "You will always seem to be
looking right through at the upright sprays, though all the solid weight
of Hume, Gibbon, and Rollin is in front of them."

"Precisely," said Edmund.  "It is not well to feel that there is
anything to be hidden.  The chief part of the vexation is, however," he
added--shutting the door and lowering his voice--"that I am convinced
that there must have been foul play somewhere."

"Oh, Edmund; French measure!"

"Nonsense!  That does not account for at least a whole piece
disappearing."

He took out a pencil, and went again into his calculations, while his
sister-in-law indignantly exclaimed--

"It is all prejudice, because that horrid attorney said all these poor
people were a bad lot."

"Hush, hush!" said Mrs Carbonel, rather frightened, and--

"I advise you to think before you speak," said Captain Carbonel quietly
but sternly.

Still Dora could not help saying, as soon as she was alone with her
sister, "I shall believe in the French measure.  I like that slow, dull
man, and I am sure he is honest."

"Yes, dear, only pray don't say any more to Edmund, but let us get the
book-case placed as fast as we can, and let him forget all about it."

CHAPTER TWO.

THE LIE OF THE LAND.

  "Thank you, pretty cow, that gave
  Pleasant milk to soak my bread,
  Every day and every night
  Warm and fresh, and sweet and bright."
  _J.  Taylor_.

Darkness had descended before there had been time to do more than shake
into the downstair rooms and bedrooms and be refreshed with the evening
meal, but with morning began the survey of the new home.

The front part of the house had three living rooms, with large sash
windows, almost to the ground, shaded by the verandah.  These were
drawing-room, dining-room, and study, the last taken out of the entry,
where was the staircase, and there were three similar rooms above.
These had been added by the late owner to the original farmhouse, with a
fine old-fashioned kitchen that sent Mary and Dora into greater raptures
than their cook.  There were offices around, a cool dairy, where stood
great red glazed pans of delicious-looking cream and milk, and a clean
white wooden churn that Dora longed to handle.  The farmhouse rooms were
between it and the new ones, and there were a good many rooms above, the
red-tiled roof rising much higher than that of the more modern part of
the house.  There was a narrow paling in front, and then came the
farmyard, enclosed in barns, cow-houses and cart-sheds, and a cottage
where the bailiff, Master Pucklechurch, had taken up his abode, having
hitherto lived in the farmhouse.  He was waiting to show Captain
Carbonel over the farm.  He was a grizzled, stooping old fellow, with a
fine, handsome, sunburnt face; bright, shrewd, dark eyes looking out
between puckers, a short white smock-frock, and long gaiters.  It was
not their notion of a bailiff but the lawyer, who was so chary of his
praise, had said that old Master Pucklechurch and his wife were
absolutely trustworthy.  They had managed the farm in the interregnum,
and brought him weekly accounts in their heads, for neither could write,
with the most perfect regularity and minuteness.  And his face did
indeed bespeak confidence in his honesty, as he touched his hat in
answer to the greeting.

The ladies, however, looked and smelt in some dismay, for the centre of
the yard was a mountain of manure and straw, with a puce-coloured pond
beside it.  On the summit of the mountain a handsome ruddy cock, with a
splendid dark-green arched tail, clucked, chuckled, and scratched for
his speckled, rose-crowned hens, a green-headed, curly-tailed drake
"steered forth his fleet upon the lake" of brown ducks and their yellow
progeny, and pigs of the plum-pudding order rooted in the intermediate
regions.  The road which led to the cart-sheds and to the house, skirted
round this unsavoury tract.

"Oh, Edmund!" sighed Mary.

"Farmer's wife, Mary," said her husband, smiling.  "It ought to be a
perfect nosegay to you."

"I'm sure it is not wholesome," she said, looking really distressed, and
he dropped his teasing tone, and said--

"Of course it shall be remedied!  I will see to it."

A dismal screeching and cackling here attracted the attention of the
sisters, who started towards Pucklechurch's cottage, and the fowl-house,
(a very foul house by the by) in front of which, on a low wooden stool,
sat a tidy old woman, Betty Pucklechurch in fact, in a tall muslin cap,
spotted kerchief blue gown, and coarse apron, with a big girl before her
holding the unfortunate hen, whose cries had startled them.

"Oh, don't go near!  She is killing it," cried Dora.

"No;" as the hen, with a final squawk, shook out her ruffled feathers,
and rushed away to tell her woes to her companions on the dunghill,
while the old woman jumped up, smoothed down her apron, and curtsied
low.

"What were you doing?" asked Mary, still startled.

"Only whipping her breast with nettles, ma'am, to teach her to sit close
in her nest, the plaguey thing, and not be gadding after the rest."

"Poor thing!" cried Dora.  "But oh, look, look, Mary, at the dear little
chickens!"

They were in the greatest delight at the three broods of downy little
chickens, and one of ducklings, whose parent hens were clucking in
coops; and in the kitchen they found a sickly one nursed in flannel in a
basket, and an orphaned lamb which staggered upon its disproportionate
black legs at sight of Betty.

"Ay! he be always after me," she said.  "They terrify one terrible, as
if 'twas their mother, till they can run with the rest."

Dora would have petted the lamb, but it retreated from her, behind
Betty's petticoats, and she could only listen to Mary's questions about
how much butter was made from how many cows milk, and then be taken to
see the two calves, one of which Betty pronounced to be "but a
staggering Bob yet, but George Butcher would take he in a sen'night,"
which sounded so like senate, that it set Dora wondering what council
was to pronounce on the fate of the poor infant bull.

Over his stall, Edmund found them, after an inspection of the pig-styes,
and having much offended Master Pucklechurch by declaring that he would
have them kept clean, and the pigs no longer allowed to range about the
yard.

"Bless you, sir, the poor things would catch their death of cold and
die," was the answer to the one edict; and to the other, "They'd never
take to their victuals, nor fat kindly without their range first."

"Then let them have it in the home-field out there, where I see plenty
of geese."

"They'll spile every bit of grass, sir," was the growling objection; and
still worse was the suggestion, which gradually rose into a command,
that the "muck-heap" should be removed to the said home-field, and never
allowed to accumulate in such close proximity to the house.

Pucklechurch said little; but his "If it be your will, sir," sounded
like a snarl, and after ruminating for some time, he brought out--as if
it were an answer to a question about the team of horses--

"We'll have to take on another boy, let be a man, if things is to be a
that 'en a."

"Let us, then," said the captain, and joined his ladies, with the old
man depressed and grumbling inwardly.

There was an orchard preparing to be beautiful with blossom, and a
considerable kitchen garden at the back and on the other side of the
house, bounded by an exceedingly dirty and be-rutted farm road, over
which the carriage had jolted the evening before.  The extensive
home-field in front was shut off from the approach by a belt of
evergreens, and sloped slightly upwards towards the hill which gave the
parish its name.

"We will cut off a nice carriage road," said Mary, as she looked at it.

"All in good time," replied her husband, not wishing further to shock
poor Master Pucklechurch, who had to conduct the party to the arable
fields--one of which was being ploughed by three fine sleek horses, led
by Bill Morris, with his father at the shafts.  In another, their
approach was greeted by hideous yells and shouts which made Dora start.

"Ay, ay," said Pucklechurch, "he knows how to holler when he see me
a-coming;" and at the same time a black-specked cloud of rooks rose up
from the furrows, the old man stamping towards the boy who ought to have
been keeping them, vituperating him in terms that it was as well not to
hear.

And it was such a tiny boy after all, and in such a pair of huge boots
with holes showing his bare toes.  However, they served him to run away
from Master Pucklechurch into the furthest ditch, and if the ladies had
designs on him, they had to be deferred.

On the opposite side were more fields, with crops in various stages, one
lovely with the growing wheat and barley, another promising potatoes,
and another beans; and beyond, towards the river, were meadows parted by
broad hedgerows, with paths between, in which a few primroses and golden
celandines looked up beneath the withy buds and the fluttering hazel
catkins.  Then came the meadows, in one of which fed the cows, pretty
buff-and-white creatures, and in another field were hurdled the sheep,
among their dole of turnips, sheep and turnips alike emitting an odour
of the most unpleasant kind, and the deep baas of the ewes, and the
thinner wail of the lambs made a huge mass of sounds; while Captain
Carbonel tried to talk to Master Buttermere the shepherd, a silent,
crusty, white-haired old man in a green smock and grey old coat, who
growled out scarcely a word.

So the tour of the property was made, and old Pucklechurch expressed his
opinion.  "He'll never make nothing of it; he is too outlandish and full
of his fancies, and his madam's a fine lady.  'Pon my word and honour,
she was frought at that there muck-heap!"

This pleasant augury was of course not known to the new-comers, who
found something so honest and worthy about the Pucklechurches that they
could not help liking them, though Mrs Carbonel had another tussle with
Betty about fresh butter.  "It war no good to make it more than once a
week.  Folk liked it tasty and meller;" and that the Carbonels had by no
means the same likings, made her hold up her hands and agree with her
husband that their failure was certain.  These first few days were spent
in the needful arrangements of house and furniture, during which time
Captain Carbonel came to the conclusion that no one could be more stupid
or awkward than Master Hewlett, but that he was an honest man, and tried
to do his best, such as it was, while his relation, Dan, though
cleverer, was much more slippery, and could not be depended upon.  Dora
asked Master Hewlett what schools there were in the place, and he made
answer that the little ones went in to Dame Verdon, but she didn't make
much of it, not since she had had the shaking palsy, and she could not
give the lads the stick.  He thought of sending his biggest lad to
school at Poppleby next spring, but 'twas a long way, and his good woman
didn't half like it, not unless there was some one going the same way.

Betty Pucklechurch's account amounted to much the same.  "Dame Verdon
had had the school nigh about forty years.  She had taught them all to
read their Testament, all as stayed long enough, for there was plenty
for the children to do; and folks said she wasn't up to hitting them as
she used to be."

Farmer Goodenough, the churchwarden, who came to see Captain Carbonel
about the letting of a field which was mixed up with the Greenhow
property, gave something of the like character.  "She is getting old,
certain sure, but she is a deserving woman, and she keeps off the
parish."

"But can she teach the children?"

"She can teach them all they need to know, and keep the little ones out
of mischief," said the farmer, perhaps beginning to be alarmed.  "No use
to learn them no more.  What do they want of it for working in the
fields or milking the cows?"

"They ought at least to know their duty to God and their neighbour,"
said Captain Carbonel.  "Is there no Sunday School?"

"No, sir,"--very bluntly.  "I hear talk of such things at Poppleby and
the like," he added, "but we don't want none of them here.  The lot here
are quite bad enough, without maggots being put into their heads."

Captain Carbonel did not wish to continue the subject.  The farmer's own
accent did not greatly betoken acquaintance with schools of any sort.

Of course the wife and sister were amused as well as saddened by his
imitative account of the farmer's last speech, but they meant to study
the subject on their first Sunday.  They had learnt already that Uphill
Priors was a daughter church to Downhill Priors, and had only one
service on a Sunday, alternate mornings and evenings.  The vicar was the
head of a house at Oxford, and only came to the parsonage in the summer.
The services were provided for by a curate, living at Downhill, with
the assistance of the master of a private school, to whom the vicarage
was let.  When Captain Carbonel asked Master Pucklechurch about the
time, he answered, "Well, sir, 'tis morning churching.  So it will be
half-past ten, or else eleven, or else no time at all."

"What, do you mean that there will be none?"

"No, sir.  There will be churching sure enough, but just as time may
chance, not to call it an hour.  Best way is to start as soon as you
sights the parson a-coming past the gate down there.  Then you're sure
to be in time.  Bell strikes out as soon as they sees him beyond the
`Prior's Lane.'"

The Carbonels, in Sunday trim, with William the man-servant, and two
maids, their Prayerbooks in white pocket-handkerchiefs, following in the
rear, set forth for the gate, in the spring freshness.  The grass in the
fields was beginning to grow up, the hedges were sprouting with tender
greens and reds, the polished stems of the celandine were opening to the
sunshine in the banks, with here and there a primrose.  Birds were
singing all round, and a lark overhead--most delightful pleasures to
those so long shut up in a town.  It was the side of a hill, where the
fields were cut out into most curious forms, probably to suit the
winding of a little brook or the shape of the ground; and there were,
near the bottom, signs of a mass of daffodils, which filled the sisters
with delight, though daffodils were not then the fashion, and were
rather despised as yellow and scentless.

As they came near the second gate, they saw a black figure go by on an
old white horse; then they came out on a long ascending lane with deep
ruts, bordered by fresh soft turf on either sides, with hawthorn hedges,
and at intervals dark yew trees.

A cracked bell struck up, by which they understood that the clergyman
had come in sight, and they came themselves out upon a village green,
where geese, donkeys, and boys in greenish smock-frocks, seemed to be
all mixed up together.  Thatched cottages stood round the green, and a
public-house--the "Fox and Hounds."  The sign consisted of a hunt,
elaborately cut out in tin, huntsman, dogs, and fox, rushing across from
the inn on a high uplifted rod of iron, fastened into a pole on the
further side of the road, whence the sound of the bell proceeded, and
whither the congregation in smock-frocks and black bonnets were making
their way.

Following in this direction, the Carbonels, much amused, passed under
the hunt, went some distance further, and found a green churchyard,
quite shut in by tall elm trees, which, from the road, almost hid the
tiny tumble-down church, from whose wooden belfry the call proceeded.
It really seemed to be buried in the earth, and the little side windows
looked out into a ditch.  There were two steps to go down into the deep
porch, and within there seemed to be small space between the roof and
the top of the high square pew into which they were ushered by Master
Hewlett, who, it seemed, was the parish clerk.

They saw little from it, but on one side, hung from the roof a huge
panel with the royal arms, painted in the reign of William and Mary, as
the initials in the corners testified, and with the lion licking his
lips most comically; on the other side was a great patch of green damp;
behind, a gallery, full of white smock-frocked men with their knees
thrust through the rails in front.  Immediately before them rose the
tall erection of pulpit, the fusty old cushion and tassels, each faded
to a different tint, overhanging so much that Dora could not help
thinking that a thump from an energetic preacher would send it down on
Edmund's head in a cloud of dust.  There was the reading-desk below,
whence the edges of a ragged Prayer-book protruded, and above it
presently appeared a very full but much-frayed surplice, and a thin worn
face between white whiskers.  The service was quietly and reverently
read, but not a response seemed to come from anywhere except from Master
Hewlett's powerful lungs, somewhere in the rear, and there was a certain
murmur of chattering in the chancel followed by a resounding whack.
Then Master Hewlett's head was seen, and his steps heard as he tramped
along the aisle and climbed up the gallery stairs, as the General
Thanksgiving began, and there he shouted out the number of the Psalm,
"new version," that is, from Brady and Tate, which every one had bound
up with the Prayer-book.  Then a bassoon brayed, and a fiddle squealed,
and the Psalm resounded with hearty goodwill and better tone than could
have been expected.

Master Hewlett stayed to assist in the second singing, and the children,
who sat on low forms and on the chancel step, profited by it to make
their voices more audible than the Commandments, though the clergyman
had not gone to the altar, and once in the course of the sermon, Captain
Carbonel was impelled to stand up and look over the edge of the pew,
when he beheld a battle royal going on over a length of string, between
a boy in a blue petticoat and one in a fustian jacket.  At the unwonted
sight, the fustian-clad let go, and blue petticoat tumbled over
backwards, kicking up a great pair of red legs, grey socks, and
imperfect but elephantine boots, and howling at the same time.  The
preacher stopped short, the clerk had by this time worked his way down
from the gallery, and, collaring both the antagonists, hauled them out
into the churchyard, the triple stamping being heard on the pavement all
the way.  The sermon was resumed and read to its conclusion.  It was a
very good one, but immensely beyond the capacity of the congregation,
and Mary Carbonel had a strong suspicion that she had heard it before.

It was only on coming out that any notion could be gathered of the
congregation.  There were a good many men and big boys, in smocks, a few
green, but most of them beautifully white and embroidered; their wearers
had sat without books through the whole service, and now came out with
considerable trampling.

The pews contained the young girls in gorgeous colours, the old women,
and the better class of people, but not many of them, for the "_petit
noblesse_" of Uphill were very "_petit_" indeed, in means and numbers;
but their bonnets were enormous, and had red or purple bows standing
upright on them, and the farmers had drab coats and long gaiters.  The
old dames curtsied low, the little girls stared, and the boys peeped out
from behind the slanting old headstones and grinned.  Some of them had
been playing at marbles on the top of the one square old monument, until
routed by Master Hewlett on his coming out with the two combatants.

Captain Carbonel had gone round to the vestry door to make acquaintance
with the clergyman, though Farmer Goodenough informed him in an audible
whisper, "He ain't the right one, sir; he be only schoolmaster."

And when the two met at the door, and the captain shook hands and said
that they would be neighbours, he was received with a certain hesitating
smile.

"I should tell you, sir, that I am only taking occasional duty here--
assisting.  I am Mr Atkins.  I have a select private academy at the
vicarage, which the President of Saint Cyril's lets to me.  He is here
in the summer holidays."

"I understand.  The curate lives at Downhill!" said Captain Carbonel.

"At the priory, in fact, with his father's family.  Yes, it is rather an
unfortunate state of affairs," he said, answering the captain's
countenance rather than his words; "but I have no responsibility.  I
merely assist in the Sunday duty; and, indeed, I advise you to have as
little to do with the Uphill people as possible.  An idle
good-for-nothing set!  Any magistrate would tell you that there's no
parish where they have so many up before them."

"No wonder!" said Captain Carbonel under his breath.

"A bad set," repeated Mr Atkins, pausing at the shed where his old grey
horse was put up; and there they parted.

The captain and his wife and her sister walked to Downhill, two miles
off, across broad meadows, a river, and a pretty old bridge, the next
Sunday morning, found the church scantily filled, but with more
respectable-looking people, and heard the same sermon over again, so
that Mary was able to identify it with one in a published volume.

CHAPTER THREE.

THE TURNIP FIELD.

  "You ask me why the poor complain,
  And these have answered thee."
  _Southey_.

"Hullo, Molly Hewlett, who'd ha' thought of seeing you out here?"

It was in a wet turnip field, and a row of women were stooping over it,
picking out the weeds.  The one that was best off had great boots, a
huge weight to carry in themselves; but most had them sadly torn and
broken.  Their skirts, of no particular colour, were tucked up, and they
had either a very old man's coat, or a smock-frock cut short, or a small
old woollen shawl, which last left the blue and red arms bare; on their
heads were the oldest of bonnets, or here and there a sun-bonnet, which
looked more decent.  One or two babies were waiting in the hedgeside in
the charge of little girls.

"Molly Hewlett," exclaimed another of the set, straightening herself up.
"Why, I thought your Dan was working with Master Hewlett, for they
Gobblealls," (which was what Uphill made of Carbonel).

"So he be; but what is a poor woman to do when more than half his wage
goes to the `Fox and Hounds,' and she has five children to keep and my
poor sister, not able to do a turn?  There's George Hewlett, grumbling
and growling at him too, and no one knows how long he'll keep him on."

"What!  George, his cousin, as was bound to keep him on?"

"I don't know; George is that particular himself, and them new folks,
Gobbleall as they call them, are right down mean, and come down on you
if they misses one little mossle of parkisit; and there's my poor sister
to keep--as is afflicted, and can't do nothing!"

"But she pays you handsome," said Betsy Seddon, "and looks after the
children besides."

"Pays, indeed!  Not half enough to keep her, with all the trouble of
helping her about!  Not that I grudges it, but she wants things extry,
you see, and Dan he don't like it.  But no doubt the ladies will take
notice of her."

"I thought the lady kind enough," interposed another woman.  "She
noticed how lame our granny was with the rheumatics, and told me to send
up for broth."

"We wants somewhat bad enough," returned another thin woman, with her
hand to her side.  "Nobody never does nothing for no one here!"

"Nor we don't want no one to come worriting and terrifying," cried the
last of the group, with fierce black eyes and rusty black hair sticking
out beyond her man's beaver hat, tied on with a yellow handkerchief.
"Always at one about church and school, and meddling with everything--
the ribbon on one's bonnet and to the very pots on the fire.  I knows
what they be like in Tydeby!  And what do you get by it, but old cast
clothes and broth made of dish-washings?"  She enforced all this with
more than one word not to be written.

"I know, I'd be thankful for that!" murmured the thin woman, who looked
as if she had barely a petticoat on, and could have had scarcely a
breakfast.

"Oh, we all know's Bessy Mole is all for what she can get!" said the
independent woman, tossing her head.

"And had need to be," returned Molly Hewlett, in a scornful tone, which
made the poor woman in question stoop all the lower, and pull her
groundsel more diligently.

"The broth ain't bad," ventured she who had tried it.

"I shall see what I can get out of them," added another.  "I bain't
proud; and my poor children's shoes is a shame to see."

"You'll not get much," said Molly Hewlett, with a sniff.  "The captain,
as they calls him, come down on my Jem, as was taking home a little bit
of a chip for the fire, and made him put it down, as cross as could be."

"How now, you lazy, trolloping, gossiping women!  What are you after?"

Farmer Goodenough was upon them; and the words he showered on them were
not by any means "good enough" to be repeated here.  He stormed at them
for their idleness so furiously as to set off the babies in the hedge
screaming and yelling.  Tirzah Todd, the gipsy-looking woman whom he
especially abused, tossed her head and marched off in the midst,
growling fiercely, to quiet her child; and he, sending a parting
imprecation after her, directed his violence upon poor Bessy Mole,
though all this time she had been creeping on, shaking, trembling, and
crying, under the pelting of the storm; but, unluckily, in her
nervousness and blindness from tears, she pulled up a young turnip, and
the farmer fell on her and rated her hotly for not being worth half her
wage, and doing him more harm than good with her carelessness.  She had
not a word to say for herself, and went on shivering and trying to check
her sobs while he shouted out that he only employed her from charity,
and she had better look out, or he should turn her off at once.

"Oh, sir, don't!" then came out with a burst of tears.  "My poor
children--"

"Don't go whining about your children, but let me see you do your work."

However, this last sentence was in a milder tone, as if the fit of
passion had exhausted itself; and Mr Goodenough found his way back to
the path that crossed the fields, and went on.  Tirzah Todd set her
teeth, clenched her fist and shook it after him, while the other women,
as soon as he was out of sight, began to console Bessy Mole, who was
crying bitterly and saying, "what would become of her poor children, and
her own poor father."

"Never you mind, Bessy," said Molly Hewlett, "every one knows as how old
Goodenough's bark is worse than his bite."

"He runs out and it's over," put in Betsy Seddon.

"I'm sure I can hardly keep about any way," sobbed the widow.  "My
inside is all of a quake.  I can't abide words."

"Ten to one he don't give you another sixpence a week, after all," added
Nanny Barton.

"He ain't no call to run out at one," said Tirzah, standing upright and
flourishing her baby.

"I'd like to give him as good as he gave, an old foul-mouthed brute!"

"Look there!  There's the ladies coming," exclaimed Nanny Barton.

"I thought there was some reason why he stopped his jaw so soon,"
exclaimed Molly, stooping down and pulling up weeds (including turnips)
with undiscerning energy, in which all the others followed her example,
except Tirzah, who sulkily retreated under the hedge with her baby,
while Jem Hewlett and Lizzie Seddon ran forward for better convenience
of staring.  It was a large field, and the party were still a good way
off; but as it sloped downwards behind the women, the farmer must have
seen them a good deal before the weeders had done so.

These, be it remembered, were days when both farmers and their labourers
were a great deal rougher in their habits than we, their grandchildren,
can remember them; and there was, besides, the Old Poor Law, which left
the amount of relief and of need to be fixed at the vestry meetings by
the ratepayers themselves of each parish alone so that the poor were
entirely dependent on the goodwill or judgment of their employers, whose
minds were divided between keeping down the wages and the rates, and who
had little of real principle or knowledge to guide them.  It was
possible to have recourse to the magistrates at the Petty Sessions, who
could give an order which would override the vestry; but it was apt to
be only the boldest, and often the least deserving, who could make out
the best apparent cases for themselves, that ventured on such a measure.

The two ladies stopped and spoke to Molly Hewlett and Nanny Barton, whom
they had seen at their doors, and who curtsied low; and Nanny, as she
saw Mrs Carbonel's eyes fall on her boots, put in--

"Yes, ma'am, 'tis bitter hard work this cold, damp weather, and wears
out one's shoes ter'ble.  These be an old pair of my man's, and hurts my
poor feet dreadful, all over broken chilblains as they be; and my
fingers, too," she added, spreading out some fingers the colour of
beetroot, with dirty rags rolled round two of them.

Dora shrank.  "And you can go on weeding with them?"

"Yes, ma'am.  What can us do, when one's man gets but seven shillings a
week.  And I've had six children, and buried three," and her face looked
ready for tears.

"Well, we will come and see you, and try to find something to help you,"
said Mrs Carbonel.  "Where do you live?"

"Out beyond the church, ma'am--a long way for a lady."

"Oh, we are good walkers."

"And please, my lady," now said Molly, coming to the front, "if you
could give me an old bit of a pelisse, or anything, to make up for my
boy there.  He's getting big, you see, and he is terrible bad off for
clothes.  I don't know what is to be done for the lot of 'em."

Dora had recognised in the staring boy, who had come up close, him who
had made the commotion in church; and she ventured to say, "I remember
him.  Don't you think, if you or his father kept him with you in church,
he would behave better there?"

"Bless you, miss, his father is a sceptic.  I can't go while I've got no
clothes--nothing better than this, miss; and I always was used to go
decent and respectable.  Besides, I couldn't nohow take he into the seat
with me, as Master Pucklechurch would say I was upsetting of his
missus."

"Well, I hope to see him behave better next Sunday."

"Do you hear, Jem?  The lady is quite shocked at your rumbustiousness!
But 'twas all Joe Saunders's fault, ma'am, a terrifying the poor
children.  His father will give him the stick, that he will, if he hears
of it again."

Meantime Mrs Carbonel had turned to Widow Mole, who, after her first
curtsey, had been weeding away diligently and coughing.

"Where do you live?" she asked.  "I don't think I have seen you before."

"No, ma'am," she said quietly.  "I live down the Black Hollow."

"You don't look well.  Have you been ill?  You have a bad cough."

"It ain't nothing, ma'am, thank you.  I can keep about well enough."

"Do you take anything for it?"

"A little yarb tea at night sometimes, ma'am."

"We will try and bring you some mixture for it," said Mrs Carbonel.
And then she spoke to Betsy Seddon, who for a wonder had no request on
her tongue, and asked her who the other woman was, in the hedge with the
baby.

"That's Tirzah Todd, ma'am," began Mrs Seddon, but Molly Hewlett thrust
her aside, and went on, being always the most ready with words; "she is
Reuben Todd's wife, and I wouldn't wish to say no harm of her, but she
comes of a gipsy lot, and hasn't never got into ways that us calls
reverend, though I wouldn't be saying no harm of a neighbour, ma'am."

"No, you'd better not," exclaimed a voice, for Tirzah was nearer or had
better ears than Mrs Daniel Hewlett had suspected, "though I mayn't go
hypercriting about and making tales of my neighbours, as if you hadn't
got a man what ain't to be called sober twice a week."

"Hush! hush!" broke in Mrs Carbonel; "we don't want to hear all this.
I hope no one will tell us unkind things of our new neighbours, for we
want to be friends with all of you, especially with that bright-eyed
baby.  How old is it?"

She made it smile by nodding to it, and Tirzah was mollified enough to
say, "Four months, ma'am; but she have a tooth coming."

"What's her name?"

Tirzah showed her pretty white teeth in a smile.  "Well, ma'am, my
husband he doth want to call her Jane, arter his mother, 'cause 'tis a
good short name, but I calls her Hoglah, arter my sister as died."

"Then she hasn't been christened?"

"No.  You see we couldn't agree, nor get gossips; and that there parson,
he be always in such a mighty hurry, or I'd a had her half-baptized
Hoglah, and then Reuben he couldn't hinder it."

Tirzah was getting quite confidential to Mrs Carbonel, and Dora
meantime was talking to Molly Hewlett, but here it occurred to the
former that they must not waste the women's time, and they wished them
good-bye, Dora fearing, however, that there would be a quarrel between
Tirzah and Molly.

"Oh dear! oh dear!" she sighed, "couldn't you make peace between those
two," she said; "they will fight it out."

"No, I think the fear of the farmer and the need of finishing their work
will avert the storm for the present at least," said Mary, "and I
thought the more I said, the worse accusations I should hear."

"But what people they are!  I do begin to believe that attorney man,
that they are a bad lot."

"Don't be disheartened, Dora, no one has tried yet, apparently, to do
anything for them.  We must try to see them in their own homes."

"Beginning with Mrs Seddon.  She was quiet and civil, and did not beg."

"Neither did that thin little woman.  I should like to give her a
flannel petticoat.  There is a look of want about her."

"But I'm most taken with the wild woman, with the teeth and the eyes,
and the merry smile.  I am sure there is fun in her."

"Little enough fun, poor things!" sighed Mrs Carbonel.

She was more used to poor people.  She had more resolution, though less
enthusiasm than her sister.

CHAPTER FOUR.

NOBODY'S BUSINESS.

  "For the rector don't live on his living like other Christian sort of
  folks."--_T.  Hood_.

The sisters found on coming home that a very handsome chestnut horse was
being walked up and down before the front door, and their man-servant,
William, informed them that it belonged to the clergyman.

As they advanced to the verandah, Captain Carbonel and his visitor came
out to meet them, and Mr Ashley Selby was introduced.  He looked more
like a sportsman than a clergyman, except for his black coat; he had a
happy, healthy, sunburnt face, top boots, and a riding-whip in his hand,
and informed Mrs Carbonel that his father and mother would have the
honour of calling on her in a day or two.  They had an impression that
he had come to reconnoitre and decide whether they were farmers or
gentry.

"We have been trying to make acquaintance with some of your flock," said
Mary.

"The last thing I would advise you to do," he answered; "there are not a
worse lot anywhere.  Desperate poachers!  Not a head of game safe from
them."

"Perhaps they may be improved."

He shrugged his shoulders.  "See what my father has to say of them."

"Is there much distress?"

"There ought not to be, for old Dr Fogram and my father send down a
handsome sum for blankets and coals every Christmas, and Uphill takes
care to get its share!"  He laughed.  "No sinecure distributing!"

"We have not been to see the school yet."

"A decrepit old crone, poor old body!  She will soon have to give in.
She can't even keep the children from pulling off her spectacles."

"And Sunday School?"

"Well, my father doesn't approve of cramming the poor children.  I
believe the Methodists have something of the kind at Downhill; but there
is no one to attend to one here, and the place is quite free of
dissent."

"Cause and effect?" said Captain Carbonel, drily.

"Would you object if we tried to teach the poor children something?"
asked Mrs Carbonel, cautiously.

"Oh no, not at all.  All the good ladies are taking it up, I believe.
Mrs Grantley, of Poppleby, is great at it, and I see no harm in it; but
you'll have to reckon with my father.  He says there will soon be no
ploughmen, and my mother says there will be no more cooks or housemaids.
You'd better write to old Fogram, he'll back you up."

Mary had it on her lips to ask him about Widow Mole, but he had turned
to Edmund to discuss the hunting and the shooting of the neighbourhood.
They discovered, partly at this time, and partly from other visitors,
that he was the younger son of the squire of Downhill, who had been made
to take Holy Orders without any special fitness for it, because there
was a living likely soon to be ready for him, and in the meantime he was
living at home, an amiable, harmless young man, but bred up so as to
have no idea of the duties of his vocation, and sharing freely in the
sports of his family, acting as if he believed, like his father, that
they were the most important obligations of man; and accepting the
general household belief that only the Methodistical could wish for more
religious practice.

Be it understood that all this happened in the earlier years of the
century, and would be impossible under the revival of the Church that
has since taken place.  No one now can hold more than one piece of
preferment at a time, so that parishes cannot be left unprovided.  Nor
could Ashley Selby be ordained without a preparation and examination
which would have given him a true idea of what he undertook, or would
have prevented his ordination.  This, however, was at a time when the
work of the church had grown very slack, and when a better spirit was
beginning to revive.  The father of Mary and Dora had been a zealous and
earnest man, and both they and Edmund had really serious ideas of duty
and of the means of carrying them out.  In London they had heard sermons
which had widened and deepened their views, but they had done no work,
as the relation with whom they lived thought it impossible and improper
for young ladies there.  Thus they were exceedingly desirous of doing
what they could to help the place where their lot was cast, and they set
forth to reconnoitre.  First, they found their way to the school, which
stood on the border of the village green, a picturesque thatched
cottage, with a honeysuckle and two tall poplars outside.  But strange
sounds guided them on their way, and the first thing they saw was a
stout boy of four or five years old in petticoats bellowing loudly
outside, and trying to climb the wicket gate which was firmly secured by
a rusty chain.  Mary tried to undo the gate, speaking meanwhile to the
urchin, but he rushed away headlong back into the school, and they heard
him howling, "They bees a-coming!"

A big girl in a checkered pinafore came out and made a curtsey,
assisting to undo the chain.

"What has he been doing?" asked Dora.

"He be a mortial bad boy!" answered the girl.  "He've been getting at
Dame Verdon's sugar."

"And what is your name?" asked Mrs Carbonel.

"Lizzie Verdon, ma'am.  I helps Grannie."

Grannie did seem in need of help.  There she sat in a big wooden chair
by the fire, the very picture of an old dame, with a black bonnet,
high-crowned and crescent shaped in front, with a white muslin cap
below, a buff handkerchief crossed over her shoulders, a dark
short-sleeved gown, long mittens covering her arms, and a checkered
apron; a regular orthodox birch-rod by her side, and a black cat at her
feet.  But her head was shaking with palsy, and she hardly seemed to
understand what Lizzie screamed into her ear that, "Here was the
ladies."

But the door which they had shut in the face of their spaniel was thrust
open.  Up went the cat's back, bristle went her tail, her eyes shot
sparks, and she bounded to the top of her mistress's chair.  Dandy
barked defiance, all the children shouted or screamed and danced about,
and the old woman gasped and shook more.  Lizzie alone was almost equal
to the occasion.  She flew at the cat who was standing on tiptoe on the
tall back of the chair, with huge tail and eyes like green lamps,
swearing, hissing, and spitting, and, regardless of scratches, caught
him up by the scruff of his neck and disposed of him behind the
staircase door; while Dora at the same moment secured Dandy by the
collar, and rushing out, put him over the garden gate and shut both that
and the door.  Mary, afraid that the old lady was going to have a fit,
went up to her with soothing apologies, but the unwonted sight seemed to
confuse her the more, and she began crying.  Lizzie, however, came to
the rescue.  She evidently had all her wits about her.  First she called
out: "Order, children.  Don't you see the ladies?  Sit down, Jem
Hewlett, or I'll after you with the stick!"  Then, as the children
ranged themselves, she stamped at some to enforce her orders, shook the
rod at others, and set up the smallest like so many ninepins, handling
them by the shoulder on one small bench, interspersing the work with
consolations to granny and explanations to the ladies, who were about to
defer their visit.

"Granny, now never you mind.  Tip is all right upstairs.  Benny, you bad
boy, I'll be at you.  Don't go, please, lady.  Bet, what be doin' to
Jim?  Never mind, granny!  Susan Pucklechurch, you'll read to the lady,
so pretty."

About five children, more tidily dressed than the others, had a whole
and sound form to themselves near the fire and the mistress.  The other
two benches were propped, the one on two blocks of wood, the other on
two sound and two infirm legs, and this was only balanced by a child at
each end, so that when one got up the whole tumbled down or flew up, but
the seat was very low, and the catastrophe generally produced mirth.

Susan Pucklechurch, granddaughter to the old bailiff and his Betty, was
evidently the show scholar.  "She be in her Testament, ma'am," explained
Lizzie; and accordingly a terribly thumbed and dilapidated New Testament
was put into the child's hand, from which she proceeded to bawl out,
with long pauses between the words, and spelling the longest, a piece of
the Sermon on the Mount, selected because there were no names in it.  It
was a painful performance to reverent ears, and as soon as practicable
Mrs Carbonel stopped it with "Good child!" and a penny, and asked what
the others read.  Those who were not "in the Testament" read the
"Universal Spelling-book," provided at their own expense, but not in
much better condition, and from this George Hewlett, son and heir to the
carpenter, and a very different person from his cousin Jem, read the
history of the defence of that city where each trade offered its own
commodity for the defence, even to the cobbler, who proposed to lay in a
stock of good l-e-a-t-h-e-r--lather!

These, and three little maidens who had picture spelling-books not going
beyond monosyllables, were the aristocracy, and sat apart, shielded from
the claws and teeth of their neighbours in consideration of paying
fourpence, instead of twopence, a week.  The boy was supposed to write
large letters on a slate, and the bigger girls did some needlework, and
not badly--indeed, it was the best of their performances.  The dame went
on mumbling and shaking all the time, and it was quite evident that she
was entirely past the work, and that Lizzie was the real mistress;
indeed, Mrs Carbonel was inclined to give her credit for a certain
talent for teaching and keeping order, when the sisters emerged from the
close little oven of a place, hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry,
but full of great designs.

Captain Carbonel, however, to their disappointment, advised them to wait
to set anything on foot till Dr Fogram, the President of Saint Cyril's,
came down in the summer holidays, when counsel could be taken with him,
and there would be more knowledge of the subject.  Dora did not like
this at all.  She was sure that the Son of Mist, as she was naughty
enough to call the doctor, would only hamper them, and she was only half
consoled by being told that there was no objection to her collecting a
few of the children on Sunday and trying to teach them, and in the
meantime acquaintance might be made with the mothers.

CHAPTER FIVE.

AT HOME.

  "Now I've gone through all the village, from end to end,
  save and except one more house;
  But I haven't come to that, and I hope I never shall,
  and that's the village Poor House."
  _T.  Hood_.

Cottage visiting turned out to be a much chequered affair.  One of the
first places to which the sisters made their way was the Widow Mole's.
They found it, rather beyond the church, down a lane, where it was
hidden behind an overgrown thorn hedge, and they would scarcely have
found it at all, if a three-year-old child had not been clattering an
old bit of metal against the bar put across to prevent his exit.  He was
curly and clean, except with the day's surface dirt, but he only stared
stolidly at the question whether Mrs Mole lived there.  A ten-year-old
girl came out, and answered the question.

"Yes, mother do live here, but her be out at work."

"Is that your grandfather?" as they caught sight of a very old man on a
chair by the door, in the sun.

"Yes, ma'am.  Will you come in and see him?"

He was a very old man, with scanty white hair, but he was very clean,
and neatly dressed in a white smock, mended all over, but beautifully
worked over the breast and cuffs, and long leather buskins.  He was very
civil, too.  He took off his old straw hat, and rose slowly by the help
of his stout stick, though the first impulse of the visitors was to beg
him not to move.  He did not hear them, but answered their gesture.

"I be so crippled up with the rheumatics, you see, ma'am," and he put
his knotted and contracted hand up to his ear.

Mrs Carbonel shouted into his ear that she was sorry for him.  She
supposed his daughter was out at work.

"Yes, ma'am, with Farmer Goodenough--a charing to-day it is."

"Washing," screamed the little girl.

"She was off at five o'clock this morning," he went on.  "She do work
hard, my daughter Bess, and she's a good one to me, and so is little Liz
here.  Thank the Lord for them."

"And her husband is dead?"

"Yes, ma'am.  Fell off a haystack three years ago, and never spoke no
more.  We have always kept off the parish, ma'am.  This bit of a cottage
was my poor wife's, and she do want to leave it to the boy; but she be
but frail, poor maid, and if she gave in, there'd be nothing for it but
to give up the place and go to the workhouse; and there's such a lot
there as I could not go and die among."

He spoke it to the sympathising faces, not as one begging, and they
found out that all was as he said.  He had seen better days, and held
his head above the parish pay, and so had his son-in-law but the early
death of poor Mole, and the old man's crippled state, had thrown the
whole maintenance of the family on the poor young widow, who was really
working herself to death, while, repairs being impossible, the cottage
was almost falling down.

"Oh, what a place, and what a dear old man!" cried the ladies, as they
went out.  "Well, we can do something here.  I'll come and read to him
every week," exclaimed Dora.

"And I will knit him a warm jacket," said Mary, "and surely Edmund could
help them to prop up that wretched cottage."

"What a struggle their lives must have been, and so patient and good!
Where are we going now?"

"I believe that is the workhouse, behind the church," said Mary.  "That
rough-tiled roof."

"It has a bend in the middle, like a broken back.  I must sketch it,"
said Dora.

"Why, there's Edmund, getting over the churchyard stile."

"Ay, he can't keep long away from you, Madam Mary."

"Were you going to the workhouse?" said Captain Carbonel, coming up, and
offering an arm to each lady, as was the fashion in those days.

"We thought of it.  All the poorest people are there, of course."

"And the worst," said the captain.  "No, I will not have you go there.
It is not fit for you."

For besides that he was very particular about his ladies, and had no
notion of letting them go to all the varieties of evil where they could
hope to do good, like the ladies of our days, the workhouse was an
utterly different place from the strictly disciplined union houses of
the present Poor Law.  Each parish had its own, and that of Uphill had
no master, no order, but was the refuge of all the disorderly,
disreputable people, who could not get houses, or pay their rent, who
lived in any kind of fashion, on parish pay and what they could get, and
were under no restraint.

While the captain was explaining to them what he had heard from Farmer
Goodenough, a sudden noise of shouting and laughing, with volleys of
evil words, was heard near the "Fox and Hounds."

"What is that?" asked Dora, of a tidy young woman coming her way.

"That's only the chaps at old Sam," she answered, as if it was an
ordinary sound.  And on them exclaiming, she explained.  "Samson
Sanderson, that's his name, sir.  He be what they calls _non-compos_,
and the young fellows at the `Fox and Hounds' they have their fun out of
he.  They do bait he shameful."

Violent shouts of foul words and riotous laughter could be distinguished
so plainly, that Captain Carbonel hastily thrust his wife and sister
into the nearest cottage, and marched into the group of rough men and
boys, who stood holloaing rude jokes, and laughing at the furious oaths
and abuse in intermittent gasps with which they were received.

"For shame!" his indignant voice broke in.  "Are you not ashamed,
unmanly fellows, to treat a poor weak lad in this way?"

There was a moment's silence.  Then a great hulking drover called out,
"Bless you, sir, he likes it."

"The more shame for you," exclaimed the captain, "to bait a poor
innocent lad with horrid blasphemy and profanity.  I tell you every one
of you ought to be fined!"

The men began to sneak away from the indignant soldier.  The poor idiot
burst out crying and howling, and the ostler came forward, pulling his
forelock, and saying, "You'll not be hard on 'em, sir.  'Tis all sport.
There, Sammy, don't be afeared.  Gentleman means you no harm."

Captain Carbonel held out some coppers, saying, "There, my poor lad,
there's something for you.  Only don't let me hear bad words again."

Sam muttered something, and pulled his ragged hat forward as he shambled
off into some back settlements of the public-house, while the ostler
went on--

"'Tis just their game, sir!  None of 'em would hurt poor Sam!  They'd
treat him the next minute, sir.  All in sport."

"Strange sport," said the captain, "to teach a poor helpless lad, who
ought to be as innocent as a babe, that abominable blasphemy."

"He don't mean nought, sir!  All's one to he!"

"All the worse in those who do know better, I tell you; and you may tell
your master that, if this goes on, I shall certainly speak to the
magistrates."

There was no need to tell the landlord, Mr Oldfellow.  The captain was
plainly enough to be heard through the window of the bar.  The drovers
had no notion that their amusement was sinful, for "it didn't hurt no
one," and, in fact, "getting a rise" out of Softy Sam was one of the
great attractions of the "Fox and Hounds," so that Mr Oldfellow was of
the same mind as Dan Hewlett, who declared that "they Gobblealls was
plaguey toads of Methodys, and wasn't to think to bully them about like
his soldiers."

They had another drink all round to recover from their fright, when they
treated Softy Sam, but took care not to excite him to be noisy, while
the captain might be within earshot.

The two ladies had meanwhile taken refuge in what proved to be no other
than Mrs Daniel Hewlett's house, a better one, and less scantily
provided with furniture, than the widow Mole's, but much less clean and
neat.  The door stood open, and there was a tub full of soap-suds
within.  The captain gave a low whistle to intimate his presence, and
stood at the entrance.  Unwashed dinner things were on a round table, a
dresser in confusion against the wall, on another _Moore's Almanack_ for
some years past, full of frightful catastrophes, mixed with little,
French, highly-coloured pictures of the Blessed Virgin.

His wife and her sister were seated, the one on a whole straw chair, the
other on a rickety one, conversing with a very neat, pale, and
pleasant-looking invalid young woman, evidently little able to rise from
her wooden armchair.  Molly Hewlett, in a coarse apron, and a cap far
back amid the rusty black tangles of her hair, her arms just out of the
wash-tub, was in the midst of a voluble discourse, into which the ladies
would not break.

"You see, ma'am, she was in a right good situation, but she was always
unlucky, and she had the misfortune to fall down the attic stairs with
the baby in her arms."

"The baby was not hurt," put in the invalid.

"Not it, the little toad, but 'twas saving he as ricked her back
somehow, and made her a cripple for life, as you see, ma'am; and she was
six months in the hospital, till the doctor, he say as how he couldn't
do nothing more for her, so Hewlett and me we took her in, as she is my
own sister, you see, and we couldn't let her go to the workhouse, but
she do want a little broth or a few extrys now and then, ma'am, more
than we poor folks can give her."

"My mistress is very good, and gives me a little pension," put in the
invalid, while her sister looked daggers at her, and Mrs Carbonel, in
obedience to her husband's signal, took a hasty leave.

"There now!  That's the way of you, Judith," cried Molly Hewlett,
banging the door behind them.  "What should you go for to tell the
ladies of that pitiful pay of yours but to spile all chance of their
helping us, nasty, mean skin-flints as they be!"

"I couldn't go for to deceive them," humbly replied Judith, meek, but
cowering under the coming storm.

"Who asked you to deceive?  Only to hold your tongue for your own good,
and mine and my poor children's, that you just live upon.  As if your
trumpery pay was worth your board and all the trouble I has with you
night and day, but you must come in and hinder these new folk from
coming down liberal with your Methody ways and your pride!  That's it,
your pride, ma'am.  Oh, I'm an unhappy woman, between you and Dan!  I
am!"

Molly sank into a chair, put her apron over her face and cried, rocking
herself to and fro, while Judith, with tears in her eyes, tried gentle
consolations all in vain, till Molly remembered her washing, and rose
up, moaning and lamenting.

Meantime Mrs Carbonel and her sister were exclaiming in pity that this
was a dear good girl, though Edmund shook his head over her
surroundings.

"I wonder how to make her more comfortable," said Dora.  "She seemed so
much pleased when I promised to bring her something to read."

"I am afraid those Hewletts prey on her," said Mary.

"And patronising her will prove a complicated affair!" said the captain.

He wanted them to come home at once, but on the way they met Nanny
Barton, who began, with low curtsies, a lamentable story about her girls
having no clothes, and she would certainly have extracted a shilling
from Miss Carbonel if the captain had not been there.

"Never accept stories told on the spur of the moment," he said.

Then Betsy Seddon and Tirzah Todd came along together, bending under
heavy loads of broken branches for their fires.  Tirzah smiled as usual,
and showed her pretty teeth, but the captain looked after her, and said,
"They have been tearing Mr Selby's woods to pieces."

"What can they do for firewood?" said his wife.

"Let us look out the rules of your father's coal store and shoe club,"
he said.

CHAPTER SIX.

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD.

  "Through slush and squad,
  When roads was bad,
  But hallus stop at the Vine and Hop."
  _Tennyson_.

Through all Pucklechurch's objections and evident contempt for his
fancies, and those of young madam, Captain Carbonel insisted on the
clearance of the yard.  He could not agree with the old man, who made
free to tell him that, "Such as that there muck-heap was just a bucket
to a farmer's wife, if she was to be called a farmer's wife--was that
it."

With some reflection, Captain Carbonel decided that a bucket might mean
a bouquet, and answered, "Maybe she might have too much of a good thing.
When I went down to Farmer Bell's the other day, they had a famous
heap, and I was struck with the sickly look of his wife and daughters."

"His missus were always a poor, nesh 'ooman," returned Pucklechurch.

"And I don't mean mine to be like her if I can help it," said the
captain.

But he did not reckon on the arrival of a prancing pair of horses, with
a smart open carriage, containing two ladies and a gentleman, in the
most odorous part of the proceedings, when he was obliged to clear the
way from a half-loaded waggon to make room for them, and, what was quite
as inconvenient, to hurry up the back stairs to his dressing-room to
take off his long gaiters, Blucher boots (as half high ones were then
called) and old shooting coat, and make himself presentable.

In fact, when he came into the room, Dora was amused at the perceptible
look of surprised approval of the fine tall soldierly figure, as he
advanced to meet Mr and Mrs Selby and their daughter, the nearest
neighbours, who were, of course, in the regular course of instruction of
the new-comers in the worthlessness and ingratitude of Uphill and the
impossibility of doing anything for the good of the place.

Mary was very glad that he interrupted the subject by saying merrily,
"You caught me in the midst of my Augean stable.  I hope next time you
are kind enough to visit us that the yard may be in a more respectable
condition."

Mr Selby observed that it was unpardonable not to have done the work
beforehand, and the captain answered, "On the contrary, it was reserved
as a fragrant bucket, or bouquet for a farmer's wife."

Whereat the visitors looked shocked, and Mary made haste to observe:
"But we do hope to make a better road to the house through the fields."

"There is a great deal to be done first," said Dora, who thought the
observation rather weak.

Nothing else that was interesting took place on this occasion.  Mr
Selby asked the captain whether he hunted, and gave him some information
on the sport of all kinds in the neighbourhood.  Miss Selby asked Dora
if she liked archery, music, and drawing.  Mrs Selby wanted to
recommend a housemaid, and advised Mrs Carbonel against ever taking a
servant from the neighbourhood.  And then they all turned to talk of the
evil doings of the parish thieves, poachers, idlers, drunkards, and to
warn the Carbonels once more against hoping to improve them.  The horses
could be heard pawing and jingling outside, and, as the ladies rose to
take leave, Captain Carbonel begged leave to hurry out and clear the
coast.  And it was well that he did so, for he had to turn back a whole
procession of cows coming in to be milked, and sundry pigs behind them.

The farm court was finished, and never was so bad again, the animals
being kept from spending their day there, except the poultry, in which
Mary took great delight.  Soon came more visitors, and it became a joke
to the husband and sister that she always held out hopes of "the future
drive" when they arrived, bumped or mired by the long lane.  "Mary's
Approach," as Edmund called it, had to be deferred till more needful
work was done.  The guests whom they best liked, Mr and Mrs Grantley,
the clergyman and his wife from the little town of Poppleby, gave an
excellent and hopeful account of their rector, Dr Fogram, who was, they
said, a really good man, and very liberal.

Mrs Grantley was interested in schools and poor people, as it was easy
to discover, and Mary and Dora were soon talking eagerly to her, and
hearing what was done at Poppleby; but there were gentry and prosperous
tradespeople there, who could be made available as subscribers or
teachers; so that their situation was much more hopeful than that of the
Carbonels, who had not the authority of the clergyman.

Poppleby was a much larger place than Downhill, on the post road to
London.  The mail-coach went through it, and thence post-horses were
hired, and chaises, from the George Inn.  The Carbonels possessed a
phaeton, and a horse which could be used for driving or riding, and thus
Captain Carbonel took the two ladies to return the various calls that
had been made upon them.  They found the Selbys not at home, but were
warmly welcomed by the Grantleys, and spent the whole afternoon with
them, and, at Dora's earnest request, were taken to see the schools.  So
different was the taste and feeling of those days that, though Poppleby
Church was a very fine old one--in grand architecture, such as in these
days is considered one of the glories of the country--no one thought of
going to look at it, and the effect of Mr Grantley's excellent sermons
had been the putting up of a new gallery right across the chancel arch.

It had a fine tower and steeple, and this Dora thought of as a
delightful subject for a sketch from the Parsonage garden.  She made
great friends with Lucy Grantley, the eldest daughter, over their tastes
in drawing, as well as in the Waverley novels and in poetry, and was
invited to spend a long day at Poppleby and take a portrait of the
steeple.

After the calls had been made and returned, began the dinner-parties.
Elmour Priory was so near Greenhow that it would have been easy to walk
there across the fields, or to drive in the phaeton, especially as the
hours were much earlier, and six or half-past was held to be a late
dinner hour, but this would have been contrary to etiquette, especially
the first time, with people who evidently thought much of "style," and
the Carbonels were not superior to such considerations, which were--or
were supposed to be--of more importance in those days.  So a chaise was
ordered, and they went in state, and had a long, dull evening, chiefly
enlivened by the Miss Selbys and Dora playing on the piano.

As they were going home, all round by the road, when they were near the
top of the hill, before they came to the "Fox and Hounds," the postilion
first shouted and then came to a sudden stop.  The captain, putting his
head out at the window, saw by the faint light of a young moon, going
down in the remains of sunset, that he was jumping off his horse,
growling and swearing, but under his breath, when the captain sprang
out.  A woman was lying across the road, and had barely escaped being
run over.  Mary and Dora were both out in a moment.

"Poor thing, poor thing!  Is it a fit?  She is quite insensible."

"A fit of a certain kind," said the captain, who was dragging her into
the hedge, while the post-boy held the horses.  "Go back, Mary, Dora!"

"It is Nanny Barton!" said Dora in horror.

Mary took down one of the carriage lamps and held it to the face.  "Yes,
it is!" said she.  "Can't we take her home, or do anything?"

"No, no; nonsense!" said Edmund.  "Don't come near, don't touch her.
Don't you see, she is simply dead drunk."

"But we can't leave her here."

"The best thing to do!  Yes, it is; but we will stop at the `Fox and
Hounds,' if that will satisfy you, and send some one out to see after
her."

They were obliged to be satisfied, for the tones were authoritative, and
they had to accept his assurance that the woman was in no state for them
to meddle with.  She would come to no harm, he said, when he had put her
on the bank, and it was only to pacify them that he caused the postilion
to stop at the public-house, whence roaring, singing, and shouts
proceeded.  The landlord came out, supposing it was some new arrival,
and when Captain Carbonel jumped out, and, speaking severely, desired
that some one would go to look after the woman, who was lying in the
road, and whom the horses had almost run over, he answered as if he had
been doing the most natural and correct thing in the world.

"Yes, sir; I had just sent her home.  They had been treating of her, and
she had had a drop too much.  She wasn't in a proper state."

"Proper state!  No!  I should think not!  It is a regular shame and
disgrace that you should encourage such goings on!  Where's the woman's
husband?  Has no one got the humanity to come and take her home?"

Oldfellow called gruffly to some of the troop, who came reeling out to
the door, and told them it was time to be off, and that some one, "You
Tirzah had best see to that there Barton 'oman."

Captain Carbonel wished to keep his ladies from the sight, but they were
watching eagerly, and could not help seeing that it was Tirzah Todd,
more gipsy-looking than ever, who came out.  Not, however, walking as if
intoxicated, and quite able to comprehend Captain Carbonel's brief
explanation where to find her companion.

"Ah, poor Nanny!" she said cheerfully.  "She's got no head!  A drop is
too much for her."

The chaise door was shut, and they went on, Dora and Mary shocked
infinitely, and hardly able to speak of what they had seen.

And they did not feel any happier when the next day, as Mary was feeding
the chickens, Nanny came up to her, curtseying and civil.

"Please, ma'am, I'm much obliged to you for seeing to me last night.  I
just went in to see if my husband was there, as was gone to Poppleby
with some sheep, and they treated me, ma'am.  And that there Tirzah and
Bet Bracken, they was a-singing songs, as it was a shame to hear, so I
ups and rebukes them, and she flies at me like a catamount, ma'am; and
then Mr Oldfellow, he puts me out, ma'am, as was doing no harms as
innocent as a lamb."

"Well," said Mrs Carbonel, "it was no place for any woman to be in, and
we were grieved, I cannot tell you how much, that you should be there.
You had better take care; you know drunkenness is a really wicked sin in
God's sight."

"Only a little overtaken--went to see for my husband," muttered Nanny.
"I didn't take nigh so much as that there Tirzah Todd, that is there
with Bet Bracken every night of her life, to sing--"

"Never mind other people.  Their doing wrong doesn't make you right."

"Only a drop," argued Nanny.  "And that there Tirzah and Bet--"

Mary was resolved against hearing any more against Tirzah and Bet, and
actually shut herself into the granary till Nanny was gone.  And there
she sat down on a sack of peas and fairly cried at the thought of the
sin and ignorant unconsciousness of evil all round her.  And then she
prayed a little prayer for help and wisdom for these poor people and
themselves.  Then she felt cheered up and hopeful.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

SUNDAY SCHOOL.

  "She hastens to the Sunday School."  _Jane Taylor_.

Captain Carbonel had written to the President of Saint Cyril's, and at
once obtained his willing consent to the ladies attempting to form a
little Sunday School.  Dr Fogram said that he should come down himself
on July 21, and should be very glad to take counsel with the Carbonels
on the state of Uphill.  He would be glad to assist if any outlay were
needed.

The sisters were in high spirits.  The only place they could find for
the purpose was the wash-house and laundry.  Once in five weeks two
women, in high white muslin caps and checked aprons, of whom Betsy
Seddon was one, Betty Pucklechurch the other, came to assist the maids
in getting up the family linen--a tremendous piece of work.  A tub was
set on the Saturday, with ashes placed in a canvas bag on a frame above;
water was poured on it, and ran through, so as to be fitted for the
operations which began at five o'clock in the morning, and absorbed all
the women of the establishment, and even old Pucklechurch, who was
called on to turn the mangle.

Except during this formidable week, the wash-house and laundry were
empty, and hither were invited the children.  About twenty, of all ages,
came--the boys in smocks, the girls in print frocks and pinafores, one
in her mother's black bonnet, others in coarse straw or sun-bonnets.
All had shoes of some sort, but few had stockings, though the long
frocks concealed the deficiencies, and some wore stocking-legs without
feet.

They made very low bows, or pulled their forelocks, most grinned and
looked sheepish, and a very little one began to cry.  It did not seem
very promising, but Mary and Dora began by asking all their names, and
saying they hoped to be better friends.  They, for the most part, knew
nothing, with the exception of George Hewlett's two eldest, Bessie
Mole's girls, and one sharp boy of Dan Hewlett's, also the Pucklechurch
grandchildren; but even these had very dim notions, and nobody but the
Hewletts could tell a word of the Catechism.

To teach them the small commencement of doctrine comprised in the
earliest pages of "First Truths" was all that could be attempted, as
well as telling them a Bible story, to which the few intelligent ones
listened with pleasure, and Johnnie Hewlett showed that he had already
heard it--"from aunt," he said.  He was a sickly, quiet-looking boy,
very different from his younger brother, Jem, who had organised a revolt
among the general multitude before long.  None of these had enough
civilisation to listen or be attentive for five minutes together, and
when Mrs Carbonel looked round on hearing a howl, there was a pitched
battle going on between Jem and Lizzie Seddon over her little sister,
who had been bribed into coming with a lump of gingerbread, which the
boy was abstracting.  He had been worked up enough even to lose his awe
of the ladies, and to kick and struggle when Dora, somewhat imprudently,
tried to turn him out.

The disturbance was so great that the sisters were obliged to dismiss
their pupils at least a quarter of an hour sooner than they had
intended, and without having tried to teach the short daily prayers that
had been part of the programme.

Somewhat crestfallen they sped back to the house.

"Did you ever see such a set of little savages?" cried Dora.

"Come, there was a very fair proportion of hopeful ones," was the reply.

These hopeful ones made one class under Dora, while Mary, who had more
patience and experience, undertook the others, who, when once wakened,
proved very eager and interested, in a degree new to those who are not
the first lights in gross darkness.  Johnnie Hewlett was the brightest
among the children, for though his weekdays were occupied in what his
mother called "keeping a few birds," or, more technically,
"bird-starving," he spent most of his spare time beside his sick aunt,
and had not only been taught by her to read, but to think, and to say
his prayers.

As Dora gradually learnt, both Mary Hewlett and Judith Grey had been
children of a little "smock-frock" farmer, and had not been entirely
without breeding; but Molly had been the eldest, and had looked after
the babies, and done much of the work of the farm, till she plunged into
an early and most foolish marriage with the ne'er-do-well member of the
old sawyer's family, and had been going deeper into the mire ever since.

Judith, a good deal younger, and always delicate, had gone to the dame
school when Mrs Verdon was rather less inefficient, and at ten years
old had been taken into service by an old retired servant, who needed
her chiefly as a companion, and thence she had been passed on to a
family where the ladies were very kind to the servants, and the children
brought them their books and their information of all kinds, so that she
had much cultivation, religious and otherwise.

When her accident had sent her home to the only surviving member of her
family, she hoped to be of use to her sister and the children; but,
before long, she found it almost hopeless.  Molly, indeed, was roughly
kind to her, but Dan took no notice of her except to "borrow" her money,
and any attempt to interfere with the management of the children was
resented.

Johnnie, the eldest boy, was fond of his aunt, and soon became her best
attendant when not out at the work that began at nine years old.  He was
willing that she should teach him, and when the ladies came to see her,
she was full of stories of what he had told her.  She said no word of
the rudeness of the girls or the tyranny of Jem, as she sat helpless by
the fire.  When all were out, these were pleasant peaceful visits to
her, and she was grateful for the books Dora lent her, and the
needlework Mrs Carbonel gave her when she was well enough to do it.
Molly was not unwilling that her sister should be "a fav'rite," as she
called it, more especially as Jem was generally allowed to swallow any
dainty brought by the ladies that was to his taste.

Old Master Redford, Widow Mole's father, was another cheerful spot in
the village.  He was a thoroughly good, devout person in a simple way,
and most grateful for Dora's coming to read to him.  Old Pucklechurch
once, indeed, said, "What, ma'am, ye be never a-going to read to that
there Thomas Redford!  Why, 'tis all one as singing Psalms to a dead
horse."

In spite, however, of this hopeless augury, Dora's voice did reach his
ears.  He had made good use of his scanty opportunities, and had taught
his family to be thoroughly conscientious.  There was another daughter
in service, who from time to time sent him a little help, but the
transit of money was a difficulty in those days, and the relief could
not often come.  One morning Widow Mole fainted away in the hayfield,
and hardly heard Farmer Goodenough abusing her fine-lady airs, though
she trembled and shook so much when she tried to go on that she was
forced to let Tirzah Todd lead her home, and the next morning she could
not get up.

She had been in such plight before, and the shop trusted her, knowing
that she always strove to pay off her debts, but the farmer rated her
vehemently, declaring that she had been good for nothing since the
ladies had been putting fancies and megrims in her head, and that he
would not take her on again.  Probably he did not mean to fulfil his
threat, for, as far as her strength allowed, she was the best and most
thorough worker of all his women, and he had no desire to have the whole
family on the rates; but the ladies believed it, and came home furious
with indignation, and even Captain Carbonel thought her justified in
accepting the dismissal, and as soon as "kitchen physic" had a little
restored her, she became washer-woman, weeding woman, and useful woman
generally at Greenhow Farm.

Many a cup of tea and thick slice of bread-and-butter were carried out
to her after breakfast, not to say three-cornered remnant of pie, or
sandwich of cold meat at luncheon; and, though some was saved for
"granfer and the children," still she began to look like another woman
ere many weeks were over.

Betsy Seddon and Molly Hewlett were much displeased, and reproached her
with having got the place by "hypercriting about."

Nanny Barton put on a white apron and brought out the big Bible when she
saw the ladies getting over the stile.  The first time Dora was much
delighted; the second, Mrs Carbonel managed to see that the Bible was
open at one of the genealogies in the First Book of Chronicles, and
spied besides the dirtiest of all skirts under the apron.  After that
she did not much heed when Nanny said she would come to church if her
shoes were not so bad.

Tirzah Todd laughed and showed her white teeth and merry eyes so
pleasantly that no one could help liking to talk with her, but alas! old
Pucklechurch took care to let them know that she could be just as merry
in a different way at the "Fox and Hounds."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

MARY'S APPROACH.

  "The chaise was stayed,
  But yet was not allowed
  To drive up to the door, lest all
  Should say that she was proud."
  _Cowper_.

Dr Fogram was true to his word, and made his appearance at the Long
Vacation.  The Carbonels, to whom little eager Sophia had been added a
day or two previously, first saw him at Downhill Church, where he made a
most dignified appearance, in a very full surplice, with his Doctor of
Divinity's red hood over it.  The clerk, small, grey-haired, and
consequential, bustled up to open the pulpit door for him, and he
preached, in a fine, sonorous voice, a very learned sermon, that might
have been meant for his undergraduates at Oxford.

It was the day for afternoon service at Uphill, so the sisters had to
hurry away to eat their luncheon in haste, and then to introduce Sophy
to the Sunday School, where she was to teach a class of small ones, a
matter of amazing importance and ecstasy.

She was a damsel of thirteen, in a white frock and cape, a pink sash,
pink kerchief round her neck, pink satin ribbons tying down her broad
Leghorn hat over her ears, in what was called gipsy fashion.  She had
rosy cheeks, blue, good-natured eyes, and shining, light-brown curls all
round her head.  Her appearance in the school was quite as memorable to
the children as Dr Fogram's could be to their elders, and the little
ones were so engaged in looking at her that they quite forgot to be
naughty, except that Billy Mole, in curiosity to know what anything so
glossy and shining could be, pinched the end of her sash, and left the
grimy mark of his little hot hands on it, which caused Maitland the
maid, who had charge of her toilette, to declare that such things always
came of going among "they nasty, dirty little brats."

Dr Fogram rode over on a plump, shining, black horse, followed by a
well-equipped groom.  He dismounted, and gave his horse to the man when
he overtook the Carbonel party on the way up the hill.

"Captain Carbonel, I believe," said he, touching his hat, almost a
shovel.  "Will you do me the honour to introduce me to the ladies," and
to them he uncovered with the grand formal politeness which even then
was becoming rather old-fashioned, and which they returned with
curtsies, Sophia's, being fresh from the dancing-master, the most
perfect of all.

"I understand," said he, "that I am greatly indebted to you for pains
taken with this unfortunate parish."

"We have been trying to do what we could," said Mrs Carbonel, to whom
this was chiefly addressed.

"It is a great kindness," he replied, "and I hope the people may show
themselves sensible of your exertions, but hitherto all endeavours for
their benefit have been thrown away."

Dora could not help wondering what the exertions were!

After the service he joined the family again, and said that he thought
the appearance of the poor--and especially of the children--and their
behaviour much improved, and he had no doubt it was owing to the gentle
and beneficent influence of the ladies, to whom he bowed.

In fact, the children had been much engaged in staring, though whether
he or Sophy were the prime attraction, might be doubtful.  At any rate,
Master Pucklechurch's rod had only once descended.  Moreover, two neat
sun-bonnets of lilac print adorned two heads, and the frocks looked as
if they were sometimes washed.

Captain Carbonel said he hoped to have some conversation with the
President about the parish; and he responded that he hoped to do himself
the honour of calling the next day.  After which he mounted his horse
and rode off.

The three sisters waited and watched as if their whole fate depended on
the morning's conference but nothing was seen of the President till
after luncheon, when he rode up, attended by his groom as before.  To
their great disappointment, he would talk of nothing but the beauty of
the country, and of the voices of Lablache and Sonntag, or the like,
which he evidently considered the proper subjects for ladies; and it was
not till he had spent the quarter of an hour, fit for a visit of
ceremony, on these topics that he asked Captain Carbonel to allow him a
little conversation with him.

They shut themselves into the captain's little `den,' which was
something between a gun-room and a library, with the rectory books going
round two sides of the room, Edmund's sword, pistols, and spurs hanging
over the mantelpiece, and his guns, shot-belts, powder-horn, and
fishing-rods on hooks on the wall.  No noise was heard for more than an
hour, during which Dora fumed, Mary cut off the dead roses, and Sophia
was withheld from peeping.

At last they came out--the horses had been brought to the door--the
President bowed to the ladies, mounted, and rode off, while Edmund came
across the lawn; and they all clustered round him.

"Well," said he, "we have fared better than we expected.  Dr Fogram has
long been regretting the state of the parish."

"Why did he do nothing?" broke in Dora.

"I suppose he has much on his hands; and, I am afraid, my poor old uncle
was a hindrance, for he really seemed like a man who had got rid of an
incubus when he found that we were willing to do what we could.  Then it
seems that he was disappointed in Ashley Selby.  He thought that, being
an inhabitant of the place, the young man would be interested in the
people, and make his sisters useful."

"They!" exclaimed Dora.  "They are such fine ladies, who think about
nothing but Almack's, are afraid of the dirt, and of catching all sorts
of disorders at the cottages."

"I can hardly get Dora to be moderately civil to them," said Mary.

"Yes," said Edmund, "parental influence has been strong.  The mother
fears for health, the father for his game, and the children have grown
up to think poachers and their families almost beyond the pale of
humanity.  It has been too much for this young man, who simply
acquiesced in the way in which he was bred.  However, this will come to
an end, for the present holder of the family living has had a paralytic
stroke, and wants him to come and assist.  I fully believe that he may
do much better away from home habits, especially under a good
incumbent."

"And what is to happen to us?" inquired Mary.

"Dr Fogram says that he will send us one of the Fellows of his
college--a young man full of zeal, who is eager for parochial work, and
has been taking duty at a parish some miles from Oxford.  He thinks we
shall be satisfied with the change."

"As if we were the people to be satisfied," cried Dora.  "Just confess,
Edmund, that the old gentleman did not think the place worth attending
to, till educated gentlefolk came to live in it."

"Say, rather, that he really did not know the deficiencies," said the
captain, "till they were brought before him."

"Then he ought," muttered Dora.

"Judge not," whispered Mary, who was a reverent person.

"And the school?" resumed Dora.  "Was he aware of any deficiency there?"

"He was very glad to hear that you had begun keeping school, and will
contribute to a better arrangement for the week-day school, assist in
pensioning off Dame Verdon, if needful, and in obtaining a better
person."

Dora and Sophy each gave a little caper, and squeezed one another's
hands.

"He is quite disposed to be liberal," continued Edmund; "and I am sure
we shall find him no impediment."

"I don't think the school is going on now," said Mary.  "Lizzie Verdon
came for some broth, and said Granny was bad in bed.  I asked whether
she had had the doctor, and she stared and said no, but Dame Spurrell
had got her some `yarbs.'"

For in those days the union doctor was not an institution.  Large tracts
of country would contract with some apothecary to attend their sick; but
he was generally a busy man, with his hands full of paying patients, and
there was nobody to keep him up to his work among the poor, if he could
have done it, which he really could not.  The poor themselves knew that
it was in vain to apply to him, or if he came once in a serious case, to
expect any attention; and they preferred to depend on the woman clever
in "yarbs," on the white witch, or, in favoured villages, on the lady
bountiful or the clergyman and his wife; and in simple cases these
latter were quite efficient, keeping a family medicine-chest and a book
on household medicine.

Mrs Carbonel had rooted out her mother's book, replenished her chest,
and had cured two or three children who had been eating unripe apples,
and greatly benefited Mole with infusions of Jesuit's bark in a large
jug, the same thing as quinine, only more cumbrously and domestically
prepared.  But most of the Uphill people had the surest confidence in
Dame Spurrell and her remedies, some of which were very curious; for
Mrs Carbonel found a child who had fits wearing, in a bag, a pinch of
black hair from the cross on the back of a jackass; and once, when she
objected to a dirty mark on the throat of Susan Pucklechurch, she was
told it was left by a rasher of bacon put on to cure a sore throat.

The symptoms were sometimes curious as she now found when she went to
inquire after Dame Verdon, who, Lizzie informed her, had her heart
hanging by only one string, and when that gave way, she would not be
here.

For the present, however, she was in bed, under a quilt made of coloured
cloth scraps; but however it might be with her heart-strings, she did
not seem likely to get up again.  It was hay time, and it appeared that
no one did come to school in hay and harvest seasons, so that there was
time to consider what could be done.  Dr Fogram was invited to dinner
to hold consultation with the ladies, whom the captain would not leave
to any conclusion as to the schools.

There were no such things as trained masters and mistresses in those
days; the National Society had only been in existence eleven years, and
Government had not taken up the matter at all.  Educated and religious
people had, however, come to the conclusion that it would be well to
help all the village children to know their faith and duty, and to read
their Bibles; and the good work of Mrs Hannah More and Mrs Trimmer
were examples that had begun to be followed, now that the one was in
extreme old age, and the other in her grave.  The Carbonel family had
been bred up to such work, and all of them knew a good deal more about
it than the President, whose studies had been chiefly in Greek plays,
and whose tasks had been dealing with young men and the college estates.
His conscience as a clergyman was a good deal stirred by the condition
of his parish, and he was really thankful to those who would take up the
matter, as well as ready to assist with his purse.

So it was settled that Mrs Carbonel should write about a widow at her
old home, who had once been a servant in the family.  She was known to
be a good religious person, who could read, and write, and cast accounts
quite well enough for any possibly advanced scholars, as well as being a
beautiful needlewoman.  An old friend went to see her, explain the
situation to her, and ascertain if she were willing to undertake the
school for twenty pounds a year, and what the children could pay.

A cottage belonging to Captain Carbonel might have a room added to it to
receive the scholars, by the end of harvest, by which time they might be
got together, and Mrs Verdon was to be induced to resign by a pension
of half-a-crown a week, a sum then supposed to be ample, and which,
indeed, was so for her wants, which were much less than in these days.
Captain Carbonel looked over the cottage, and worked out an estimate of
the cost with old Hewlett, whose notions of paper work were of the kind
shown in his Midsummer bill.

+===========================+=========+=====+
|                           |shillings|pence|
+---------------------------+---------+-----+
|1 ooden barrer a oodnt soot|        9|    6|
+---------------------------+---------+-----+
|1 ooden barrer a ood soot  |        9|    6|
+===========================+=========+=====+

The result of the calculations, conjectural and otherwise, was this.

"Mary, look here.  This is an expensive year, and if we do the thing
this year, we must put off making the drive through the fields--your
approach, madam."

Mary came and looked at his figures.  "How will it be after harvest?"
she said.

"Harvest is an inappreciable quantity, especially to novices," he said.
"If you believe Farmer Goodenough, the finest weather will not save me
from finding myself out of pocket."

"Farmer Goodenough is an old croaker, after his kind," said Mary.

"It won't do to reckon thereupon.  I must be secure of capital enough to
fall back upon.  Think it over well, Mary, and answer me to-morrow; and
you had better say nothing to your sisters till your own mind is made
up.  I own that I should be very glad of the road.  It would save us and
old Major a good deal, to say nothing of our friends' bones."

"Do you mean that you wish it, Edmund?"

"I wish to leave it entirely to you."

Dora and Sophy had gone across the fields, a four miles' walk to
Poppleby, and were to be brought home in the evening, and Mary was left
to wander about the old road and the field-path, and meditate on the
ruts and quagmires that would beset the way in the winter, and shut them
up from visiting, perhaps even from church.  Besides, there were
appearances!

There was an old gentleman, a far-away connection of Edmund's, who had
been in the navy, and now lived at Poppleby, and went about collecting
all the chatter to be heard in one house, and retailing it all in
another, and he thought himself licensed to tell Edmund and Mary
everything personal.  One thing was--

"My dear fellow, you should really put a check on your wife's
Methodistical ways!"

"I didn't know she had any."

"I have been told, on good authority, that she has a meeting every
Sunday in the wash-house."

Edmund laughed.  "A dozen children for Sunday School, with the
President's full consent."

"It won't do, Edmund.  You'll find it won't do!  Why, old Selby told me
she was a pretty creature, only just like your good pious ladies,
running into all the dirtiest cottages."

And to Mary it was, "Let me give you a hint, my dear Mrs Carbonel.  The
Duchess saw you in Poppleby, and asked who you were, and she said she
would like to visit you, if you did not live in such a hole."

"I don't think I want her," said Mary.

"Now, my dear, don't you be foolish!  It would be so much to Edmund's
advantage!  He was in the same regiment with Lord Henry, and you might
have the best society in the county, if only you would make your new
drive!  Why, even Lady Hartman says she can't take her horses again
through that lane, or into the farm court.  Miss Yates said it was quite
disgusting."

Mary Carbonel might laugh.  She did not care for her own dignity, but
she did for Edmund's; and though she had been amused at Lady Hartman's
four horses entangled in the narrow sweep, and did not quite believe old
Captain Caiger, the lady herself had been very charming, and Mary did
not like to cut her husband and sisters off from the pleasantest houses
in the country.

But the words, "Love not the world," came up into her mind, and the
battle ended by her saying to her husband--

"Don't let us have the _ap_proach this year, dear Edmund.  I don't want
it to be Mary's _re_proach."

"You are quite sure?  In spite of Caiger?"

"Indeed I am; though I am afraid it is asking you to give up something."

"Not while I have my merry faces at home, Mary.  And indeed, little
woman, I am glad of your decision.  It is right."

"I am so glad!"

CHAPTER NINE.

THE SCREEN.

  "There is no honesty in such dealing."--_Shakespeare_.

One day when Sophy had been trusted to go out alone to carry a few veal
cutlets from luncheon to Judith, she found the door on the latch, but no
one in the room downstairs, the chair empty, the fire out, and all more
dreary than usual, only a voice from above called out, "Please come up."

Sophy, pleased with the adventure, mounted the dark and rickety stairs,
and found herself in the open space above, cut off from the stairs by a
screen, and containing a press-bed, where Judith lay, covered by an
elaborate patchwork quilt.  There was a tiny dressing-table under the
narrow lattice window, and one chair, also a big trunk-box, with a
waggon-shaped lid, such as servants used to have in those days, covered
with paper, where big purple spots of paint concealed the old print of
some story or newspaper.  On the wall hung a few black profiles, and all
was very fairly neat, whatever the room might be shut off by a wooden
partition, whence came a peculiar sour smell.

"Oh, it is Miss Sophia!" exclaimed Judith.  "I beg your pardon, ma'am, I
thought it was Dame Spurrell, who said she would come and look in on me,
or I would not have troubled you to come up."

"I am glad I did, Judith; I like to see where you live.  Only, are you
worse?"

"No, miss, only as my back is sometimes, and my sister and all the
children are gone to the hiring fair, so it was not handy to get me up."

"And this is your room!" said Sophy, looking about her.  "Isn't it very
cold?"

"Johnnie heats me a brick to keep me warm at night; but my feet are
always cold downstairs.  It does not make much difference."

"Oh dear!  And you have a screen, I see.  Oh!  Why, that is our
drawing-room paper."

She sat transfixed at the recognition, while Judith observed, quite
innocently, with a free conscience--

"Yes, miss, my brother-in-law brought it home, and told me it was just a
scrap that was left over, and he was free to have, though I said I did
wonder the lady did not want to keep it in case of an accident
happening."

"Yes," said Sophy, "I don't think he had any business to have it, for
all one division of the paper is put on upside down.  The laburnums
point up instead of hanging down, and I am sure Mary would have altered
it if she could.  It was beautiful French paper that Edmund brought home
from Paris and laid up for the furnishing their house."

This, of course, Mrs Carbonel and Dora would never have told poor
Judith, but Sophy was young and unguarded, and apt to talk when she had
better have held her tongue.

"I am sorry to hear it, miss, indeed I am.  I am afraid one could not
take it off the screen to put it back again where it did ought to be."

Sophy looked, but it was manifestly impossible.  Spoiling the screen
would not mend the wall of the drawing-room.

"Perhaps Molly might have another bit left," she said, only thinking of
the triumph of carrying home the means of repairing the deficiency by
her own unassisted sagacity.

"I will ask her, miss.  I am sure I never thought Dan would go for to do
such a thing," mourned Judith, though, even as she spoke, there came
back on her recollections of times when she had tried to be blind and
deaf.  "But if Mrs Carbonel would let me pay for it, miss, I should be
easier in my mind.  I have a shilling, though no doubt that is not the
worth of it."  And she began feeling for a little box under her pillow,
never mentioning that she had already paid Dan a shilling for it.

"No, no; nonsense, Judith!  Of course my sister would not take it for
the world; but if any one could find another bit, just to patch up the
part above the book-case, it would be nice."

"I will do what in me lays, Miss Sophy," answered Judith.

So Sophy took her leave and trotted home, very proud of her discovery,
which she communicated in an eager voice as the phaeton drew up at the
front door.

"Oh, Edmund, I have found the rest of the drawing-room paper!"

"Hush! not so loud, my dear," said Dora, getting out of the back seat,
and Edmund, being busy in telling the groom to attend to something in
the harness, did not heed at first.

"Did you know, Dora?" asked Sophy, in a lower voice, being struck by
something in her repressive manner.

"Yes; but I did not tell, because Edmund was so much vexed, and it was
of no use now."

Dora really hoped no one had heard, as Mary was busy with her parcels,
and she was too fond of Judith not to wish to shield her family; but it
was too late.  The captain came in with, "What's this about the
drawing-room paper?"

Sophy was delighted to pour out the history of her discovery, and tell
how it appeared on the screen that sheltered poor Judith Grey.

"Exactly as I supposed," said Captain Carbonel.  "I always believed that
fellow was a thief."

"But it is not poor Judith's fault," exclaimed the sisters, with one
voice.

"She knew nothing about it.  She wanted to pay the shilling for it,"
said Sophia.

The captain laughed a little.

"And she is going to search for a bit to go up there!" continued the
girl more vehemently; and he laughed again.

"Yes," said Mary, "if you only saw something of her, you would be
convinced that her whole character is very different from that of the
rest of the family."

"Don't you be taken in by plausibility," said the captain.  "I know that
fellow Dan is a thief.  I meant to tell his relation, George, that I
won't allow him to be employed on the new schoolroom.  I shall do so
now."

"Would it not be better to forget what happened so long ago?"  Mary
ventured to say.

"And suppose Judith restores it," added Sophia.

"Pshaw!" said the captain; but Mary followed him to the study, and what
she did with him there her sisters did not know, but it resulted in his
allowing that Dan might have another trial, with a sharp eye over him.

So unused was Uphill to the visits of ladies, that when the piece of
French paper was sold to Judith, no one had thought of her being sought
out in her bedroom.  Molly came home with the children in the evening,
tired out but excited--for all had had rather more beer than was good
for them, and the children a great many more sweets.  Jem and Judy were
quarrelling over a wooden horse covered with white spots, but whose mane
had already disappeared, Lizzie was sick, cross, and stupid, Polly had
broken the string of her new yellow necklace, and was crying about it,
and nobody had recollected the aunt except Johnnie, who presented her
with a piece of thin gingerbread representing King George the Fourth, in
white, pink, and gilt!  Molly herself was very tired, though she said it
was all very fine, and she had seen a lot of people, and the big sleeves
they wore were quite a wonder.  Then she scolded Polly with all her
might for crying and never setting the tea, nor boiling the kettle; and,
after all, it was Johnnie who made up the fire, fetched water, and set
the kettle boiling.  They all wrangled together over their purchases,
and the sights they had seen, or not seen, while Judith was glad to be
out of the way of seeing, though not of hearing.  Then the girls trailed
themselves upstairs.  Judy slept with her aunt, Polly and Lizzie had a
kind of shake-down on a mattress of chaff or hulls, as she called it, by
her side.  Judith always insisted on their prayers, but they said they
were much too tired to-night, and could not say anything but "Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John," which was all they knew except the Lord's Prayer.
Judith had taught them this, but they thought the repeating it a very
difficult ceremony, far too hard when they were tired.

Their mother went to bed soon afterwards, taking Jem with her, and so
did Johnnie, all being anxious to get what sleep they could before the
dreaded moment of father's return.  Public-houses were not obliged to
close at any special time in those days, and the home-coming, especially
on a fair day, was apt to be a terrible affair.  It was not till past
one o'clock that shouts, broken bursts of singing, and howls of
quarrelling announced the break-up of the riotous party, and presently
the door bounced open, and with oaths at the darkness, though there was
bright moonlight, Dan stumbled in and staggered upstairs, overturning
the unlucky screen upon Polly as he did so, cursing and swearing at them
all, and ordering his wife to get up and open the door, which he was
past finding.  He did not attack Judith, though he almost fell over her
bed, and the two girls lay trembling, not daring to lift off the screen
till the door of the bedroom was shut on them; and then came the only
too well-known sound of their mother scolding and crying, and his
swearing and beating her.

They were only too much used to such disturbance, and were asleep again
before it was over; but Judith could only lie on, shaking with terror--
not personal--but at the awful words she heard, and praying that they
might not be visited on that unhappy household, but that God would
forgive.

It was not till the next day when the house was tolerably quiet, and
Molly, rather fretful and grumbling, had helped Judith down to her place
by the fire, that she ventured the question, "Molly, you have not a bit
more of that pretty wall-paper you gave me for my screen?"

"Did it get broke last night in Dan's drunken tantrums?"

"Not more than I can mend, but little Miss Sophia, she says that the
paper in the Greenhow drawing-room is quite spoilt for want of a piece
to cover up a bit that was put on wrong."

"My patience!  And how did Miss Sophia come to know anything about it?"

"She came up to see me, and bring those cutlets that you are warming up
now."

"Bless me!  Well, Dan will be vexed," said Molly.  "Such mean folk as
they are, a-peeping and a-prying after everything!  They knows how to
look after whatever they chooses to say is their own; and the captain,
he made a row before about that there trumpery yard or two of paper that
was the parkisit of them that hung it."

"Miss Sophy says it spoilt the room."

"Sp'ilt it!  They've little to vex 'em that is terrified about that!"

"But have you got the bit, Molly?"

"I never had it!  Dan kept it in the outhouse.  He may have a scrap
left, that he used to make caps for the Christmas boys when he used the
rest to paper Mrs Hunter's closet with down at Downhill.  Your piece
was left over of that, and may be there was half-a-yard more; but he
locks that there workshop of his, so as one can't get in to get a bit of
shavings to light the fire.  So you must ask him.  I am sure I dare not
do it.  He's _that_ angry if one does but look into his shop."

"I must try and get it!" said Judith.

"Not now, I wouldn't," entreated Molly.  "What is it to the ladies?  And
father, he will be fit to tear the place down if he hears of it!  Them
Gobblealls is set again him already, and 'tis just taking away our bread
to say a bit more about it to them folks.  George Hewlett is particular
enough already, without having a work about this."

Poor Judith, she felt as if she could never be at peace with her
conscience, while she had those yellow laburnums in sight in her room,
and she did not see how restitution and confession could injure her
brother-in-law; but her code of right and wrong was very different from
that of either husband or wife.

Molly went on maundering about the hardship of having taken in a poor
helpless thing, and having stood between her and the workhouse, only
that she should turn a viper and a spy, and take her poor children's
bread out of their mouths, forgetting that Jem was at the very moment
eating up the piece of apple-pie that had come with the cutlets.

Judith tried to get her thoughts together, and decided that, however
much she might dread Dan's anger, and care for his interest and family
peace, it was her duty to do her best to recover whatever remnant was
possible of his booty.  So when he came home to dinner she ventured to
ask him if he had a piece left of that paper of her screen.

"Why?" he asked, turning on her, as if he hoped to make more of whatever
he had.

She told him timidly, and it was as she had feared.  He began abusing
her violently for letting spies up into her room, and turning against
him, that let her have her house-room, and "worriting" them all with her
hypocritical ways.  He could tell her there was nothing between her and
the workhouse, and all was interspersed with oaths, terrible to hear.

Molly began taking her part, and declaring that Judith could not help it
if little miss would come into her room; but Dan, who had qualified last
night's revel with another mug of ale, was quite past all reason, and
declared that Judith called the girl up on purpose to bring him into
trouble, and that nothing but harm had ever come of her canting, Methody
ways, and he had a good mind to kick her out at once to the workhouse,
and would do so, if she brought them Gobblealls down on him again.
There had been nothing but plague ever since they came into the parish,
and he wouldn't have them come poll-prying about his house.  No, he
wouldn't.

Judith knew this was a vain threat, for he was always out of the house
when they came, and she also knew that he was the last man to give up
the small payment that she was in the habit of making quarterly, or what
was begged from her besides, so she was not afraid of any such measure;
but she was much shaken, and felt quite ill afterwards, and Molly did
not stint her blame and lamentations.  Nothing happened in consequence,
except that, from that time forward, Dan's incipient dislike to "they
Gobblealls" was increased, and they could do nothing which he did not
find fault with; though his wife, grumbling at them all the time, was
quite willing to get everything possible out of them.

CHAPTER TEN.

INNOVATIONS.

  "Timotheus placed on high
  Among the tuneful choir,
  With flying fingers touched the lyre."
  _Dryden_.

On the first of October the new beginning was to be made.  The new
curate, Mr Harford, arrived, and spent his first few days at Greenhow,
while looking out for a lodging at Downhill, for he was to be shared
between the two parishes as before, and Mr Atkins still undertook to
assist on Sundays.  Mr Harford looked very young, almost a boy, and was
small and thin, but not in the least delicate.  He had only worked off
his superfluous flesh in study and parish cares at Oxford, and he was
likely to do the same in his new home.  He looked on it as likely to be
his residence for a long time, for, as the President had already told
Mrs Carbonel, he was engaged to a young lady, whose father would not
consent to her marriage till he had a living worth 500 pounds a year,
and there were a good many fellows senior to him.

He seemed to have no fears of any amount of work, and the first thing he
thought of was how to arrange for Uphill to have two services on Sunday,
as he thought could be contrived by giving the Downhill people, who
mostly lived near the church, their second service in the evening
instead of the morning; and, as Mr Atkins would thus have more to do,
he gave up to that gentleman the addition to his stipend, which the
President had offered to himself.  The boon was great to the Greenhow
family, who had often been hindered by weather from getting to Downhill.
Moreover, he had plans for one service and sermon in the week, and for
a cottage lecture at a distant hamlet.

Also, in the first fortnight of his stay, he had called at every house,
alike in Downhill and Uphill, to the great surprise of some of the
families, who had not in the memory of man seen a parson cross their
threshold.  Some did not like it, such as old Dame Verdon, who, though
she could hardly get out of bed, was very sore about the new school; and
when her friends came to see her, told them wonderful stories which she
had picked up--or Lizzie had from some hawker--that the gentlefolks
thought there were too many children for the rates and taxes, and they
were going to get them all into the school, and make an end of them.
Sometimes she said it was by "giving of them all the cowpox," as Dame
Spurrell called vaccination as the fashion was in those parts, sometimes
it was by sending them all out to Botany Bay.

And as Mrs Carbonel had prevailed on the new gardener's wife to have
her baby vaccinated, and George Hewlett's and Mrs Mole's children had
been thence treated by her own hands, this was believed the more,
although none of the children were visibly the worse for it after the
first few days; but some of the women, and almost all the children
believed the story, and many of the little ones were in fits of terror
about the school, so that there was a falling off even with the Sunday
School.  The new school was only an additional room to a good-sized
cottage, with a couple of windows and a brick floor, fitted with forms
without backs, but which had at least good firm legs to stand upon, pegs
for the cloaks and head-gear round the walls, and a single desk, likely
to be quite sufficient for the superior few who were to learn writing
and summing.  The stock, obtained from the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, consisted of a dozen copies of Mrs Trimmer's
Abridgment of the Old Testament, the same number of the lady's work on
the New Testament, a packet of little paper books of the Sermon on the
Mount, the Parables and the Miracles, and another packet of little
books, where the alphabet led the way upwards from ba, bo, etcetera, to
"Our cat can kill a rat; can she not?"  Also the broken Catechism, and
Sellon's Abridgment of instruction on the Catechism.  There were a
housewife full of needles, some brass thimbles, and a roll of calico
provided, and this was the apparatus with which most village schools
would commence.

Mrs Thorpe arrived with her two little girls, the neatest of creatures,
still wearing her weeds, as indeed widows engaged in any business used
to do for life as a sort of protection.  Under her crape borders showed
the smoothest of hair, and her apron was spotlessly white.  The two
little girls were patterns, with short cut hair, spotted blue frocks and
checkered pinafores in the week, lilac frocks on Sundays; white capes on
that same day, and bonnets of coarse straw, tied down with green ribbon,
over little bonnet caps with plain net frilling, the only attempt at
luxury apparent in their dress.  Their names were Jane and Mary, and
they looked very pretty and demure, though there was a little mischief
in Mary's eyes.  Nothing could look nicer or more promising in the eyes
of the sisters when they took her to her cottage, nor could any one be
better pleased than she to work under her own young ladies, and to have
so peaceful a home for her little daughters.  She was introduced to her
future scholars on Sunday in the wash-house, and very shy and awkward
did they look, nor were the numbers as large as usual.

Mr Harford came to open the school on Monday morning, and the ladies
met him there.  The room was in beautiful order, and presently the
younger Moles, the George Hewletts, the Seddons, the Pucklechurch
grandchildren, and about half-a-dozen more dropped in; but no one else
appeared, and these stood handling their pennies and looking sheepish.

Mr Harford, after looking out to see whether any one else was coming,
addressed them in words a little too fine for their comprehension, and
then read a few prayers, after which he and Mrs Carbonel went away,
taking the unwilling Sophy to her lessons, but leaving Dora to follow
when she had heard the names called over, and inaugurated the work; and
their journey was enlivened by meeting a child with flying hair and
ragged garments rushing headlong, so as to have only just time to turn
off short over a gap in a field where some men who were ploughing called
out, "Run, little one, run; she'll catch thee!" with a great shouting
laugh, and at the same moment appeared, with a big stick in her hand,
Nancy Morris in full chase, her cap on the back of her head, and looking
not much less wild than her offspring.

However, she drew up at the sight of the clergyman and the lady, pulled
her cap forward and her apron to the middle, curtsied low, and in a
voice of conscious merit, though out of breath, explained that she was
"arter Elizabeth," who was _that_ terrifying and _contrary_ that she
would not go to school.

Mr Harford, not quite accustomed to the popular use of the verb to
terrify, began to ask what the child had done to alarm her mother so
much and Nancy, understanding him as little, said, "'Tis all along of
Dame Verdon, ma'am.  She be for to say that the new governess will beat
them and send them off to Minsterham, as sure as they're alive; and I
told Bet not to believe no such stuff, but her won't listen to I--"

Mr Harford was the more mystified.  Why should she send them to
Minsterham?  And what was the child afraid of?  Mrs Carbonel had more
notion.  Minsterham was the assize town, and going thither was a polite
form of mentioning the being before a court of justice.

"Elizabeth need have no fears of a prison," she said.  "She is a silly
child to be frightened; but when she sees that the other children like
school, and that nothing happens to them, she will know better.  Don't
beat her, it will only frighten her more."

"If it is your will, ma'am, I'll let her off; but I'll give her the
stick another time, as sure as she is alive, the little toad."

"Hopeful," said the lady and gentleman to each other, as soon as she was
out of sight, and they could laugh.

It was indeed uphill work in every sense that was before Mrs Thorpe,
but the effect was visible in much improvement in the general demeanour
of the children.  A chair was found for her where she sat among them at
church, and prevented the outrageous misconduct that the ladies had been
unable effectively to check; and the superior readers were gradually
acquiring a very cheap form of Prayer-book, with only Matins and
Evensong and the Collects, besides the Psalms.

But that the children sat on the chancel steps, and that kneeling in
church was unknown to them, never occurred as an irreverence to any of
the party, though as Mr Harford read the ante-Communion service from
the altar instead of disrobing himself of his surplice in the pulpit
just before the sermon, he had to walk through the whole school, making
those in his way stand up to let him pass.

The singers, on the establishment of a double service, began to absent
themselves at least once on a Sunday, so Mr Harford and the ladies
tried to arrange for the singing of the children instead.  He had no
knowledge of music, which was then thought a rather doubtful
accomplishment for a young man, and Mrs Thorpe had, if possible, less,
so all that could be done was for Dora to train the children by ear; and
she found that their thin, shrill notes were held as painful by all save
a few doting mothers, her sisters, and herself.  The captain laughed at
her, and finally promised her a grinding organ.  It came; it could play
four tunes, and all the singers were naturally offended.  But on the
first Sunday there was a great catastrophe, for when once set on it
would not stop, but went on playing its four tunes long after the Old
Hundredth was finished.  Mr Harford waited to begin the Prayer for King
George till it had finished, hoping that it would stop, if not at the
end of the second tune at least at the fourth; but, behold, it started
off with the Old Hundredth again, upon which Captain Carbonel emerged
from his pew, and, with the help of Master Pucklechurch, bore it out
into the churchyard, where it continued to play till after the service,
when there was time to check its pertinacity by adjustment of the
machinery.  At its best, the singers--even George Hewlett--were much
hurt, and the compromise was made that it never should uplift its voice
when they were present in full force with bass, flute, and viol, but
should only draw forth its four tunes when there were only the children
to need the accompaniment.

Even then, Dan Hewlett, who unluckily had the best voice of all, swore
that he would never come to church again while "they had that there
horgin to buzz away like a big bumbledore;" and he kept his word.

"You see, ma'am, he has his feelings," said Molly.

He would fain have made all his family join in the secession; but
Johnnie would not be kept away from Sunday School; and Molly had heard
rumours of penny clubs and of prizes at Christmas so, though the other
children were very irregular, she kept them on after a fashion.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

AN UNPROFITABLE CROP.

  "My mother bids me bind my hair."--_Old Ballad_.

"Oh Mary, Mary, what is to be done about the hair?" cried Sophy, one
Sunday after church.

"Isn't it dreadful?" said Dora.  "Those fearful curl-papers sticking out
with rolls of old newspapers!  I told them it was not fit to be seen
last Sunday, but there were even Elizabeth and Jane Hewlett in them
to-day."

"Yes," said Mary, "they said that mother's aunt was coming to tea, so
she had curled them before they came out.  I told them I would excuse it
for this once, but that I should send any one home who came such a
figure on Sunday."

Elizabeth and Jane, be it observed, were George Hewlett's daughters, the
most civilised, if the dullest-witted, of the flock.  Polly, Betsy, and
Judy were the children of Dan Hewlett.  As a rule, all the old women of
the parish were called Betty, all the middle-aged Lizzie, and the girls
Elizabeth.

"It is worse on week-days," said Dora.  "One would think it was a
collection of little porcupines!"

"And so dirty," began Sophy, but she was hushed up, for Edmund was seen
approaching, and Mary never allowed him to be worried with the small,
fretting details of school life.

It was a time when it was the fashion for young ladies up to their teens
to have their hair curled in ringlets round their heads or on their
shoulders.  Sophy's hair curled naturally, and had been "turned up" ever
since she had come to live at home in the dignity of fourteen, but she
and both her sisters wore falls of drooping ringlets in front, and in
Mary's case these had been used to be curled in paper at night, though
she would as soon have been seen thus decorated by day as in her
night-cap.  But there was scarcely another matron in the parish who did
not think a fringe of curl-paper the proper mode of disposing of her
locks when in morning _desabille_, unless she were elderly and wore a
front, which could be taken off and put on with the best cap.

Maid-servants wore short curls or smooth folds round side-combs under
net caps, and this was the usual trim of the superior kind of women.
The working women wore thick muslin white caps, under which, it was to
be hoped, their hair was cut short, though often it straggled out in
unseemly elf-locks.  Married women did not go bareheaded, not even the
younger ladies, except in the evening, when, like their maiden sisters,
they wore coils of their back hair round huge upright ornamental combs
on the summit of their heads.

But the children's heads were deservedly pain and grief to the Carbonel
senses, and Mary was impelled to go and make a speech in school,
desiring that no more curl-papers should appear there on Sundays, and
recommending that all hair should be kept short, as her own and her
sister's had been, till the fit age for the "turning up" was attained.
She called up Susan Pucklechurch and Rachel Mole, who had nice smooth
hair neatly parted in the middle, and declared them to be examples of
the way that heads ought to appear.

That afternoon the women stood out at their gates.  "So the lady told
you to take pattern by Widdy Mole's child, did her?" said Nanny Barton,
loud enough for all her neighbours to hear.

"Ay, mother, by Rachel Mole and Susie Pucklechurch."

"As if I'd go out of my way to follow after a mean creeper and low thing
like Widow Mole," exclaimed Mrs Barton.

"She knows which way her bread is buttered.  A-making favourites!"
exclaimed Nancy Morris.

"Getting in to work in the garding away from Farmer Goodenough, as her
man had worked for for years, ay, and his before un," chimed in Nanny
Barton.

"And if you could see the platefuls and cupfuls as the ladies carries
out to her," added Betsy Seddon.  "My word and honour!  No wonder she is
getting lively enough just to bust some day."

"That's the way she comes over them," said Nanny Barton.

"That's what them gentlefolks likes, and Bessy Mole she knows it,"
observed Nancy Morris; at which they all laughed shrilly.

"As though I'd take pattern by her," exclaimed Nanny Barton.  "I'd
liefer take pattern by Softy Sam, or Goodenough's old scarecrow."