"I am glad to hear it; it makes a great difference."

"You see," said the lady, "our institution is merely intended to support these women in the time of want; and if we were to couple our assistance with religion we should just sink into a mothers'

meeting, and make the women think--"

"Think that you prize the soul more than the body," said Julius, as she halted in search of a word. "I understand, Cecil; you would not be in the prevailing fashion. I don't want to argue that point, only to understand about Anne."

So saying, he went at once to Anne's abode, the old schoolroom, which, like everything else belonging to Mrs. Miles Charnock, had a sad-coloured aspect, although it had been fitted up very prettily.

The light was sombre, and all the brighter pictures and ornaments seemed to have been effaced by a whole gallery of amateur photographs, in which the glories of the African bush were represented by brown masses of shade variegated by blotches of white. Even in Miles's own portrait on the table, the gold seemed overwhelmed by the dark blue; and even as Julius entered, she shut it up in its brown case, as too sacred for even his brother's eyes.

However, a flush of pleasure came to her pale face at the invitation to take a class, and to read to a good old woman, whom in his secret soul he thought so nearly a dissenter, that she could not be made more so. She promised her help with some eagerness for as long as she should remain in England, and accepted the books he gave her without protest. Nay, that same evening she took Jenny off into her gray abode, to consult her whether, since she must now join the early breakfast, she could go to daily service without becoming formal.

She even recurred to her question, whether Julius was a Christian, without nearly as much negation in her tones as before; and Jenny, taking it as it was meant, vouched for his piety, so as might render it a little more comprehensible to one matured on Scottish Calvinism and English Methodism, diluted in devout undogmatic minds, with no principle more developed than horror of Popery and of worldliness.

Turned loose in solitude, reserve, and sadness, on her husband's family, who did nothing but shock her with manifestations of the latter, she could hardly turn even to the clerical portion of it, while Julius, as well as his curates, bore all the tokens by which she had been taught to know a Papist. Daily intercourse was perhaps drawing her a little towards her brother-in-law; but Herbert Bowater united these obnoxious externals to a careless tongue, and joyous easy-going manner, and taste for amusement, which so horrified Anne, that she once condoled with his sister, and proposed to unite in prayer for his conversion; but this was more than Joanna could bear, and she cried, "I only wish I were as good a Christian as dear Herbert!"

For indeed, the sister's heart intensely esteemed his sweetness, honesty, and simplicity, even while she found it an uphill task to coax him to steady work. After that first morning he was indeed ashamed to let her see the proportion between his pastoral visits and his theological reading; but the newspapers (he had two or three weekly ones) had a curious facility of expansion, and there was a perilous sound in "I'll just see where the meet is,"--not that he had the most distant idea of repairing thither; it was pure filial interest in learning where his father and Edith would be.

Jenny could not tell whether her presence conduced to diligence or to chatter, but he minded her more than any one else, and always stuck close to her, insisting on her admiring all his proteges.

There was one with whom he was certainly doing a work, which, as Julius truly said, no one more clerical could have done so well-- namely, the son of his landlady, a youth who held a small clerkship in an office at Willansborough, and who had fallen this year under the attraction of the Backsworth races, so as to get into serious difficulties with his master, and narrowly escape dismissal for the sake of his mother.

The exceeding good-nature and muscular Christian side of the lodger's character was having a most happy effect on the lad. He had set up a regular hero-worship, which Herbert encouraged by always calling for him when going to the choral practices, getting him into the choir, lending him books, and inviting him to read in his room in the evening. How much they played with the dogs was not known; but at any rate, Harry Hornblower was out of mischief, and his mother was so grateful to Mr. Bowater, that she even went the length of preferring his sermons to those of both his seniors.

The discovery that most vexed Jenny was that Sirenwood had so much of his time. He seemed to be asked to come to dinner whenever Sir Harry saw him, or a chair was left vacant at a party; and though his Rector was inexorable as to releasing him on casual notice from the parish avocations of three nights in the week, the effect was grumbling as savage as was possible from so good-humoured a being; and now and then a regular absence without leave, and a double growl at the consequent displeasure. It was true that in ten minutes he was as hearty and friendly as ever to his colleagues, but that might be only a proof of his disregard of their reproofs, and their small effect.

Eleonora Vivian was not the attraction. No; Herbert thought her a proud, silent, disagreeable girl, and could see no beauty in her; but he had a boy's passion for the matured splendour of her sister's beauty; and she was so kind to him!

What could Jenny mean by looking glum about it? She was stunningly good, and all that. She had done no end of good with clubs and mothers' meetings at her married home; and it was no end of a pity she was not in Compton parish, instead of under poor wretched old Fuller, whom you could not stir--no, not if you tied a firebrand to his tail.

CHAPTER XIII Withered Leaves and Fresh Buds

Lady Rosamond and Joanna Bowater could not fail to be good friends; Herbert was a great bond of union, and so was Mrs. Poynsett.

Rosamond found it hard to recover from the rejection of her scheme of the wheeled-chair, and begged Jenny to become its advocate; but Mrs. Poynsett listened with a smile of the unpromising kind--"You too, Jenny?"

"Why not, dear Mrs. Poynsett? How nice it would be to see you in your own corner again!"

"I don't think my own corner remains."

"Oh! but it could be restored at once."

"Do you think so? No, no, Jenny my dear; cracked china is better left on the shelf out of the way, even if it could bear the move, which it can't."

Then Jenny understood, and advised Rosamond to bide her time, and wait till the session of parliament, when the house would be quieter; and Rosamond nodded and held her peace.

The only person who held aloof was Cecil, who would not rise to the bait when Raymond tried to exhibit Miss Bowater as a superior intellectual woman.

Unluckily, too, Jenny observed one evening at the five o'clock tea, "I hear that Mrs. Duncombe has picked up some very funny people--a lady lecturer, who is coming to set us all to rights."

"A wonderful pair, I hear!" said Frank. "Mrs. Clio Tallboys, she calls herself, and a poor little husband, whom she carries about to show the superiority of her sex."

"A Cambridge professor and a great political economist!" observed Cecil, in a low but indignant voice.

"The Yankee Cambridge!" quoth Frank.

"The American Cambridge is a distinguished university," returned Cecil.

"Cecil is right, Master Frank," laughed his mother; "Cam and Isis are not the only streams of learning in the world."

"I never heard of him," said Jenny; "he is a mere satellite to the great luminary."

"They are worth seeing," added Frank; "she is one of those regular American beauties one would pay to get a sight of."

"Where did you get all this information?" asked Cecil.

"From Duncombe himself. They met on the Righi; and nothing is more comical than to near him describe the ladies' fraternization over female doctors and lawyers, till they rushed into each other's arms, and the Clio promised to come down on a crusade and convert you all."

"There are two ways of telling a story," said Cecil.

"No wonder the gentlemen quake!" said Mrs. Poynsett.

"I don't," said Frank, boyishly.

"Because you've no wife to take you in hand," retorted Jenny.

"For my part," said Mrs. Poynsett, "I can't see what women want. I have always had as many rights as I could exercise."

"Ah! but we are not all ladies of the manor," said Jenny, "nor do we all drive coaches."

"I observe," said Cecil, with dignity, "that there is supposed to be a license to laugh at Mrs. Duncombe and whatever she does."

"She would do better to mind her children," said Frank.

"Children! Has she children?" broke in Anne and Rosamond, both at once.

"Didn't you know it?" said Jenny.

"No, indeed! I didn't think her the sort of woman," said Rosamond.

"What does she do with them?"

"Drops them in the gutter," said Frank. "Literally, as I came home, I heard a squeak, and found a child flat in a little watercourse. I picked it out, and the elder one told me it was Ducky Duncombe, or some such word. Its little boots had holes in them, mother; its legs were purple, and there was a fine smart foreign woman flirting round the corner with young Hornblower."

"Boys with long red hair, and Highland dresses?" exclaimed Rosamond.

"Yes, the same we saw with Miss Vivian!"

"Exactly!" said Frank, eagerly. "She is quite a mother to those poor little wretches; they watch for her at the Sirenwood gate, and she walks with them. The boy's cry was not for mother or nurse, but for Lena!"

"Pray, did she come at his call?"