The Frobishers

"I thought as much!" said Joan.

She was standing in a road--a byway--through an oak coppice, in her riding habit beside her horse, and had ungirthed him and removed the saddle.

"Poor old boy, I am sorry for you. You must have suffered, and yet you went bravely along, and splendidly over the fence."

Ruby turned his head at his mistress's voice, snuffed his approval of her sympathy, and stood unmoving, save that the skin twitched about an ugly raw on the shoulder.

"It is that tree again," said Joan. "Some saddlers seem never to grasp the law by which a tree is made to fit. I have sent this saddle twice to Oxley, and he has vowed, by all things blue, on each occasion, that he has rectified the defect. Never, old boy, shall you have this side-saddle on your back again."

Once more the patient horse turned his head, looked at his mistress and snuffed, as though accepting the assurance in full confidence. He knew Joan, knew that she pitied him, knew that he would be cared for.

"I beg your pardon--are you in difficulties? and can I be of any assistance?" asked a young man, breaking through the coppice of sere russet leaves, and descending on his hunter to the road that was cut some two feet below the surface of the shrub and tree clothed hillside. He was not in pink, but in a dark serviceable coat, and wore white corduroy breeches, a stiff velvet hunting cap, and top-boots, and was spurred.

"I am at a loss what to do," answered the girl. "I have acted most inconsiderately. I let my sister Sibyll ride on, and take the groom with her. I lagged because I had a suspicion that something was going wrong with Ruby. Of course I ought to have detained the groom, but my sister was eager, and I did not like to spoil her sport. Next piece of want of consideration that I was guilty of was to dismount here in the wood, to lift the saddle and see if the dear old fellow were rubbed. Look! how badly he has been served. I cannot possibly replace the saddle and remount him. So I shall have to walk all the way to Pendabury House in a riding skirt--and only a lady knows how laborious that is."

"To Pendabury!"

"Yes, that is our home."

Joan now looked for the first time with any interest at the gentleman with whom she had been conversing, and at once perceived that he was not one of the usual party that attended a meet and followed the hunt, but was an entire stranger.

"I am Miss Frobisher," she said.

"I must introduce myself," he at once spoke; "my name is Beaudessart."

"Beaudessart!"

It was now her turn to express surprise.

"Then," said she, "I have a sort of notion that some kind of relationship exists between us!"

"For my sins, none," answered the young man; "in place of relation there has been estrangement. My grandfather married a Mrs. Frobisher, a widow, and your father was her son by a former husband. The families have been in contact, brought so by this marriage, but it has produced friction. However, let us not consider that; let the fact of there having been some connection embolden me to ask your permission to transfer your side-saddle to my mare, and to lead your galled Ruby to his stable."

"You are very good."

"There is not a man in the hunt who would not make the same offer."

"I cheerfully admit that our South Staffordshire hunters are ever courteous and ready to assist a damsel in difficulties. Is not that the quality of Chivalry?"

"The same applies to every gentleman in England," said Mr. Beaudessart. "Wherever he sees need, perplexity, distress, thither he flies with eager heart to assist."

He had already dismounted, and without another word proceeded to remove his own saddle, and to adjust that of the lady to the back of his mare.

"One moment," said Joan Frobisher. "I ought to forewarn you that you are running a risk--the tree of my saddle will fit the back of no living horse."

"It will do no harm so long as my Sally is not galloped, Miss Frobisher. I shall have to lay on you the injunction not to fly away. Besides, I am a stranger in this part of the country. It was that which threw me out, and brought me through the coppice. I do not know my way to Pendabury, and shall need your guidance."

He placed his hands in position to receive Joan's foot, and with a spring she was in the saddle. Then he looked up at her.

She was a tall, well-built girl. In her dark green hunting habit, the collar turned up with scarlet, and brightened with the South Staffordshire hunt buttons, her graceful form was shown to good effect.

She had well-moulded features, the jaw had a bold sweep, and the chin was firmly marked. The eyes were large, lustrous, and soft. If the modelling of the lower portion of her face conveyed a suspicion of hardness, this was at once dispelled by the soft light of the kindly eyes.

Mr. Beaudessart now fitted his own saddle on the back of Ruby so as not to incommode the galled beast.

"I was in a difficulty," said Joan, as they began to move forward down the roadway. "I might have been run in by the agents of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and had to appear at the next Petty Sessions--before papa--think of that, and be fined sixpence, and costs, eight-and-nine; total, nine-and-threepence. It would have made a hole in my pocket-money."

"Do the costs stand in that proportion to the fine? I really know nothing of English magistrates and their courts."

"Oh, the magistrates have nothing to do with costs. These are inexplicable to the uninitiated. The Greek mysteries are nothing to them."

Then they proceeded a little way without talking, as the road became steep.

On reaching ground less precipitous, Joan asked--

"You say that you are a stranger in these parts?"

"Yes--entirely."

"No, not entirely. Your name is familiar to all. Why, our church is full of Beaudessart monuments, and the county history is prodigal in the matter of pedigree of Beaudessart. For the matter of that, we have any number of pictures of them at Pendabury."

"Are you great in pedigree?" asked the young man with a smile.

"Of a horse. I know nothing of my own, and care little. By the way, it is through a Beaudessart that we came by our home; and"--laughing--"we do not intend to surrender it without a siege. We have a portrait in the dining-room of the last of the Beaudessart squires of Pendabury, a choleric, resolute man, to judge by his counterfeit presentment."

The young man looked up at Joan with a flicker in his eyes and a twinkle of a smile on his lips.

Joan perceived it, and was rendered nervous, lest she might have said something in bad taste, something that had touched him and made him wince, and he had disguised the pain with a smile. Did he really think that she suspected him of making a claim to the Pendabury estate? She scrutinised his face to read his mind, but the smile ambiguously twitching the corners of the mouth had passed away, and he strode forwards serene in countenance, with an elastic tread and a toss of the head, as though he had put from him whatever thought had passed through his mind at the provocation of her words. The young man was upright in carriage, broad in back, his head covered with light hair that rippled over his forehead and curled forth behind from under his velvet cap. Surely when a child he must have had natural ringlets of gold. His face was fresh, open, honest, and careless in expression. His eyes were dark grey. He looked like a man of good feeling, and one who was well bred.

"Mr. Beaudessart," said Joan, "you must have formed a very bad opinion of my intelligence, coming on me as you did, in the depth of a wood and far from assistance. I had put myself into a position of great awkwardness; I got off Ruby to examine his shoulder without a thought that, granted he were sound, I could not girth him up tight enough to remount, and that if I found him badly rubbed I should have to walk home. What can you think of me?"

"I think only of the tenderness of your heart, that put all considerations for self on one side, in solicitude for your horse."

"Thank you. I am very fond of Ruby. Nevertheless, I blame myself for lack of foresight." Then, changing her tone as she changed the subject, she asked, "Have you been long in our neighbourhood?"

"We took the cottage at Rosewood--do you chance to know it?"

Joan made a movement of assent.

"We took it at Lady Day last on a term of years. But we, that is my mother and I, spent all the summer in Switzerland, after we had settled our few sticks of furniture in the house. The garden had been neglected and not stocked, so that it was too late in the year when we came into possession to do very much with it. My mother has great ambition to cultivate a garden. We are not notable gardeners in Canada--she is a Canadian, and I was born there. It will be a new experience here, and one to give her great pleasure. She has read about English ladies and the little paradises they create, in which they pass their innocent hours, and she hopes to acquire the same tastes, and reap the same joys, and to spend her declining years in flowery bliss. She is a dear mother to me," he added, in a tone full of tenderness, and Joan liked him for the words.

Thus conversing, they reached the outskirts of the wood, and were on the highway between hedges in pleasant champaign country.

"I have some excuse for being ignorant of the lie of the land," said Mr. Beaudessart. "I was born, as I told you, in Canada. My father lived and died there."

"And your mother will be happy in England?"

"Oh, she knows that I have to be here; it was my father's urgent request. He hungered after the old fatherland."

"Have you sisters?"

"I have a sister, who is now with my mother, but she is with her only now and then. She has taken her own line, and has become a nurse. I suppose Rosewood is some miles from here--how many I have not the faintest notion."

"If you hunt with us, you will don the pink?"

"I do not know about that. It costs about twenty pounds to blaze out a full-blown poppy, and the suit will last but a season. It is rather like advertising oneself as a man of large fortune, and I am not that. I can live, but cannot be lavish."

So they talked, falling into half confidences; and presently many evidences appeared of approach to a gentleman's seat of some importance. The trees stood in clumps. Hedges no longer divided the fields; they were parted by wire fences. Ploughed land gave way to pasturage. Then were heard the sounds of rooks cawing, and a church spire pierced the rounded banks of trees, that had not all lost their foliage, though that foliage was turned to copper.

And presently they came to the gates.

At that moment up trotted Joan's sister Sibyll, with the groom following her. The younger Miss Frobisher was but eighteen; she was a very pretty and graceful girl, with a high colour and dancing eyes. She was now in great spirits, and, riding up to her sister, exclaimed--

"Oh, Joan! give me joy! I am the happiest girl on earth. On this, the first meet of the season, I was in at the death. Look! I have had my cheeks painted; and see! I have the brush, and am promised the mask when it is mounted."

Then she noticed the gentleman leading Ruby, and raised her eyebrows.

"What ails your horse?" she inquired.

"Sibylla--this is Mr. Beaudessart. Sir--my sister. Mr. Beaudessart has been so very kind. My poor Ruby is frightfully rawed; I could not ride him home, so this gentleman has most generously lent me his mount and has led my horse." Then to the young man: "Mr. Beaudessart, you must come into Pendabury and have a cup of tea or a glass of wine. You have eight or nine miles to cover before reaching home, and I have spoiled your day's hunting. Moreover, you positively must see the original Beaudessart Stammburg, as the Germans would term it."

He bowed, and said in reply--

"Are you sure that your father would desire it?"

"Quite so. How could he do other?" Still he hesitated. Joan saw that he was desirous of accepting her invitation, but was unwilling to intrude.

"No!" she said, "I will not take a refusal. A lady's invitation carries all the force of a command. If it be not accepted, she is mortally affronted."

"In that case I have no alternative."

They passed through the great gates into the grounds that unfolded before them as they proceeded, sweeping lawns, park-like, with the house, a Queen Anne mansion, square and stately, standing back against a well-wooded hill, the sun flashing golden in the long windows that looked to the west.

"It is a beautiful spot," said the young man in a grave tone, and a change came over his face.

"Oh, Joan!" exclaimed Sibyll, riding beside her sister, "such fun! I had never been in at the death before. And fancy! when puss was in extremis, fallen on and torn to pieces by the hounds--will you believe me? there was a butterfly flickering above the scene of blood and death-agony unconcernedly. Conceive! a butterfly at this period of the year; so out of season!"

"So out of place," said Joan.

Steps led to the front door, that was under a portico composed of Ionic pillars of Bath stone, that contrasted, as did the white coigns, with the red sandstone of which the house was built, one of the warmest and best of building materials. The long windows had casements painted creamy white, and the roof of the house was concealed by a balustrade of white stone.

At the steps the ladies dismounted, and the groom and a boy who had run from the stables took the horses.

Then the two girls, gathering up their habits, mounted to the door, and Joan, as she ascended, turned with a slight bow and a smile of encouragement to the young man, feeling at the same time not a little puzzled at the hesitation, even reluctance, that he manifested in accompanying her within.

The butler opened the glass doors, and all then entered the lofty hall, out of which the staircase ascended to the upper apartments. It was a fine hall, rich with plaster work, and hung with full-length portraits.

"Matthews," said Miss Frobisher, "will you kindly inform your master that a gentleman is here--Mr. Beaudessart? Yet stay, we will drink tea in the dining-room. Please to put cold meat and wine on the sideboard."

"Yes, miss."

The man withdrew with a bow.

"Joan," said Sibyll," I am going to rid myself of my boots and shed my habit."

"Have your tea first," urged. the elder. "There is no occasion for such a hurry."

"Yes there is," answered the young girl. "It is all very well for you to sit down at once to a meal--you have been muddling along at a snail's pace on Ruby with a sore shoulder, but I have been in the swim all day, and was at the finish. I say, Joan, am I really much painted? It is rather horrible, is it not?--but such fun to have Reynard's blood on one's cheek. Only I suspect the painting was done in the slightest possible manner. I must send for the keeper to dress the brush for me. What is put on--borax? He will know. I will ring for Matthews to send after him."

"You really must postpone changing for ten minutes. Papa will be so interested to hear of your adventures and success."

"Oh, I shall run to him in the library on my way, and show him the badges of war and trophies of victory. I must go--I shall be down again in a trice. I have torn my skirt in a thorn bush, and am plastered with mud. Tally-ho! ta-ra-ra!"

Then she departed, twittering, "We will all go a-hunting to-day."

Joan turned to the young man with a pleasant smile, and said--

"My sister is somewhat wilful. You must excuse her--she is the spoilt child of the house. My father dotes on her, and every man, woman, and child in the place is her humble servant. Now look about you. Here all the faces and figures that adorn the walls are Beaudessarts, from that grim-visaged gentleman in trunk hose and spindle legs, which is the earliest portrait we have. Is there, by the way, anything you would like? A whisky and soda? Perhaps a wash above all things? I will call the footman. I shall be making tea, and you can come to me in the dining-room. Papa will be there. The servant, Joseph, will be your guide."

Joan expected her father to appear at once, but he did not arrive. Matthews had not found him in the study, he had gone forth into the grounds.

Sibylla, as well, was disappointed; she had bounded into the library to display her spoils.

Joan put tea in the silver pot over the lamp, and saw that the sideboard was well supplied with cold beef and pheasant, and that spirits and wine were set out; then she went to a glass and hastily arranged her hair.

Mr. Beaudessart was shown in by Joseph.

"Now," said the girl, "whilst the tea is brewing I am entirely at your service to show you the pictures. That over the mantelpiece is my father, and yonder is my mother, who was taken from us sixteen years go. She was a beautiful woman when young, and you can see that in middle age the traces were not gone Yonder is the portrait I told you of, Squire Hector Beaudessart, the last of the family in Pendabury. After his death the property fell to papa, though how it came about I cannot inform you. I believe it was a complicated affair."

The young man walked up to the picture and stood before it, gazing intently on the canvas. The evening sun shone into the room, not, happily, on the painting itself, but on a side wall, and the reflected light illumined the picture sufficiently for him to be able to see it distinctly.

"It is very well painted, I believe. Do you not consider it so?" asked Joan. "The artist was Knight, the academician."

"It is admirable. It portrays not only the outward features, as nose and eyes, but the inner character, resolution and remorselessness."

"I have heard that he was considered a determined old gentleman," said the girl.

"Pertinacious in pursuing his own course, impatient of contradiction, implacable in his resentments, and then--proud."

"If we have any good in us we are proud," said Joan. "Pride is a necessary factor in a man up to a certain point. It implies strength, or furnishes it. But vanity is mere weakness."

"Yes," answered the young man, "we must all have self-respect, but at the same time respect others. That I do not think my grandfather ever did if they dared to differ from him."

"Your grandfather!"

A cough behind them, as they stood contemplating the picture.

Joan knew it, whisked about, and saw her father entering the room with his stick in his hand.

"Oh, papa! I am so glad that you have arrived. Here is Mr. Beaudessart from Canada, so interested in the family portraits."

"Mr. Beaudessart," said Mr. Frobisher stiffly; "pray what Mr. Beaudessart?"

"I must apologise, sir, for my intrusion," said the young man, feeling at once a sense of chill from the presence of the squire. "I have ventured to ask Miss Frobisher to permit me to see the pictures."

"Papa!" said Joan, also aware of the coldness of her father's manner," I insisted on Mr. Beaudessart coming in, he has been so kind. Ruby was frightfully rubbed, and he lent me his mare. Had he not done so I should have had to walk home from Littlefold Wood."

"What Mr. Beaudessart may this gentleman be?" asked the squire, with a freezing manner. He was an old, spare man, with shrivelled legs, about which his trousers hung loosely, with a long, knife-like face, his hair very grey and curled about the temples. His nose was aquiline, his eyebrows thick and white, and his eyes bright and hard.

He wore a grey suit that, however, did not become him. He was one of those men with face and figure belonging to the first half of the nineteenth century, who look ill fitted in modern costume, one whom nothing would become save the high-collared coat, and the short waistcoat and abundant necktie of the reign of William IV. The studied absence of graciousness of manner assumed by Mr. Frobisher affected both the young people with a feeling of discomfort.

"My father was Walter," said the stranger; "he was son to that old gentleman yonder. My name is the same as that of my grandfather--Hector Beaudessart."

Joan was aware that something grated on and angered her father.

"My dear papa," she said, "you have no idea what a generous assistance Mr. Beaudessart has rendered me--at the sacrifice of his day's sport and pleasure. How I could have got home without his courteous and ready help I cannot tell. And having seen me to the Pendabury gates, he proposed returning home. But I would not hear of it; I insisted on his coming in and having some refreshment. Sibyll followed the hounds to the grim death, but I was brought to a full stop in the wood by the condition of Ruby."

"Sir," said Mr. Frobisher, looking straight at Mr. Beaudessart and ignoring his daughter, "I take it as a most surprising piece of assurance, your thrusting yourself into this house."

The young man coloured up, and replied with dignity--

"I grieve to my heart that you should so regard it; I am aware that there was some ill-feeling existing between yourself and my father, but I can assure you I do not share it, and I trusted that you, on your part, would have laid aside any sentiment that was bitter when the earth closed over his head. Allow me to relieve you of my presence."

"Sir," said Mr. Frobisher, bridling up and pointing at him with his stick," I repeat, and emphasise my opinion, I consider it a gross, an unwarrantable piece of effrontery your intrusion here, taking advantage of my daughter's ignorance of the world, and of circumstances that must for ever estrange our families. Your deceased father's conduct"-

"Excuse me, sir. I may be to blame for my thoughtlessness, or for my belief that human nature was gentler than I find it, but I can hear nothing against my father. He behaved always as an honourable man. What charge can you or anyone lay against him?"

"That of having formed and obstinately maintained opinions contrary to those held by his father, the author of his being and the squire of the parish!" He flourished his stick and pointed to the picture of the old Squire Hector. "He might at least have kept his views to himself. I maintain that, by his conduct, he lost the blessing which is pronounced upon dutiful sons."

"A man is free to form his own opinions," said the young Hector, "and it would be unworthy of a man to keep them to himself. If he is worth his salt he will maintain them. My father did not disguise what he felt in his heart, and he suffered for his independence. I wish you a good-day."

He bowed and looked hastily at Miss Frobisher, whose cheek burned with shame. She could not meet his eye; her own were lowered and full of tears.

"Oh, papa! Papa!" she gasped.

Mr. Beaudessart was gone.

"Papa, how could you treat him so after his great civility to me? It was I who asked him in. He was most reluctant to come here, but I insisted."

"Like a fatuous girl, you did wrong out of sheer dulness. It was a piece of outrageous impertinence in him, poking his nose into this house. I am, thank God, not dead yet, and till I am--But there, I have no patience to speak of the fellow. To come prying here! Desirous to see the pictures, indeed! He wanted to peer about at everything--take stock of all there is in the house."

"But why so, papa?"

"Why!--because, forsooth, some day Pendabury will be his."

"His--Mr. Beaudessart's!"

Joan was startled.

"Yes, his; but not one minute before I am laid in the churchyard."

"How can that be? The estate has left the Beaudessarts and come to us Frobishers."

"It has left them only during my life. Mr. Hector yonder"--he pointed with his stick to the portrait of the old squire--"his grandfather, very rightly was incensed with his son, Walter, for taking up with liberal views in politics, and for being bitten with advanced church opinions, such as were promulgated by the Oxford tract writers. Young fools at the time were up in the clouds with all sorts of inflated notions. Mr. Hector, the old squire, was furious with his son. As Walter would not abandon his opinions, the old man washed his hands of him, would not speak to him or admit him over his doorstep. He left the estate to me, his second wife's son by her former marriage, for my life, to revert to the Beaudessarts only after my decease and that of his son Walter, who, he protested, should be excluded entirely from the property."

"Really, papa, I think that Walter was very hardly treated. Young men are hot-headed and enthusiastic, but they cool down as they grow older."

"I do not see that he was hardly treated. I do not see it at all. It is I, or you, who meet with unfair treatment. If I had been so happy as to have had a son of my own, would I not have desired to transmit Pendabury to him? Is it not a monstrous injustice that I should be debarred from so doing? And you. I should have liked to constitute you heiress, so that, on your marriage, you would have carried this place to your husband. But it cannot be. This Beaudessart cub intervenes. When I depart this life you will have to pack your portmanteaus and turn out. It is atrocious, inhuman, unchristian."

"But, papa, it is we who are the interlopers. It is the Beaudessarts who have been unjustly treated."

"Interlopers! Oh, you think that jackanapes is defrauded of his rights by your own father? Is that an opinion a child of mine dares to entertain? There is filial respect, indeed! There is reverence for my grey hairs! Is contrariety a thing bred in these walls? Does a curse rest on Pendabury, that the child there should rise up and call its parent opprobrious names?"

"Oh, papa, I never did that! If any wrong were committed, it was not by you, but by the old Squire Hector. However, let all that be--I really know nothing of the particulars except what you have divulged. But do consider in what a painful, humiliating position I was placed by your speaking to the young Mr. Beaudessart as you did, and practically turning him out of the house."

"It was due to your own thoughtlessness."

"I knew nothing of what you have now told me; if I had I would have hesitated about asking him in."

"But he was aware, and should not have taken advantage of your ignorance. Enough of this--pour me out some tea. Ha, shrimps! Tea is the only meal at which I care for them, and then--if fresh--I love them."

Sibylla came singing into the dining-room in bounding spirits.

"Oh, I am hungry! So glad there is cold beef. I must have some beer. I cannot stand your tea slops after a hard day. Papa, congratulate me! I have had the most splendid day in my life; a day to be marked with white chalk, a day never to be forgotten."

Then ensued an account of how she was in at the finish, with its concomitants.

"There were but five at the last," she added. "Joan dropped out very early over some scruple about Ruby. Bless me, Joan, why did you look? If you had not seen the raw, you might have gone on with a safe conscience. Do not pry, and seek to discover what is best not known. Take it for granted that all is well, till you have the contrary forced upon you. That is my doctrine and philosophy."

"Prying--exactly!" said Mr. Frobisher, looking up from his shrimps. "We have had an exemplification of prying here, that I have very properly exposed. Joan, did that cub happen to ask the sizes of the several rooms, so as to enable him to provide carpets? and the height of the windows for the furnishing of curtains?"

"Papa," answered Miss Frobisher, with pain in her face and in her tone, "I take the entire blame upon myself, as I have already assured you; he was most reluctant to intrude, but I insisted. I put it in such a way as to leave him no option but to come here. Sibyll is my witness. Even had I known that he was the man to whom Pendabury must eventually fall, I do not think that such knowledge would have weighed heavily with me. Usually the heir to an estate is not kept at a distance from it, and treated as an enemy by him who is in present enjoyment. If that were the usual condition of affairs, a father would be invariably at daggers drawn with his eldest son."

"Joan, the circumstances in this case are peculiar."

"I know no more of them than what I have just been told. I daresay that I have judged hastily from insufficient acquaintance with the particulars. Let this pass, papa. I had no intention of causing you annoyance, I can well assure you; and no one can regret more than I do that this contretemps has occurred."

"What is all this ruction about?" asked Sibylla, and then, without waiting for an answer, which, a she saw, neither was disposed to give, she went on, "Papa, Joan, who are coming to dinner to-night?"

"The rector and Mrs. Barker, and the young lady who is staying at Westholt,--I forget her name,--Colonel Wood, and Mr. Prendergast."

"Let me see," said the younger girl. "Papa takes in mother Frump; you are led by the rector; Colonel Wood gives his arm to Miss Somebody or other; and I am consigned to Jack Prendergast, the rector's pupil. Thank you. I shall have a headache and not appear."

"But, Sibyll, you must."

"A lively dinner for me, indeed, with that hobble-de-hoy, who can talk of nothing but his dog, and whose notions of sport rise no higher than ratting. Last time I sat by him he took my appetite away, because he would talk of his dog's distemper--and diagnose the disorder minutely. I am tired through hunting; I shall not come down."

"But, Sibyll, indeed you must remember what is due to our guests."

"Other people may be ill when they please, why not I?"

"But, remember, you are the heroine of this day."

"Ah, I forgot! Yes; I shall be down. I'll open Jack Prendergast's dull eyes. Why does he not come out?"

"He has not got a horse."

"But he should have one."

"I suppose he or his father cannot afford it."

"Then I do not see that we have any call to show him civility. A man who does not keep his hunter should know that his level is not ours."

"My dear Sibyll, it is not a note of gentility to have a well-stuffed purse. A man may be nice and yet poor."

"But he is not nice at all. He is not worth the trouble of talking to."

"If he had a horse, he would yarn about that; as he has only a dog, that interests him, and it is your duty to condescend to him, and maintain a doggy conversation."

"I will not trouble myself to discuss what does not interest me, and with a fellow so dull. He is reading with Mr. Barker for the university, and is safe to be plucked. He will disappear and subside into some business or other, and we shall happily see him no more."

The butler entered with a salver, and presented to the squire an orange envelope containing a telegraphic despatch.

Mr. Frobisher dipped his fingers in water, and leisurely wiped them on his napkin. Then be adjusted his pince-nez, and tore open the envelope.

Joan noticed that his face suddenly changed--a shadow fell over it, and it became grey as his hair.

He rose, staggering, to his feet

"Matthews, order Fashion to be saddled and brought round. I must at once to Lichfield."

"Papa, not now!" exclaimed Sibyll. "You will hardly be back for dinner."

"Papa, not Fashion," urged Joan; "he is given to shying. Let Thomas drive you in."

"Bid them saddle Fashion at once," said Mr. Frobisher, putting out his hand, groping for his stick.

"Yes, sir. Is it to be immediately?" asked the butler.

"At once."

"What is the matter, papa?" asked Joan, as soon as the butler had withdrawn. At the same time she found the stick and placed it in her father's hand.

"Matter? You heard. I must go to Lichfield. If I am not back at the time our guests arrive, make my excuses. Say that urgent business has called me away."

"But you must be back," said his youngest daughter. "You must. Who else is to lead in Mrs. Barker?"

"We will settle that," said Joan to her sister; and then to her father, "I wish you would let Thomas drive you over in the dogcart."

"No, no," he answered impatiently. "I shall be there quicker if I ride. Besides, I do not want company of any kind."

"Joy!" exclaimed Sibyll, "Colonel Wood will take Mrs. Barker in, and Jack Prendergast will bring in the young lady, and I shall thrust myself on the left of Colonel Wood--he is a blasé old fool, but amusing, and better company than Jack Prendergast." She hummed a tune. "Joan, what was that tiff about between you and the daddy?" she asked, so soon as her father had left the room.

"It was due to me. I brought in Mr. Beaudessart, and he did not like it."

"What nonsense! Of course, whenever the hunters come this way we must offer them some refreshment. I don't care whether papa growls and grumps--I shall go on doing so."

"It was the name of Beaudessart that ruffled him."

"A man cannot help his name. And Beaudessart is a good name, and is connected with this place."

"That is just it. You see, Sibyll, we are, though papa may not relish the term, yet manifestly and undoubtedly interlopers. This is a Beaudessart house and estate, that has by some irregularity devolved upon us. I do not quite riddle it out, but as far as I can understand, old Mr. Hector Beaudessart passed over his son, and left the place to papa, although no blood relation whatsoever."

"I will get the new County History that is being issued in parts," said Sibyll; "it is in the room, and our parish comes into one of the earlier numbers. It is kept over yonder."

She went to the bookstand, and drew out some paper-covered, octavo-sized parts.

"Here we are, Joan, and here is a view of the house. What do you want? nothing about the parish, and the church, and all that. Here is Pendabury! Listen! 'Pendabury is a noble seat, formerly in the possession of the Beaudessart family; the mansion stands with its back to a red sandstone hill crowned with entrenchments, supposed to have been occupied by the renowned Penda, King of the Mercians.' We don't want all this. Now to the point. 'This beautiful estate and residence was devised by the late Mr. Hector Beaudessart to his wife's son by a former husband, the present much esteemed possessor, Martin Frobisher, Esq.' Well, that is all right! It was left to papa, and here papa and we are. What more would you have?"

"Is there a pedigree of the Beaudessarts in the book?" asked Joan.

"Yes, a long one--generations of them, since the Conquest."

"How does it conclude?"

"Here--'Hector Beaudessart of Pendabury, Esq., J.P., D.L., a former High Sheriff of the County, married, in the first place, Prudence, daughter of Herbert Knight, Esq., and had issue Walter of Montreal, Canada, who married Josephine, daughter of Henry Perleux of Les Rapides, Esq., and has issue, in addition to a daughter, Julia, one son, Hector.'"

"That was the young man who helped me home. Go on, Sibyll."

"'Hector Beaudessart married secondly Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph Francis, Esq., and widow of Samuel Frobisher, Esq., and had no issue by his second wife. The estate passed by his will to Martin Frobisher, eldest son of the said Samuel and his wife Elizabeth.'"

"That is our father, and this shows that we are interlopers."

"Interlopers or not, we are jolly comfortable here," said Sibyl!. "A blessed thing that old Hector quarrelled with his son, and left Pendabury to papa. I could kiss the old man for doing so."

"But it was very hard on his son and grandson."

"That is no concern of ours. Old Squire Hector had a right, I suppose, to do with the property as he would."

"As things stand, papa did not relish young Mr. Beaudessart coming to see the place."

"It was natural that the fellow should like to take a peep at what his father lost. Not so bad a lot, Joan, that of the cuckoo. Lucky job for us, anyhow. It is an ill wind that does not blow good to someone. Blessed be the east wind that touched up old Hector's liver when he made his testament."

"But Pendabury is left to our father for his life only."

"What, are not we to be co-heiresses?"

"No."

"I call that mean. I could box old Hector's ears for that."

Sibylla threw the parts of the County History on the carpet.

"Joan," said she, leaning back in the cushioned easy chair, "we shall have rare fun to-morrow. You know there will be a shooting party and a beat of the Bradstreet coverts. We are to lunch in the wood, and then, in the evening, have a dinner. No old fogies and young half-baked lumps of fellows, but really nice people, full--brimming with chaff."

"Yes. I am aware. But, Sibyll, do not leave those numbers of the County History on the floor."

"Why not?"

"Joseph is so thoughtless. When he comes to put coals on the fire he may tread on them as waste paper. Put them back on the stand whence you took them."

"Not I--I am stiff and tired. I will tell Joseph to mind where he treads, and to collect them."

Joan stooped and gathered together half a dozen dispersed separate issues of the volume, and after arranging them in their proper sequence, replaced them on the shelf whence her sister had taken them, in a stand at the farther end of the room.

This done she turned round, and saw something that startled and annoyed her.

"Sibyll, for shame! what are you doing?"

"Only looking at the telegram, Joan. Papa had dropped it under the table."

"Put it down. You have no right whatever to look at it."

"If it had been so particular and private, he would have burnt it or carried it away."

"He was unnerved, and perhaps forgot what he did with it. You have acted very wrongly in touching it."

"I have done more than touch it; I have read it," said Sibyll. "It is from London: 'Willjoens Reef smashed up. J. F. absconded.' J. F. may stand for Uncle James."

At that moment the butler threw open the door and Mr. Frobisher entered in hat, greatcoat, and muffler, and with a whip in one hand.

"Did chance to leave an orange envelope?" he asked." Oh!" Sibyll had hastily laid the telegram on pink paper upon the table. "That is what I want, not the envelope."

He took it up with a hand that shook, as Joan observed

The without giving final instructions to his daughters, he was about to leave, when Joan said--

"Father, you will try to be back in time for dinner."

"If possible--can't say. Very serious news."

Then he left the room.

Joan went to one of the long windows and looked out. Next moment she saw her father ride past.

"I wish," said she, "that he had not decided on Fashion. Papa is much troubled in mind, and should have had a steadier horse to ride." Then, leaving the window, she picked up the telegram envelope and threw it into the fire, saying, "Sibyll, I am vexed with you. You know that you did wrong in reading the telegram."

"I don't care," retorted the younger. "Willjoens Reef smashed up. Dynamite, I suppose. J. F. absconded into space, blown up into the clouds, maybe. But no, dynamite strikes downwards. I wonder if J.F. stands for Uncle James. If so, perhaps this telegram promises us relief from his rather tiresome presence and tedious commercial talk. I loathe all that smacks and savours of trade and money-making. It is vulgar."

Joan Frobisher, having lost her mother when still a child, had been called upon by her father to take that mother's place in social functions, to entertain visitors, to occupy the head of the table at dinners, and act generally as hostess. She was consequently able to discharge her duties with easy confidence. Possessed of good feeling and the tact that springs out of it, she had united in her every requisite that goes to make up a perfect hostess. She was skilful in starting topics upon which she knew that her guests could talk, in maintaining conversation in flow, and by delicate intervention to draw every member of the circle into it.

But on the occasion of the evening after the opening hunt, when the party sat down and her father was still absent, the burden of her task was felt by her as oppressive and irksome; it was with an effort that she discharged even the ordinary formalities.

The obligation under which she lay of apologizing for the lack of the presence of the host, and explaining it, was in itself embarrassing and a damper to conviviality. But in addition there was much that occupied her mind, and there were cares that distracted it. She could not shake off the painful impression produced on her by her father's treatment of Mr. Beaudessart. Not only was his behaviour unjust towards him, but it was humiliating to herself. The mortification was the more poignant because she could not but perceive that it was Mr. Beaudessart and his father who were the injured parties, and that her father, her sister, and herself were occupying a position to which they had attained solely through 'the caprice of a masterful and resentful old tyrant.

She recalled the smile that had played about the ,young man's lips when she had spoken such bold words about the Frobishers maintaining themselves in Pendabury against all attempts that might be made to dislodge them. He was aware at the time how empty the boast was. She coloured at the recollection that she had made it.

But if thoughts associated with this passage in the day's proceedings were painful, those that concerned the telegram were disquieting. The initials J. F. probably did serve to indicate her uncle, James Frobisher, as her sister had surmised. She knew that he was interested in a gold mine in the Transvaal.

She had not made her uncle's acquaintance till recently--a year ago--as he had been all his time in South Africa, Australia, Brazil, and California. He had been a wanderer, picking up a good deal of information in his wanderings, but shedding a good deal of the finer qualities of an Englishman at the same time.

He was full of schemes for making money, but none of these schemes as yet had enriched himself; the reason being, as he insisted, that you must have gold to make gold--as you must sow grain to reap a wheaten harvest. As he had been unprovided with capital he had seen others spring into the position of millionaires, and been himself incapable of following them.

He had obtained unbounded influence over her father, whom he had dazzled with his speculative projects.

Certainly Uncle James had been an entertaining man for a while, but wearisome to listen to for long, especially to such as had no money to embark in foreign ventures. Joan had not been able to feel confidence in his integrity. He was too fluent, flexible, and flashy, to inspire trust. There was an apparent lack in him of an indefinable something, and that a something like principle, and there was a shiftiness that implied an absence of strict views as to right and wrong.

Joan had behaved towards her uncle with gracious courtesy, even with friendliness, but without being able to draw to him with affection. On the other band, Sibyll had treated him with positive rudeness. She disliked her uncle because his conversation was about means of making money, speculation in railways, mines, factories, brandy distilleries, hotels; and Sibyll abhorred what she called "shop-talk."

Joan was disturbed over the telegraphic message, which was curt but significant. She shivered internally with the dread lest her uncle should have been engaged in some equivocal proceedings connected with what he termed the floating of his Willjoens Gold Reef Company, and that this had come to light and had forced him to levant.

She had no real foundation for such a surmise other than the words of the telegram, but she had no trust in her uncle's probity. She feared lest her father might have become entangled in the schemes of his brother.

Joan was proud as she was upright, and the surmise was enough to make her sick at heart; under a placid exterior she was forced to hide the troubles and fears that were distracting her.

The dining-room at Pendabury was a very stately apartment. It was long, lofty, and of a suitable width. The walls were panelled with old deal in immensely wide slabs, so perfectly seasoned and nicely united as to give the impression of each panel being composed of one single slice from a gigantic pine. The panels were enclosed within a moulded framework, and a rich cornice, or entablature, broken by the mitring above pilasters at intervals, divided the walls into sections; this was happily worked in with the rich plaster decoration of the ceiling. The woodwork was painted dark, and against this background the pictures showed to advantage.

The furniture was of mahogany, upholstered with velvet, of a comparatively modern character, and though rich and solid, was not in keeping with the Queen Anne style of the room.

The curtains were drawn; a large fire of logs, backed up with coke, was blazing and glowing on the hearth. The table sparkled with silver and glass and candles, and was rich with colour from the Alamander and Tacsonia blossoms, and wreaths of Smilax that decorated the cloth. The whole afforded a look of comfort, elegance, and wealth such as is seen nowhere so well as in England.

The rector sat on Joan's right hand. He was an amiable, elderly man, with grey hair and whiskers that were white; a man such as an Established Church can alone produce, and produce to an almost unlimited extent; well-bred, well-educated, harmless in life, and best described by a series of negatives. In an Established Church, patrons, whether public or private, whether crown or mitre, chancellor or squire, seek to promote only such men as are colourless in opinion and deficient of independence of character, who they may be sure will give no offence in anything, that the ministry be not blamed, and that they will, in this one quality, sum up all their characteristics.

Mr. Barker, rector of the parish, was a keen angler, an enthusiastic bee-keeper, and a conscientious parish priest.

The party at table was small, and the table had accordingly not been enlarged.

Colonel Wood had led in Mrs. Barker, but Sibyll sat on his left side, and the colonel paid a good deal more attention to her than he did to his partner. He was one of those old gentlemen whose sole idea of conversation with a young woman is banter, the paying of little compliments, the making of little jokes, the talking of little nonsenses, the production of abundant chaff, and the never letting drop one grain of good sense. He was not an unintelligent man by any means, but in the society of young ladies, which was the society he particularly affected, he aimed at laborious silliness.

Joan saw what was going on between the colonel and Sibyll, to the neglect of the old lady--a gentle, charming person, limited in her range of ideas and sympathies, but purely refined and kindly.

It vexed Joan, and she took occasion repeatedly to make a remark to and draw a few sentences from Mrs. Barker, so as not to allow her to feel that she was being neglected.

"In no summer that I have known since I have been here," droned the rector, "has the fern-web been so abundant; I went out one morning through the brakes of filix mas, and I believe I was able to detach a beetle from every third leaf. You know, of course, that the coccabundi is none other than the fern-web."

On the side opposite to the colonel, Sibyll, and Mrs. Barker, sat young Prendergast and Miss Foljamb. They seemed to be ill-matched. The young man was fidgeting under his chair with a pet dog that belonged to Sibyll, and which was allowed to go where it liked. He had feebly attempted conversation with the young lady, but she belonged to the intellectual order, and promptly snubbed him.

"You have had no experience with the Röntgen ray?" she asked, fixing him with a hard eye.

"N--no--is it anything a chap can eat?"

"Oh, Miss Foljamb," said Joan, "what a privilege--if you know how to use the X ray. I shall have to enlist your services. Poor Goody Brash has swallowed a paper of pins--as Mrs. Barker can tell you, and we have been in such a way about her. We do not know how to work the X ray, even if we get the apparatus, so as to find whereabouts in her system the pins have distributed themselves. Mr. Prendergast, do tell me how Towzer is. Has the stick of brimstone in his drinking-bowl done him good?" Then she turned her head. "Now, my dear rector--what are the characteristics of the coccabundi?"

Spots of colour burnt in Joan's cheek. She was consumed by an internal fever, and in addition to her own cares, she was fretted at Sibyll's conduct and want of consideration for Mrs. Barker.

The dessert was laid, and Joan was sensible of relief at the thought that in ten minutes the ladies would retire, when Matthews, the butler, came to her side, and said in a low tone, "I beg your pardon, miss, but you are wanted immediately in the hall."

"Will it not do presently? We shall all then be leaving."

"No, miss, it is--it is most particular."

The tone of his voice startled her; she looked up, and saw that the man was not only grave, but was a prey to great agitation.

Instantly rising to her feet, she apologised to Mrs. Barker.

"Prithee excuse me--I am summoned from you-- for a moment."

"We may as well all rise," said Mrs. Barker.

"Oh no!-- no! I shall be back presently. It may be nothing, but Matthews urges me to go. I ask your pardon, gentlemen, for my momentary withdrawal. Some business that requires my immediate attention calls me away." She left the room, and was in the hall. Then the butler shut the door of communication between it and the dining-room.

Joan saw the groom awaiting her. He touched his forehead. The great hall was but partially lighted with one large coloured lamp, and she could not see the man's face distinctly.

"You have something to say to me, Thomas?"

"Beg pardon, miss," said he; "it's Fashion never could abide the smell or sight of a donkey. There's no vice in him, none at all, but he is terrible nervous."

"But what is the matter?"

The groom again saluted.

"You see, miss, there's a bit of a moon, and the miller's old donkey--it's grey, miss, perhaps you know, and I daresay the heavy dew have brought out the smell rank like, and with the winter coat on him thick. And that there stoopid donkey--nothen else would do, but he must stand in the paddock lookin' out into the road over the gate. The squire, miss, he came trottin' 'ome from Lichfield upon Fashion, and comes round a corner right on that there donkey, lookin', miss, and smellin' orful. And whether it were the looks of him in the moon, or the smell of him in the winter coat and all damp, I can't say, miss; maybe it were both!"

"Well?"

"And up like a squirrel goes Fashion, or rather, fust he jumped sideways across the road, and then up the bank, where he never could hold on, miss, and away he rolls with master, and down he comes into the road; or else whether, when he swerved, master fell off, and afore Fashion went runnin' up the bank"--

"My father!" Joan's heart stood still.

"Well, miss, I'm afraid it's terrible bad. They've took him into the miller's house. But there really is no vice in Fashion--it's all nerves--there never was so timid an 'oss."

The butler, who had been standing with his back to the dining-room door, with the handle in his hand, now came forward, and said--

"Miss, I fear the case is serious--very serious--could hardly be worse."

Joan gasped. For a moment she stood as one stunned, with her hand to her heart. Then she rallied, and walked to the dining-room, the door of which Matthews opened for her.

She stood in the entrance, white as a sheet, her eyes lustrous, yet fixed with horror.

"Mrs. Barker, oh!--and rector--all, please to leave us. There has been an accident. My father; my poor father"--She did not finish the sentence; her fortitude gave way, and she burst into tears.

But there was no need for her to say more. All understood what was implied but left unsaid.

Mr. Shand, the family solicitor, was seated in the library with the two girls, Joan and Sibylla Frobisher, a few days after the funeral. He was a formal man, with the complexion of an under-baked seedcake. The girls were, as a matter of course, in deep mourning. The face of Joan bore the marks of wearing and protracted anxiety. She realised, in a manner impossible to her shallow sister, that a crisis in their lives had been reached. That they must leave Pendabury neither doubted, but Joan shrewdly suspected there were unpleasant revelations that would have to be made shortly, concerning the matter of the gold mine. The younger girl had dismissed the telegram from her thoughts, occupied only with her father's death and funeral, but it was not possible for Joan to disguise from herself that the brief message which had brought about her father's fatal ride to Lichfield was fraught with further trouble. She accordingly fixed her eyes on the lawyer with intensity of attention, and with a heart within her bosom that quivered with apprehension. Nevertheless, she was aware of a sense of relief at the prospect of now at last learning everything, of having her worst fears either dissipated or confirmed. Certainly she could bear that better than prolonged suspense.

"Young ladies," said the solicitor, "I have some very distressing news to communicate. I would have asked the rector to relieve me of a painful duty, but that the matter belongs to my province rather than to his, and that to me alone all the particulars are known." He coughed behind his hand. "After your irreparable loss of a father, which we all deplore, comes a second blow that I fear will also prove irreparable, and will be equally felt, though of a different kind. I presume that you are aware that the former squire--I mean the penultimate, Mr. Hector Beaudessart, left to your father, the son of his wife by a first husband, the enjoyment of the manor and estate and mansion of Pendabury during the term of his natural life, with reversion to the issue, lawfully begotten, of his son Walter, that is to say, to the present Mr. Hector Beaudessart, now of Rosewood Cottage, who was not born at the time that the elder Mr. Hector made the testamentary disposition of his estate. It was never his intention to permanently alienate from his family the property which it had held in possession for many generations, but to mark with his displeasure his son Walter, in a most sensible manner. I use the expression sensible not in its popular significance, but in that which is more legitimate, as implying a manner that would be felt. Whether Mr. Walter Beaudessart's conduct was of a nature deserving of such severe notice, it is, happily, not my place to consider, and therefore I will pass no opinion either upon that or upon the method adopted by his father to emphasise his reprobation. It suffices me to state the fact that Mr. Walter, now deceased, was debarred from entering upon the estate of Pendabury, and from deriving any pecuniary or other advantage from it. Your father, whose decease we so profoundly deplore, had no power left him of imposing any charge on the estate, on behalf of his widow, had his wife survived him, or of any child he might have. Consequently, all that he was able to do, so as to make provision for your future, was to lay by annually a certain sum deducted from the revenues of the property. You understand me, young ladies?"

"Perfectly," said Joan.

"I cry shame on old Hector," said Sibyll; "I should like to poke my parasol through his picture. We have better right to Pendabury than any whippersnapper from the Colonies, for we were born here."

"If your father had acted in accordance with my advice," pursued Mr. Shand, ignoring Sibylla's words, "you would be now in a very different position from that in which you actually are placed. He ought to have heavily insured his life for your benefit. This. however, he would not do. He preferred to invest his savings. Unhappily, of late, he sold out all his securities, and transferred the proceeds to a gold mine in South Africa, in which your uncle was largely interested, and of the prospects of which he was vastly sanguine. Mr. James Frobisher was a man by nature hopeful and confident, and, to employ a serviceable colloquialism, all his geese were swans. He was assured that the Willjoens Reef was auriferous, and would yield an enormous interest on capital spent developing it. Your father--whose deplorable decease we cannot forget--implicitly believed in him, and caught fire at the representations of Mr. James Frobisher, when he came to England for the purpose of forming a company for the working of the mine. Your lamented and ever to be lamented father withdrew his money, sold all his investments that were absolutely safe, and yielded from four to four and a half per cent. actually, one only was at three and a quarter, and against my advice, I may say my urgent entreaty, sank everything he had amassed on your behalf in this South African venture. As I pointed out to him at the time,--you will excuse another colloquialism, though vulgar,--it is ill to put all your eggs into one basket. I need hardly inform you that your father whom we so profoundly deplore--was not a man to turned from his purpose when he had formed such."

"Indeed he was not," threw in Sibyll, "and in that my sister Joan takes after him."

"Quite so. And in spite of my grave and reiterated remonstrances, he put every penny that he had saved through twenty-eight years into that--to my mind--most risky speculation. I am sorry to have to inform you that my worst anticipations have been realised. Those who were shareholders, not feeling satisfied with the report that had been received, before embarking further in the matter, privately despatched an expert to investigate the Willjoens Reef. To this I believe your father was either not a party or a reluctant party. No sooner did this independent report reach home--than your uncle disappeared. The report was most unsatisfactory; it represented the estate which was to have proved an Eldorado as practically worthless. It lies outside the fringe of profitable gold-producing reefs. Your uncle, no doubt quite unconsciously, had been associated with a party of eminently unscrupulous men, Jews for the most part, who have been thrusting Willjoens and other valueless properties on the market. Some properties in the Transvaal are gold - producing, because gold is found in them. Such Willjoens is not. Others are gold-producing only so far that gold is got by them out of the pockets of credulous speculators in England and elsewhere--and such gold goes into the pockets of the men who float the concern. I regret to say that such is Willjoens Reef."

"Then, what has become of all our money?" asked

"Gone, young lady. A parcel of unprincipled Jews have it, who will never be made to disgorge. It is lost utterly and beyond recovery."

"What, then, shall we have to live upon?"

"There remains nothing of the accumulations made by your father so sadly removed from us. As your mother had no private means, no income comes to you in that way. You will receive what is brought in by a sale at Pendabury, but that will not furnish a considerable sum. The late Mr. Hector Beaudessart made a list of pictures, books, and the amount and kind of plate, all which he decided were to remain as heirlooms, and were to be inalienable. Consequently, in a sale, only furniture can be offered, glass and china, the horses, carriages, and contents of the saddle-room, the bulbs in the beds and plants in the greenhouses and conservatories."

"Fudge!" said Sibyll, "we cannot possibly live on that. We will cut down the timber on the estate, and raise several thousand pounds by that means."

"You have no power to do so," said Mr. Shand, in dry, monotonous voice. "By your father's most lamentable decease, everything has passed to Mr. Hector Beaudessart except such contents of the house and its appurtenances as are not scheduled as heirlooms."

"I never heard the like. I do not agree to it," said Sibyll.

"Dear Miss Sibylla, your consent is not asked or required. As I have stated, so the matter stands, and is unalterable. To use a vulgarism, for which I know you will pardon me, and for which I apologise beforehand, what can't be cured must be endured. With your leave, Miss Frobisher, I will give notice to the domestics. There will, perhaps, be something in the bank that will defray their wages and the cost of the funeral, and provide for your immediate necessities. The court day for the half-year that terminates at Michaelmas has not yet been held, as a month's grace is always allowed to the tenants. You will be entitled, of course, to the money that then comes in, less certain charges and the payment of property bills out of it. That will be yours, when your father's will has been proved, young ladies. If you will take my advice, you will be so wise as to remove at your earliest possible convenience from Pendabury, and install yourselves in some place less expensive to keep up. To employ a vulgarism once more, for which I crave excuse--you must cut your coat according to your cloth."

"Probably our best course will be to go to our aunts Benigna and Charlotte," said Joan, "our

father's sisters at Stafford."

"Aunt Benigna may whistle for me," exclaimed Sibylla. "Why, Joan, you know I could never abide either. Benigna belies her name; she is always scolding and finding fault: she has never a good word to say to one--but harangues and sermonises till it makes one sick. As to Charlotte--she is an old stupid, who smiles and sips tea, and has not an idea in her head."

"I am afraid, young lady," said the solicitor, "that these ladies will be found in no position to receive you. I am apprised that they also have lost everything in this Willjoens Reef. They were talked over by their brother James into intrusting their little fortune in his hands. It is infinitely sad and unfortunately true."

"Good heavens! Poor dear old ladies!" gasped Joan. "At their age, what can they do?"

"That settles their hash," said Sibylla; "so talk no more to me of aunts Benigna and Charlotte."

"Mr. Shand," said Joan, "under the circumstances, what is your advice?"

"A sale of everything that can be sold," answered the lawyer, "is not likely to bring in sufficient to maintain you in even moderate comfort. What your father's liabilities are I cannot yet tell. I greatly fear he has risked money of his own apart from what he had laid by for you, and that this may make a sad hole in the half-year's rent. Have you relatives who would come to your aid?"

Joan shook her head.

"Not one. Uncle James Frobisher is now out of the question. My aunts are also out of the question. I really know of none other--that is, none to whom I would care to apply. My dear mother belonged to the Hopgoods--a respectable but not wealthy manufacturing family. My father kept up no relations with them. He considered that his position debarred him from so doing. I would not, indeed I could not consistently with self-respect apply to those whom my dear father so persistently held all these years at arm's length. To appeal as a pauper to them is more than my pride could endure."

"Do not even think of such a thing," said Sibyll. "I wash my hands of the whole Hopgood lot."

"And your father's family?"

"On that side--no relatives other than Uncle James and my two impoverished aunts."

"There is one thing." Mr. Shand spoke hesitatingly, and looked down on the table as he spoke. "Your case is sure to evoke much sympathy. I do not quite know how you will take it--there is a homely and good proverb--but I will not venture to quote it. I have talked the matter over with the Reverend Mr. Barker, your rector, without, of course, entering into particulars, merely indicating the broad outlines of the case. We both think that under the exceptional circumstances, and seeing how widely respected your father was, chairman on the bench and patron of so many societies for the benefiting of the agriculture, and horticulture, and poultry-raising of the country, that some little collection might possibly be suggested that would be warmly taken up by--of course--the county people to--to"--

"Sir!" Joan flamed through throat, cheeks, and temples. "Not another word to that effect."

"I confess I have no other suggestion to make," said the solicitor.

"I thank you, Mr. Shand. I am glad that you have stated the condition of our affairs so plainly," said Joan. "Practically we are left, if not absolutely destitute, yet without a sufficiency to maintain us, unless we eat up our little capital. That capital, whatever it may prove to be, is best left to fall back upon in an emergency. Now that we know the very worst, there is but one thing that can be done--and that is to face it, and face it with good heart, frankly."

One morning, a week after the interview with Mr. Shand, the sisters were in their own private sitting-room together.

Joan was putting away sundry trifles that belonged to her, and getting rid of the ten thousand accumulations that gather in a house during a long tenancy. She burned many old bills and letters.

Sibyll was engaged in doing little more than help her sister, by ensuring combustion of bills and letters, by turning them over, or pressing them down among the coals with the poker in her hand.

"I have made up my mind what I shall do," said she. "I shall go a round of visits, and spend my Christmas with the Maleverers. I shall be able to spin out my engagements through the spring and early summer, and by that time something is sure to turn up."

"You cannot do this," said Joan, looking at her sister with surprise; "visiting comes expensive."

"But it will be economy--I shall save my grub with you."

"Dear Sibyll, that is nothing. Visiting will entail a good deal of outlay in dress."

"You would not have me go shabby."

"No--but as Mr. Shand says, 'You must cut your coat according to your cloth.' You must dress as our means will permit. Besides, there are the servants--presents must be made to them--and there is the cost of travelling. Indeed, Sibyll, it is not possible."

"What shall we be driven to do? Go out as governesses? Well, if I can find a nice family, where the children give no trouble and the salary is good, I will even submit to that. Miss Blair did not have a bad time of it with us--only she would so persistently paint and frizzle, and set her cap at papa."

"Sibyll, you have not been educated for a governess."

"Pshaw! I can read and write and spell indifferently well. I am not much of a hand at the piano, but of course I could teach. It only means letting the pupil muddle along at the scales, and you sit by with a novel, and just throw in a word now and then."

"No, dear, you have neither the training nor the application."

"I have as much as most governesses."

"That may be--but the country is overrun with incapables drifting from situation to situation, staying a term in each, till their incapacity has demonstrated itself unequivocally. No--you are not calculated to be a successful governess."

"Then I shall go on the stage. There are pots of money to be made there so long as one is decent-looking."

"The stage is a profession that is most exacting. It demands training and hard work. You know, Sibyll, that you have a woeful short memory. Go on with the beginning of the Paradise Lost, from

'Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree'"--

"No, Joan, I detest Milton; you know that."

"Well, then, try something else that you learned quite recently with Miss Blair--

'The stag at eve had drunk his fill
Where danced the moon on Monan's rill.'"

"I have forgotten all that stuff."

"Sibyll, no stage for you. You are as ill-adapted for that profession as you are to be a governess."

"Then I shall become a nurse. Some of the nurses' costumes are quite fascinating, and they have a jolly lively time in the hospitals, I hear."

"My dear Sibyll, you would have to pass through an apprenticeship, scrubbing the floors and doing real menial work, with a chance of being rejected."

"I'm not going to do anything menial. Scrub the floors indeed! Black the medical students boots next! Not I--rather than that I'll marry old Colonel Wood."

"It is not leap year, so you cannot ask him if he will have you."

At this juncture Matthews entered with a salver and presented a note to Miss Frobisher.

"Any answer?" she inquired.

"I really do not know, miss. The boy brought it from the Beaudessart Arms, and said that he had forgotten whether he was to wait for an answer or not."

Joan opened the envelope, which was addressed to her in a feminine hand, and her face at once assumed an expression of surprise.

"In a moment, Matthews. I must consider."

The butler withdrew.

"It is odd," she said, rather to herself than to her sister. "What can she want?"

"Who, Joan?"

"Look yourself at the note." She passed the sheet to her sister.

Sibyll read it, tossed it across the table, and said, "I call that a jolly bit of cheek. If I were you I would not answer it in any way."

"I do not know what she wants. It may be kindly intended."

"Oh, kindly intended indeed! The gloating cormorant! Allow me to go and give her my mind plainly and forcibly expressed."

"No, Sibyll, she asks to see me. I will go, but I do not much like this. Touch the bell."

When the butler reappeared, Joan said, "There is no message. I will answer the note in person."

Then she left the room, dressed to go out, and quitted the house.

As she walked through the grounds along the drive, she could not but wince at the sight of such familiar and beautiful landscape that she would be leaving without a prospect of seeing it again.

Hard by the entrance lodge stood a neat inn, "The Beaudessart Arms," and to that Joan directed her steps. She was immediately admitted to the little parlour, where was seated a lady in widow's weeds. She had abundant white hair, and dark eyes under well-drawn dark eyebrows.

She rose immediately, and advancing towards the visitor, said, "Miss Frobisher."

"Mrs. Beaudessart, I presume."

"Will you take a chair?" said the lady. "I dare-say you are surprised at the step I have taken of driving over from Rosewood, and putting up my cob here, and then sending to entreat your visit. For many reasons I thought it most expedient to adopt this method of communicating with you. Will you not be seated?"

Joan did not accept the invitation; she made a slight apologetic bow, and remained standing.

"Miss Frobisher," continued the widow, in a gentle voice tinged with a Colonial accent, "there are things better spoken between woman and woman than committed to writing, or passed through the medium of a solicitor. It sometimes happens that words at one time read leave one callous, which at another time move one to tears. So much depends on the reader and the mood of the listener. I wish to communicate a proposition, that I prefer should come from my lips to your ear, than that it should reach you in any other way. There has been estrangement, bitterness, in the past, harsh thoughts and resentful feelings have been entertained--but those heads in which the thoughts tossed are laid low, on one side and the other. The hearts that were fired with resentment are both still. There is no reason why we should carry on these same feelings; let them die and be forgotten. Come, I will have you by my side on the sofa." She laid her hand on Joan's wrist, and drew her down.

"I can assure you that my son and I have no other thought towards you than one of deep sympathy and heartfelt goodwill. He has had the privilege of making your acquaintance. I should have gone on my way grieving at not knowing you--and that is one reason why I have been so bold as to ask you to honour me with a visit here."

She retained her hand on Joan's wrist, and looked at her with her kind eyes.

"Miss Frobisher, let me tell you a little about ourselves."

Joan wondered. The lady seemed reluctant to make the proposal she had said it was her purpose to make, and to make which she had driven over from Rosewood.

"When my dear husband was dismissed from home--it was for no wrong done, but because he entertained opinions very different from his father--he went to Canada, and entered a house of business. He was advanced from being clerk to be partner, and realised a respectable fortune, after which he withdrew entirely from business, just before his death. I do not say that what he made was a large sum, so that my son Hector was left a wealthy man, but that he was comfortably off. On account of his expectations in England there was no necessity that he should be put into business. It might have been better if he had been, as then his life would have been less desultory. However, I have not come here to discuss that. My dear husband's one ambition was that Hector should grow up to be a thorough English gentleman, and he was willing--in order to ensure this--to undergo great sacrifices, the greatest of all the parting with his son to be bred in England. However, I have not asked you to meet me that I might talk about my son, but about yourself and your sister. Will you take what I am going to say in good part, as it is intended? We are not relatives, and yet it almost seems as though we ought to be akin. Cannot earth constitute a tie as well as blood? You have been born, and lived on, and have loved Pendabury, where my husband was born and where his forefathers had lived for centuries. And I may say that, separated from it by the wide ocean, deprived of it, he loved it to the last with intense passion. As somehow akin, linked through Pendabury, my son and I consider that we are allied to you. If you will acknowledge the bond, none so gratified and happy as we. Hector thinks, and so do I, that in common fairness, if your father had been given the estate for his life, he ought to have been allowed to charge it to a reasonable amount his family. It was hardly treating him fairly deny him the means to provide for his nearest and dearest. Now, Miss Frobisher"--the lady pressed the girl's wrist gently--"you will allow it to be so--let there be a small sum paid over to you and your sister in quarterly instalments; just as your father would have desired had he been able so to arrange it."

"You are very kind," answered Joan, touched by the offer and the way in which it had been made. "I feel unable to express to you how deeply I am moved by your goodness. But do not be angry, do not consider me ungrateful, if I say that I cannot possibly accept this generous proposition. I tell you, in all frankness, that since I have known how my father stepped into the Pendabury estate, I have felt that a great injustice was done to Mr. Walter Beaudessart. If my father had viewed the matter as I do, he would have refused to profit by the will, and have set himself to work out a career for himself, gone into business, and made his own way to a competence. Actually, the whole twenty-eight years that he lived in Pendabury were years in which the rightful owner was thrust out of the enjoyment of it. He to whom the place properly belonged never had it, and I cannot consent to take anything more out of the estate. I recognise, with all my heart, the kind intent that has prompted you to make me this noble offer, but excuse me if I say that I cannot accept it. Already has Mr. Shand offered to send round the hat among those we have known and entertained and regarded as our fellows. I declined the proposal. The rector has heard of some almshouses for decayed gentlewomen, and has asked me to sanction his canvassing for votes to get me and my sister into one of them--as buxom damsels to figure as decayed gentlewomen. I could not entertain such an idea. I refused that also. No, dear Mrs. Beaudessart, I feel that it is exhilarating, like having the east wind in one's face, to meet the world and make one's own fate, and rely on God, one's stout heart, and ten nimble fingers--but I thank you all the same." And she stood up to depart.

"My daughter Julie, Miss Frobisher."

A young lady entered, dressed as a hospital nurse. She had an oval face, abundant glossy dark hair, that swelled out from under her bonnet, her mother's clear brown eyes, like drops of crystal water over agates, and rather thick dark eyebrows. There was strength in her build, decision in her tread. A look was sufficient. Joan knew that she would like her--indeed, she liked her instinctively already.

"Another of my audacities," said Mrs. Beaudessart. "I made Julie come with me in the hopes of getting you to meet."

"Miss Frobisher, I see, was just about to leave you, mamma," said Julie; "if she does not object, I will stroll with her for a few minutes wherever she is going."

"I am going home--I mean," with a slight flush, "to Pendabury."

"I will accompany you part of the way--if you will allow me," said the nurse.

Joan bowed. She was not desirous of company. She had no wish to extend acquaintance with more of the Beaudessart family--but she could not refuse, and she was drawn towards this girl. Moreover, the thought traversed her brain that, other schemes failing, she herself might seek means of self-support in nursing, although her sister might be unfitted for such a career.

She said, "It will be a real pleasure to me."

As the two girls passed through the gates into the park--for park the grounds might well be designated, though containing no deer--Joan glanced with a transient, and, as she felt, unworthy suspicion at her companion, to see if she were observant of the dignity of the approach to the mansion. But Julie was not looking about her--she kept her eyes on the ground.

"Have you long been engaged in nursing?" asked Joan.

"For three years--that is the time since I entered on probation in a hospital."

"Now, I presume, you will give it up?"

"Oh no! I could not do so."

"Why not? There can now be no necessity for it."

"There has been no pecuniary necessity hitherto. Our means were sufficient without my doing any work. But--there are other necessities that make the work one I cannot abandon."

"I do not comprehend."

"May I tell you a little story of my childhood?"

The clear brown eyes were turned on Joan and met hers, eyes that were limpid wells, at the bottom of which truth must lie.

"It is not much of a story. It would be better to describe it as an incident. Yet it was one that determined the whole course of my life."

"Then it was a first chapter in a story that is slowly unfolding."

"I suppose so. It is nothing in itself--except to me, and to me everything. When I was a little girl at Montreal, my bedroom was at the back of the house, and overlooked a small yard or garden, beyond which was the back of another house, with windows looking into the same yard or garden. In a room that had a window opposite was a woman dying of cancer. All night long there was a candle in her room, and it cast a reflection through my window upon the wall, a little patch of faded yellow light, yet sufficient to tell me, as I lay in bed, that there was someone sick and suffering over against me, across the yard. I did not know at first why a light was always burning in that upper room, but after a while my mother mentioned it, yet not all the particulars. These I learned from some of the maidservants. If I had spoken about the light, they would have removed me to another room, but so soon as I knew why it was there I could not have endured to be taken elsewhere. I became accustomed to lie awake thinking of the sick woman and praying for her. And then, after a while, all night long she moaned, and I could hear her moans. I doubt if she ever slept. If I did, and woke up, I heard her moans again. Sometimes during the day I went into the yard. I heard them in the day. I believe that I became white and worn from want of sleep and fretting over that woman and her terrible pains. My mother did not know what was the matter with me, and I would not tell her, lest she should insist on my removal to another apartment. I should have suffered more elsewhere, knowing that the poor creature was in pain and moaning, and I unable to hear her, and that the light was shining from her window and that I could not see it. I had many and many a cry about that suffering woman. Can you believe it? I once did a very daring thing. I went to the house, without telling my mother, and knocked and asked to be allowed to go up into the sickroom and kiss her. They would not permit me. At last she died--and the light went out."

"And that determined your vocation?" said Joan gravely.

"It did."

"It would have mine--I think--I--I hope,' said Joan. "But I have never met with any real case of great suffering. Goody Brash once swallowed a paper of pins, and she is always fussing about them, and sending for brandy, because they hurt her. They are all over her system,"

"I was a little thing of thirteen then," said Julie, "but I never have had any other thought since at the bottom of my heart, but to do all I could to help those who suffer, and to comfort those in pain. Now do you see? It matters nothing to me if my brother be rich. I must be a nurse. Do you remember what the apostle says, 'Woe is me if I preach not the gospel'? If he had cast aside his work and lapsed into lazy ways and gone into easy quarters, would he have been happy? Woe is me if I do not minister to those in anguish. Have you seen a little skiff when the wind fills the sail, and away it goes, cutting the water? It seems inspired with a life it knew not when rocking listlessly, moored to the quay. So it is with me; a breath, a wind of love swells my heart and carries me forward. I cannot help myself I must go on."

The girls walked on side by side in silence for some way. Presently Joan said--

"My sister was speaking to me, not half an hour ago, about becoming a nurse. She wished it, but I myself do not consider that she has any real call to, or aptitude for the life."

"It is with the nurse as with the priest," said Julie. "There are many quite qualified to do the hack work of the profession; but then, the nurse and the priest with a vocation, that is something other, it is a soul-absorbing, life-consuming passion, the passion of pity. If your sister be a strong, brave girl, if she has a sunny spirit, by all means let her go into the hospital wards. But to be a real nurse she must be a sister in heart, a sister to everyone whose nerves are wrung; she must weep with those who weep, and her heart must bleed with those who bleed."

"How can you be happy in such a life?"

"Happy!"

Julie turned her face on Joan, and the sunshine seemed to be in it.

"I remember," said the nurse, "reading a story of St. Patrick. He had been a slave boy keeping swine in the oak woods of Ulster in cold and nakedness. He ran away, and managed to get to France; but always he seemed to hear the cry of the little slave boys in Ireland calling to him, 'Come over and help us.'"

They had reached that point whence the house appeared in sight. Julie turned abruptly and said--

"I must go back to my mother. I am not often with her now, and when I am, I do not like to leave her side."

"I will retrace the way with you," said Joan. Both turned.

"You have met my brother, I hear," said Julie.

"Yes. How does he approve of your being a nurse?"

"Not at all. Our dear father had some old-fashioned English prejudices which he retained in the New World. Although he himself was compelled by circumstances to be in business, yet he never took to it with zest, and he was firmly resolved that Hector should not--as he termed it--soil his hands with trade. So he sent him to Eton, provided him with money, and brought him up to be, what he is, a light-hearted, gracious young man, of blameless life, and living for his pleasures. But one is not compelled to fashion one's life to suit a brother's fancies. I chose my own line. I could not do other. I find no fault with Hector; he did not hear that woman's moans. You cannot answer a call till you have been called."

Again they proceeded in silence. Presently Julie said--

"You must be sad at heart leaving this beautiful place, where you have been so happy."

"Yes, I am sorry."

Then neither spoke for a while.

"I am sorry especially," said Joan, "that I shall not now have the chance of seeing more of you."

"But," answered Julie, "I shall not be here. My home and my work are where things are not smooth and cheerful, but in a world of woes and tears."

"If"--said Joan, and ceased.

"What would you say?"

"If," she recommenced, thus encouraged, "If at any time I should cry out to you, 'Come over and help me!' will you come?"

"I give you my word."

"I shall hold you to it!" And the girls clasped hands.

Night had fallen, although the hour was but six. The sky was obscure; the line where it ended and the horizon began was smurched with lurid flames from furnace chimneys, and punctured with gas lights from windows. Here and there a disregarded heap of cinders and small coal glowed, sent forth flickers and smoked. Here and there a steam puff trailed athwart the black heavens, partially illumined from below. Here and there flashed green and red and orange lamps.

Joan descended from a train on the North Staffordshire line, that crept from station to station, sown at such short intervals that the engine was unable to get up pace between them.

Little expense had been incurred to make the station beautiful or commodious. It consisted of nothing other than two long sheds and a high-spanned covered footway from one platform to the other; and seemed designed mainly for the exhibition of advertisements of teas, baking powders, and soaps on its long, protracted boardings.

Joan issued from the station, having delivered up her ticket, and stood outside on the causeway of indented tiles. No cab was stationed there to invite a fare, no hotel 'bus was in readiness.

She had with her but a Gladstone bag.

Halting on the pavement, holding her bag, she looked along a road deep in mud, with sparse gas lamps reflecting themselves in puddles.

A few houses, stragglers from the town stretching towards the station, coal and timber and clay yards, a mean public-house, a waggon shed--these were all that were revealed by the artificial light.

There was no distant glow thrown up upon the clouds to indicate the presence of a great town. No great towers and spires visible from the station looming up against the flaring furnace lips and fire tongues, showing where was the nucleus of this busy neighbourhood.

A ragged urchin came up.

"Carry your luggage, miss?"

"How far is it into the town?"

"It's all town. What part do you want to go to?"

"The Griffin Hotel."

"All right you are. A mile and an 'arf, but there's the electric tram."

"But where is the tram?"

"Take you to it for twopence and carry yer bag."

"Very well. You shall have the twopence. How far?"

"Take yer two minutes."

The boy shouldered the bag and slouched away. Presently he turned his head and said--

"The tram'll take you right past the Griffin. Tell the chap as has yer penny to set yer down there. You'll do it bloomin' cheap, yer will, owin' to me. Threepence. If yer'd had a cab as I see'd yer squintin' about arter, it would a cost yer a bob, and the cabby 'ud a cussed and swore at yer if yer hadn't put on another sixpence, seein' yer to be an unprotected female and a stranger, and the time--night."

He led Joan to a three-cornered paved place where a road came into that from the station, and where she saw the line of rails, and by the side poles with insulators and wires.

In the midst stood a lamp-post with a flickering gas jet in it. The glass was cracked and a chip was out, allowing the wind to rush in and wanton with the flame.

"You're a bag-woman, for 'ere's yer bag," said the boy, planting Joan's luggage under the lamp and seating himself upon it. "But are yer a professional commercial traveller?"

"No, I am not quite that."

"Nobody comes 'ere but commercials. I don't see why the manerer-fact'rin' bosses don't employ young wimen to trot about with their samples. Blowed if I don't think they'd be more persuadin' by long chalks than the men--they would be with me, if good-lookin', as you are."

"You monkey," said Joan, laughing--to be addressed in this off-hand, familiar tone by a dirty street arab was to her a new experience--

"You monkey! I suppose you expect another penny for the compliment you have paid me."

"Shouldn't object; and I'll throw yer in my blessin' free, gratis, and for nothin'. I wish yer all 'appiness, and luck whatever yer takes in 'and. I couldn't do it more 'andsome. Here you are with your tram. Jump in with all yer legs, and I'll chuck the bag arter you. Driver, set my gal down at the Griffin, don't forget, or I'll withdraw my patronage."

In the tram were but two persons: a gentleman with dark moustache, bushy dark hair, and restless eyes; the other a young and pretty girl. As Joan saw at a glance, he was annoying her with his attentions. She was a modest and reserved girl, and looked with evident relief at Joan as she entered. Joan grasped the situation a moment after she had seated herself, and then changed her place and planted herself deliberately between the man and the girl he was persecuting. She looked him straight in the face, and he, muttering some remark that she did not catch, drew away.

In about ten minutes Joan descended from the car, when at once the girl followed her, and with a smile said, "I thank you."

Joan then went into an inn that was reputed to be the best in the place, but which made no efforts to assert its superiority to others, and to pretend to be of first or even second class order. She entered a narrow passage with the bar on one side and the "Commercial Room" on the other, and inhaled an atmosphere strongly impregnated with spirits. She looked about her with a feeling of bewilderment for someone to whom she might apply for accommodation.

The barmaid was conversing with a party of commercials in the inner apartment, whence flowed fumes of whisky and tobacco, and issued the clink of spoons in tumblers. She either did not notice the arrival of Joan, or did not consider it worth her while to attend to a mere woman, till she had satisfied all the requirements of the gentlemen in the inner snuggery. Presently she sauntered to the bar with careless indifference of manner, and looked coldly at Joan, then turned her head to respond to some sally from a lively bag-man, and only at last asked superciliously--

"May it please?"--

It was too much trouble to complete the question. Joan, however, readily supplied the answer.

"I shall be glad of a bedroom."

The superior young person rang a bell, and a chambermaid responded.

"Selina, number thirteen!"

Then she sped back to that bosom of conviviality, the inner bar.

The maid took Joan's bag and led the way upstairs to a small, clean bedroom, looked into the jug, and satisfied herself that there was water therein--probably of two days' standing, to judge by the film covering it, lighted a candle, and departed. The idea that hot water might be of advantage did not occur to her. However, after having left the room, she put in her head again and asked--

"A commercial?"

"I have not that honour," replied Joan, and the girl withdrew with a face that showed that Joan, by her disclaimer, had forfeited the sole claim she could have advanced to be treated with respect.

When Joan descended, after having washed her face and hands, opened her bag, and arranged her hair, she again stood in hesitation whither to go, when the maid said--

"Into the Commercial Room, if you please; there's no other sitting-room with a fire. I don't fancy there'll be any gentlemen come in, unless they be teetotallers."

"I should like some dinner," said Joan. "At what hour do you dine?"

"Dinner! Lord keep you! We dine at one o'clock; then's the ordinary."

"Well, call it supper. Can I have some?"

"Certainly; anything you please to command."

"Oh, I do not require much; I would leave it to you."

"Then I daresay we could manage a chop."

Joan seated herself by the fire, put her feet on the fender, looked among the glowing coals, and fell into a dream.

After the deference to which she had hitherto been treated, not only by the servants at Pendabury, but by the villagers, by the entire neighbourhood, by the tradesmen and shopkeepers of Lichfield, this was a strange experience. It did not offend her, it amused her. With her clear good sense she was aware that she could not expect the treatment in a strange place to which she had been accustomed at home, and that in her altered circumstances she must expect new surroundings and an altered tone of address.

She was left undisturbed for half an hour, and then the girl came in to lay the cloth at one end of the table.

About the same time a large-built commercial traveller entered, a man with a profusion of dark hair, with shaven cheeks, but a ring of moustache and beard left encircling his mouth. He seated himself at the table and expanded to fill up the entire extremity, and planted his broad fat hands upon his sturdy knees spread wide apart.

"Now then, Jenny," said he to the maid, "I want supper. I've been tootling about all day and have had no time to pick up more than a couple of sandwiches. What can you do for me, my lass? I'm famished as an ogre."

"Anything you please to ask for," responded the maid.

"Well, then, get me mulligatawny soup, a fried sole, and a little shoulder of mutton with onion sauce. For sweets"--

"Lord bless you, sir, it is past seven o'clock. I don't think it could be done. There's no fish--but we might do you a chop."

"And for sweets?"

"I daresay we could manage some bread and marmalade. What will you have to drink?"

"Two whiskies and a large soda."

"This lady is going to have the same," observed the girl.

Joan glanced up, shocked.

"Not the whiskies, please. I will take tea."

The bag-man looked hard at Joan, and asked in a courteous tone--

"I beg pardon, but are you travelling for any firm? I am in the hardware."

"I--oh dear no! That is the third time I have been asked the same question within an hour."

"No wonder. No one comes to this place except on business. There is nothing to be seen, to attract visitors. It leads to nowhere but to coal and marl pits. I am heartily glad to hear, mem, that you are not in the commercial line. The females are cutting us out everywhere, invading every business, storming every profession. There will be nothing left us men to do presently but manual labour. Our branch has hitherto remained sacred, but for how long? In Shakespeare's days no woman was on the stage, and now women delight in taking breeches parts. It is a complaint made by the men in these potteries--the women are rolling up the carpet from under their feet. If they would remain at home and mind their houses and children and cook the meals, it would be the best for all; but no, they will go into the potbanks and ruin the men. Female competition lowers the wages. If they would stick to home, the wages of the men would be higher, and the families would be in every way better off."

He would have talked further, never disrespectful, but inclined to be rather more familiar than Joan cared for in a casual acquaintance of the class.

Her supper, consisting of tea and chops, now made appearance, and as she showed no wish to pursue the conversation, the traveller retired to the bar till his meal was ready. Two small chops were displayed, then a metal cover was lifted, that had not been brightened since it left the shop where purchased; they consisted of much fat and little lean, and this latter underdone. No potatoes were introduced, but a stand of cruets was placed within Joan's reach. It contained a phial of Yorkshire relish with a bit out of the neck, and the contents, very cloudy, had certainly long ago lost all the relish the makers had given it; a mustard pot with a thick discoloured crust and dabs of the condiment on the side, also oil and pepper.

Joan's supper was hardly ended before the gentleman in the hardware line came in, simultaneously with the chops he had commanded. Joan then put on her cloak and hat, and took her umbrella, to sally forth for a stroll. She was tired, for she had had a trying day, but she was not desirous of being drawn into more intimate discourse with the traveller, and she was curious to see something, of the place to which she had come, in its night aspect.

The street was alive with people--full of animation. The shops were doing a good business, especially those of the greengrocers and butchers. Young women clustered about the drapers', dressmakers', and milliners' windows, discussing and eyeing the finery displayed.

A party of three girls, arm in arm, swept down the causeway laughing boisterously, and shouting jokes at the young men that passed, and who retaliated in the same vein. Then a band of the Salvation Army made its presence known playing a frolicsome strain, and halted at a corner, where a man addressed those on their way up and down the street, without, however, arresting their attention. The chorus of Hallelujah lasses and lanky, cadaverous-faced soldiers next brayed out a hymn of the most sacred and solemn import, whereupon the children who had congregated round roared out a ribald chorus in parody of the words of the hymn.

Joan hurried past, her gorge rising with disgust, and saw a flaring gas jet above a stall spread with almond rock, barley sugar, and peppermint sticks, the latter composed of twisted strands of rainbow hues. Around this many boys were assembled, greedily eyeing the delicacies.

Joan halted to examine their faces--some clean, but others very grimy--when one urchin looked up at her, laughed, and winking, said--

"That's my gal, as guy me threepence. Twopence for carryin' her bag and one penny for personal complerment. I say, I'm enj'yin' myself amazin' out of them pennies; that I am, just about. Look 'ere." He held up a stick of peppermint and broke it in half with his dirty hands. "I say! 'ave an 'arf? I give it you with all my 'eart, for a liberal young female you be. Take it."

"You are very good," said Joan, with a natural shrinking. "I will not deprive you of it."

"Oh, take it and welcome. It'll make it all the sweeter to me to share with you. Don't say you're too proud, and make a chap blush for your bad manners."

"I am not too proud," said Joan, smiling, and taking the proffered bit of sweetstuff. It was very sticky, and the boy found some difficulty in disengaging his fingers from it.

"Now look 'ere. Clap it into yer mouth, and let me see yer suck and enj'y it."

And Joan did as desired.

"You're a good un'," said the imp.

Then he suffered her to proceed.

A rapid turn in the street brought her into a throng of a different sort, composed of interested spectators gathered in a ring about a woman prostrate on the ground, whilst another vociferated in coarse and strident tones, and gesticulated excitedly, her brogue clearly an Irishwoman.

"The loidy gave me a black oie. Bedad, you wouldn't have me stand that, would you? So I gave the loidy back what she gave me, and wid interest. There she loies. You may pick her up now and teach her 'ow to address a loidy another time."

Joan worked her way energetically through the crowd; such a spectacle, which afforded absorbing interest to others, revolted her as 'greatly as the holy profanities of the Salvation Army.

She reached the highest point in the street--came out upon a square, or open area, irregularly shaped, from which radiated narrow streets, diving downhill, and becoming apparently dirtier and more shabby as they led away from the centre.

From the point where she stood she could look over ranges of small houses--as she judged by the lights from their windows, and above them wavered and flared the streamers of fire from the furnaces in full blast.

She stood a moment looking, observing, wondering. Then she returned to her inn, took her candle, and retired to bed.

Long into the night sounded the tramp of feet and the clatter of tongues in the street, broken now and then by the shouts of men and women quarrelling, by the disjointed strains of tipsy men in song, by the screams of bold girls, by the grind when the electric tram passed, and by the tolling of its warning bell. Verily Joan was in a world undreamt of by her at Pendabury, and in an atmosphere wholly new to her experience.

On the following morning, having had her breakfast, Joan Frobisher left the Griffin, with the purpose of finding a cottage which she could rent for herself and her sister.

After much consideration, she had come to North Staffordshire, to the pottery district, in the hopes of obtaining employment as an artist on china. She was skilful with her pencil and brush, and she had attempted painting on biscuit china, which had been subsequently fired. Some of her achievements in this department had furnished stalls at bazaars, and had even sold.

It was a moot point with her, whether to obtain employment first and take lodgings after, or to look out for and secure a house previous to making application for work. She had turned the alternatives over in her mind, and had resolved on first finding suitable quarters. Should she obtain a place in a workshop for porcelain painting, she would desire at once to enter on it, and not be then put to the difficulty of securing a habitation.

The pottery district in North Staffordshire forms a belt of seven miles in length, nowhere exceeding two in breadth; beginning with Tunstall and ending with Longton, and running from north-west to south-east. In addition to the two places above named, it comprehends as well Burslem, Hanley, and Stoke. It consists, in fact, of certain centres of shops and public buildings, with intervening tracts of streets, collieries, factories, and furnaces, and occasional intervening fields. The streets are composed of thoroughfares between dingy cottages, with volumes of smoke rolling over and frequently enveloping them. The pottery ovens rise hardly higher than the ridges of the roofs of the houses, and when they are heated, and there is some wind, then, during the forty or sixty hours of firing, the houses to leeward are involved in coils of smoke that fill every crevice with grime.

Fortunately the pottery district lies high, between five and six hundred feet above the sea, and catches every wind. This prevents the burden of coal smoke from hanging over the region in black or brown fog as in London. But it is a cheerless district, where the eyes have no objects to rest upon that produce delight. The public buildings are as though moulded out of soot, and smuts hang from their cornices as a fringe. Such trees as exist have trunks of ebony, the sheep in the pastures bear blackened fleeces, such leaves and flowers as grow--they do not flourish--soil the fingers that pluck them. The sky is never wholly blue, the water never crystal clear, the earth is heaped with refuse, the very air is never uncontaminated.

Only at night, when the banners of flame flaunt in the sky, and ten thousand lights sparkle in the habitations of men, does the country assume some pretence of picturesqueness; but then it is the picturesqueness of an Inferno. If the belt consisted of potteries alone, its dinginess would not be so considerable, but it is bordered with collieries and foundries, and tile and brick works.

Joan walked about the town, past row after row of low dwelling-houses, and noticed that they were all constructed on one pattern--at the most slightly varied. They presented to the street a face in which opened a door, with one window beside it, and in the upper storey two windows, one of which was above the door. Not a house had more than ground floor and one storey over it. None had attics above, nor gardens before them. The only attempt at these latter were facing the houses of the parson and doctor, and in each case was a failure, nothing showing therein save naked soil, or at best mangy turf.

Joan found that there were houses more commodious in the suburbs, also small, and, as far as she could judge, possessing the advantage of a lobby into which the front door opened, instead of opening immediately into the kitchen. These houses were new, and had been secured and entered into so soon as mason and plasterer had turned out.

The streets formed by these new habitations had not been paved as yet; the ruts remained formed by the waggons that had brought the bricks of which the houses were made, and the clayey soil, churned by the feet of the horses, was resolved into adhesive mud.

Joan passed huge marl pits of vast depth and circumference, craters out of which the clay had been drawn for the making of the coarser pottery for drain pipes and chimney pots. Beyond this region she got among collieries and furnaces, and consequently turned back.

The streets were well-nigh deserted. No business whatever was being transacted in the shops. Vans lumbered by conveying cases laden with earthenware, that was being taken to the railway; or waggons ascended from the canal charged with china-clay brought by water from Cornwall.

The electric tram travelled, but the car was occupied by only a stray commercial traveller. No young people were about, save the children swarming in the playground of the school, and a prodigy of piety, a converted boy of fourteen, who stood before a chapel admiring a poster twice as tall as himself, that announced he was to preach and conduct a revival on the ensuing Sabbath.

Joan gravely questioned whether it would be safe to venture on one of the bran-new houses only completed at Michaelmas. No such scruple seemed to have occurred to the minds of others, or hard necessity had driven them to risk health and life; for almost every new house was already occupied. One, indeed, she noticed with a dab of whitewash on the window pane, indicating that it was but just out of the tradesmen's hands. She ventured to the glass of the bay window and looked into the room, and saw the new plastered wall exuding drops, which here and there had run together and trickled down, leaving trails like snail-tracks.

Reluctantly she turned back from these more attractive houses, and entered the town itself, and wandered up and down its many streets, all stricken with the same monotony and the same meanness, only relieved by the long walls of some great pottery.

At last she saw a corner house, that was untenanted, and bore the ungrammatical notice in the window--"To let. Inquire next door."

The house was humble, but not out of repair, and certainly did not contain many rooms. After slight hesitation Joan tapped at the door of the adjoining cottage.

A girl opened, and before addressing her looked her critically up and down.

"What do you want here?" she asked presently.

"The house next door is to be let. It is my wish to look over it. Have you the key?"

"Yes, I have. It is just a fellow to this house, only that it is turned t'other way on. Our door is on the left hand and the window beyond that, and in. No. 16 it is right hand--that's the difference."

"But you will allow me to step within, will you not?"

"Who are you?"

"My name is Frobisher, and I am on the lookout for a small house for my sister and myself. As you see, I am in mourning. We have recently lost our father."

"Is your mother alive?"

"No; she has been dead these many years. We are left badly off, and shall have to work for our livelihood."

"What are you going to do? Take in needlework or trim bonnets? You look like a dressmaker. There's a living to be picked up that way. The girls here dress a lot."

"I cannot say what my sister may do, but I, for my part, intend to go into a pottery."

"Pottery!--potbank you mean. Come in, and sit you down. We'll talk a bit. What makes you think of going into a potbank?"

"I can paint flowers."

"Oh, on paper, maybe. It's another trick on pots."

"But I really have done a little that way."

"Now look here," said the girl--"there, take a seat. Was your father a Staffordshire potter?"

"No; he was a Staffordshire man, but he lived at some distance from this."

"Then it's no good your thinking of it. We have been brought up to it from babies. They do tell there have been potbanks here for hundreds of years, and our people been at it for generations; and the little ones take to it naturally, as ducks to water and cats to milk. But for a stranger" she shrugged her shoulders and gave a contemptuous sniff--"you'd best turn to dressmaking."

Joan looked at the girl; she had red hair, was deadly pale, with ashen lips, and her right hand was paralysed.

"You are not well, I fear," said she gently.

"I--I'm poisoned."

"Poisoned?"

"Ay, with the lead."

"How so?"

The girl looked hard at Joan.

"You're as green as a Whitsuntide gooseberry," she said. "I've been a ground-layer--that's how it came about. In time we are all poisoned. Look at my hand. It was like yours once, but it has dropped at the wrist, and I can't work with it any more. So it's up with me."

"I do not yet understand."

"Well, you are soft not to know that. There's lead in the dust, lead in the glost, and the lead gets into us through the eyes and ears and nostrils and the pores of the body; it gets into your hair; it gets into the lungs and into the blood, that turns to goulard water, and then you have the colic and are crippled with the palsy, and sometimes you die of it."

Joan looked at her with eyes dilated with horror.

"But all are not so?"

"Oh no, not all--only the ground-layers and the dippers. But then there be towers--they get the potter's asthma."

"Is there nothing to be done for you? Cannot the doctor put you to rights?"

"Me!--never get my hand to work--never. But for the rest, to drive the lead out of you, some say suck lemons.1 Lemons cost a penny a piece, and it would take five or six to make a good squash. How can I afford a couple of squashes in a day? Then others tell--drink no end of ale and get boozy on it, and it'll clear away the lead. That's what the men say as an excuse for becoming fuddled. I find it's not only the dippers that take too much beer. Others say take a pint of raw milk morning and evening. A pint of raw milk! Why, that's as much as supplies a dozen houses for their tea. And where am I to get real genuine raw milk from--a quart a day? It's got wonderful like sky-blue, the milk has, when it comes to our street. So--do you want to see No. 16? Come along then--I've got the key."

(1 It is a delusion to suppose that lemons are of use against plumbism. What is effectual is sulphuric acid, diluted. This forms with lead an insoluble salt, which is carried out of the system.

"I do wish to look at the house, for indeed I believe I shall take it. Will you mind my asking what is your name?"

"Me!--I'm Miss Myatt."

Joan smiled.

"What are you a-larfing at?" asked the pale girl, suspiciously and angrily.

"I am smiling to think of us two being next-door neighbours, and seeing one another every day, and being Miss Frobisher and Miss Myatt to one another."

"Get along, then. I'm Polly Myatt, and what be you?"

"I am Joan Frobisher."

"All right. Here's the key. Hope we shall be neighbours. I like you, though I can see with half an eye as you are not one of us."

I'll let you in," said Polly Myatt.

She led the way to the adjoining house, turned the key, and threw the door open.

"We just keep the key hard by to save trouble," she said. "But you must apply to Butcher & Co. for terms and take. This is an end house, and there was a bit of space not to be had for the others, so they gave a passage with a stair in it. But you'll have to pay extra for that--I bet my bones, old Butcher will frank you if he can."

Joan went over the little house. It needed whitewashing and fresh papering in the parlour or front kitchen, but when furnished it would serve.

"I shall take it," she said.

"Well, I'm glad to have you come by us," said Polly. "Now you'll be wanting beds and chairs and other sticks. Shall you go on the hire system or buy right out?"

"I shall buy."

"It is best in the end. I've nothing particular to do, so I'll go with you and show you where you can buy cheap. How much brass shall you spend?"

"At the outset no more than is absolutely necessary. I can add more furniture after I have found work."

"That's right--come now along with me into No. 17 and take a snapping. I've got the kettle on the hob, but I ain't got no milk."

"I shall be happy, and much obliged to you."

"Oh, there's no call for that. You'll have to pay Butcher & Co. a month in advance. They are not trusting innocents."

Joan followed her new acquaintance into No. 17. Along with freedom of speech and bluntness of manner, there was no little kindliness in the pale, red-haired girl. If the difference in the way in which she was addressed and treated startled Joan, it did not disconcert her. She knew that the manner in which she would be treated must be in accordance with that in which she met little advances made to her, and answered such as questioned her. She was wholly prepared to do her utmost to gain the good opinion of those with whom she was likely to be associated. There was a crispness in the social atmosphere that she felt was stimulating, and there was the novelty of new acquaintanceship that was interesting.

"Now you just turn this over. A hint is as good as a blow to a wise horse. If I was you and loved a quiet sleep and pleasant dreams, I would not take the front bedroom over the passage. There's a four and half brick and no more between that room and the chamber mother and father have in our house. You see father has the ovens to fire, and it's hot and trying work, tending the fires. It's not always, but just off and on, that father comes home the worse for liquor. He's lively then, and mother she lays on with her tongue, and he answers, and there's pretty games I can tell you. Well--it's p'r'aps amusing for the first hour, but you get stalled the second, and the third you'll be swearing at 'em through the four and half wall. Father's a tidy old chap in general. But we've all our little failings, and that's just what makes the difference between us and the angels."

"I cannot understand," said Joan, as she sat over the fire sipping tea, that was mainly tannin, so long had the pot been stewing on the hob, "I cannot understand why you are allowed to poison yourself. The manufacturers should not suffer it."

"Bless your boots! the thing has to be done, and someone must do it. The public will have their ware glazed and coloured, and there is now quite a run on majolica, which is worse than all. We must find them what they demand. If we do not the Germans will do so."

"But are not means taken to prevent these consequences?"

"They do what they can, but they can't do everything. In the little potbank it is worse than in those that are big. At Fenning's they have fans to carry off the dust, and they do tell me that the Government are going to insist there shall be fans everywhere. But even with fans, all is not swept away. Nigh on half of those who do the painting and gilding and ground-laying are short-sighted. We begin as kids, and with looking close at what is under our noses, it makes our eyes come so. You'll see--a lot have to wear spectacles, but a girl won't wear them unless she's forced to it. Well, that means that those who are ground-laying lean over their work, and so they get the lead into them. There are respirators. But if you breathe through them all day it is like to bring on asthma. Then we are a careless lot. They are making a fuss now about our taking our meals in the workrooms--that is what we always used to do--and in the little pot-banks I don't see how they can do any other. It isn't everywhere you can have a separate room in which the girls can get their breakfast and tea--and of course by right we should always wash our hands before eating. But some are so daring and so thoughtless, that I've known one girl as licked her hand, that was blue with dust, just out of display of bravery."

"This ought not to be allowed."

"Bless your life! you must have nurses to attend on everyone, and see that they keep to the regulations. We don't want to have that--no thank you."

"But what is this ground-laying, as you term it?"

"I'll tell you what it is. Say you have a bit of ware--a cup, or a saucer, or a vase, or a teapot--to cover with colour, all over, or, maybe, all but where there are to be flowers in gold or other colour. Well, then, we paint in the pattern first in treacle and water, and then cover all with the oil or medium. So soon as this is done, with cotton wool we take up powder-paint and dab it all over the surface, till it is completely and evenly covered. And it is in doing this that the dust flies. There is lead in the powder to fix the colours. When all is covered, then the pot is fired -- and the flowers come out white, but the ground is fast. Then next the flowers and sprays are painted in. Do you see?"

"Yes," answered Joan. "I can understand. The colour dust is an impalpable powder, and is applied by means of cotton wool. In so doing, much becomes detached, floats in the air, and by this means is absorbed."

"That is just it. They are now trying a plate of glass between the work and your eyes, but Lord love your bones! one can't manage with that for long. The dust lies on the glass so that we cannot see what we are doing, and if we wipe it there is a smear; and if you're doing piece-work, you can't spare the time to clear the plate of glass, and you must do without it; and if you do try to clear it--why, it sets the dust flying again."

"The manufacturers should refuse to produce this ground-laid ware."

"The public insists on having it, and will pay for it--better the money come to us than go to the Germans. The pay is too good for us to let that slide."

"But you're selling your very lives."

"Well, we have a short life and a jolly one."

"How old are you?"

"Going four-and-twenty."

"And I am twenty-three. We are of the same age, and see how strong and hale I am, whereas you--oh, Polly! Polly!" The tears came into Joan's eyes.

"Blazes!" exclaimed the paralysed girl; "don't look so scared. I need not have gone into the ground-laying unless I had liked."

"Then why did you do so?"

"There--I don't mind telling you. It was all along of a sealskin tippet."

"What do you mean?"

"It was so--Jessie Armstrong got a muff of seal-skin and her hat trimmed with it too--and my word and bones she was a duchess. She was setting her cap at Jack Duncalf, and thought she'd compass and captivate him with them there muff and trimmings. Jack, I had a notion, rather liked me, and I wasn't going to let Jessie carry him off just with sealskin muff and 'at. B