HARD CASH

By Charles Reade

[Transcriber's Note: The pound sign is indicated by L. No attempt has been made to transcribe Greek text or sheet music. Accent marks in foreign words are ignored. Two chapters named Chapter XLI.]

CONTENTS

[ PREFACE ]

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PREFACE

“HARD CASH,” like “The Cloister and the Hearth,” is a matter-of-fact Romance—that is, a fiction built on truths; and these truths have been gathered by long, severe, systematic labour, from a multitude of volumes, pamphlets, journals, reports, blue-books, manuscript narratives, letters, and living people, whom I have sought out, examined, and cross-examined, to get at the truth on each main topic I have striven to handle.

The madhouse scenes have been picked out by certain disinterested gentlemen, who keep private asylums, and periodicals to puff them; and have been met with bold denials of public facts, and with timid personalities, and a little easy cant about Sensation* Novelists; but in reality those passages have been written on the same system as the nautical, legal, and other scenes: the best evidence has been ransacked; and a large portion of this evidence I shall be happy to show at my house to any brother writer who is disinterested, and really cares enough for truth and humanity to walk or ride a mile in pursuit of them.

CHARLES READE.
6 BOLTON ROW, MAYFAIR,
December 5, 1868.

* This slang term is not quite accurate as applied to me.
Without sensation there can be no interest: but my plan is
to mix a little character and a little philosophy with the
sensational element.

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HARD CASH

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PROLOGUE

IN a snowy villa, with a sloping lawn, just outside the great commercial seaport, Barkington, there lived a few years ago a happy family. A lady, middle-aged, but still charming; two young friends of hers; and a periodical visitor.

The lady was Mrs. Dodd; her occasional visitor was her husband; her friends were her son Edward, aged twenty, and her daughter Julia, nineteen, the fruit of a misalliance.

Mrs. Dodd was originally Miss Fountain, a young lady well born, high bred, and a denizen of the fashionable world. Under a strange concurrence of circumstances she coolly married the captain of an East Indiaman. The deed done, and with her eyes open, for she was not, to say, in love with him, she took a judicious line—and kept it: no hankering after Mayfair, no talking about “Lord this” and “Lady that,” to commercial gentlewomen; no amphibiousness. She accepted her place in society, reserving the right to embellish it with the graces she had gathered in a higher sphere. In her home, and in her person, she was little less elegant than a countess; yet nothing more than a merchant-captain's wife; and she reared that commander's children in a suburban villa, with the manners which adorn a palace. When they happen to be there. She had a bugbear; Slang. Could not endure the smart technicalities current; their multitude did not overpower her distaste; she called them “jargon”—“slang” was too coarse a word for her to apply to slang: she excluded many a good “racy idiom” along with the real offenders; and monosyllables in general ran some risk of' having to show their passports. If this was pedantry, it went no further; she was open, free, and youthful with her young pupils; and had the art to put herself on their level: often, when they were quite young, she would feign infantine ignorance, in order to hunt trite truth in couples with them, and detect, by joint experiment, that rainbows cannot, or else will not, be walked into, nor Jack-o'-lantern be gathered like a cowslip; and that, dissect we the vocal dog—whose hair is so like a lamb's—never so skilfully, no fragment of palpable bark, no sediment of tangible squeak, remains inside him to bless the inquisitive little operator, &c., &c. When they advanced from these elementary branches to Languages, History, Tapestry, and “What Not,” she managed still to keep by their side learning with them, not just hearing them lessons down from the top of a high tower of maternity. She never checked their curiosity, but made herself share it; never gave them, as so many parents do, a white-lying answer; wooed their affections with subtle though innocent art, thawed their reserve, obtained their love, and retained their respect. Briefly, a female Chesterfield; her husband's lover after marriage, though not before; and the mild monitress the elder sister, the favourite companion and bosom friend of both her children.

They were remarkably dissimilar; and perhaps I may be allowed to preface the narrative of their adventures by a delineation; as in country churches an individual pipes the keynote, and the tune comes raging after.

Edward, then, had a great calm eye, that was always looking folk full in the face, mildly; his countenance comely and manly, but no more; too square for Apollo; but sufficed for John Bull. His figure it was that charmed the curious observer of male beauty. He was five feet ten; had square shoulders, a deep chest, masculine flank, small foot, high instep. To crown all this, a head, overflowed by ripples of dark brown hair, sat with heroic grace upon his solid white throat, like some glossy falcon new lighted on a Parian column.

This young gentleman had decided qualities, positive and negative. He could walk up to a five-barred gate and clear it, alighting on the other side like a fallen feather; could row all day, and then dance all night; could fling a cricket ball a hundred and six yards; had a lathe and a tool-box, and would make you in a trice a chair, a table, a doll, a nutcracker, or any other moveable, useful, or the very reverse. And could not learn his lessons, to save his life.

His sister Julia was not so easy to describe. Her figure was tall, lithe, and serpentine; her hair the colour of a horse-chestnut fresh from its pod; her ears tiny and shell-like, her eyelashes long and silky; her mouth small when grave, large when smiling; her eyes pure hazel by day, and tinged with a little violet by night. But in jotting down these details, true as they are, I seem to myself to be painting fire, with a little snow and saffron mixed on a marble pallet. There is a beauty too spiritual to be chained in a string of items; and Julia's fair features were but the china vessel that brimmed over with the higher loveliness of her soul. Her essential charm was, what shall I say? Transparence.

“You would have said her very body thought.”

Modesty, Intelligence, and, above all, Enthusiasm, shone through her, and out of her, and made her an airy, fiery, household joy. Briefly, an incarnate sunbeam.

This one could learn her lessons with unreasonable rapidity, and until Edward went to Eton, would insist upon learning his into the bargain, partly with the fond notion of coaxing him on, as the company of a swift horse incites a slow one; partly because she was determined to share his every trouble, if she could not remove it. A little choleric, and indeed downright prone to that more generous indignation which fires at the wrongs of others. When heated with emotion, or sentiment, she lowered her voice, instead of raising it like the rest of us. She called her mother “Lady Placid,” and her brother “Sir Imperturbable.” And so much for outlines.

Mrs. Dodd laid aside her personal ambition with her maiden name; but she looked high for her children. Perhaps she was all the more ambitious for them, that they had no rival aspirant in Mrs. Dodd. She educated Julia herself from first to last: but with true feminine distrust of her power to mould a lordling of creation, she sent Edward to Eton, at nine. This was slackening her tortoise; for at Eton is no female master, to coax dry knowledge into a slow head. However, he made good progress in two branches—aquatics and cricket.

After Eton came the choice of a profession. His mother recognised but four; and these her discreet ambition speedily sifted down to two. For military heroes are shot now and then, however pacific the century; and naval ones drowned. She would never expose her Edward to this class of accidents. Glory by all means; glory by the pail; but safe glory, please; or she would none of it. Remained the church and the bar: and, within these reasonable limits, she left her dear boy free as air; and not even hurried—there was plenty of time to choose: he must pass through the university to either. This last essential had been settled about a twelvemonth, and the very day for his going to Oxford was at hand, when one morning Mr. Edward formally cleared his throat: it was an unusual act, and drew the ladies' eyes upon him. He followed the solemnity up by delivering calmly and ponderously a connected discourse, which astonished them by its length and purport. “Mamma, dear, let us look the thing in the face.” (This was his favourite expression, as well as habit.) “I have been thinking it quietly over for the last six months. Why send me to the university? I shall be out of place there. It will cost you a lot of money, and no good. Now, you take a fool's advice; don't you waste your money and papa's, sending a dull fellow like me to Oxford. I did bad enough at Eton. Make me an engineer, or something. If you were not so fond of me, and I of you, I'd say send me to Canada, with a pickaxe; you know I have got no headpiece.”

Mrs. Dodd had sat aghast, casting Edward deprecating looks at the close of each ponderous sentence, but too polite to interrupt a soul, even a son talking nonsense. She now assured him she could afford very well to send him to Oxford, and begged leave to remind him that he was too good and too sensible to run up bills there, like the young men who did not really love their parents. “Then, as for learning, why, we must be reasonable in our turn. Do the best you can, love. We know you have no great turn for the classics; we do not expect you to take high honours like young Mr. Hardie; besides, that might make your head ache: he has sad headaches, his sister told Julia. But, my dear, an university education is indispensable Do but see how the signs of it follow a gentleman through life, to say nothing of the valuable acquaintances and lasting friendships he makes there: even those few distinguished persons who have risen in the would without it, have openly regretted the want, and have sent their children: and that says volumes to me.”

“Why, Edward, it is the hall-mark of a gentleman,” said Julia eagerly. Mrs. Dodd caught a flash of her daughter: “And my silver shall never be without it,” said she warmly. She added presently, in her usual placid tone, “I beg your pardon, my dears, I ought to have said my gold.” With this she kissed Edward tenderly on the brow, and drew an embrace and a little grunt of resignation from him. “Take the dear boy and show him our purchases, love!” said Mrs. Dodd, with a little gentle accent of half reproach, scarce perceptible to a male ear.

“Oh, yes,” and Julia rose and tripped to the door. There she stood a moment, half turned, with arching neck, colouring with innocent pleasure. “Come, darling. Oh, you good-for-nothing thing.”

The pair found a little room hard by, paved with china, crockery, glass, baths, kettles, &c.

“There, sir. Look them in the face; and us, if you can.”

“Well, you know, I had no idea you had been and bought a cart-load of things for Oxford.” His eye brightened; he whipped out a two-foot rule, and began to calculate the cubic contents. “I'll turn to and make the cases, Ju.”

The ladies had their way; the cases were made and despatched; and one morning the Bus came for Edward, and stopped at the gate of Albion Villa. At this sight mother and daughter both turned their heads quickly away by one independent impulse, and set a bad example. Apparently neither of them had calculated on this paltry little detail; they were game for theoretical departures; to impalpable universities: and “an air-drawn Bus, a Bus of the mind,” would not have dejected for a moment their lofty Spartan souls on glory bent; safe glory. But here was a Bus of wood, and Edward going bodily away inside it. The victim kissed them, threw up his portmanteau and bag, and departed serene as Italian skies; the victors watched the pitiless Bus quite out of sight; then went up to his bedroom, all disordered by packing, and, on the very face of it, vacant; and sat down on his little bed intertwining and weeping.

Edward was received at Exeter College, as young gentlemen are received at college; and nowhere else, I hope, for the credit of Christendom. They showed him a hole in the roof, and called it an “Attic;” grim pleasantry! being a puncture in the modern Athens. They inserted him; told him what hour at the top of the morning he must be in chapel; and left him to find out his other ills. His cases were welcomed like Christians, by the whole staircase. These undergraduates abused one another's crockery as their own: the joint stock of breakables had just dwindled very low, and Mrs. Dodd's bountiful contribution was a godsend.

The new comer soon found that his views of a learned university had been narrow. Out of place in it? why, he could not have taken his wares to a better market; the modern Athens, like the ancient, cultivates muscle as well as mind. The captain of the university eleven saw a cricket-ball thrown all across the ground; he instantly sent a professional bowler to find out who that was; through the same ambassador the thrower was invited to play on club days; and proving himself an infallible catch and long-stop, a mighty thrower, a swift runner, and a steady, though not very brilliant bat, he was, after one or two repulses, actually adopted into the university eleven. He communicated this ray of glory by letter to his mother and sister with genuine delight, coldly and clumsily expressed; they replied with feigned and fluent rapture. Advancing steadily in that line of academic study towards which his genius lay, he won a hurdle race, and sent home a little silver hurdle; and soon after brought a pewter pot, with a Latin inscription recording the victory at “Fives” of Edward Dodd: but not too arrogantly; for in the centre of the pot was this device, “The Lord Is My Illumination.” The Curate of Sandford, who pulled number six in the Exeter boat, left Sandford for Witney: on this he felt he could no longer do his college justice by water, and his parish by land, nor escape the charge of pluralism, preaching at Witney and rowing at Oxford. He fluctuated, sighed, kept his Witney, and laid down his oar. Then Edward was solemnly weighed in his jersey and flannel trousers, and proving only eleven stone eight, whereas he had been ungenerously suspected of twelve stone,* was elected to the vacant oar by acclamation. He was a picture in a boat; and, “Oh!!! well pulled, six!!” was a hearty ejaculation constantly hurled at him from the bank by many men of other colleges, and even by the more genial among the cads, as the Exeter glided at ease down the river, or shot up it in a race.

*There was at this time a prejudice against weight, which
has yielded to experience

He was now as much talked of in the university as any man of his college, except one. Singularly enough that one was his townsman; but no friend of his; he was much Edward's senior in standing, though not in age; and this is a barrier the junior must not step over—without direct encouragement—at Oxford. Moreover, the college was a large one, and some of “the sets” very exclusive: young Hardie was Doge of a studious clique; and careful to make it understood that he was a reading man who boated and cricketed, to avoid the fatigue of lounging; not a boatman or cricketer who strayed into Aristotle in the intervals of Perspiration.

His public running since he left Harrow was as follows: the prize poem in his fourth term; the sculls in his sixth; the Ireland scholarship in his eighth (he pulled second for it the year before); Stroke of the Exeter in his tenth; and reckoned sure of a first class to consummate his twofold career.

To this young Apollo, crowned with variegated laurel, Edward looked up from a distance. The brilliant creature never bestowed a word on him by land; and by water only such observations as the following: “Time, Six!” “Well pulled, Six!” “Very well pulled, Six!” Except, by-the-bye, one race; when he swore at him like a trooper for not being quicker at starting. The excitement of nearly being bumped by Brasenose in the first hundred yards was an excuse. However, Hardie apologised as they were dressing in the barge after the race; but the apology was so stiff, it did not pave the way to an acquaintance.

Young Hardie, rising twenty-one, thought nothing human worthy of reverence, but Intellect. Invited to dinner, on the same day, with the Emperor of Russia, and with Voltaire, and with meek St. John, he would certainly have told the coachman to put him down at Voltaire.

His quick eye detected Edward's character; but was not attracted by it: says he to one of his adherents, “What a good-natured spoon that Dodd is; Phoebus, what a name!” Edward, on the other hand, praised this brilliant in all his letters, and recorded his triumphs and such of his witty sayings as leaked through his own set, to reinvigorate mankind. This roused Julia's ire. It smouldered through three letters; but burst out when there was no letter; but Mrs. Dodd, meaning, Heaven knows, no harm, happened to say meekly, a propos of Edward, “You know, love, we cannot all be young Hardies.” “No, and thank Heaven,” said Julia defiantly. “Yes, mamma,” she continued, in answer to Mrs. Dodd's eyebrow, which had curved; “your mild glance reads my soul; I detest that boy.” Mrs. Dodd smiled: “Are you sure you know what the word 'detest' means? And what has young Mr. Hardie done, that you should bestow so violent a sentiment on him?”

“Mamma, I am Edward's sister,” was the tragic reply; then, kicking off the buskin pretty nimbly, “There! he beats our boy at everything, and ours sits quietly down and admires him for it: oh! how can a man let anybody or anything beat him! I wouldn't; without a desperate struggle.” She clenched her white teeth and imagined the struggle. To be sure, she owned she had never seen this Mr. Hardie; but after all it was only Jane Hardie's brother, as Edward was hers; “And would I sit down and let Jane beat me at Things? Never! never! never! I couldn't.”

“Your friend to the death, dear; was not that your expression?”

“Oh, that was a slip of the tongue, dear mamma; I was off my guard. I generally am, by the way. But now I am on it, and propose an amendment. Now I second it. Now I carry it.”

“And now let me hear it.”

“She is my friend till death—or Eclipse; and that means until she eclipses me, of course.” But she added softly, and with sudden gravity: “Ah! Jane Hardie has a fault which will always prevent her from eclipsing your humble servant in this wicked world.”

“What is that?”

“She is too good. Much.”

“Par exemple?”

“Too religious.”

“Oh, that is another matter.”

“For shame, mamma! I am glad to hear it: for I scorn a life of frivolity; but then, again, I should not like to give up everything, you know.” Mrs. Dodd looked a little staggered, too, at so vast a scheme of capitulation. But “everything” was soon explained to mean balls, concerts, dinner-parties in general, tea-parties without exposition of Scripture, races, and operas, cards, charades, and whatever else amuses society without perceptibly sanctifying it. All these, by Julia's account, Miss Hardie had renounced, and was now denouncing (with the young the latter verb treads on the very heels of the former). “And, you know, she is a district visitor.”

This climax delivered, Julia stopped short, and awaited the result.

Mrs. Dodd heard it all with quiet disapproval and cool incredulity. She had seen so many young ladies healed of many young enthusiasms by a wedding ring. But, while she was searching diligently in her mine of ladylike English—mine with plenty of water in it, begging her pardon—for expressions to convey inoffensively, and roundabout, her conviction that Miss Hardie was a little, furious simpleton, the post came and swept the subject away in a moment.

Two letters; one from Calcutta, one from Oxford.

They came quietly in upon one salver, and were opened and read with pleasurable interest, but without surprise, or misgiving; and without the slightest foretaste of their grave amid singular consequences.

Rivers deep and broad start from such little springs.

David's letter was of unusual length for him. The main topics were, first, the date and manner of his return home. His ship, a very old one, had been condemned in port: and he was to sail a fine new teak-built vessel, the Agra, as far as the Cape; where her captain, just recovered from a severe illness, would come on board, and convey her and him to England. In future, Dodd was to command one of the Company's large steamers to Alexandria and back.

“It is rather a come-down for a sailor, to go straight ahead like a wheelbarrow in all weathers with a steam-pot and a crew of coalheavers. But then I shall not be parted from my sweetheart such long dreary spells as I have been thus twenty years, my dear love: so is it for me to complain?”

The second topic was pecuniary; the transfer of their savings from India, where interest was higher than at home, but the capital not so secure.

And the third was ardent and tender expressions of affection for the wife and children he adored. These effusions of the heart had no separate place, except in my somewhat arbitrary analysis of the honest sailor's letter; they were the under current. Mrs. Dodd read part of it out to Julia; in fact all but the money matter: that concerned the heads of the family more immediately; and Cash was a topic her daughter did not understand, nor care about. And when Mrs. Dodd had read it with glistening eyes, she kissed it tenderly, and read it all over again to herself, and then put it into her bosom as naively as a milkmaid in love.

Edward's letter was short enough, and Mrs. Dodd allowed Julia to read it to her, which she did with panting breath, and glowing cheeks, and a running fire of comments.

“'Dear Mamma, I hope you and Ju are quite well——'”

“Ju,” murmured Mrs. Dodd plaintively.

“'And that there is good news about papa coming home. As for me, I have plenty on my hands just now; all this term I have been ('training' scratched out, and another word put in: C — R — oh, I know) 'cramming.'”

“'Cramming,' love?”

“Yes, that is the Oxfordish for studying.”

“'—For smalls.'”

Mrs. Dodd contrived to sigh interrogatively. Julia, who understood her every accent, reminded her that “smalls” was the new word for “little go.”

“'—Cramming for smalls; and now I am in two races at Henley, and that rather puts the snaffie on reading and gooseberry pie' (Goodness me), 'and adds to my chance of being ploughed for smalls.'”

“What does it all mean?” inquired mamma, “'gooseberry pie'? and 'the snaffle'? and 'ploughed'?”

“Well, the gooseberry pie is really too deep for me: but 'ploughed' is the new Oxfordish for 'plucked.' O mamma, have you forgotten that? 'Plucked' was vulgar, so now they are 'ploughed.' 'For smalls; but I hope I shall not be, to vex you and Puss.'”

“Heaven forbid he should be so disgraced! But what has the cat to do with it?”

“Nothing on earth. Puss? that is me. How dare he? Did I not forbid all these nicknames and all this Oxfordish, by proclamation, last Long.”

“Last Long?”

“Hem! last protracted vacation.”

“'—Dear mamma, sometimes I cannot help being down in the mouth,' (why, it is a string of pearls) 'to think you have not got a son like Hardie.'” At this unfortunate reflection it was Julia's turn to suffer. She deposited the letter in her lap, and fired up. “Now, have not I cause to hate, and scorn, and despise le petit Hardie?”

“Julia!”

“I mean to dislike with propriety, and gently to abominate—Mr. Hardie, junior.”

“'—Dear mamma, do come to Henley on the tenth, you and Ju. The university eights will not be there, but the head boats of the Oxford and Cambridge river will; and the Oxford head boat is Exeter, you know; and I pull Six.'”

“Then I am truly sorry to hear it; my poor boy will overtask his strength; and how unfair of the other young gentlemen; it seems ungenerous; unreasonable; my poor child against so many.”

“'—And I am entered for the sculls as well, and if you and “the Impetuosity”' (Vengeance!) 'were looking on from the bank, I do think I should be lucky this time. Henley is a long way from Barkington, but it is a pretty place; all the ladies admire it, and like to see both the universities out and a stunning race.' Oh, well, there is an epithet. One would think thunder was going to race lightning, instead of Oxford Cambridge.”

“'—If you can come, please write, and I will get you nice lodgings; I will not let you go to a noisy inn. Love to Julia and no end of kisses to my pretty mamma. —From your affectionate Son,

“'EDWARD DODD.'”

They wrote off a cordial assent, and reached Henley in time to see the dullest town in Europe; and also to see it turn one of the gayest in an hour or two; so impetuously came both the universities pouring into it—in all known vehicles that could go their pace—by land and water.

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CHAPTER I

IT was a bright hot day in June. Mrs. Dodd and Julia sat half reclining, with their parasols up, in an open carriage, by the brink of the Thames at one of its loveliest bends.

About a furlong up stream a silvery stone bridge, just mellowed by time, spanned the river with many fair arches. Through these the coming river peeped sparkling a long way above, then came meandering and shining down; loitered cool and sombre under the dark vaults, then glistened on again crookedly to the spot where sat its two fairest visitors that day; but at that very point flung off its serpentine habits, and shot straight away in a broad stream of scintillating water a mile long, down to an island in mid-stream: a little fairy island with old trees, and a white temple. To curl round this fairy isle the broad current parted, and both silver streams turned purple in the shade of the grove; then winded and melted from the sight.

This noble and rare passage of the silvery Thames was the Henley racecourse. The starting-place was down at the island, and the goal was up at a point in the river below the bridge, but above the bend where Mrs. Dodd and Julia sat, unruffled by the racing, and enjoying luxuriously the glorious stream, the mellow bridge crowded with carriages—whose fair occupants stretched a broad band of bright colour above the dark figures clustering on the battlements—and the green meadows opposite with the motley crowd streaming up and down.

Nor was that sense, which seems especially keen and delicate in women, left unregaled in the general bounty of the time. The green meadows on the opposite bank, and the gardens at the back of our fair friends, flung their sweet fresh odours at their liquid benefactor gliding by; and the sun himself seemed to burn perfumes, and the air to scatter them, over the motley merry crowd, that bright, hot, smiling, airy day in June.

Thus tuned to gentle enjoyment, the fair mother and her lovely daughter leaned back in a delicious languor proper to their sex, and eyed with unflagging though demure interest, and furtive curiosity, the wealth of youth, beauty, stature, agility, gaiety, and good temper, the two great universities had poured out upon those obscure banks; all dressed in neat but easy-fitting clothes, cut in the height of' the fashion; or else in jerseys white or striped, and flannel trousers, and straw hats, or cloth caps of bright and various hues; betting, strolling, laughing, chaffing, larking, and whirling stunted bludgeons at Aunt Sally.

But as for the sport itself they were there to see, the center of all these bright accessories, “The Racing,” my ladies did not understand it, nor try, nor care a hook-and-eye about it. But this mild dignified indifference to the main event received a shock at 2 p. m.: for then the first heat for the cup came on, and Edward was in it. So then Racing became all in a moment a most interesting pastime—an appendage to Loving. He left to join his crew. And, soon after, the Exeter glided down the river before their eyes, with the beloved one rowing quietly in it: his jersey revealed not only the working power of his arms, as sunburnt below the elbow as a gipsy's, and as corded above as a blacksmith's, but also the play of the great muscles across his broad and deeply indented chest: his oar entered the water smoothly, gripped it severely, then came out clean, and feathered clear and tunably on the ringing rowlock: the boat jumped and then glided, at each neat, easy, powerful stroke. “Oh, how beautiful and strong he is!” cried Julia. “I had no idea.”

Presently the competitor for this heat came down: the Cambridge boat, rowed by a fine crew in broad-striped jerseys. “Oh, dear” said Julia, “they are odious and strong in this boat too. I wish I was in it—with a gimlet; he should win, poor boy.”

Which corkscrew staircase to Honour being inaccessible, the race had to be decided by two unfeminine trifles called “Speed” and “Bottom.”

Few things in this vale of tears are more worthy a pen of fire than an English boat-race is, as seen by the runners; of whom I have often been one. But this race I am bound to indicate, not describe; I mean, to show how it appeared to two ladies seated on the Henley side of the Thames, nearly opposite the winning-post. These fair novices then looked all down the river, and could just discern two whitish streaks on the water, one on each side the little fairy isle, and a great black patch on the Berkshire bank. The threatening streaks were the two racing boats: the black patch was about a hundred Cambridge and Oxford men, ready to run and hallo with the boats all the way, or at least till the last puff of wind should be run plus halloed out of their young bodies. Others less fleet and enduring, but equally clamorous, stood in knots at various distances, ripe for a shorter yell and run when the boats should come up to them. Of the natives and country visitors, those who were not nailed down by bounteous Fate ebbed and flowed up and down the bank, with no settled idea but of getting in the way as much as possible, and of getting knocked into the Thames as little as might be.

There was a long uneasy suspense.

At last a puff of smoke issued from a pistol down at the island; two oars seemed to splash into the water from each white streak; and the black patch was moving; so were the threatening streaks. Presently was heard a faint, continuous, distant murmur, and the streaks began to get larger, and larger, and larger; and the eight splashing oars looked four instead of two.

Every head was now turned down the river. Groups hung craning over it like nodding bulrushes.

Next the runners were swelled by the stragglers they picked up; so were their voices; and on came the splashing oars and roaring lungs.

Now the colours of the racing jerseys peeped distinct. The oarsmen's heads and bodies came swinging back like one, and the oars seemed to lash the water savagely, like a connected row of swords, and the spray squirted at each vicious stroke. The boats leaped and darted side by side, and, looking at them in front, Julia could not say which was ahead. On they came nearer and nearer, with hundreds of voices vociferating “Go it, Cambridge” “Well pulled, Oxford!” “You are gaining, hurrah!” “Well pulled Trinity!” “Hurrah!” “Oxford!” “Cambridge!” “Now is your time, Hardie; pick her up!” “Oh, well pulled, Six!” “Well pulled, Stroke!” “Up, up! lift her a bit!” “Cambridge!” “Oxford!” “Hurrah!”

At this Julia turned red and pale by turns. “O mamma!” said she, clasping her hands and colouring high, “would it be very wrong if I was to pray for Oxford to win?”

Mrs. Dodd had a monitory finger; it was on her left hand; she raised it; and that moment, as if she had given a signal, the boats, fore-shortened no longer, shot out to treble the length they had looked hitherto, and came broadside past our palpitating fair, the elastic rowers stretched like greyhounds in a chase, darting forward at each stroke so boldly they seemed flying out of the boats, and surging back as superbly, an eightfold human wave: their nostrils all open, the lips of some pale and glutinous, their white teeth all clenched grimly, their young eyes all glowing, their supple bodies swelling, the muscles writhing beneath their jerseys, and the sinews starting on each bare brown arm; their little shrill coxswains shouting imperiously at the young giants, and working to and fro with them, like jockeys at a finish; nine souls and bodies flung whole into each magnificent effort; water foaming and flying, rowlocks ringing, crowd running, tumbling, and howling like mad; and Cambridge a boat's nose ahead.

They had scarcely passed our two spectators, when Oxford put on a furious spurt, and got fully even with the leading boat. There was a louder roar than ever from the bank. Cambridge spurted desperately in turn, and stole those few feet back; and so they went fighting every inch of water. Bang! A cannon on the bank sent its smoke over both competitors; it dispersed in a moment, and the boats were seen pulling slowly towards the bridge—Cambridge with four oars, Oxford with six, as if that gum had winged them both.

The race was over.

But who had won our party could not see, and must wait to learn.

A youth, adorned with a blue and yellow rosette, cried out, in the hearing of Mrs. Dodd, “I say, they are properly pumped, both crews are:” then, jumping on to a spoke of her carriage-wheel, with a slight apology, he announced that two or three were shut up in the Exeter.

The exact meaning of these two verbs passive was not clear to Mrs. Dodd; but their intensity was. She fluttered, and wanted to go to her boy and nurse him, and turned two most imploring eyes on Julia, and Julia straightway kissed her with gentle vehemence, and offered to ruin and see.

“What, amongst all those young gentlemen, love? I fear that would not be proper. See, all the ladies remain apart.” So they kept quiet and miserable, after the manner of females.

Meantime the Cantab's quick eye had not deceived him; in each racing boat were two young gentlemen leaning collapsed over their oars; and two more, who were in a cloud, and not at all clear whether they were in this world still, or in their zeal had pulled into a better. But their malady was not a rare one in racing boats, and the remedy always at hand: it combined the rival systems; Thames was sprinkled in their faces—Homoeopathy: and brandy in a teaspoon trickled down their throats—Allopathy: youth and spirits soon did the rest; and, the moment their eyes opened, their mouths opened; and, the moment their mouths opened, they fell a chaffing.

Mrs. Dodd's anxiety and Julia's were relieved by the appearance of Mr. Edward, in a tweed shooting-jacket sauntering down to them, hands in his pockets, and a cigar in his mouth, placidly unconscious of their solicitude on his account. He was received with a little guttural cry of delight; the misery they had been in about him was duly concealed from him by both, and Julia asked him warmly who had won.

“Oh, Cambridge.”

“Cambridge! Why, then you are beaten?”

“Rather.” (Puff.)

“And you can come here with that horrible calm, and cigar, owning defeat, and puffing tranquillity, with the same mouth. Mamma, we are beaten. Beaten! actually.”

“Never mind,” said Edward kindly; “you have seen a capital race, the closest ever known on this river; and one side or other must lose.”

“And if they did not quite win, they very nearly did,” observed Mrs. Dodd composedly; then, with heartfelt content, “He is not hurt, and that is the main thing.”

“Well, my Lady Placid, and Mr. Imperturbable, I am glad neither of your equanimities is disturbed; but defeat is a Bitter Pill to me.”

Julia said this in her earnest voice, and drawing her scarf suddenly round her, so as almost to make it speak, digested her Bitter Pill in silence. During which process several Exeter men caught sight of Edward, and came round him, and an animated discussion took place. They began with asking him how it had happened, and, as he never spoke in a hurry, supplied him with the answers. A stretcher had broken in the Exeter? No, but the Cambridge was a much better built boat, and her bottom cleaner. The bow oar of the Exeter was ill, and not fit for work. Each of these solutions was advanced and combated in turn, and then all together. At last the Babel lulled, and Edward was once more appealed to.

“Well, I will tell you the real truth,” said he, “how it happened.” (Puff.)

There was a pause of expectation, for the young man's tone was that of conviction, knowledge, and authority.

“The Cambridge men pulled faster than we did.” (Puff.)

The hearers stared and then laughed.

“Come, old fellows,” said Edward, “never win a boat-race on dry land! That is such a plain thing to do; gives the other side the laugh as well as the race. I have heard a stretcher or two told, but I saw none broken. (Puff.) Their boat is the worst I ever saw; it dips every stroke. (Puff.) Their strength lies in the crew. It was a good race and a fair one. Cambridge got a lead and kept it. (Puff.) They beat us a yard or two at rowing; but hang it all, don't let them beat us at telling the truth, not by an inch.” (Puff.)

“All right, old fellow!” was now the cry. One observed, however, that Stroke did not take the matter so coolly as Six; for he had shed a tear getting out of the boat.

“Shed a fiddlestick!” squeaked a little sceptic.

“No” said another, “he didn't quite shed it; his pride wouldn't let him.”

“So he decanted it, and put it by for supper, suggested Edward, and puffed.

“None of your chaff, Six. He had a gulp or two, and swallowed the rest by main force.”

“Don't you talk: you can swallow anything, it seems.” (Puff.)

“Well, I believe it,” said one of Hardie's own set. “Dodd doesn't know him as we do. Taff Hardie can't bear to be beat.”

When they were gone, Mrs. Dodd observed, “Dear me! what if the young gentleman did cry a little, it was very excusable; after such great exertions it was disappointing, mortifying. I pity him for one, and wish he had his mother alive and here, to dry them.” *

*Oh where, and oh where, was her Lindley Murray gone?

“Mamma, it is you for reading us,” cried Edward, slapping his thigh. “Well, then, since you can feel for a fellow, Hardie was a good deal cut up. You know the university was in a manner beaten, and he took the blame. He never cried; that was a cracker of those fellows. But he did give one great sob, that was all, and hung his head on one side a moment. But then he fought out of it directly, like a man; and there was an end of it, or ought to have been. Hang chatterboxes!”

“And what did you say to console him, Edward?” inquired Julia warmly.

“What—me? Console my senior, and my Stroke? No, thank you.”

At this thunderbolt of etiquette both ladies kept their countenances this was their muscular feat that day—and the racing for the sculls came on: six competitors, two Cambridge, three Oxford, one London. The three heats furnished but one good race, a sharp contest between a Cambridge man and Hardie, ending in favour of the latter; the Londoner walked away from his opponent; Sir Imperturbable's competitor was impetuous, and ran into him in the first hundred yards; Sir I. consenting calmly. The umpire, appealed to on the spot, decided that it was a foul, Mr. Dodd being in his own water. He walked over the course, and explained the matter to his sister, who delivered her mind thus—

“Oh! if races are to be won by going slower than the other, we may shine yet: only, I call it Cheating, not Racing.”

He smiled unmoved; she gave her scarf the irony twist, and they all went to dinner. The business recommenced with a race between a London boat and the winner' of yesterday's heat, Cambridge. Here the truth of Edward's remark appeared. The Cambridge boat was too light for the men, and kept burying her hose; the London craft, under a heavy crew, floated like a cork. The Londoners soon found out their advantage, and, overrating it, steered into their opponents water prematurely, in spite of a warning voice from the bank. Cambridge saw, and cracked on for a foul; and for about a minute it was anybody's race. But the Londoners pulled gallantly, and just scraped clear ahead. This peril escaped, they kept their backs straight and a clear lead to the finish. Cambridge followed a few feet in their wake, pulling wonderfully fast to the end, but a trifle out of form, and much distressed.

At this both universities looked blue, their humble aspiration being, first to beat off all the external world, and then tackle each other for the prize.

Just before Edward left his friends for “the sculls,” the final heat, a note was brought to him. He ran his eye over it, and threw it open into his sister's lap. The ladies read it. Its writer had won a prize poem, and so now is our time to get a hint for composition:

“DEAR SIR,—Oxford must win something. Suppose we go in for these sculls. You are a horse that can stay; Silcock is hot for the lead at starting, I hear; so I mean to work him out of wind; then you can wait on us, and pick up the race. My head is not well enough to-day to win, but I am good to pump the Cockney; he is quick, but a little stale—Yours truly,

“ALFRED HARDIE”

Mrs. Dodd remarked that the language was sadly figurative; but she hoped Edward might be successful in spite of his correspondent's style.

Julia said she did not dare hope it. “The race is not always to the slowest and the dearest.” This was in allusion to yesterday's “foul.”

The skiffs started down at the island, and, as they were longer coming up than the eight oars, she was in a fever for nearly ten minutes. At last, near the opposite bank, up came the two leading skiffs struggling, both men visibly exhausted—Silcock ahead, but his rudder overlapped by Hardie's bow; each in his own water.

“We are third,” sighed Julia, and turned her head away from the river sorrowfully. But only for a moment, for she felt Mrs. Dodd start and press her arm; and lo! Edward's skiff was shooting swiftly across from their side of the river. He was pulling just within himself, in beautiful form, and with far more elasticity than the other two had got left. As he passed his mother and sister, his eyes seemed to strike fire, and he laid out all his powers, and went at the leading skiffs hand over head. There was a yell of astonishment and delight from both sides of the Thames. He passed Hardie, who upon that relaxed his speed. In thirty seconds more he was even with Silcock. Then came a keen struggle: but the new comer was “the horse that could stay:” he drew steadily ahead, and the stern of his boat was in a line with Silcock's person when the gun fired; and a fearful roar from the bridge, the river, and the banks, announced that the favourite university had picked up the sculls in the person of Dodd of Exeter.

In due course he brought the little silver sculls, and pinned them on his mother.

While she and Julia were telling him how proud they were, and how happy they should be, but for their fears that he would hurt himself, beating gentlemen ever so much older than himself, came two Exeter men with wild looks hunting for him.

“Oh, Dodd! Hardie wants you directly.”

“Don't you go, Edward,” whispered Julia; “why should you be at Mr. Hardie's beck and call? I never heard of such a thing. That youth will make me hate him.”

“Oh, I think I had better just go and see what it is about,” replied Edward: “I shall be back directly.” And on this understanding he went off with the men.

Half-an-hour passed; an hour; two hours, and he did not return. Mrs. Dodd and Julia sat wondering what had become of him, and were looking all around, and getting uneasy, when at last they did hear something about him, but indirectly, and from an unexpected quarter. A tall young man in a jersey and flannel trousers, and a little straw hat, with a purple rosette, came away from the bustle to the more secluded part where they sat, and made eagerly for the Thames as if he was a duck, and going in. But at the brink he flung himself into a sitting posture, and dipped his white handkerchief into the stream, then tied it viciously round his brow, doubled himself up with his head in his hands, and rocked himself like an old woman—minus the patience, of course.

Mrs. Dodd and Julia, sitting but a few paces behind him, interchanged, a look of intelligence. The young gentleman was a stranger; but they had recognised a faithful old acquaintance at the bottom of his pantomime. They discovered, too, that the afflicted one was a personage: for he had not sat there long when quite a little band of men came after him. Observing his semi-circularity and general condition, they hesitated a moment; and then one of them remonstrated eagerly.: “For Heaven's sake come back to the boat! There is a crowd of all the colleges come round us; and they all say Oxford is being sold. We had a chance for the four-oared race, and you are throwing it away.”

“What do I care what they all say?” was the answer, delivered with a kind of plaintive snarl.

“But we care.”

“Care then! I pity you.” And he turned his back fiercely on them, and then groaned by way of half apology. Another tried him: “Come, give us a civil answer, please.”

“People that intrude upon a man's privacy, racked with pain, have no right to demand civility,” replied the sufferer, more gently, but sullenly enough.

“Do you call this privacy?”

“It was, a minute ago. Do you think I left the boat, and came here among the natives, for company? and noise? With my head splitting?”

Here Julia gave Mrs. Dodd a soft pinch, to which Mrs. Dodd replied by a smile. And so they settled who this petulant young invalid must be.

“'There, it is no use,” observed one, sotto voce, “the bloke really has awful headaches, like a girl, and then he always shuts up this way. You will only rile him, and get the rough side of his tongue.”

Here, then, the conference drew towards a close. But a Wadham man, who was one of the ambassadors, interposed. “Stop a minute,” said he. “Mr. Hardie, I have not the honour to be acquainted with you, and I am not here to annoy you, nor to be affronted by you. But the university has a stake in this race, and the university expostulates through us—through me, if you like.”

“Who have I the honour?” inquired Hardie, assuming politeness sudden and vast.

“Badham, of Wadham.”

“Badham o' Wadham? Hear that, ye tuneful nine! Well, Badham o' Wadham, you are no acquaintance of mine; so you may possibly not be a fool. Let us assume by way of hypothesis that you are a man of sense, a man of reason as well as of rhyme. Then follow my logic. Hardie of Exeter is a good man in a boat when he has not got a headache.

“When he has got a headache, Hardie of Exeter is not worth a straw in a boat.

“Hardie of Exeter has a headache now.

“Ergo, the university would put the said Hardie into a race, headache and all, and reduce defeat to a certainty.

“And, ergo, on the same premises, I, not being an egotist, nor an ass, have taken Hardie of Exeter and his headache out of the boat, as I should have done any other cripple.

“Secondly, I have put the best man on the river into this cripple's place.

“Total, I have given the university the benefit of my brains; and the university, not having brains enough to see what it gains by the exchange, turns again and rends me, like an animal frequently mentioned in Scripture; but, nota bene, never once with approbation.”

And the afflicted Rhetorician attempted a diabolical grin, but failed signally; and groaned instead.

“Is this your answer to the university, sir?”

At this query, delivered in a somewhat threatening tone, the invalid sat up all in a moment, like a poked lion. “Oh, if Badham o' Wadham thinks to crush me auctoritate sua et totius universitatis, Badham o' Wadham may just tell the whole university to go and be d——d, from the Chancellor down to the junior cook at Skimmery Hall, with my compliments.”

“Ill-conditioned brute!” muttered Badham of Wadham. “Serve you right if the university were to chuck you into the Thames.” And with this comment they left him to his ill temper. One remained; sat quietly down a little way off, struck a sweetly aromatic lucifer, and blew a noisome cloud; but the only one which betokens calm.

As for Hardie, he held his aching head over his knees, absorbed in pain, and quite unconscious that sacred pity was poisoning the air beside him, and two pair of dovelike eyes resting on him with womanly concern.

Mrs. Dodd and Julia had heard the greatest part of this colloquy. They had terribly quick ears and nothing better to do with them just then. Indeed, their interest was excited.

Julia went so far as to put her salts into Mrs. Dodd's hand with a little earnest look. But Mrs. Dodd did not act upon the hint. She had learned who the young man was: had his very name been strange to her, she would have been more at her ease with him. Moreover, his rudeness to the other men repelled her a little. Above all, he had uttered a monosyllable and a stinger: a thorn of speech not in her vocabulary, nor even in society's. Those might be his manners, even when not aching. Still, it seems, a feather would have turned the scale in his favour, for she whispered, “I have a great mind; if I could but catch his eye.”

While feminine pity and social reserve were holding the balance so nicely, and nonsensically, about half a split straw, one of the racing four-oars went down close under the Berkshire bank. “London!” observed Hardie's adherent.

“What, are you there, old fellow?” murmured Hardie, in a faint voice. “Now, that is like a friend, a real friend, to sit by me, and not make a row. Thank you! thank you!”

Presently the Cambridge four-oar passed: it was speedily followed by the Oxford; the last came down in mid-stream, and Hardie eyed it keenly as it passed. “There,” he cried, “was I wrong? There is a swing for you; there is a stroke. I did not know what a treasure I had got sitting behind me.”

The ladies looked, and lo! the lauded Stroke of the four-oar was their Edward.

“Sing out and tell him it is not like the sculls. We must fight for the lead at starting, and hold it with his eyelids when he has got it.”

The adherent bawled this at Edward, and Edward's reply came ringing back in a clear, cheerful voice, “We mean to try all we know.”

“What is the odds?” inquired the invalid faintly.

“Even on London; two to one against Cambridge; three to one against us.”

“Take all my tin and lay it on,” sighed the sufferer.

“Fork it out, then. Hallo! eighteen pounds? Fancy having eighteen pounds at the end of term. I'll get the odds up at the bridge directly. Here's a lady offering you her smelling-bottle.”

Hardie rose and turned round, and sure enough there were two ladies seated in their carriage at some distance, one of whom was holding him out three pretty little things enough, a little smile, a little blush, and a little cut-glass bottle with a gold cork. The last panegyric on Edward had turned the scale.

Hardie went slowly up to the side of the carriage, and took off his hat to them with a half-bewildered air. Now that he was so near, his face showed very pale; the more so that his neck was a good deal tanned; his eyelids were rather swollen, and his young eyes troubled and almost filmy with the pain. The ladies saw, and their gentle bosoms were touched: they had heard of him as a victorious young Apollo trampling on all difficulties of mind and body; and they saw him wan, and worn, with feminine suffering: the contrast made him doubly interesting.

Arrived at the side of the carriage, he almost started at Julia's beauty. It was sun-like, and so were her two lovely earnest eyes, beaming soft pity on him with an eloquence he had never seen in human eyes before; for Julia's were mirrors of herself; they did nothing by halves.

He looked at her and her mother, and blushed, and stood irresolute, awaiting their commands. This sudden contrast to his petulance with his own sex paved the way. “You have a sad headache, sir,” said Mrs. Dodd; “oblige me by trying my salts.”

He thanked her in a low voice.

“And, mamma,” inquired Julia, “ought he to sit in the sun?”

“Certainly not. You had better sit there, sir, and profit by our shade and our parasols.”

“Yes, mamma, but you know the real place where he ought to be is Bed.”

“Oh, pray don't say that,” implored the patient.

But Julia continued, with unabated severity, “And that is where he would go this minute, if I was his mamma.”

“Instead of his junior, and a stranger,” said Mrs. Dodd, somewhat coldly, dwelling with a very slight monitory emphasis on the “stranger.”

Julia said nothing, but drew in perceptibly, and was dead silent ever after.

“Oh, madam!” said Hardie eagerly, “I do not dispute her authority, nor yours. You have a right to send me where you please, after your kindness in noticing my infernal head, and doing me the honour to speak to me, and lending me this. But if I go to bed, my head will be my master. Besides, I shall throw away what little chance I have of making your acquaintance; and the race just coming off!”

“We will not usurp authority, sir,” said Mrs. Dodd quietly; “but we know what a severe headache is, and should be glad to see you sit still in the shade, and excite yourself as little as possible.”

“Yes, madam,” said the youth humbly, and sat down like a lamb. He glanced now and then at the island, and now and then peered up at the radiant young mute beside him.

The silence continued till it was broken by—a fish out of water. An undergraduate in spectacles came mooning along, all out of his element. It was Mr. Kennet, who used to rise at four every morning to his Plato, and walk up Shotover Hill every afternoon, wet or dry, to cool his eyes for his evening work. With what view he deviated to Henley has not yet been ascertained. He was blind as a bat, and did not care a button about any earthly boat-race, except the one in the AEneid, even if he could have seen one. However, nearly all the men of his college went to Henley, and perhaps some branch, hitherto unexplored, of animal magnetism drew him after. At any rate, there was his body; and his mind at Oxford and Athens, and other venerable but irrelevant cities. He brightened at sight of his doge, and asked him warmly if he had heard the news.

“No: what? Nothing wrong, I hope?”

“Why, two of our men are ploughed; that is all,” said Kennet, affecting with withering irony to undervalue his intelligence.

“Confound it, Kennet, how you frightened me! I was afraid there was some screw loose with the crew.”

At this very instant, the smoke of the pistol was seen to puff out from the island, and Hardie rose to his feet. “They are off!” cried he to the ladies, and after first putting his palms together with a hypocritical look of apology, he laid one hand on an old barge that was drawn up ashore, and sprang like a mountain goat on to the bow, lighting on the very gunwale. The position was not tenable an instant, but he extended one foot very nimbly and boldly, and planted it on the other gunwale; and there he was in a moment, headache and all, in an attitude as large and inspired as the boldest gesture antiquity has committed to marble—he had even the advantage in stature over most of the sculptured forms of Greece. But a double opera-glass at his eye “spoiled the lot,” as Mr. Punch says.

I am not to repeat the particulars of a distant race coming nearer and nearer. The main features are always the same; only this time it was more exciting to our fair friends, on account of Edward's high stake in it. And then their grateful though refractory patient, an authority in their eyes, indeed all but a river-god, stood poised in air, and in excited whispers interpreted each distant and unintelligible feature down to them:

“Cambridge was off quickest.”

“But not much.”

“Anybody's race at present, madam.”

“If this lasts long we may win. None of them can stay like us.”

“Come, the favourite is not so very dangerous.”

“Cambridge looks best.”

“I wouldn't change with either, so far.”

“Now, in forty seconds more, I shall be able to pick out the winner.”

Julia went up this ladder of thrills to a high state of excitement; and, indeed, they were all so tuned to racing pitch, that some metal nerve or other seemed to jar inside all three, when the piercing, grating voice of Kennet broke in suddenly with—

“How do you construe [Greek text]?”

The wretch had burrowed in the intellectual ruins of Greece the moment the pistol went off, and college chat ceased. Hardie raised his opera-glass, and his first impulse was to brain the judicious Kennet, gazing up to him for an answer, with spectacles goggling like supernatural eyes of dead sophists in the sun.

“How do you construe 'Hoc age''? you incongruous dog. Hold your tongue, and mind the race.”

“There, I thought so. Where's your three to one, now? The Cockneys are out of this event, any way. Go on, Universities, and order their suppers!”

“But which is first, sir?” asked Julia imploringly. “Oh, which is first of all?”

“Neither. Never mind; it looks well. London is pumped; and if Cambridge can't lead him before this turn in the river, the race will be ours. Now, look out! By Jove, we are ahead!”

The leading boats came on, Oxford pulling a long, lofty, sturdy stroke, that seemed as if it never could compete with the quick action of its competitor. Yet it was undeniably ahead, and gaining at every swing.

Young Hardie writhed on his perch. He screeched at them across the Thames, “Well pulled, Stroke! Well pulled all! Splendidly pulled, Dodd! You are walking away from them altogether. Hurrah, Oxford for ever, hurrah!” The gun went off over the heads of the Oxford crew in advance, and even Mrs. Dodd and Julia could see the race was theirs.

“We have won at last,” cried Julia, all on fire, “and fairly; only think of that!”

Hardie turned round, grateful to beauty for siding with his university. “Yes, and the fools may thank me; or rather my man, Dodd. Dodd for ever! Hurrah!”

At this climax even Mrs. Dodd took a gentle share in the youthful enthusiasm that was boiling around her, and her soft eyes sparkled, and she returned the fervid pressure of her daughter's hand; and both their faces were flushed with gratified pride and affection.

“Dodd!” broke in “the incongruous dog,” with a voice just like a saw's. “Dodd? Ah, that's the man who is just ploughed for smalls.”

Ice has its thunderbolts.

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER II

WINNING boat-races was all very fine; but a hundred such victories could not compensate Mr. Kennet's female hearers for one such defeat as he had announced—a defeat that, to their minds, carried disgrace. Their Edward plucked! At first they were benumbed, and sat chilled, with red cheeks, bewildered between present triumph and mortification at hand. Then the colour ebbed out of their faces, and they encouraged each other feebly in whispers, “Might it not be a mistake?”

But unconscious Kennet robbed them of this timid hope. He was now in his element, knew all about it, rushed into details, and sawed away all doubt from their minds. The sum was this. Dodd's general performance was mediocre, but passable; he was plucked for his Logic. Hardie said he was very sorry for it. “What does it matter?” answered Kennet; “he is a boating-man.

“Well, and I am a boating-man. Why, you told me yourself, the other day, poor Dodd was anxious about it on account of his friends. And, by-the-bye, that reminds me they say he has got two pretty sisters here.”

Says Kennet briskly, “I'll go and tell him; I know him just to speak to.”

“What! doesn't he know?”

“How can he know?” said Kennet jealously; “the testamurs were only just out as I came away.” And within this he started on his congenial errand.

Hardie took two or three of his long strides, and fairly collared him. “You will do nothing of the kind.”

“What, not tell a man when he's ploughed? That is a good joke.”

“No. There's time enough. Tell him after chapel to-morrow, or in chapel if you must; but why poison his triumphal cup? And his sisters, too, why spoil their pleasure? Hang it all, not a word about 'ploughing' to any living soul to-day.”

To his surprise, Kennet's face expressed no sympathy, nor even bare assent. At this Hardie lost patience, and burst out impetuously, “Take care how you refuse me; take care how you thwart me in this. He is the best-natured fellow in college. It doesn't matter to you, and it does to him; and if you do, then take my name off the list of your acquaintance, for I'll never speak a word to you again in this world; no, not on my death-bed, by Heaven!”

The threat was extravagant; but Youth's glowing cheek and eye, and imperious lip, and simple generosity, made it almost beautiful.

Kennet whined, “Oh, if you talk like that, there is an end to fair argument.”

“End it then, and promise me; upon your honour!”

“Why not? What bosh! There, I promise. Now, how do you construe [Greek text]?”

The incongruous dog (“I thank thee, Taff, for teaching me that word”) put this query with the severity of an inquisitor bringing back a garrulous prisoner to the point. Hardie replied gaily, “Any way you like, now you are a good fellow again.”

“Come, that is evasive. My tutor says it cannot be rendered by any one English word; no more can [Greek text].”

“Why, what on earth can he know about English? [Greek text] is a Cormorant: [Greek text] is a Skinflint; and your tutor is a Duffer. Hush! keep dark now! here he comes.” And he went hastily to meet Edward Dodd: and by that means intercepted him on his way to the carriage. “Give me your hand, Dodd,” he cried; “you have saved the university. You must be stroke of the eight-oar after me. Let me see more of you than I have, old fellow.”

“Within all my heart,” replied Edward calmly, but taking the offered hand cordially; though he rather wanted to get away to his mother and sister. “We will pull together, and read together into the bargain,” continued Hardie.

“Read together? You and I? What do you mean?”

“Well, you see I am pretty well up in the Imigliner books; what I have got to rub up is my Divinity and my Logic—especially my Logic. Will you grind Logic with me? Say 'Yes,' for I know you will keep your word.”

“It is too good an offer to refuse, Hardie; but now I look at you, you are excited: wonderfully excited: within the race, eh? Now, just—you—wait—quietly—till next week, and then, if you are so soft as to ask me in cool blood——”

“Wait a week?” cried the impetuous youth. “No, not a minute. It is settled. There, we cram Logic together next term.”

And he shook Edward's hand again with glistening eyes and an emotion that was quite unintelligible to Edward; but not to the quick, sensitive spirits, who sat but fifteen yards off.

“You really must excuse me just now,” said Edward, and ran to the carriage, and put out both hands to the fair occupants. They kissed him eagerly, with little tender sighs; and it cost them no slight effort not to cry publicly over “the beloved,” “the victorious,” “the ploughed.”

Young Hardie stood petrified. What? These ladies Dodd's sisters. Why, one of them had called the other mamma. Good heavens! all his talk in their hearing had been of Dodd; and Kennet and he between them had let out the very thing he wanted to conceal, especially from Dodd's relations. He gazed at them, and turned hot to the very forehead. Then, not knowing what to do or say, and being after all but a clever boy, not a cool, “never unready” man of the world, he slipped away, blushing. Kennet followed, goggling.

Left to herself, Mrs. Dodd would have broken the bad news to Edward at once, and taken the line of consoling him under her own vexation: it would not have been the first time that she had played that card. But young Mr. Hardie had said it would be unkind to poison Edward's day: and it is sweet woman's nature to follow suit; so she and Julia put bright faces on, and Edward passed a right jocund afternoon with them. He was not allowed to surprise one of the looks they interchanged to relieve their secret mortification. But, after dinner, as the time drew near for him to go back to Oxford, Mrs. Dodd became silent, and a little distraite; and at last drew her chair away to a small table, and wrote a letter.

In directing it she turned it purposely, so that Julia could catch the address: “Edward Dodd, Esq., Exeter College, Oxford.”

Julia was naturally startled at first, and her eye roved almost comically to and fro the letter and its Destination, seated calm and unconscious of woman's beneficent wiles. But her heart soon divined the mystery: it was to reach him the first thing in the morning, and spare him the pain of writing the news to them; and, doubtless, so worded as not to leave him a day in doubt of their forgiveness and sympathy.

Julia took the missive unobserved by the Destination, and glided out of the room to get it quietly posted.

The servant-girl was waiting on the second-floor lodgers, and told her so, with a significant addition, viz., that the post was in this street, and only a few doors off. Julia was a little surprised at her coolness, but took the hint with perfect good temper, and just put on her shawl and bonnet, and went with it herself. The post-office was not quite so near as represented; but she was soon there, for she was eager till she had posted it. But she came back slowly and thoughtfully; here in the street, lighted only by the moon, and an occasional gaslight, there was no need for self-restraint, and soon her mortification betrayed itself in her speaking countenance. And to think that her mother, on whom she doted, should have to write to her son, there present, and post the letter! This made her eyes fill, and before she reached the door of the lodging, they were brimming over.

As she put her foot on the step, a timid voice addressed her in a low tone of supplication. “May I venture to speak one word to you, Miss Dodd?—one single word?”

She looked up surprised; and it was young Mr. Hardie.

His tall figure was bending towards her submissively, and his face, as well as his utterance, betrayed considerable agitation.

And what led to so unusual a rencontre between a young gentleman and lady who had never been introduced?

“The Tender Passion,” says a reader of many novels.

Why, yes; the tenderest in all our nature:

Wounded Vanity.

Naturally proud and sensitive, and inflated by success and flattery, Alfred Hardie had been torturing himself ever since he fled Edward's female relations. He was mortified to the core. He confounded “the fools” (his favourite synonym for his acquaintance) for going and calling Dodd's mother an elder sister, and so not giving him a chance to divine her. And then that he, who prided himself on his discrimination, should take them for ladies of rank, or, at all events, of the highest fashion and, climax of humiliation, that so great a man as he should go and seem to court them by praising Dodd of Exeter, by enlarging upon Dodd of Exeter, by offering to grind Logic with Dodd of Exeter. Who would believe that this was a coincidence, a mere coincidence? They could not be expected to believe it; female vanity would not let them. He tingled, and was not far from hating the whole family; so bitter a thing is that which I have ventured to dub “The Tenderest Passion.” He itched to soothe his irritation by explaining to Edward. Dodd was a frank, good-hearted fellow; he would listen to facts, and convince the ladies in turn. Hardie learned where Dodd's party lodged, and waited about the door to catch him alone: Dodd must be in college by twelve, and would leave Henley before ten. He waited till he was tired of waiting. But at last the door opened; he stepped forward, and out tripped Miss Dodd. “Confound it!” muttered Hardie, and drew back. However, he stood and admired her graceful figure and action, her ladylike speed without bustling. Had she come back at the same pace, he would never have ventured to stop her: on such a thread do things hang: but she returned very slowly, hanging her head. Her look at him and his headache recurred to him—a look brimful of goodness. She would do as well as Edward, better perhaps. He yielded to impulse, and addressed her, but with all the trepidation of a youth defying the giant Etiquette for the first time in his life.

Julia was a little surprised and fluttered, but did not betray it; she had been taught self-command by example, if not by precept.

“Certainly, Mr. Hardie,” said she, within a modest composure a young coquette might have envied under the circumstances.

Hardie had now only to explain himself; but instead of that, he stood looking at her within silent concern. The fair face she raised to him was wet with tears; so were her eyes, and even the glorious eyelashes were fringed with that tender spray; and it glistened in the moonlight.

This sad and pretty sight drove the vain but generous youth's calamity clean out of his head. “Why, you are crying! Miss Dodd, what is the matter? I hope nothing has happened.”

Julia turned her head away a little fretfully, with a “No, no!” But soon her natural candour and simplicity prevailed; a simplicity not without dignity; she turned round to him and looked him in the face. “Why should I deny it to you, sir, who have been good enough to sympathise with us? We are mortified, sadly mortified, at dear Edward's disgrace; and it has cost us a struggle not to disobey you, and poison his triumphal cup with sad looks. And mamma had to write to him, and console him against to-morrow: but I hope he will not feel it so severely as she does: and I have just posted it myself, and, when I thought of our dear mamma being driven to such expedients, I—Oh!” And the pure young heart, having opened itself by words, must flow a little more.

“Oh, pray don't cry,” said young Hardie tenderly; “don't take such a trifle to heart so. You crying makes me feel guilty for letting it happen. It shall never occur again. If I had only known, it should never have happened at all.”

“Once is enough,” sighed Julia.

“Indeed, you take it too much to heart. It is only out of Oxford a plough is thought much of; especially a single one; that is so very common. You see, Miss Dodd, an university examination consists of several items: neglect but one, and Crichton himself would be ploughed; because brilliancy in your other papers is not allowed to count; that is how the most distinguished man of our day got ploughed for Smalls. I had a narrow escape, I know, for one. But, Miss Dodd, if you knew how far your brother's performance on the river outweighs a mere slip in the schools, in all university men's eyes, the dons' and all, you would not make this bright day end sadly to Oxford by crying. Why, I could find you a thousand men who would be ploughed to-morrow with glory and delight to win one such race as your brother has won two.”

Julia sighed again. But it sounded now half like a sigh of relief—the final sigh, with which the fair consent to be consoled.

And indeed this improvement in the music did not escape Hardie. He felt he was on the right tack: he enumerated fluently, and by name, many good men, besides Dean Swift, who had been ploughed, yet had cultivated the field of letters in their turn; and, in short, he was so earnest and plausible, that something like a smile hovered about his hearer's lips, and she glanced askant at him with furtive gratitude from under her silky lashes. But it soon recurred to her that this was rather a long interview to accord to “a stranger,” and under the moon; so she said a little stiffly, “And was this what you were good enough to wish to say to me, Mr. Hardie?”

“No, Miss Dodd, to be frank, it was not. My motive in addressing you, without the right to take such a freedom, was egotistical. I came here to clear myself; I—I was afraid you must think me a humbug, you know.”

“I do not understand you, indeed.”

“Well, I feared you and Mrs. Dodd might think I praised Dodd so, and did what little I did for him, knowing who you were, and wishing to curry favour with you by all that; and that is so underhand and paltry a way of going to work, I should despise myself.”

“Oh, Mr. Hardie,” said the young lady, smiling, “How foolish: why, of course, we knew you had no idea.”

“Indeed I had not; but how could you know it?”

“Why, we saw it. Do you think we have no eyes? Ah, and much keener ones than gentlemen have. It is mamma and I who are to blame, if anybody; we ought to have declared ourselves: it would have been more generous, more—manly. But we cannot all be gentlemen, you know. It was so sweet to hear Edward praised by one who did not know us; it was like stolen fruit; and by one whom others praise: so, if you can forgive us our slyness, there is an end of the matter.”

“Forgive you? you have taken a thorn out of my soul.”

“Then I am so glad you summoned courage to speak to me without ceremony. Mamma would have done better, though; but after all, do not I know her? my mamma is all goodness and intelligence. And be assured, sir, she does you justice; and is quite sensible of your disinterested kindness to dear Edward.” With this she was about to retire.

“Ah! But you, Miss Dodd? with whom I have taken this unwarrantable liberty?” said Hardie imploringly.

“Me, Mr. Hardie? You do me the honour to require my opinion of your performances: including of course this self-introduction?”

Hardie hung his head; there was a touch of satire in the lady's voice, he thought.

Her soft eyes rested demurely on him a moment; she saw he was a little abashed.

“My opinion of it all is that you have been very kind to us; in being most kind to our poor Edward. I never saw, nor read of anything more generous, more manly. And then so thoughtful, so considerate, so delicate! So instead of criticising you, as you seem to expect, his sister only blesses you, and thanks you from the very bottom of her heart.”

She had begun within a polite composure borrowed from mamma; but, once launched, her ardent nature got the better: her colour rose and rose, and her voice sank and sank, and the last words came almost in a whisper; and such a lovely whisper: a gurgle from the heart; and, as she concluded, her delicate hand came sweeping out with a heaven-taught gesture of large and sovereign cordiality, that made even the honest words and the divine tones more eloquent. It was too much; the young man, ardent as herself, and not, in reality, half so timorous, caught fire; and seeing a white, eloquent hand rather near him, caught it, and pressed his warm lips on it in mute adoration and gratitude.

At this she was scared and offended. “Oh; keep that for the Queen!” cried she, turning scarlet, and tossing her fair head into the air, like a startled stag; and she drew her hand away quickly and decidedly, though not roughly. He stammered a lowly apology—in the very middle of it she said quietly, “Good-bye, Mr. Hardie,” and swept, with a gracious little curtsey, through the doorway, leaving him spell-bound.

And so the virginal instinct of self-defence carried her off swiftly and cleverly. But none too soon; for, on entering the house, that external composure her two mothers Mesdames Dodd and Nature had taught her, fell from her like a veil, and she fluttered up the stairs to her own room with hot cheeks, and panted there like some wild thing that has been grasped at and grazed. She felt young Hardie's lips upon the palm of her hand plainly; they seemed to linger there still; it was like light but live velvet. This, and the ardent look he had poured into her eyes, set the young creature quivering. Nobody had looked at her so before, and no young gentleman had imprinted living velvet on her hand. She was alarmed, ashamed, and uneasy. What right had he to look at her like that? What shadow of a right to go and kiss her hand? He could not pretend to think she had put it out to be kissed; ladies put forth the back of the hand for that, not the palm. The truth was he was an impudent fellow, and she hated him now, and herself too, for being so simple as to let him talk to her: mamma would not have been so imprudent when she was a girl.

She would not go down, for she felt there must be something of this kind legibly branded on her face: “Oh! oh! just look at this young lady! She has been letting a young gentleman kiss the palm of her hand; and the feel has not gone off yet; you may see that by her cheeks.”

But then, poor Edward! she must go down.

So she put a wet towel to her tell-tale cheeks, and dried them by artistic dabs, avoiding friction, and came downstairs like a mouse, and turned the door-handle noiselessly, and glided into the sitting-room looking so transparent, conscious, and all on fire with beauty and animation, that even Edward was startled, and, in a whisper, bade his mother observe what a pretty girl she was: “Beats all the country girls in a canter.” Mrs. Dodd did look; and, consequently, as soon as ever Edward was gone to Oxford, she said to Julia, “You are feverish, love; you have been excited with all this. You had better go to bed.”

Julia complied willingly; for she wanted to be alone and think. She retired to her own room, and went the whole day over again; and was happy and sorry, exalted and uneasy, by turns; and ended by excusing Mr. Hardie's escapade, and throwing the blame on herself. She ought to have been more distant; gentlemen were not expected, nor indeed much wanted, to be modest. A little assurance did not misbecome them. “Really, I think it sets them off,” said she to herself.

Grand total: “What must he think of me?”

Time gallops in reverie: the town clock struck twelve, and with its iron tongue remorse entered her youthful conscience. Was this obeying mamma? Mamma had said, “Go to bed:” not, “Go upstairs and meditate: upon young gentlemen.” She gave an expressive shake of her fair shoulders, like a swan flapping the water off its downy wings, and so dismissed the subject from her mind.

Then she said her prayers.

Then she rose from her knees, and in tones of honey said, “Puss! puss! pretty puss!” and awaited a result.

Thieves and ghosts she did not believe in, yet credited cats under beds, and thought them neither “harmless” nor “necessary” there.

After tenderly evoking the dreaded and chimerical quadruped, she proceeded none the less to careful research, especially of cupboards. The door of one resisted, and then yielded with a crack, and blew out the candle. “There now,” said she.

It was her only light, except her beauty. They allotted each Hebe but one candle, in that ancient burgh. “Well,” she thought, “there is moonlight enough to undress by.” She went to draw back one of the curtains; but in the act she started back with a little scream. There was a tall figure over the way watching the house.

The moon shone from her side of the street full on him, and in that instant her quick eye recognised Mr. Hardie.

“Well!” said she aloud, and with an indescribable inflexion; and hid herself swiftly in impenetrable gloom.

But, after a while, Eve's daughter must have a peep. She stole with infinite caution to one side of the curtain, and made an aperture just big enough for one bright eye. Yes, there he was, motionless. “I'll tell mamma,” said she to him, malignantly, as if the sound could reach him.

Unconscious of the direful threat, he did not budge.

She was unaffectedly puzzled at this phenomenon; and, not being the least vain, fell to wondering whether he played the nightly sentinel opposite every lady's window who exchanged civilities within him. “Because, if he does, he is a fool,” said she, promptly. But on reflection, she felt sure he did nothing of the kind habitually, for he had too high an opinion of himself; she had noted that trait in him at a very early stage. She satisfied herself, by cautious examination, that he did not know her room. He was making a temple of the whole lodging. “How ridiculous of him!” Yet he appeared to be happy over it; there was an exalted look in his moonlit face; she seemed now first to see his soul there. She studied his countenance like an inscription, and deciphered each rapt expression that crossed it; and stored them in her memory.

Twice she left her ambuscade to go to bed, and twice Curiosity, or Something, drew her back. At last, having looked, peered, and peeped, till her feet were cold, and her face the reverse, she informed herself that the foolish Thing had tired her out.

“Good-night, Mr. Policeman,” said she, pretending to bawl to him. “And oh! Do rain! As hard as ever you can.” With this benevolent aspiration, a little too violent to be sincere, she laid her cheek on her pillow doughtily.

But her sentinel, when out of sight, had more power to disturb her. She lay and wondered whether he was still there, and what it all meant, and whatever mamma would say; and which of the two, she or he, was the head culprit in this strange performance, to which Earth, she conceived, had seen no parallel; and, above all, what he would do next. Her pulse galloped, and her sleep was broken; and she came down in the morning a little pale. Mrs. Dodd saw it at once, with the quick maternal eye; and moralised: “It is curious; youth is so fond of pleasure; yet pleasure seldom agrees with youth; this little excitement has done your mother good, who is no longer young; but it has been too much for you. I shall be glad to have you back to our quiet home.”

Ah! Will that home be as tranquil now?

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CHAPTER III

THE long vacation commenced about a month afterwards, and Hardie came to his father's house, to read for honours, unimpeded by university races and college lectures; and the ploughed and penitent one packed up his Aldrich and his Whately, the then authorities in Logic, and brought them home, together with a firm resolution to master that joyous science before the next examination for Smalls in October. But lo! ere he had been an hour at home, he found his things put neatly away in his drawers on the feminine or vertical system—deep strata of waistcoats, strata of trousers, strata of coats, strata of papers—and his Logic gone.

In the course of the evening he taxed his sister good-humouredly, and asked “What earthly use that book was to her, not wearing curls.”

“I intend to read it, and study it, and teach you it,” replied Julia, rather languidly—considering the weight of the resolve.

“Oh, if you have boned it to read, I say no more; the crime will punish itself.”

“Be serious, Edward, and think of mamma! I cannot sit with my hands before me, and let you be reploughed.”

“I don't want. But—reploughed!—haw, haw! but you can't help me at Logic, as you used at Syntax. Why, all the world knows a girl can't learn Logic.”

“A girl can learn anything she chooses to learn. What she can't learn is things other people set her down to.” Before Edward could fully digest this revelation, she gave the argument a new turn by adding fretfully, “And don't be so unkind, thwarting and teasing me!” and all in a moment she was crying.

“Halloa!” ejaculated Edward, taken quite by surprise. “What is the matter, dears?” inquired maternal vigilance from the other end of the room. “You did not speak brusquely to her, Edward?”

“No, no,” said Julia eagerly. “It is I that am turned so cross and so peevish. I am quite a changed girl. Mamma, what is the matter with me?” And she laid her brow on her mother's bosom.

Mrs. Dodd caressed the lovely head soothingly with one hand, and made a sign over it to Edward to leave them alone. She waited quietly till Julia was composed: and then said, softly, “Come, tell me what it is: nothing that Edward said to you; for I heard almost every word, and I was just going to smile, or nearly, when you—— And, my love, it is not the first time, you know. I would not tell Edward, but I have more than once seen your eyes with tears in them.”

“Have you, mamma?” said Julia, scarcely above a whisper.

“Why, you know I have. But I said to myself it was no use forcing confidence. I thought I would be very patient, and wait till you came to me with it; so now, what is it, my darling? Why do you speak of one thing and think of another? and cry without any reason that your mother can see?”

“I don't know, mamma,” said Julia, hiding her head. “I think it is because I sleep so badly. I rise in the morning hot and quivering, and more tired than I lay down.”

Mrs. Dodd inquired how long this had been.

Julia did not answer this question; she went on, with her face still hidden: “Mamma, I do feel so depressed and hysterical, or else in violent spirits: but not nice and cheerful as you are, and I used to be; and I go from one thing to another, and can settle to nothing—even in church I attend by fits and starts: I forgot to water my very flowers last night: and I heard Mrs. Maxley out of my window tell Sarah I am losing my colour. Am I? But what does it matter? I am losing my sense; for I catch myself for ever looking in the glass, and that is a sure sign of a fool, you know. And I cannot pass the shops: I stand and look in, and long for the very dearest silks, and for diamonds in my hair.” A deep sigh followed the confession of these multiform imperfections; and the culprit half raised her head to watch their effect.

As for Mrs. Dodd, she opened her eyes wide with surprise; but at the end of the heterogeneous catalogue she smiled, and said, “I cannot believe that. If ever there was a young lady free from personal vanity, it is my Julia. Why, your thoughts run by nature away from yourself; you were born for others.”

Her daughter kissed her gratefully, and smiled: but after a pause, said, sorrowfully, “Ah! that was the old Julia, as seen with your dear eyes. I have almost forgotten her. The new one is what I tell you, dear mamma, and that” (within sudden fervour) “is a dreamy, wandering, vain, egotistical, hysterical, abominable girl.”

“Let me kiss this monster that I have brought into the world,” said Mrs. Dodd. “And now let me think.” She rested her eyes calm and penetrating upon her daughter; and at this mere look, but a very searching one, the colour mounted and mounted in Julia's cheek strangely.

“After all,” said Mrs. Dodd thoughtfully, “yours is a critical age. Perhaps my child is turning to a woman; my rosebud to a rose. And she sighed. Mothers will sigh at things none other ever sighed at.

“To a weed, I fear,” replied Julia. “What will you say when I own I felt no real joy at Edward's return this time? And yesterday I cried, 'Do get away, and don't pester me!'”

“To your brother? Oh!”

“Oh, no, mamma, that was to poor Spot. He jumped on me in a reverie, all affection, poor thing.”

“Well, for your comfort, dogs do not appreciate the niceties of our language.”

“I am afraid they do; when we kick them.”

Mrs. Dodd smiled at the admission implied here, and the deep penitence it was uttered with. But Julia remonstrated, “Oh no! no! don't laugh at me, but help me within your advice: you are so wise and so experienced: you must have been a girl before you were an angel. You must know what is the matter with me. Oh, do pray cure me, or else kill me, for I cannot go on like this, all my affections deadened and my peace disturbed.”

And now the mother looked serious and thoughtful enough; and the daughter watched her furtively. “Julia,” said Mrs. Dodd, very gravely, “if it was not my child, reared under my eye, and never separated from me a single day, I should say, this young lady is either afflicted with some complaint, and it affects her nerves and spirits; or else she has—she is—what inexperienced young people call 'in love.' You need not look so frightened, child; nobody in their senses suspects you of imprudence or indelicacy; and therefore I feel quite sure that your constitution is at a crisis, or your health has suffered some shock—pray Heaven it may not be a serious one. You will have the best advice, and without delay, I promise you.”

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CHAPTER IV

That very evening, Mrs. Dodd sent a servant into the town with a note like a cocked-hat for Mr. Osmond, a consulting surgeon, who bore a high reputation in Barkington. He came, and proved too plump for that complete elegance she would have desired in a medical attendant; but had a soft hand, a gentle touch, and a subdued manner. He spoke to the patient with a kindness which won the mother directly; had every hope of setting her right without any violent or disagreeable remedies; but, when she had retired, altered his tone; and told Mrs. Dodd seriously she had done well to send for him in time: it was a case of “Hyperaesthesia” (Mrs. Dodd clasped her hands in alarm), “or as unprofessional persons would say, 'excessive sensibility.'”

Mrs. Dodd was somewhat relieved. Translation blunts thunderbolts. She told him she had always feared for her child on that score. But was sensibility curable? Could a nature be changed?

He replied that the Idiosyncrasy could not; but its morbid excess could, especially when taken in time. Advice was generally called in too late. However, here the only serious symptom was the Insomnia. “We must treat her for that,” said he, writing a prescription; “but for the rest, active employment, long walks or rides, and a change of scene and associations, will be all that will be required. In these cases,” resumed Mr. Osmond, “connected as they are with Hyperaemia, some medical men considered moderate venesection to be indicated.” He then put on his gloves saying, “The diet, of course, must be Antiphlogistic. Let us say then, for breakfast, dry toast with very little butter—no coffee—cocoa (from the nibs), or weak tea: for luncheon, beef-tea or mutton-broth: for dinner, a slice of roast chicken, and tapioca or semolina pudding. I would give her one glass of sherry, but no more, and barley-water; it would be as well to avoid brown meats, at all events for the present. With these precautions, my dear madam, I think your anxiety will soon be happily removed.”

Julia took her long walks and light diet; and became a little pale at times, and had fewer bursts of high spirits in the intervals of depression. Her mother went with her case to a female friend. The lady said she would not trust to surgeons and apothecaries; she would have a downright physician. “Why not go to the top of the tree at once, and call in Dr. Short? You have heard of him?”

“Oh, yes; I have even met him in society; a most refined person: I will certainly follow your advice and consult him. Oh, thank you, Mrs. Bosanquet! A propos, do you consider him skilful?

“Oh, immensely; he is a particular friend of my husband's.”

This was so convincing, that off went another three-cocked note, and next day a dark-green carriage and pair dashed up to Mrs. Dodd's door, and Dr. Short bent himself in an arc, got out, and slowly mounted the stairs. He was six feet two, wonderfully thin, livid, and gentleman-like. Fine homing head, keen eye, lantern jaws. At sight of him Mrs. Dodd rose and smiled. Julia started and sat trembling. He stepped across the room inaudibly, and after the usual civilities, glanced at the patient's tongue, and touched her wrist delicately. “Pulse is rapid,” said he.

Mrs. Dodd detailed the symptoms. Dr. Short listened within the patient politeness of a gentleman, to whom all this was superfluous. He asked for a sheet of note-paper, and divided it so gently, he seemed to be persuading one thing to be two. He wrote a pair of prescriptions, and whilst thus employed looked up every now and then and conversed with the ladies.

“You have a slight subscapular affection, Miss Dodd: I mean, a little pain under the shoulder-blade.”

“No, sir,” said Julia quietly.

Dr. Short looked a little surprised; his female patients rarely contradicted him. Was it for them to disown things he was so a good as to assign them?

“Ah!” said he, “you are not conscious of it: all the better; it must be slight; a mere uneasiness: no more.” He then numbered the prescriptions, 1, 2, and advised Mrs. Dodd to drop No. 1 after the eighth day, and substitute No. 2, to be continued until convalescence. He put on his gloves to leave. Mrs. Dodd then, with some hesitation, asked him humbly whether she might ask him what the disorder was. “Certainly, madam,” said he graciously; “your daughter is labouring under a slight torpidity of the liver. The first prescription is active, and is to clear the gland itself, and the biliary ducts, of the excretory accumulation; and the second is exhibited to promote a healthy normal habit in that important part of the vascular system.”

“What, then, it is not Hyperaemia?”

“Hyperaemia? There is no such disorder in the books.”

“You surprise me,” said Mrs. Dodd. “Dr. Osmond certainly thought it was Hyperaemia.” And she consulted her little ivory tablets, whereon she had written the word.

But meantime, Dr. Short's mind, to judge by his countenance, was away roaming distant space in search of Osmond.

“Osmond? Osmond? I do not know that name in medicine.”

“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Julia, “and they both live in the same street!” Mrs. Dodd held up her finger to this outspoken patient.

But a light seemed to break in on Dr. Short. “Ah! you mean Mr. Osmond: a surgeon. A very respectable man, a most respectable man. I do not know a more estimable person—in his grade of the profession—than my good friend Mr. Osmond. And so he gives opinions in medical cases, does he?” Dr. Short paused, apparently to realise this phenomenon in the world of Mind. He resumed in a different tone: “You may have misunderstood him. Hyperaemia exists, of course; since he says so. But Hyperaemia is not a complaint; it is a symptom. Of biliary derangement. My worthy friend looks at disorders from a mental point; very natural: his interest lies that way, perhaps you are aware: but profounder experience proves that mental sanity is merely one of the results of bodily health: and I am happy to assure you that, the biliary canal once cleared, and the secretions restored to the healthy habit by these prescriptions, the Hyperaemia, and other concomitants of hepatic derangement, will disperse, and leave our interesting patient in the enjoyment of her natural intelligence, her friends' affectionate admiration, and above all, of a sound constitution. Ladies, I have the honour” and the Doctor eked out this sentence by rising.

“Oh, thank you, Dr. Short,” said Mrs. Dodd, rising within him; “you inspire me with confidence and gratitude.” As if under the influence of these feelings only, she took Dr. Short's palm and pressed it. Of the two hands, which met for a moment then, one was soft and melting, the other a bunch of bones; but both were very white, and so equally adroit, that a double fee passed without the possibility of a bystander suspecting it.

For the benefit of all young virgins afflicted like Julia Dodd, here are the Doctor's prescriptions:—

FOR MISS DODD.

Rx Pil: Hydrarg: Chlor: Co:
singuml: nocte sumend:
Decoc: Aloes Co: 3j
omni mane
viii. Sept. J. S.

———-

FOR MISS DODD.

Rx Conf: Sennae.
Potass: Bitartrat.
Extr: Tarax: a a 3ss
Misft: Elect:
Cujus sum: 3j omni mane.
xviii. Sept. J. S.

———-

Id: Anglie reddit: per me Carol: Arundin:

The same done into English by me. C. R.

FOR MISS DODD.

1. O Jupiter aid us!! Plummer's pill to be taken every night, 1 oz. compound decoction of Aloes every morning.

8th Sept. J. S.

FOR MISS DODD.

2. O Jupiter aid us!! with Confection of Senna, Bitartrate of Potash, extract of Dandelion, of each half an ounce, let an electuary be mixed; of which let her take 1 drachm every morning.

18th Sept. J. S.

———-

“Quite the courtier,” said Mrs. Dodd, delighted. Julia assented: she even added, with a listless yawn, “I had no idea that a skeleton was such a gentlemanlike thing; I never saw one before.”

Mrs. Dodd admitted he was very thin.

“Oh no, mamma; 'thin' implies some little flesh. When he felt my pulse, a chill struck to my heart. Death in a black suit seemed to steal up to me, and lay a finger on my wrist: and mark me for his own.”

Mrs. Dodd forbade her to give way to such gloomy ideas; and expostulated firmly with her for judging learned men by their bodies. “However,” said she, “if the good, kind doctor's remedies do not answer his expectations and mine, I shall take you to London directly. I do hope papa will soon be at home.”

Poor Mrs. Dodd was herself slipping into a morbid state. A mother collecting Doctors! It is a most fascinating kind of connoisseurship, grows on one like Drink; like Polemics; like Melodrama; like the Millennium; like any Thing.

Sure enough, the very next week she and Julia sat patiently at the morning levee of an eminent and titled London surgeon. Full forty patients were before them: so they had to wait and wait. At last they were ushered into the presence-chamber, and Mrs. Dodd entered on the beaten ground of her daughter's symptoms. The noble surgeon stopped her civilly but promptly. “Auscultation will give us the clue,” said he, and drew his stethoscope. Julia shrank and cast an appealing look at her mother; but the impassive chevalier reported on each organ in turn without moving his ear from the key-hole: “Lungs pretty sound,” said he, a little plaintively: “so is the liver. Now for the——Hum? There is no kardiac insufficiency, I think, neither mitral nor tricuspid. If we find no tendency to hypertrophy we shall do very well. Ah! I have succeeded in diagnosing a slight diastolic murmur; very slight.” He deposited the instrument, and said, not without a certain shade of satisfaction that his research had not been fruitless, “The heart is the peccant organ.”

“Oh, sir! is it serious?” said poor Mrs. Dodd.

“By no means. Try this” (he scratched a prescription which would not have misbecome the tomb of Cheops), “and come again in a month.” Ting! He struck a bell. That “ting” said, “Go, live, Guinea; and let another come.”

“Heart-disease now!” said Mrs. Dodd, sinking back in her hired carriage, and the tears were in her patient eyes.

“My own, own mamma,” said Julia earnestly, “do not distress yourself. I have no disease in the world, but my old, old, old one, of being a naughty, wayward girl. As for you, mamma, you have resigned your own judgment to your inferiors, and that is both our misfortunes. Dear, dear mamma, do take me to a doctress next time, if you have not had enough.”

“To a what, love?”

“A she-doctor, then.”

“A female physician, child? There is no such thing. No; assurance is becoming a characteristic of our sex; but we have not yet intruded ourselves into the learned professions, thank Heaven.”

“Excuse me, mamma, there are one or two; for the newspapers say so.”

“'Well, dear, there are none in this country, happily.”

“'What, not in London?”

“No.”

“Then what is the use of such a great overgrown place, all smoke, if there is nothing in it you cannot find in the country? Let us go back to Barkington this very day, this minute, this instant; oh, pray, pray.”

“And so you shall—to-morrow. But you must pity your poor mother's anxiety, and see Dr. Chalmers first.”

“Oh, mamma, not another surgeon! He frightened me; he hurt me. I never heard of such a thing; oh, please not another surgeon.”

“It is not a surgeon, dear; it is the Court Physician.”

The Court Physician detected “a somewhat morbid condition of the great nervous centres.” To an inquiry whether there was heart-disease, he replied, “Pooh!” On being told Sir William had announced heart-disease, he said, “Ah! that alters the case entirely.” He maintained, however, that it must be trifling, and would go no further, the nervous system once restored to its healthy tone. “O Jupiter, aid us! Blue pill and Seidhitz powder.”

Dr. Kenyon found the mucous membrane was irritated and required soothing. “O Jupiter, &c.”

Mrs. Dodd returned home consoled and confused; Julia listless and apathetic. Tea was ordered, with two or three kinds of bread, thinnest slices of meat, and a little blane mange, &c., their favourite repast after a journey; and whilst the tea was drawing, Mrs. Dodd looked over the card-tray and enumerated the visitors that had called during their absence. “Dr. Short— Mr. Osmond—Mrs. Hetherington—Mr. Alfred Hardie—Lady Dewry—Mrs. and Miss Bosanquet. What a pity Edward was not at home, dear; Mr. Alfred Hardie's visit must have been to him.”

“Oh, of course, mamma.”

“A very manly young gentleman.”

“'Oh, yes. No. He is so rude.”

“Is he? Ah! he was ill just then, and pain irritates gentlemen; they are not accustomed to it, poor Things.”

“That is like you, dear mamma; making excuses for one.” Julia added faintly, “But he is so impetuous.”

“I have a daughter who reconciles me to impetuosity. And he must have a good heart, he was so kind to my boy.”

Julia looked down smiling; but presently seemed to be seized with a spirit of contradiction: she began to pick poor Alfred to pieces; he was this, that, and the other; and then so bold, she might say impudent.

Mrs. Dodd replied calmly that he was very kind to her boy.

“Oh, mamma, you cannot approve all the words he spoke.”

“It is not worth while to remember all the words young gentlemen speak now-a-days. He was very kind to my boy, I remember that.”

The tea was now ready, and Mrs. Dodd sat down, and patted a chair, with a smile of invitation for Julia to come and sit beside her. But Julia said, “In one minute, dear,” and left the room.

When she came back, she fluttered up to her mother and kissed her vehemently, then sat down radiant. “Ah!” said Mrs. Dodd, “why, you are looking yourself once more. How do you feel now? Better?”

“How do I feel? Let me see: The world seems one e-nor-mous flower-garden, and Me the butterfly it all belongs to.” She spake, and to confirm her words the airy thing went waltzing, sailing, and fluttering round the room, and sipping mamma every now and then on the wing.

In this buoyancy she remained some twenty-four hours; and then came clouds and chills, which, in their turn, gave way to exultation, duly followed by depression. Her spirits were so uncertain, that things too minute to justify narration turned the scale either way: a word from Mrs. Dodd—a new face at St. Anne's Church looking devoutly her way—a piece of town gossip distilled in her ear by Mrs. Maxley—and she was sprightly or languid, and both more than reason.

One drizzly afternoon they were sitting silent and saddish in the drawing-room, Mrs. Dodd correcting the mechanical errors in a drawing of Julia's, and admiring the rare dash and figure, and Julia doggedly studying Dr. Whately's Logic, with now and then a sigh, when suddenly a trumpet seemed to articulate in the little hall: “Mestress Doedd at home?”

The lady rose from her seat, and said with a smile of pleasure, “I hear a voice.”

The door opened, and in darted a grey-headed man, with handsome but strongly marked features, laughing and shouting like a schoolboy broke loose. He cried out, “Ah! I've found y' out at last.” Mrs. Dodd glided to meet him, and put out both her hands, the palms downwards, with the prettiest air of ladylike cordiality; he shook them heartily. “The vagabins said y' had left the town; but y' had only flitted from the quay to the subbubs; 'twas a pashint put me on the scint of ye. And how are y' all these years? an' how's Sawmill?”

“Sawmill! What is that?”

“It's just your husband. Isn't his name Sawmill?”

“Dear no! Have you forgotten?—David.”

“Ou, ay. I knew it was some Scripcher Petrarch or another, Daavid, or Naathan, or Sawmill. And how is he, and where is he?”

Mrs. Dodd replied that he was on the seas, but expect——

“Then I wish him well off 'em, confound 'em oncannall! Halloa! why, this will be the little girl grown up int' a wumman while ye look round.”

“Yes, my good friend; and her mother's darling.”

“And she's a bonny lass, I can tell ye. But no freend to the Dockers, I see.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Dodd sadly, “looks are deceitful; she is under medical advice at this very——”

“Well, that won't hurt her, unless she takes it.” And he burst into a ringing laugh: but in the middle of it, stopped dead short, and his face elongated. “Lord sake, mad'm,” said he impressively, “mind what y' are at, though; Barkton's just a trap for fanciful femuls: there's a n'oily ass called Osmond, and a canting cut-throat called Stephenson and a genteel, cadaveris old assassin called Short, as long as a maypole; they'd soon take the rose out of Miss Floree's cheek here. Why, they'd starve Cupid, an' veneseck Venus, an' blister Pomonee, the vagabins.”

Mrs. Dodd looked a little confused, and exchanged speaking glances with Julia. “However,” she said calmly, “I have consulted Mr. Osmond and Dr. Short; but have not relied on them alone. I have taken her to Sir William Best. And to Dr. Chalmers. And to Dr. Kenyon.” And she felt invulnerable behind her phalanx of learning and reputation.

“Good Hivens!” roared the visitor, “what a gauntlet o' gabies for one girl to run; and come out alive! And the picter of health. My faith, Miss Floree, y' are tougher than ye look.”

“My daughter's name is Julia,” observed Mrs. Dodd, a little haughtily; but instantly recovering herself, she said, “This is Dr. Sampson, love—an old friend of your mother's.”

“And th' Author an' Invintor of th' great Chronothairmal Therey o' Midicine, th' Unity Perriodicity an' Remittency of all disease,” put in the visitor, with such prodigious swiftness of elocution that the words went tumbling over one another like railway carriages out on pleasure, and the sentence was a pile of loud, indistinct syllables.

Julia's lovely eyes dilated at this clishmaclaver, and she bowed coldly. Dr. Sampson had revealed in this short interview nearly all the characteristics of voice, speech, and manner, she had been taught from infancy to shun: boisterous, gesticulatory, idiomatic; and had taken the discourse out of her mamma's mouth twice. Now Albion Villa was a Red Indian hut in one respect: here nobody interrupted.

Mrs. Dodd had little personal egotism, but she had a mother's, and could not spare this opportunity of adding another Doctor to her collection: so she said hurriedly, “Will you permit me to show you what your learned confreres have prescribed her?” Julia sighed aloud, and deprecated the subject with earnest furtive signs; Mrs. Dodd would not see them. Now, Dr. Sampson was himself afflicted with what I shall venture to call a mental ailment; to wit, a furious intolerance of other men's opinions; he had not even patience to hear them. “Mai—dear—mad'm,” said he hastily, “when you've told me their names, that's enough. Short treats her for liver, Sir William goes in for lung disease or heart, Chalmers sis it's the nairves, and Kinyon the mookis membrin; and I say they are fools and lyres all four.”

“Julia!” ejaculated Mrs. Dodd, “this is very extraordinary.”

“No, it is not extraordinary,” cried Dr. Sampson defiantly; “nothing is extraordinary. D'ye think I've known these shallow men thirty years, and not plumbed 'um?”

“Shallow, my good friend? Excuse me! they are the ablest men in your own branch of your own learned profession.”

“Th' ablest! Oh, you mean the money-makingest: now listen me! our lairned Profession is a rascally one. It is like a barrel of beer. What rises to the top?” Here he paused for a moment, then answered himself furiously, “THE SCUM.”

This blast blown, he moderated a little. “Look see!” said he, “up to three or four thousand a year, a Docker is often an honest man, and sometimes knows something of midicine; not much, because it is not taught anywhere. But if he is making over five thousand, he must be a rogue or else a fool: either he has booed an' booed, an' cript an' crawled, int' wholesale collusion with th' apothecary an' the accoucheur—the two jockeys that drive John Bull's faemily coach—and they are sucking the pashint togither, like a leash o' leeches: or else he has turned spicialist; has tacked his name to some poplar disorder, real or imaginary; it needn't exist to be poplar. Now, those four you have been to are spicialists, and that means monomaniues—their buddies exspatiate in West-ind squares, but their souls dwell in a n'alley, ivery man jack of 'em: Aberford's in Stomich Alley, Chalmers's in Nairve Court, Short's niver stirs out o' Liver Lane, Paul's is stuck fast in Kidney Close, Kinyon's in Mookis Membrin Mews, and Hibbard's in Lung Passage. Look see! nixt time y' are out of sorts, stid o' consultin' three bats an' a n'owl at a guinea the piece, send direct to me, and I'll give y' all their opinions, and all their prescriptions, gratis. And deevilich dear ye'll find 'em at the price, if ye swallow 'm.”

Mrs. Dodd thanked him coldly for the offer, but said she would be more grateful if he would show his superiority to persons of known ability by just curing her daughter on the spot.

“Well, I will,” said he carelessly: and all his fire died out of him. “Put out your tongue!—Now your pulse!”

Mrs. Dodd knew her man (ladies are very apt to fathom their male acquaintance—too apt, I think); and, to pin him to the only medical theme which interested her, seized the opportunity while he was in actual contact with Julia's wrist, and rapidly enumerated her symptoms, and also told him what Mr. Osmond had said about Hyperaesthesia.

“GOOSE GREECE!” barked Sampson, loud, clear, and sharp as an irritated watch-dog; but this one bow-wow vented, he was silent as abruptly.

Mrs. Dodd smiled, and proceeded to Hyperaemia, and thence to the Antiphlogistic Regimen.

At that unhappy adjective, Sampson jumped up, cast away his patient's hand, forgot her existence—she was but a charming individual—and galloped into his native region, Generalities.

“Antiphlogistic! Mai—dear—mad'm, that one long fragmint of ass's jaw has slain a million. Adapted to the weakness of human nature, which receives with rivirince ideas however childish, that come draped in long-tailed and exotic words, that aasimine polysyllable has riconciled the modern mind to the chimeras of th' ancients, and outbutchered the guillotine, the musket, and the sword: ay, and but for me

Had barred the door
For cinturies more

on the great coming sceince, the sceince of healing diseases, instead of defining and dividing 'em and lengthening their names and their durashin, and shortening nothing but the pashint. Th' Antiphlogistic Therey is this: That disease is fiery, and that any artificial exhaustion of vital force must cool the system, and reduce the morbid fire, called, in their donkey Latin 'flamma,' and in their compound donkey Latin 'inflammation,' and in their Goose Greece, 'phlogosis,' 'phlegmon,' &c. And accordingly th' Antiphlogistic Practice is, to cool the sick man by bleeding him, and, when blid, either to rebleed him with a change of instrument, bites and stabs instid of gashes, or else to rake the blid, and then blister the blid and raked, and then push mercury till the teeth of the blid, raked, and blistered shake in their sockets, and to starve the blid, purged, salivated, blistered wretch from first to last. This is the Antiphlogistic system. It is seldom carried out entire, because the pashint, at the first or second link in their rimedial chain, expires; or else gives such plain signs of sinking, that even these ass-ass-ins take fright, and try t' undo their own work, not disease's, by tonics an' turtle, and stimulants: which things given at the right time instead of the wrong, given when the pashint was merely weakened by his disorder, and not enfeebled by their didly rinmedies, would have cut th' ailment down in a few hours.”

“Dear me,” said Mrs. Dodd; “and now, my good friend, with respect to my daughter——

“N' list me!” clashed Sampson; “ye're goen to fathom th' antiphlogistics, since they still survive an' slay in holes and corners like Barkton and d'Itly; I've driven the vamperes out o' the cintres o' civilisation. Begin with their coolers! Exhaustion is not a cooler, it is a feverer, and they know it; the way parrots know sentences. Why are we all more or less feverish at night? Because we are weaker. Starvation is no cooler, it is an inflamer, and they know it—as parrots know truths, but can't apply them: for they know that burning fever rages in ivery town, street, camp, where Famine is. As for blood-letting, their prime cooler, it is inflammatory; and they know it (parrot-wise), for the thumping heart and bounding pulse of pashints blid by butchers in black, and bullocks blid by butchers in blue, prove it; and they have recorded this in all their books: yet stabbed, and bit, and starved, and mercuried, and murdered on. But mind ye, all their sham coolers are real weakeners (I wonder they didn't inventory Satin and his brimstin lake among their refrijrators), and this is the point whence t' appreciate their imbecility, and the sairvice I have rendered mankind in been the first t' attack their banded school, at a time it seemed imprignable.”

“Ah! this promises to be very interesting,” sighed Mrs. Dodd; “and before you enter on so large a field, perhaps it would be as well to dispose of a little matter which lies at my heart. Here is my poor daughter——”

“NLISSMEE! A human Bean is in a constant state of flux and reflux; his component particles move, change, disappear, and are renewed; his life is a round of exhaustion and repair. Of this repair the brain is the sovereign ajint by night and day, and the blood the great living material, and digestible food th' indispensible supply. And this balance of exhaustion and repair is too nice to tamper with: disn't a single sleepless night, or dinnerless day, write some pallor on the face, and tell against the buddy? So does a single excessive perspiration, a trifling diary, or a cut finger, though it takes but half an ounce of blood out of the system. And what is the cause of that rare ivint—which occurs only to pashmints that can't afford docking—Dith from old age? Think ye the man really succumms under years, or is mowed down by Time? Nay, yon's just Potry an' Bosh. Nashins have been thinned by the lancet, but niver by the scythe; and years are not forces, but misures of events. No, Centenarius decays and dies bekase his bodil' expindituire goes on, and his bodil' income falls off by failure of the reparative and reproductive forces. And now suppose bodil' exhaustion and repair were a mere matter of pecuniary, instead of vital, economy: what would you say to the steward or housekeeper, who, to balance your accounts and keep you solvent, should open every known channel of expinse with one hand, and with the other—stop the supplies? Yet this is how the Dockers for thirty cinturies have burned th' human candle at both ends, yet wondered the light of life expired under their hands.”

“It seems irrational. Then in my daughter's case you would——”

“Looksee! A pashint falls sick. What haps directly? Why the balance is troubled, and exhaustion exceeds repair. For proof obsairve the buddy when Disease is fresh!

And you will always find a loss of flesh

to put it economikly, and then you must understand it, bein a housekeeper—

Whativer the Disease, its form or essence,
Expinditure goes on, and income lessens.

But to this sick and therefore weak man, comes a Docker purblind with cinturies of Cant, Pricidint, Blood, and Goose Greece; imagines him a fiery pervalid, though the common sense of mankind through its interpreter common language, pronounces him an 'invalid,' gashes him with a lancet, spills out the great liquid material of all repair by the gallon, and fells this weak man, wounded now, and pale, and fainting, with Dith stamped on his face, to th' earth, like a bayoneted soldier or a slaughtered ox. If the weak man, wounded thus, and weakened, survives, then the chartered Thugs who have drained him by the bung-hole, turn to and drain him by the spigot; they blister him, and then calomel him: and lest Nature should have the ghost of a chance to conterbalance these frightful outgoings, they keep strong meat and drink out of his system emptied by their stabs, bites, purges, mercury, and blisters; damdijjits! And that, Asia excipted, was profissional Midicine from Hippocrates to Sampsin. Antiphlogistic is but a modern name for an ass-ass-inating rouutine which has niver varied a hair since scholastic midicine, the silliest and didliest of all the hundred forms of Quackery, first rose—unlike Seeince, Art, Religion, and all true Suns—in the West; to wound the sick; to weaken the weak; and mutilate the hurt; and thin mankind.”

The voluble impugner of his own profession delivered these two last words in thunder so sudden and effective as to strike Julia's work out of her hands. But here, as in Nature, a moment's pause followed the thunderclap; so Mrs. Dodd, who had long been patiently watching her opportunity, smothered a shriek, and edged in a word: “This is irresistible; you have confuted everybody, to their heart's content; and now the question is, what course shall we substitute?” She meant, “in the great case, which occupies me.” But Sampson attached a nobler, wider, sense to her query. “What course? Why the great Chronothairmal practice, based on the remittent and febrile character of all disease; above all, on

The law of Perriodicity, a law
Midicine yet has wells of light to draw.

By Remittency, I mean th' ebb of Disease, by Perriodicity, th' ebb and also the flow, the paroxysm and the remission. These remit and recur, and keep tune like the tides, not in ague and remittent fever only, as the Profission imagines to this day, but in all diseases from a Scirrhus in the Pylorus t' a toothache. And I discovered this, and the new path to cure of all diseases it opens. Alone I did it; and what my reward? Hooted, insulted, belied, and called a quack by the banded school of profissional assassins, who, in their day hooted Harvey and Jinner—authors too of great discoveries, but discoveries narrow in their consequences compared with mine. T' appreciate Chronothairmalism, ye must begin at the beginning; so just answer me—What is man?”

At this huge inquiry whirring tip all in a moment, like a cock-pheasant in a wood, Mrs. Dodd sank back in her chair despondent. Seeing her hors de combat, Sampson turned to Julia and demanded, twice as loud, “WHAT IS MAN?” Julia opened two violet eyes at him, and then looked at her mother for a hint how to proceed.

“How can that child answer such a question?” sighed Mrs. Dodd. “Let us return to the point.”

“I have never strayed an inch from it. It's about 'Young Physic.'”

“No, excuse me, it is about a young lady. Universal Medicine: what have I to do with that?”

“Now this is the way with them all,” cried Sampson, furious; “there lowed John Bull. The men and women of this benighted nashin have an ear for anything, provided it matters nothing: talk Jology, Conchology, Entomology, Theology, Meteorology, Astronomy, Deuteronomy, Botheronomy, or Boshology, and one is listened to with rivirence, because these are all far-off things in fogs; but at a word about the great, near, useful art of Healing, y'all stop your ears; for why? your life and dailianhourly happiness depend on it. But 'no,' sis John Bull, the knowledge of our own buddies, and how to save our own Bakin—Beef I mean—day by day, from disease and chartered ass-ass-ins, all that may interest the thinkers in Saturn, but what the deevil is it t' us? Talk t' us of the hiv'nly buddies, not of our own; babble o' comets an' meteors an' Ethereal nibulae (never mind the nibulae in our own skulls). Discourse t' us of Predistinashin, Spitzbairgen seaweed, the last novel, the siventh vile; of Chrisehinising the Patagonians on condition they are not to come here and Chrischinise the Whitechapelians; of the letter to the Times from the tinker wrecked at Timbuctoo; and the dear Professor's lecture on the probabeelity of snail-shells in the backyard of the moon: but don't ask us to know ourselves—Ijjits!!”

The eloquent speaker, depressed by the perversity of Englishmen in giving their minds to every part of creation but their bodies, suffered a momentary loss of energy; then Mrs. Dodd, who had long been watching lynx-like, glided in. “Let us compound. You are for curing all the world, beginning with Nobody. My ambition is to cure my girl, and leave mankind in peace. Now, if you will begin with my Julia, I will submit to rectify the universe in its proper turn. Any time will do to set the human race right; you own it is in no hurry: but my child's case presses; so do pray cure her for me. Or at least tell me what her Indisposition is.”

“Oh! What! didn't I tell you? Well, there's nothing the matter with her.”

At receiving this cavalier reply for the reward of all her patience, Mrs. Dodd was so hurt, and so nearly angry, that she rose with dignity from her seat, her cheek actually pink, and the water in her eyes. Sampson saw she was ruffled, and appealed to Julia—of all people. “There now, Miss Julia,” said he, ruefully; “she is in a rage because I won't humbug her. Poplus voolt decipee. I tell you, ma'am, it is not a midical case. Give me disease and I'll cure 't. Stop, I'll tell ye what do: let her take and swallow the Barkton Docks' prescriptions, and Butcher Best's, and canting Kinyon's, and after those four tinkers there'll be plenty holes to mend; then send for me!”

Here was irony. Mrs. Dodd retorted by finesse. She turned on him with a treacherous smile, and said: “Never mind doctors and patients; it is so long since we met; I do hope you will waive ceremony, and dine with me en ami.”

He accepted with pleasure; but must return to his inn first and get rid of his dirty boots and pashints. And with this he whipped out his watch, and saw that, dealing with universal medicine, he had disappointed more than one sick individual; so shot out as hard as he had shot in, and left the ladies looking at one another after the phenomenon.

“Well?” said Julia, with a world of meaning.

“Yes, dear,” replied Mrs. Dodd, “he is a little eccentric. I think I will request them to make some addition to the dinner.”

“No, mamma, if you please, not to put me off so transparently. If I had interrupted, and shouted, and behaved so, you would have packed me off to bed, or somewhere, directly.”

“Don't say 'packed,' love. Dismissed me to bed.”

“Ah!” cried Julia, “that privileged person is gone, and we must all mind our P's and Q's once more.”

Mrs. Dodd, with an air of nonchalance, replied to the effect that Dr. Sampson was not her offspring, and so she was not bound to correct his eccentricities. “And I suppose,” said she, languidly, “we must accept these extraordinary people as we find them. But that is no reason why you should say 'P's and Q's,' darling.”

That day her hospitable board was spread over a trap. Blessed with an oracle irrelevantly fluent, and dumb to the point, she had asked him to dinner with maternal address. He could not be on his guard eternally; sooner or later, through inadvertence, or in a moment of convivial recklessness, or in a parenthesis of some grand Generality, he would cure her child: or, perhaps, at his rate of talking, would wear out all his idle themes, down to the very “well-being of mankind;” and them Julia's mysterious indisposition would come on the blank tapis. With these secret hopes she presided at the feast, all grace and gentle amity. Julia, too, sat down with a little design, but a very different one, viz., of being chilly company; for she disliked this new acquaintance, and hated the science of medicine.

The unconscious Object chatted away with both, and cut their replies very short, and did strange things: sent away Julia's chicken, regardless of her scorn, and prescribed mutton; called for champagne and made her drink it and pout; and thus excited Mrs. Dodd's hopes that he was attending to the case by degrees.

But after dinner, Julia, to escape medicine universal and particular, turned to her mother, and dilated on treachery of her literary guide, the Criticaster. “It said 'Odds and Ends' was a good novel to read by the seaside. So I thought then oh! how different it must be from most books, if you can sit by the glorious sea and even look at it. So I sent for it directly, and, would you believe, it was an ignoble thing; all flirtations and curates. The sea indeed! A pond would be fitter to read it by; and one with a good many geese on.”

“Was ever such simplicity!” said Mrs. Dodd. “Why, my dear, that phrase about the sea does not mean anything. I shall have you believing that Mr. So-and-So, a novelist, can 'wither fashionable folly,'' and that 'a painful incident'' to one shopkeeper has 'thrown a gloom'' over a whole market-town, and so on. Now-a-days every third phrase is of this character; a starling's note. Once, it appears, there was an age of gold, and then came one of iron, and then of brass. All these are gone, and the age of 'jargon' has succeeded.”

She sighed, and Sampson generalised; he plunged from the seaside novel into the sea of fiction. He rechristened that joyous art Feckshin, and lashed its living professors. “You devour their three volumes greedily,” said he, “but after your meal you feel as empty as a drum; there is no leading idea in 'um; now there always is—in Moliere; and he comprehended the midicine of his age. But what fundamental truth d'our novelists iver convey? All they can do is pile incidents. Their customers dictate th' article: unideaed melodrams for unideaed girls. The writers and their feckshins belong to one species, and that's 'the non-vertebrated animals;' and their midicine is Bosh; why, they bleed still for falls and fevers; and niver mention vital chronometry. Then they don't look straight at Nature, but see with their ears, and repeat one another twelve deep. Now, listen me! there are the cracters for an 'ideaed feckshin' in Barkington, and I'd write it, too, only I haven't time.”

At this, Julia, forgetting her resolution, broke out, “Romantic characters in Barkington? Who? who?”

“Who should they be, but my pashints? Ay, ye may lauch, Miss Julee, but wait till ye see them.” He was then seized with a fit of candour, and admitted that some, even of his pashints, were colourless; indeed, not to mince the matter, six or seven of that sacred band were nullity in person. “I can compare the beggars to nothing,” said he, “but the globules of the Do-Nothings; dee——d insipid, and nothing in 'em. But the others make up. Man alive, I've got 'a rosy-cheeked miser,' and an 'ill-used attorney,' and an 'honest Screw'—he is a gardener, with a head like a cart-horse.”

“Mamma! mamma! that is Mr. Maxley,” cried Julia, clapping her hands, and thawing in her own despite.

“Then there's my virgin martyr and my puppy. They are brother and sister; and there's their father, but he is an impenetrable dog—won't unbosom. Howiver, he sairves to draw chicks for the other two, and so keep 'em goen. By-the-bye, you know my puppy?”

“We have not that honour. Do we know Dr. Sampson's puppy, love?” inquired Mrs. Dodd, rather languidly.

“Mamma!—I—I—know no one of that name.”

“Don't tell me! Why it was he sent me here told me where you lived, and I was to make haste, for Miss Dodd was very ill: it is young Hardie, the banker's son, ye know.”

Mrs. Dodd said good-humouredly, but with a very slight touch of irony, that really they were very much flattered by the interest Mr. Alfred Hardie had shown; especially as her daughter had never exchanged ten words with him. Julia coloured at this statement, the accuracy of which she had good reason to doubt; and the poor girl felt as if an icicle passed swiftly along her back. And then, for the first the in her life, she thought her mother hardly gracious; and she wanted to say she was obliged to Mr. Alfred Hardie, but dared not, and despised herself for not daring. Her composure was further attacked by Mrs. Dodd looking full at her, and saying interrogatively, “I wonder how that young gentleman could know about your being ill?”

At this Julia eyed her plate very attentively, and murmured, “I believe it is all over the town: and seriously too; so Mrs. Maxley says, for she tells me that in Barkington if more than one doctor is sent for, that bodes ill for the patient.”

“Deevelich ill,” cried Sampson heartily.

“For two physicians, like a pair of oars,
Conduck him faster to the Styjjin shores.” *
* Garth.

Julia looked him in the face, and coldly ignored this perversion of Mrs. Maxley's meaning; and Mrs. Dodd returned pertinaciously to the previous topic. “Mr. Alfred Hardie interests me; he was good to Edward. I am curious to know why you call him a puppy?”

“Only because he is one, ma'am. And that is no reason at all with 'the Six.' He is a juveneel pidant and a puppy, and contradicts ivery new truth, bekase it isn't in Aristotle and th' Eton Grammar; and he's such a chatterbox, ye can't get in a word idgeways; and he and his sister—that's my virgin martyr—are a farce. He keeps sneerin' at her relijjin, and that puts her in such a rage, she threatens 't' intercede for him at the throne.”

“Jargon,” sighed Mrs. Dodd, and just shrugged her lovely shoulders. “We breathe it—we float in an atmosphere of it. My love?” And she floated out of the room, and Julia floated after.

Sampson sat meditating on the gullibility of man in matters medical. This favourite speculation detained him late, and almost his first word on entering the drawing-room was, “Good night, little girl.”

Julia coloured at this broad hint, drew herself up, and lighted a bedcandle. She went to Mrs. Dodd, kissed her, and whispered in her ear, “I hate him!” and, as she retired, her whole elegant person launched ladylike defiance; under which brave exterior no little uneasiness was hidden. “Oh, what will become of me!” thought she, “if he has gone and told him about Henley?”

“Let's see the prescriptions, ma'am,” said Dr. Sampson.

Delighted at this concession, Mrs. Dodd took them out of her desk and spread them earnestly. He ran his eye over them, and pointed out that the mucous-membrane man and the nerve man had prescribed the same medicine, on irreconcilable grounds; and a medicine, moreover, whose effect on the nerves was nil, and on the mucous membrane was not to soothe it, but plough it and harrow it; “and did not that open her eyes?” He then reminded her that all these doctors in consultation would have contrived to agree. “But you,” said he, “have baffled the collusive hoax by which Dox arrived at a sham uniformity—honest uniformity can never exist till scientific principles obtain. Listme! To begin, is the pashint in love?”

The doctor put this query in just the same tone in which they inquire “Any expectoration?” But Mrs. Dodd, in reply, was less dry and business-like. She started and looked aghast. This possibility had once, for a moment, occurred to her, but only to be rejected, the evidence being all against it.

“In love?” said she. “That child, and I not know it!”

He said he had never supposed that. “But I thought I'd just ask ye; for she has no bodily ailment, and the passions are all counterfeit diseases; they are connected, like all diseases, with cerebral instability, have their hearts and chills like all diseases, and their paroxysms and remissions like all diseases. Nlistme! You have detected the signs of a slight cerebral instability; I have ascertained th' absence of all physical cause: then why make this healthy pashint's buddy a test-tube for poisons? Sovereign drugs (I deal with no other, I leave the nullities to the noodles) are either counterpoisons or poisons, and here there is nothing to counterpoison at prisent. So I'm for caushin, and working on the safe side th' hidge, till we are less in the dark. Mind ye, young women at her age are kittle cattle; they have gusts o' this, and gusts o' that, th' unreasonable imps. D'ye see these two pieces pasteboard? They are tickets for a ball,

In Barkton town-hall.”

“Yes, of course I see them,” said Mrs. Dodd dolefully.

“Well, I prescribe 'em. And when they have been taken,

And the pashint well shaken,

perhaps we shall see whether we are on the right system: and if so, we'll dose her with youthful society in a more irrashinal form; conversaziones, cookeyshines, et citera. And if we find ourselves on the wrong tack why then we'll hark back.

Stick blindly to 'a course,' the Dockers cry.
But it does me harm: Then 'twill do good by-and-bye. Where lairned ye that, Echoes of Echoes, say!
The killer ploughs 'a course,' the healer 'feels his way.'”

So mysterious are the operations of the human mind, that, when we have exploded in verse tuneful as the above, we lapse into triumph instead of penitence. Not that doggrel meets with reverence here below—the statues to it are few, and not in marble, but in the material itself—But then an Impromptu! A moment ago our Posy was not: and now is; with the speed, if not the brilliancy, of lightning, we have added a handful to the intellectual dust-heap of an oppressed nation. From this bad eminence Sampson then looked down complacently, and saw Mrs. Dodd's face as long as his arm. She was one that held current opinions; and the world does not believe Poetry can sing the Practical. Verse and useful knowledge pass for incompatibles; and, though Doggrel is not Poetry, yet it has a lumbering proclivity that way, and so forfeits the confidence of grave sensible people. This versification, and this impalpable and unprecedented prescription she had waited for so long, seemed all of a piece to poor mamma: wild, unpractical, and—“oh, horror! horror!”—eccentric.

Sampson read her sorrowful face after his fashion. “Oh, I see, ma'am,” cried he. “Cure is not welcome unless it comes in the form consecrated by cinturies of slaughter. Well, then, give me a sheet.” He took the paper and rent it asunder, and wrote this on the larger fragment:

Rx Die Mercur. circa x. hor: vespert:
eat in musca ad Aulam oppid:
Saltet cum xiii canicul:
praesertim meo. Dom: reddita,
6 hora matutin: dormiat at prand:
Repetat stultit: pro re nata.

He handed this with a sort of spiteful twinkle to Mrs. Dodd, and her countenance lightened again. Her sex will generally compound with whoever can give as well as take. Now she had extracted a real, grave prescription, she acquiesced in the ball, though not a county one; “to satisfy your whim, my good, kind friend, to whom I owe so much.”

Sampson called on his way back to town, and, in course of conversation, praised nature for her beautiful instincts, one of which, he said, had inspired Miss Julee, at a credulous age, not to swallow “the didly drastics of the tinkering dox.”

Mrs. Dodd smiled, and requested permission to contradict him; her daughter had taken the several prescriptions.

Sampson inquired brusquely if she took him for a fool.

She replied calmly: “No; for a very clever, but rather opinionated personage.

“Opinionated? So is ivery man who has grounnds for his opinin. D'ye think, because Dockers Short, an' Bist, an' Kinyon, an' Cuckoo, an' Jackdaw, an' Starling, an' Co., don't know the dire effecks of calomel an' drastics on the buddy, I don't know't? Her eye, her tongue, her skin, her voice, her elastic walk, all tell me she has not been robbed of her vital resources. 'Why, if she had taken that genteel old thief Short's rimidies alone, the girl's gums would be sore,

And herself at Dith's door.”

Mrs. Dodd was amused. “Julia, this is so like the gentlemen; they are in love with argumeunt. They go on till they reason themselves out of their reason. Why beat about the bush; when there she sits?”

“What, go t' a wumman for the truth, when I can go t' infallible Inference?”

“You may always go to my David's daughter for the truth,” said Mrs. Dodd, with dignity. She then looked the inquiry; and Julia replied to her look as follows: first, she coloured very high; then, she hid her face in both her hands; then rose, and turning her neck swiftly, darted a glance of fiery indignation and bitter reproach on Dr. Meddlesome, and left the apartment mighty stag-like.

“Maircy on us!” cried Sampson. “Did ye see that, ma'am? Yon's just a bonny basilisk. Another such thunderbolt as she dispinsed, and ye'll be ringing for your maid to sweep up the good physician's ashes.”

Julia did not return till the good physician was gone back to London. Then she came in with a rush, and, demonstrative toad, embraced Mrs. Dodd's knees, and owned she had cultivated her geraniums with all those medicines, liquid and solid; and only one geranium had died.

There is a fascinating age, when an intelligent girl is said to fluctuate between childhood and womanhood. Let me add that these seeming fluctuations depend much on the company she is in: the budding virgin is princess of chameleons; and, to confine ourselves to her two most piquant contrasts, by her mother's side she is always more or less childlike; but, let a nice young fellow engage her apart, and, hey presto! she shall be every inch a woman: perhaps at no period of her life are the purely mental characteristics of her sex so supreme in her; thus her type, the rosebud, excels in essence of rosehood the rose itself.

My reader has seen Julia Dodd play both parts; but it is her child's face she has now been turning for several pages; so it may be prudent to remind him she has shone on Alfred Hardie in but one light; a young but Juno-like woman. Had she shown “my puppy” her childish qualities, he would have despised her—he had left that department himself so recently. But Nature guarded the budding fair from such a disaster.

We left Alfred Hardie standing in the moonlight gazing at her lodging. This was sudden; but, let slow coaches deny it as loudly as they like, fast coaches exist; and Love is a Passion, which, like Hate, Envy, Avarice, &c., has risen to a great height in a single day. Not that Alfred's was “Love at first sight;” for he had seen her beauty in the full blaze of day with no deeper feeling than admiration; but in the moonlight he came under more sovereign spells than a fair face: her virtues and her voice. The narrative of their meeting has indicated the first, and as to the latter, Julia was not one of those whose beauty goes out with the candle; her voice was that rich, mellow, moving organ, which belongs to no rank nor station; is born, not made; and, flow it from the lips of dairymaid or countess, touches every heart, gentle or simple, that is truly male. And this divine contralto, full, yet penetrating, Dame Nature had inspired her to lower when she was moved or excited, instead of raising it; and then she was enchanting. All unconsciously she cast this crowning spell on Alfred, and he adored her. In a word, he caught a child-woman away from its mother; his fluttering captive turned, put on composure, and bewitched him.

She left him, and the moonlight night seemed to blacken. But within his young breast all was light, new light. He leaned opposite her window in an Elysian reverie, and let the hours go by. He seemed to have vegetated till then, and lo! true life had dawned. He thought he should love to die for her; and, when he was calmer, he felt he was to live for her, and welcomed his destiny with rapture. He passed the rest of the Oxford term in a soft ecstasy; called often on Edward, and took a sudden and prodigious interest in him; and counted the days glide by and the happy time draw near, when he should be four months in the same town with his enchantress. This one did not trouble the doctors; he glowed with a steady fire; no heats and chills, and sad misgivings; for one thing, he was not a woman, a being tied to that stake, Suspense, and compelled to wait and wait for others' actions. To him, life's path seemed paved with roses, and himself to march in eternal sunshine, buoyed by perfumed wings.

He came to Barkington to try for the lovely prize. Then first he had to come down from love's sky, and realise how hard it is here below to court a young lady—who is guarded by a mother—without an introduction in the usual form. The obvious course was to call on Edward. Having parted from him so lately, he forced himself to wait a few days, and then set out for Albion Villa.

As he went along, he arranged the coming dialogue for all the parties. Edward was to introduce him; Mrs. Dodd to recognise his friendship for her son; he was to say he was the gainer by it; Julia, silent at first, was to hazard a timid observation, and he to answer gracefully, and draw her out and find how he stood in her opinion. The sprightly affair should end by his inviting Edward to dinner. That should lead to their inviting him in turn, and then he should have a word with Julia, and find out what houses she visited, and get introduced to their proprietors. Arrived at this point, his mind went over hedge and ditch faster than my poor pen can follow; as the crow flies, so flew he, and had reached the church-porch under a rain of nosegays with Julia—in imagination—by then he arrived at Albion Villa in the body. Yet he knocked timidly; his heart beat almost as hard as his hand.

Sarah, the black-eyed housemaid, “answered the door.”

“Mr. Edward Dodd?”

“Not at home, sir. Left last week.”

“For long?”

“I don't rightly know, sir. But he won't be back this week, I don't think.”

“Perhaps,” stammered Alfred, “the ladies—Mrs. Dodd—might be able to tell me.”

“Oh yes, sir. But my mistress, she's in London just now.”

Alfred's eyes flashed. “Could I learn from Miss Dodd?”

“La, sir, she is in London along with her ma; why, 'tis for her they are gone; to insult the great doctors.”

He started. “She is not ill? Nothing serious?”

“Well, sir, we do hope not. She is pinning a bit, as young ladies will.”

Alfred was anything but consoled by this off-hand account; he became alarmed, and looked wretched. Seeming him so perturbed, Sarah, who was blunt but good-natured, added, “But cook she says hard work would cure our Miss of all she ails. But who shall I say was asking? For my work is a bit behind-hand.”

Alfred took the hint reluctantly, and drew out his card-case, saying, “For Mr. Edward Dodd.” She gave her clean but wettish hand a hasty wipe with her apron, and took the card. He retired; she stood on the step and watched him out of sight, said “Oho!” and took his card to the kitchen for preliminary inspection and discussion.

Alfred Hardie was resolute, but sensitive. He had come on the wings of Love and Hope; he went away heavily; a housemaid's tongue had shod his elastic feet with lead in a moment; of all misfortunes, sickness was what he had not anticipated, for she looked immortal. Perhaps it was that fair and treacherous disease, consumption. Well, if it was, he would love her all the more, would wed her as soon as he was of age, and carry her to some soft Southern clime, and keep each noxious air at bay, and prolong her life, perhaps save it.

And now he began to chafe at the social cobwebs that kept him from her. But, just as his impatience was about to launch him into imprudence, he was saved by a genuine descendant of Adam. James Maxley kept Mr. Hardie's little pleasaunce trim as trim could be, by yearly contract. This entailed short but frequent visits; and Alfred often talked with him; for the man was really a bit of a character; had a shrewd rustic wit, and a ready tongue, was rather too fond of law, and much too fond of money; but scrupulously honest: head as long as Cudworth's, but broader; and could not read a line. One day he told Alfred that he must knock off now, and take a look in at Albion Villee. The captain was due: and on no account would he, Maxley, allow that there ragged box round the captains quarter-deck: “That is how he do name their little mossel of a lawn: and there he walks for a wager, athirt and across, across and athirt, five steps and then about; and I'd a'most bet ye a halfpenny he thinks hisself on the salt sea ocean, bless his silly old heart.”

All this time Alfred, after the first start of joyful surprise, was secretly thanking his stars for sending him an instrument. To learn whether she had returned, he asked Maxley whether the ladies had sent for him. “Not they,” said Maxley, rather contemptuously; “what do women-folk care about a border, without 'tis a lace one to their nightcaps, for none but the father of all vanity to see. Not as I have ought to say again the pair; they keep their turf tidyish—and pay ready money—and a few flowers in their pots; but the rest may shift for itself. Ye see, Master Alfred,” explained Maxley, wagging his head wisely, “nobody's pride can be everywhere. Now theirs is in-a-doors; their with-drawing-room it's like the Queen's palace, my missus tells me; she is wrapped up in 'em, ye know. But the captain for my money.”

The sage shouldered his tools and departed. But he left a good hint behind him. Alfred hovered about the back-door the next day till he caught Mrs. Maxley; she supplied the house with eggs and vegetables. “Could she tell him whether his friend Edward Dodd was likely to come home soon?” She thought not; he was gone away to study. “He haven't much head-piece, you know, not like what Miss Julia have. Mrs. and Miss are to be home to-day; they wrote to cook this morning. I shall be there to-morrow, sartain, and I'll ask in the kitchen when Master Edward is a-coming back.” She prattled on. The ladies of Albion Villa were good kind ladies; the very maid-servants loved them; Miss was more for religion than her mother, and went to St. Anne's Church Thursday evenings, and Sundays morning and evening; and visited some poor women in the parish with food and clothes; Mrs. Dodd could not sleep a wink when the wind blew hard at night; but never complained, only came down pale to breakfast. Miss Julia's ailment was nothing to speak of, but they were in care along of being so wrapped up in her, and no wonder, for if ever there was a duck——!

Acting on this intelligence, Alfred went early the next Sunday to St. Anne's Church, and sat down in the side gallery at its east end. While the congregation flowed quietly in, the organist played the Agnus Dei of Mozart. Those pious tender tones stole over his hot young heart, and whispered, “Peace, be still!” He sighed wearily, and it passed through his mind that it might have been better for him, and especially for his studies, if he had never seen her. Suddenly the aisle seemed to lighten up; she was gliding along it, beautiful as May, and modesty itself in dress and carriage. She went into a pew and kneeled a minute, then seated herself and looked out the lessons for the day. Alfred gazed at her face: devoured it. But her eyes never roved. She seemed to have put off feminine curiosity, and the world, at the church door. Indeed he wished she was not quite so heavenly discreet; her lashes were delicious, but he longed to see her eyes once more; to catch a glance from them, and, by it, decipher his fate.

But no; she was there to worship, and did not discern her earthly lover, whose longing looks were glued to her, and his body rose and sank with the true worshippers, but with no more spirituality than a piston or a Jack-in-the-box.

In the last hymn before the sermon, a well-meaning worshipper in the gallery delivered a leading note, a high one, with great zeal, but small precision, being about a semitone flat; at this outrage on her too-sensitive ear, Julia Dodd turned her head swiftly to discover the offender, and failed; but her two sapphire eyes met Alfred's point-blank.

She was crimson in a moment, and lowered them on her book again, as if to look that way was to sin. It was but a flash: but sometimes a flash fires a mine.

The lovely blush deepened and spread before it melted away, and Alfred's late cooling heart warmed itself at that sweet glowing cheek. She never looked his way again, not once: which was a sad disappointment; but she blushed again and again before the service ended, only not so deeply. Now there was nothing in the sermon to make her blush: I might add, there was nothing to redden her cheek with religious excitement. There was a little candid sourness—oil and vinegar—against sects and Low Churchmen; but thin generality predominated. Total: “Acetate of morphia,” for dry souls to sip.

So Alfred took all the credit of causing those sweet irrelevant blushes; and gloated: the young wretch could not help glorying in his power to tint that fair statue of devotion with earthly thoughts.

But stay! that dear blush, was it pleasure or pain? What if the sight of him was intolerable?

He would know how he stood with her, and on the spot. He was one of the first to leave the church; he made for the churchyard gate, and walked slowly backwards and forwards by it, with throbbing heart till she came out.

She was prepared for him now, and bowed slightly to him with the most perfect composure, and no legible sentiment, except a certain marked politeness many of our young ladies think wasted upon young gentlemen; and are mistaken.

Alfred took off his hat in a tremor, and his eyes implored and inquired, but met with no further response; and she walked swiftly home, though without apparent effort. He looked longingly after her; but discretion forbade.

He now crawled by Albion Villa twice every day, wet or dry, and had the good fortune to see her twice at the drawing-room window. He was constant at St. Anne's Church, and one Thursday crept into the aisle to be nearer to her, and he saw her steal one swift look at the gallery, and look grave; but soon she detected him, and though she looked no more towards him, she seemed demurely complacent. Alfred had learned to note these subtleties now, for Love is a microscope. What he did not know was, that his timid ardour was pursuing a masterly course; that to find herself furtively followed everywhere, and hovered about for a look, is apt to soothe womanly pride and stir womanly pity, and to keep the female heart in a flutter of curiosity and emotions, two porters that open the heart's great gate to love.

Now the evening before his visit to the Dodds, Dr. Sampson dined with the Hardies, and happened to mention the “Dodds” among his old patients: “The Dodds of' Albion Villa?” inquired Miss Hardie, to her brother's no little surprise. “Albyn fiddlestick!” said the polished doctor. “No! they live by the water-side; used to; but now they have left the town, I hear. He is a sea-captain and a fine lad, and Mrs. Dodd is just the best-bred woman I ever prescribed for, except Mrs. Sampson.”

“It is the Dodds of Albion Villa,” said Miss Hardie. “They have two children: a son; his name is Edward; and a daughter, Julia; she is rather good-looking; a Gentleman's Beauty.”

Alfred stared at his sister. Was she blind? with her “rather good-looking.”

Sampson was quite pleased at the information. “N' listen me! I saved that girl's life when she was a year old.”

“Then she is ill now, doctor,” said Alfred hastily. “Do go and see her! Hum! The fact is, her brother is a great favourite of mine.” He then told him how to find Albion Villa. “Jenny, dear,” said he, when Sampson was gone, “you never told me you knew her.”

“Knew who, dear?”

“Whom? Why Dodd's sister.”

“Oh, she is a new acquaintance, and not one to interest you. We only meet in the Lord; I do not visit Albion Villa; her mother is an amiable worldling.”

“Unpardonable combination!” said Alfred with a slight sneer. “So you and Miss Dodd meet only at church!”

“At church? Hardly. She goes to St. Anne's: sits under a preacher who starves his flock with moral discourses, and holds out the sacraments of the Church as the means of grace.”

Alfred shook his head good-humouredly. “Now, Jenny, that is a challenge; and you know we both got into a fury the last time we were betrayed into that miserable waste of time and temper, Theological discussion. No, no:—

Let sects delight to bark and bite
For 'tis their nature to;
Let gown and surplice growl and fight,
For Satan makes them so.

But let you and I cut High Church and Low Church, and be brother and sister. Do tell me in English where you meet Julia Dodd; that's a dear; for young ladies 'meeting in the Lord' conveys no positive idea to my mind.”

Jane Hardie sighed at this confession. “We meet in the cottages of the poor and the sick, whom He loved and pitied when on earth; and we, His unworthy servants, try to soothe their distress, and lead them to Him who can heal the soul as well as the body, and wipe away all the tears of all His people.”

“Then it does you infinite credit, Jane,” said Alfred, warmly. “Now, that is the voice of true religion; and not the whine of this sect, nor the snarl of that. And so she joins you in this good work? I am not surprised.”

“We meet in it now and then, dear; but she can hardly be said to have joined me: I have a district, you know; but poor Mrs. Dodd will not allow Julia to enlist in the service. She visits independently, and by fits and starts; and I am afraid she thinks more of comforting their perishable bodies than of feeding their souls. It was but the other day she confessed to me her backwardness to speak in the way of instruction to women as old as her mother. She finds it so much easier to let them run on about their earthly troubles: and of course it is much easier. Ah! the world holds her still in some of its subtle meshes.”

The speaker uttered this sadly; but presently, brightening up, said, with considerable bonhomie, and almost a sprightly air: “But she is a dear girl, and the Lord will yet light her candle.”

Alfred pulled a face as of one that drinketh verjuice unawares; but let it pass: hypercriticism was not his cue just then. “Well, Jenny,” said he, “I have a favour to ask you. Introduce me to your friend, Miss Dodd. Will you?”

Miss Hardie coloured faintly. “I would rather not, dear Alfred: the introduction could not be for her eternal good. Julia's soul is in a very ticklish state; she wavers as yet between this world and the other world; and it won't do; it won't do; there is no middle path. You would very likely turn the scale, and then I should have fought against her everlasting welfare—my friend's.”

“What, am I an infidel?” inquired Alfred angrily. Jane looked distressed. “Oh no, Alfred; but you are a worldling.”

Alfred, smothering a strong sense of irritation, besought her to hear reason; these big words were out of place here. “It is Dodd's sister; and he will introduce me at a word, worldling as I am.”

“Then why urge me to do it, against my conscience?” asked the young lady, as sharply as if she had been a woman of the world. “You cannot be in love with her, as you do not know her.”

Alfred did not reply to this unlucky thrust, but made a last effort to soften her. “Can you call yourself my sister, and refuse me this trifling service, which her brother, who loves her and esteems her ten times more sincerely than you do, would not think of refusing me if he was at home?”

“Why should he? He is in the flesh himself; let the carnal introduce one another. I really must decline; but I am very, very sorry that you feel hurt about it.”

“And I am very sorry I have not an amiable worldling for my sister, instead of an unamiable and devilish conceited Christian.” And with these bitter words, Alfred snatched a candle and bounced to bed in a fury. So apt is one passion to rouse up others.

Jane Hardie let fall a gentle tear: but consoled herself with the conviction that she had done her duty, and that Alfred's anger was quite unreasonable, and so he would see as soon as he should cool.

The next day the lover, smarting under this check, and spurred to fresh efforts, invaded Sampson. That worthy was just going to dine at Albion Villa, so Alfred postponed pumping him till next day. Well, he called at the inn next day, and if the doctor was not just gone back to London!

Alfred wandered disconsolate homewards.

In the middle of Buchanan Street, an agitated treble called after him, “Mr. Halfred! hoh, Mr. Halfred!” He looked back and saw Dick Absalom, a promising young cricketer, brandishing a document and imploring aid. “Oh, Master Halfred, dooce please come here. I durstn't leave the shop.”

There is a tie between cricketers far too strong for social distinctions to divide, and, though Alfred muttered peevishly, “Whose cat is dead now?” he obeyed the strange summons.

The distress was a singular one. Master Absalom, I must premise, was the youngest of two lads in the employ of Mr. Jenner, a benevolent old chemist, a disciple of Malthus. Jenner taught the virtues of drugs and minerals to tender youths, at the expense of the public. Scarcely ten minutes had elapsed since a pretty servant girl came into the shop, and laid a paper on the counter, saying, “Please to make that up, young man.” Now at fifteen we are gratified by inaccuracies of this kind from ripe female lips: so Master Absalom took the prescription with a complacent grin; his eye glanced over it; it fell to shaking in his hand, chill dismay penetrated his heart; and, to speak with oriental strictness, his liver turned instantly to water. However, he made a feeble clutch at Mercantile Mendacity, and stammered out, “Here's a many ingredients, and the governor's out walking, and he's been and locked the drawer where we keeps our haulhoppy. You couldn't come again in half an hour, Miss, could ye?” She acquiesced readily, for she was not habitually called Miss, and she had a follower, a languid one, living hard by, and belonged to a class which thinks it consistent to come after its followers.

Dicky saw her safe off, and groaned at his ease. Here was a prescription full of new chemicals, sovereign, no doubt, i.e., deadly when applied Jennerically; and the very directions for use were in Latin words he had encountered in no prescription before. A year ago Dicky would have counted the prescribed ingredients on his fingers, and then taken down an equal number of little articles, solid or liquid, mixed them, delivered them, and so to cricket, serene; but now, his mind, to apply the universal cant, was “in a transition state.” A year's practice had chilled the youthful valour which used to scatter Epsom salts or oxalic acid, magnesia or corrosive sublimate. An experiment or two by himself and his compeers, with comments by the coroner, had enlightened him as to the final result on the human body of potent chemicals fearlessly administered, leaving him dark as to their distinctive qualities applied remedially. What should he do? Run with the prescription to old Taylor in the next street, a chemist of forty years? Alas! at his tender age he had not omitted to chaff that reverend rival persistently and publicly. Humble his establishment before the King Street one? Sooner perish drugs, and come eternal cricket! And after all, why not? Drummer-boys, and powder-monkeys, and other imps of his age that dealt destruction, did not depopulate gratis; Mankind acknowledged their services in cash: but old Jenner, taught by Philosophy through its organ the newspapers that “knowledge is riches,” was above diluting with a few shillings a week the wealth a boy acquired behind his counter; so his apprentices got no salary. Then why not shut up the old rogue's shutters, and excite a little sympathy for him, to be followed by a powerful reaction on his return from walking; and go and offer his own services on the cricket-ground to field for the gentlemen by the hour, or bowl at a shilling on their balls?

“Bowling is the lay for me,” said he; “you get money for that, and you only bruise the gents a bit and break their thumbs: you can't put their vital sparks out as you can at this work.”

By a striking coincidence the most influential member of the cricket club passed while Dick was in this quandary.

“Oh, Mr. Halfred, you was always very good to me on the ground—you couldn't have me hired by the club, could ye? For I am sick of this trade; I wants to bowl.”

“You little duffer!” said Alfred, “cricket is a recreation, not a business. Besides, it only lasts five months. Unless you adjourn to the anitipodes. Stick to the shop like a man, and make your fortune.”

“Oh, Mr. Halfred,” said Dick sorrowfully, “how can I find fortune here? Jenner don't pay. And the crowner declares he will not have it; and the Barton Chronicle says us young gents ought all to be given a holiday to go and see one of us hanged by lot. But this is what have broke this camel's back at last; here's a dalled thing to come smiling and smirking in with, and put it across a counter in a poor boy's hand. Oh! oh! oh!”

“Dick,” said Alfred, “if you blubber, I'll give you a hiding. You have stumbled on a passage you can't construe. Well, who has not? But we don't shed the briny about it. Here, let me have a go at it.”

“Ah! I've heard you are a scholard,” said Dick, “but you won't make out this; there's some new preparation of mercury, and there's musk, and there's horehound, and there's a neutral salt: and dal his old head that wrote it!”

“Hold your jaw, and listen, while I construe it to you. 'Die Mercurii, on Wednesday—decima hora vespertina, at ten o'clock at night—eat in Musca:'' what does that mean? 'Eat in Musca?'' I see! this is modern Latin with a vengeance. 'Let him go in a fly to the Towns-hall. Saltet, let him jump—cum tredecim caniculis, with thirteen little dogs—praesertim meo, especially with my little dog.' Dicky, this prescription emanates from Bedlam direct. 'Domum reddita''—hallo! it is a woman, then. 'Let her go in a fly to the—Town-hall, eh?' 'Let her jump, no, dance, with thirteen whelps, especially mine.' Ha! ha! ha! And who is the woman that is to do all this I wonder?”

“Woman, indeed!” said a treble at the door! “no more than I am; it's for a young lady. O jiminy!”

This polite ejaculation was drawn out by the speaker's sudden recognition of Alfred, who had raised his head at her remonstrance, and now started in his turn; for it was the black-eyed servant of Albion Villa. They looked at one another in expressive silence.

“Yes, sir, it is for my young lady. Is it ready, young man?”

“No, it ain't: and never will,” squealed Dick angrily “It's a vile 'oax; and you ought to be ashamed of yourself bringing it into a respectable shop.”

Alfred silenced him, and told Sarah he thought Miss Dodd ought to know the nature of this prescription before it went round the chemists.

He borrowed paper of Dick and wrote:

“Mr. Alfred Hardie presents his compliments to Miss Dodd, and begs leave to inform her that he has, by the merest accident, intercepted the enclosed prescription. As it seems rather a sorry jest, and tends to attract attention to Miss Dodd and her movements, he has ventured with some misgivings to send it back with a literal translation, on reading which it will be for Miss Dodd to decide whether it is to circulate.

“'On Wednesday, at ten P.M., let her go in a fly to the Town-hall, and dance with thirteen little {little dogs, puppies, whelps,} especially with mine: return home at six A.M. and sleep till dinner, and repeat the folly as occasion serves.'”

“Suppose I could get it into Miss's hands when she's alone?” whispered Sarah.

“You would earn my warmest gratitude.”

“'Warmest gratitude!' Is that a warm gownd, or a warm clock, I wonder?”

“It is both, when the man is a gentleman, and a pretty, dark-eyed girl pities him and stands his friend.”

Sarah smiled, and whispered, “Give it me; I'll do my best.”

Alfred enclosed the prescription and his note in one cover, handed them to her, and slipped a sovereign into her hand. He whispered, “Be prudent.”

“I'm dark, sir,” said she: and went off briskly homewards, and Alfred stood rapt in dreamy joy, and so self-elated that, had he been furnished like a peacock, he would have instantly become a “thing all eyes,” and choked up Jenner's shop, and swept his counter. He had made a step towards familiarity, had written her a letter; and then, if this prescription came, as he suspected, from Dr. Sampson, she would perhaps be at the ball. This opened a delightful vista. Meantime, Mrs. Dodd had communicated Sampson's opinion to Julia, adding that there was a prescription besides, gone to be made up. “However, he insists on your going to this ball.”

Julia begged hard to be excused: said she was in no humour for balls: and Mrs. Dodd objecting that the tickets had actually been purchased, she asked leave to send them to the Dartons. “They will be a treat to Rose and Alice; they seldom go out: mamma, I do so fear they are poorer than people think. May I?”

“It would be but kind,” said Mrs. Dodd. “Though really why my child should always be sacrificed to other people's children——”

“Oh, a mighty sacrifice!” said Julia. She sat down and enclosed the tickets to Rose Darton, with a little sugared note. Sarah, being out, Elizabeth took it. Sarah met her at the gate, but did not announce her return: she lurked in ambush till Julia happened to go to her own room, then followed her, and handed Alfred's missive, and watched her slily, and being herself expeditious as the wind in matters of the heart, took it for granted the enclosure was something very warm indeed; so she said with feigned simplicity, “I suppose it is all right now, miss?” and retreated swelling with a secret, and tormented her fellow-servants all day with innuendoes dark as Erebus.

Julia read the note again and again: her heart beat at those few ceremonious lines. “He does not like me to be talked of,” she said to herself. “How good he is! What trouble he takes about me! Ah! he will be there!”

She divined rightly; on Wednesday, at ten, Alfred Hardie was in the ball-room. It was a magnificent room, well lighted, and at present not half filled, though dancing had commenced. The figure Alfred sought was not there; and he wondered he had been so childish as to hope she would come to a city ball. He played the fine gentleman; would not dance. He got near the door with another Oxonian, and tried to avenge himself for her absence on the townspeople who were there by quizzing them.

But in the middle of this amiable occupation, and indeed in the middle of a sentence, he stopped short, and his heart throbbed, and he thrilled from head to foot; for two ladies glided in at the door, and passed up the room with the unpretending composure of well-bred people. They were equally remarkable; but Alfred saw only the radiant young creature in flowing muslin, with the narrowest sash in the room, and no ornament but a necklace of large pearls and her own vivid beauty. She had altered her mind about coming, with apologies for her vacillating disposition so penitent and disproportionate that her indulgent and unsuspecting mother was really quite amused. Alfred was not so happy as to know that she had changed her mind with his note. Perhaps even this knowledge could have added little to that exquisite moment, when, unhoped for, she passed close to him, and the fragrant air from her brushed his cheek, and seemed to whisper, “Follow me and be my slave.”

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER V

HE did follow her, and, convinced that she would be engaged ten deep in five minutes, hustled up to the master of the ceremonies and begged an introduction. The great banker's son was attended to at once. Julia saw them coming, as her sex can see, without looking. Her eyes were on fire, and a delicious blush on her cheeks, when the M. C. introduced Mr. Alfred Hardie with due pomp. He asked her to dance.

“I am engaged for this dance, sir,” said she softly.

“The next?” asked Hardie timidly.

“With pleasure.”

But when they had got so far they were both seized with bashful silence; and just as Alfred was going to try and break it, Cornet Bosanquet, aged 18, height 5 feet 4 inches, strutted up with clanking heel, and, glancing haughtily up at him, carried Julia off, like a steam-tug towing away some fair schooner. To these little thorns society treats all anxious lovers, but the incident was new to Alfred, and discomposed him; and, besides, he had nosed a rival in Sampson's prescription. So now he thought to himself, “that little ensign is 'his puppy.'”

To get rid of Mrs. Dodd he offered to conduct her to a seat. She thanked him; she would rather stand where she could see her daughter dance: on this he took her to the embrasure of a window opposite where Julia and her partner stood, and they entered a circle of spectators. The band struck up, and the solemn skating began.

“Who is this lovely creature in white?” asked a middle-aged solicitor. “In white? I did not see any beauty in white,” replied his daughter. “Why there, before your eyes,” said the gentleman, loudly.

“What, that girl dancing with the little captain? I don't see much beauty in her. And what a rubbishing dress.”

“It never cost a pound, making and all,” suggested another Barkingtonian nymph.

“But what splendid pearls!” said a third: “can they be real?”

“Real! what an idea!” ejaculated a fourth: “who puts on real pearls as big as peas with muslin at twenty pence the yard?”

“Weasels!” muttered Alfred, and quivered all over: and he felt to Mrs. Dodd so like a savage going to spring, that she laid her hand upon his wrist, and said gently, but with authority, “Be calm, sir! and oblige me by not noticing these people.”

Then they threw dirt on her bouquet, and then on her shoes, while she was winding in and out before their eyes a Grace, and her soft muslin drifting and flowing like an appropriate cloud round a young goddess.

“A little starch would make it set out better. It's as limp as a towel on the line.”

“I'll be sworn it was washed at home.”

“Where it was made.”

“I call it a rag, not a gown.”

“Do let us move,” whispered Alfred.

“I am very comfortable here,” whispered Mrs. Dodd. “How can these things annoy my ears while I have eyes? Look at her: she is the best-dressed lady in the room; her muslin is Indian, and of a quality unknown to these provincial shopkeepers; a rajah gave it us: her pearls were my mother's, and have been in every court in Europe; and she herself is beautiful, would be beautiful dressed like the dowdies who are criticising her: and I think, sir, she dances as well as any lady can encumbered with an Atom that does not know the figure.” All this with the utmost placidity.

Then, as if to extinguish all doubt, Julia flung them a heavenly smile; she had been furtively watching them all the time, and she saw they were talking about her.

The other Oxonian squeezed up to Hardie. “Do you know the beauty? She smiled your way.

“Ah!” said Hardie, deliberately, “you mean that young lady with the court pearls, in that exquisite Indian muslin, which floats so gracefully, while the other muslin girls are all crimp and stiff; like little pigs clad in crackling.”

“Ha! ha! ha! Yes. Introduce me.”

“I could not take such a liberty with the queen of the ball.”

Mrs. Dodd smiled, but felt nervous and ill at ease. She thought to herself, “Now here is a generous, impetuous thing.” As for the hostile party, staggered at first by the masculine insolence of young Hardy, it soon recovered, and, true to its sex, attacked him obliquely, through his white ladye.

“Who is the beauty of the ball?” asked one, haughtily.

“I don't know, but not that mawkish thing in limp muslin.”

“I should say Miss Hetherington is the belle,” suggested a third.

“Which is Miss Hetherington?” asked the Oxonian coolly of Alfred.

“Oh, she won't do for us. It is that little chalk-faced girl, dressed in pink with red roses; the pink of vulgarity and bad taste.”

At this both Oxonians laughed arrogantly, and Mrs. Dodd withdrew her hand from the speaker's arm and glided away behind the throng. Julia looked at him with marked anxiety. He returned her look, and was sore puzzled what it meant, till he found Mrs. Dodd had withdrawn softly from him; then he stood confused, regretting too late he had not obeyed her positive request, and tried to imitate her dignified forbearance.

The quadrille ended. He instantly stepped forward, and bowing politely to the cornet, said authoritatively, “Mrs. Dodd sends me to conduct you to her. With your permission, sir.” His arm was offered and taken before the little warrior knew where he was.

He had her on his arm, soft, light, and fragrant as zephyr, and her cool breath wooing his neck; oh, the thrill of that moment! but her first word was to ask him, with considerable anxiety, “Why did mamma leave you?”

“Miss Dodd, I am the most unhappy of men.”

“No doubt! no doubt!” said she, a little crossly. She added with one of her gushes of naivete, “and I shall be unhappy too if you go and displease mamma.”

“What could I do? A gang of snobbesses were detracting from—somebody. To speak plainly, they were running down the loveliest of her sex. Your mamma told me to keep quiet. And so I did till I got a fair chance, and then I gave it them in their teeth.” He ground his own, and added, “I think I was very good not to kick them.”

Julia coloured with pleasure, and proceeded to turn it off. “Oh! most forbearing and considerate,” said she. “Ah! by the way, I think I did hear some ladies express a misgiving as to the pecuniary value of my costume; ha! ha! Oh—you—foolish!—Fancy noticing that! Why it is in little sneers that the approval of the ladies shows itself at a ball, and it is a much sincerer compliment than the gentlemen's bombastical praises: 'the fairest of her sex,' and so on; that none but the 'silliest of her sex' believe.”

“Miss Dodd, I never said the fairest of her sex. I said the loveliest.”

“Oh, that alters the case entirely,” said Julia, whose spirits were mounting with the lights and music, and Alfred's company; “so now come and be reconciled to the best and wisest of her sex; ay, and the beautifullest, if you but knew her sweet, dear, darling face as I do. There she is; let us fly.”

“Mamma, here is a penitent for you, real or feigned, I don't know which.”

“Real, Mrs. Dodd,” said Alfred. “I had no right to disobey you and risk a scene. You served me right by abandoning me; I feel the rebuke and its justice. Let me hope your vengeance will go no further.”

Mrs. Dodd smiled at the grandiloquence of youth, and told him he had mistaken her character. “I saw I had acquired a generous, hot-headed ally, who was bent on doing battle with insects; so I withdrew; but so I should at Waterloo, or anywhere else where people put themselves in a passion.”

The band struck up again.

“Ah!” said Julia, “and I promised you this dance; but it is a waltz and my guardian angel objects to the valse a deux temps.”

“Decidedly. Should all the mothers in England permit their daughters to romp and wrestle in public, and call it waltzing, I must stand firm till they return to their senses.”

Julia looked at Alfred despondently. He took his cue and said with a smile, “Well, perhaps it is a little rompy; a donkey's gallop and then twirl her like a mop.”

“Since you admit that, perhaps you can waltz properly?” said Mrs. Dodd.

Alfred said he ought; he had given his whole soul to it in Germany last Long.

“Then I can have the pleasure of dropping the tyrant. Away with you both while there is room to circulate.”

Alfred took his partner delicately; they made just two catlike steps forward, and melted into the old-fashioned waltz.

It was an exquisite moment. To most young people Love comes after a great deal of waltzing. But this pair brought the awakened tenderness and trembling sensibilities of two burning hearts to this their first intoxicating whirl. To them, therefore, everything was an event, everything was a thrill—the first meeting and timid pressure of their hands, the first delicate enfolding of her supple waist by his strong arm but trembling hand, the delightful unison of their unerring feet, the movement, the music, the soft delicious whirl, her cool breath saluting his neck, his ardent but now liquid eyes seeking hers tenderly, and drinking them deep, hers that now and then sipped his so sweetly—all these were new and separate joys, that linked themselves in one soft delirium of bliss. It was not a waltz it was an Ecstasy.

Starting almost alone, this peerless pair danced a gauntlet. On each side admiration and detraction buzzed all the time.

“Beautiful! They are turning in the air.”

“Quite gone by. That's how the old fogies dance.”

Chorus of shallow males: “How well she waltzes.”

Chorus of shallow females: “How well he waltzes.”

But they noted neither praise nor detraction: they saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing, but themselves and the other music, till two valsers a deux temps plunged into them. Thus smartly reminded they had not earth all to themselves, they laughed good-humouredly and paused.

“Ah! I am happy!” gushed from Julia. She hushed at herself, and said severely, “You dance very well, sir.” This was said to justify her unguarded admission, and did, after a fashion. “I think it is time to go to mamma,” said she demurely.

“So soon? And I had so much to say to you.”

“Oh, very well. I am all attention.”

The sudden facility offered set Alfred stammering a little. “I wanted to apologise to you for something—you are so good you seem to have forgotten it—but I dare not hope that—I mean at Henley—when the beauty of your character, and your goodness, so overpowered me, that a fatal impulse——”

“What do you mean, sir?” said Julia, looking him full in the face, like an offended lion, while, with true feminine and Julian inconsistency her bosom fluttered like a dove. “I never exchanged one word with you in my life before to-day; and I never shall again if you pretend the contrary.”

Alfred stood stupified, and looked at her in piteous amazement.

“I value your acquaintance highly, Mr. Hardie, now I have made it, as acquaintances are made; but please to observe, I never saw you before—scarcely; not even in church.”

“As you please,” said he, recovering his wits in part. “What you say I'll swear to.”

“Then I say, never remind a lady of what you ought to wish her to forget.”

“I was a fool, and you are an angel of tact and goodness.”

“Oh, now I am sure it is time to join mamma,” said she in the driest, drollest way. “Valsons.”

They waltzed down to Mrs. Dodd, exchanging hearts at every turn, and they took a good many in the space of a round table, for in truth both were equally loth to part.

At two o'clock Mrs. Dodd resumed common-place views of a daughter's health, and rose to go.

Her fly had played her false, and, being our island home, it rained buckets. Alfred ran, before they could stop him, and caught a fly. He was dripping. Mrs. Dodd expressed her regrets; he told her it did not matter; for him the ball was now over, the flowers faded, and the lights darkness visible.

“The extravagance of these children!” said Mrs. Dodd to Julia, with a smile, as soon as he was out of hearing. Julia made no reply.

Next day she was at evening church: the congregation was very sparse. The first glance revealed Alfred Hardie standing in the very next pew. He wore a calm front of conscious rectitude; under which peeped sheep-faced misgivings as to the result of this advance; for, like all true lovers, he was half impudence, half timidity; and both on the grand scale.

Now Julia in a ball-room was one creature, another in church. After the first surprise, which sent the blood for a moment to her cheek, she found he had come without a prayer-book. She looked sadly and half reproachfully at him; then put her white hand calmly over the wooden partition, and made him read with her out of her book. She shared her hymn-book with him, too, and sang her Maker's praise modestly and soberly, but earnestly, and quite undisturbed by her lover's presence. It seemed as if this pure creature was drawing him to heaven holding by that good book, and by her touching voice. He felt good all over. To be like her, he tried to bend his whole mind on the prayers of the church, and for the first time realised how beautiful they are.

After service he followed her to the door. Island home again, by the pailful; and she had a thick shawl but no umbrella. He had brought a large one on the chance; he would see her home.

“Quite unnecessary; it is so near.”

He insisted; she persisted; and, persisting, yielded. They said but little; yet they seemed to interchange volumes; and, at each gaslight they passed, they stole a look and treasured it to feed on.

That night was one broad step more towards the great happiness, or great misery, which awaits a noble love. Such loves, somewhat rare in Nature, have lately become so very rare in Fiction that I have ventured, with many misgivings, to detail the peculiarities of its rise and progress. But now for a time it advanced on beaten tracks. Alfred had the right to call at Albion Villa, and he came twice; once when Mrs. Dodd was out. This was the time he stayed the two hours. A Mrs. James invited Jane and him to tea and exposition. There he met Julia and Edward, who had just returned. Edward was taken with Jane Hardie's face and dovelike eyes; eyes that dwelt with a soft and chastened admiration on his masculine face and his model form, and their owner felt she had received “a call” to watch over his spiritual weal. So they paired off.

Julia's fluctuating spirits settled now into a calm, demure, complacency. Her mother, finding this strange remedial virtue in youthful society, gave young parties, inviting Jane and Alfred in their turn. Jane hesitated, but, as she could no longer keep Julia from knowing her worldly brother, and hoped a way might be opened for her to rescue Edward, she relaxed her general rule, which was to go into no company unless some religious service formed part of the entertainment. Yet her conscience was ill at ease; and, to set them an example, she took care, when she asked the Dodds in return, to have a clergyman there of her own party, who could pray and expound with unction.

Mrs. Dodd, not to throw cold water on what seemed to gratify her children, accepted Miss Hardie's invitation; but she never intended to go, and at the last moment wrote to say she was slightly indisposed. The nature of her indisposition she revealed to Julia alone. “That young lady keeps me on thorns. I never feel secure she will not say or do something extravagant or unusual: she seems to suspect sobriety and good taste of being in league with impiety. Here I succeed in bridling her a little; but encounter a female enthusiast in her own house? merci! After all, there must be something good in her, since she is your friend, and you are hers. But I have something more serious to say before you go there: it is about her brother. He is a flirt: in fact, a notorious one, more than one lady tells me.”

Julia was silent, but began to be very uneasy; they were sitting and talking after sunset, yet without candles. She profited for once by that prodigious gap in the intelligence of “the sex.”

“I hear he pays you compliments, and I have seen a disposition to single you out. Now, my love, you have the good sense to know that, whatever a young gentleman of that age says to you, he says to many other ladies; but your experience is not equal to your sense; so profit by mine. A girl of your age must never be talked of with a person of the other sex: it is fatal; fatal! but if you permit yourself to be singled out, you will be talked of, and distress those who love you. It is easy to avoid injudicious duets in society; oblige me by doing so to-night.” To show how much she was in earnest, Mrs. Dodd hinted that, were her admonition neglected, she should regret for once having kept clear of an enthusiast.

Julia had no alternative; she assented in a faint voice. After a pause she faltered out, “And suppose he should esteem me seriously?”

Mrs. Dodd replied quickly, “Then that would be much worse. But,” said she, “I have no apprehensions on that score; you are a child, and he is a precocious boy, and rather a flirt. But forewarned is forearmed. So now run away and dress, sweet one: my lecture is quite ended.”

The sensitive girl went up to her room with a heavy heart. All the fears she had lulled of late revived. She saw plainly now that Mrs. Dodd only accepted Alfred as a pleasant acquaintance: as a son-in-law he was out of the question. “Oh, what will she say when she knows all?” thought Julia.

Next day, sitting near the window, she saw him coming up the road. After the first movement of pleasure at the bare sight of him, she was sorry he had come. Mamma's suspicions awake at last, and here he was again; the third call in one fortnight! She dared not risk an interview with him, ardent and unguarded, under that penetrating eye, which she felt would now be on the watch. She rose hurriedly, said as carelessly as she could, “I am going to the school,” and tying her bonnet on all in a flurry, whipped out at the back-door with her shawl in her hand just as Sarah opened the front door to Alfred. She then shuffled on her shawl, and whisked through the little shrubbery into the open field, and reached a path that led to the school, and so gratified was she at her dexterity in evading her favourite, that she hung her head, and went murmuring, “Cruel, cruel, cruel!”

Alfred entered the drawing-room gaily, with a good-sized card and a prepared speech. His was not the visit of a friend, but a functionary; the treasurer of the cricket-ground come to book two of his eighteen to play against the All-England Eleven next month. “As for you, my worthy sir (turning to Edward), I shall just put you down without ceremony. But I must ask leave to book Captain Dodd. Mrs. Dodd, I come at the universal desire of the club; they say it is sure to be a dull match without Captain Dodd. Besides, he is a capital player.”

“Mamma, don't you be caught by his chaff,” said Edward, quietly. “Papa is no player at all. Anything more unlike cricket than his way of making runs!”

“But he makes them, old fellow; now you and I, at Lord's the other day, played in first-rate form, left shoulder well up, and achieved—with neatness, precision, dexterity, and despatch—the British duck's-egg.

“Misericorde! What is that?” inquired Mrs. Dodd.

“Why, a round O,” said the other Oxonian, coming to his friend's aid.

“And what is that, pray?”

Alfred told her “the round O,” which had yielded to “the duck's egg,” and was becoming obsolete, meant the cypher set by the scorer against a player's name who is out without making a run.

“I see,” sighed Mrs. Dodd. “The jargon of the day penetrates to your very sports and games. And why British?”

“Oh, 'British' is redundant: thrown in by the universities.”

“But what does it mean?”

“It means nothing. That is the beauty of it. British is inserted in imitation of our idols, the Greeks; they adored redundancy.”

In short, poor Alfred, though not an M. P., was talking to put off time, till Julia should come in: so he now favoured Mrs. Dodd, of all people, with a flowery description of her husband's play, which I, who have not his motive for volubility, suppress. However, he wound up with the captains “moral influence.” “Last match,” said he, “Barkington did not do itself justice. Several, that could have made a stand, were frightened out, rather than bowled, by the London professionals. Then Captain Dodd went in, and treated those artists with the same good-humoured contempt he would a parish bowler, and, in particular, sent Mynne's over-tossed balls flying over his head for five, or to square leg for four, and, on his retiring with twenty-five, scored in eight minutes, the remaining Barkingtonians were less funky, and made some fair scores.”

Mrs. Dodd smiled a little ironically at this tirade, but said she thought she might venture to promise Mr. Dodd's co-operation, should he reach home in time. Then, to get rid of Alfred before Julia's return, the amiable worldling turned to Edward. “Your sister will not be back, so you may as well ring the bell for luncheon at once. Perhaps Mr. Hardie will join us.”

Alfred declined, and took his leave with far less alacrity than he had entered; Edward went down-stairs with him.

“Miss Dodd gone on a visit?” asked Alfred, affecting carelessness.

“Only to the school. By-the-bye, I will go and fetch her.”

“No, don't do that; call on my sister instead, and then you will pull me out of a scrape. I promised to bring her here; but her saintship was so long adorning 'the poor perishable body,' that I came alone.”

“I don't understand you,” said Edward. “I am not the attraction here; it is Julia.”

“How do you know that? When a young lady interests herself in an undergraduate's soul, it is a pretty sure sign she likes the looks of him. But perhaps you don't want to be converted; if so, keep clear of her. 'Bar the fell dragon's blighting way; but shun that lovely snare.'”

“On the contrary,” said Edward calmly, “I only wish she could make me as good as she is, or half as good.”

“Give her the chance, old fellow, and then it won't be your fault if she makes a mess of it. Call at two, and Jenny will receive you very kindly, and will show you you are in the 'gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity.' Now, won't that be nice?”

“I will go,” said Edward gravely.

They parted. Where Alfred went the reader can perhaps guess; Edward to luncheon.

“Mamma,” said he, with that tranquillity which sat so well on him, “don't you think Alfred Hardie is spoony upon our Julia?”

Mrs. Dodd suppressed a start, and (perhaps to gain time before replying sincerely) said she had not the honour of knowing what “spoony” meant.

“Why, sighs for her, and dies for her, and fancies she is prettier than Miss Hardie. He must be over head and ears to think that.”

“Fie, child!” was the answer. “If I thought so, I should withdraw from their acquaintance. Excuse me; I must put on my bonnet at once, not to lose this fine afternoon.”

Edward did not relish her remark: it menaced more Spoons than one. However, he was not the man to be cast down at a word: he lighted a cigar, and strolled towards Hardie's house. Mr. Hardie, senior, had left three days ago on a visit to London; Miss Hardie received him; he passed the afternoon in calm complacency, listening reverently to her admonitions, and looking her softly out of countenance, and into earthly affections, with his lion eyes.

Meantime his remark, so far from really seeming foolish to Mrs. Dodd, was the true reason for her leaving him so abruptly “Even this dear slow Thing sees it,” thought she. She must talk to Julia more seriously, and would go to the school at once. She went up-stairs, and put on her bonnet and shawl before the glass; then moulded on her gloves, and came down equipped. On the stairs was a large window, looking upon the open field; she naturally cast her eyes through it in the direction she was going, and what did she see but a young lady and gentleman coming slowly down the path towards the villa. Mrs. Dodd bit her lip with vexation, and looked keenly at them, to divine on what terms they were. And the more she looked the more uneasy she grew.

The head, the hand, the whole body of a sensitive young woman walking beside him she loves, betray her heart to experienced eyes watching unseen; and especially to female eyes. And why did Julia move so slowly, especially after that warning? Why was her head averted from that encroaching boy, and herself so near him? Why not keep her distance, and look him full in the face? Mrs. Dodd's first impulse was that of leopardesses, lionesses, hens, and all the mothers in nature; to dart from her ambush and protect her young; but she controlled it by a strong effort; it seemed wiser to descry the truth, and then act with resolution: besides, the young people were now almost at the shrubbery; so the mischief if any, was done.

They entered the shrubbery.

To Mrs. Dodd's surprise and dismay, they did not come out this side so quickly. She darted her eye into the plantation; and lo! Alfred had seized the fatal opportunity foliage offers, even when thinnish: he held Julia's hand, and was pleading eagerly for something she seemed not disposed to grant; for she turned away and made an effort to leave him. But Mrs. Dodd, standing there quivering with maternal anxiety, and hot with shame, could not but doubt the sincerity of that graceful resistance. If she had been quite in earnest, Julia had fire enough in her to box the little wretch's ears. She ceased even to doubt, when she saw that her daughter's opposition ended in his getting hold of two hands instead of one, and devouring them with kisses, while Julia still drew her head and neck away, but the rest of her supple frame seemed to yield and incline, and draw softly towards her besieger by some irresistible spell.

“I can bear no more!” gasped Mrs. Dodd aloud, and turned to hasten and part them; but even as she curved her stately neck to go, she caught the lovers' parting; and a very pretty one too, if she could but have looked at it, as these things ought always to be looked at: artistically.

Julia's head and lovely throat, unable to draw the rest of her away, compromised: they turned, declined, drooped, and rested one half moment on her captor's shoulder, like a settling dove: the next, she scudded from him, and made for the house alone.

Mrs. Dodd, deeply indignant, but too wise to court a painful interview, with her own heart beating high, went into the drawing-room, and there sat down, to recover some little composure. But she was hardly seated when Julia's innocent voice was heard calling “Mamma, mamma!” and soon she came bounding into the drawing-room, brimful of good news, her cheeks as red as fire and her eyes wet with happy tears; and there confronted her mother, who had started up at her footstep, and now, with one hand nipping the back of the chair convulsively, stood lofty, looking strangely agitated and hostile.

The two ladies eyed one another, silent, yet expressive, like a picture facing a statue; but soon the colour died out of Julia's face as well, and she began to cower with vague fears before that stately figure, so gentle and placid usually, but now so discomposed and stern.

“Where have you been, Julia?”

“Only at the school,” she faltered.

“Who was your companion home?”

“Oh, don't be angry with me! It was Alfred.”

“Alfred! His Christian name! You try my patience too hard.”

“Forgive me. I was not to blame this time, indeed! indeed! You frighten me. What will become of me? What have I done for my own mamma to look at me so?”

Mrs. Dodd groaned. “Was that young coquette I watched from my window the child I have reared? No face on earth is to be trusted after this. 'What have you done' indeed? Only risked your own mother's esteem, and nearly broken her heart!” And with these words her own courage began to give way, and she sank into a chair with a deep sigh.

At this Julia screamed, and threw herself on her knees beside her, and cried “Kill me! oh, pray kill me! but don't drive me to despair with such cruel words and looks!” and fell to sobbing so wildly that Mrs. Dodd altered her tone with almost ludicrous rapidity. “There, do not terrify me with your impetuosity, after grieving me so. Be calm, child; let me see whether I cannot remedy your sad imprudence; and, that I may, pray tell me the whole truth. How did this come about?”

In reply to this question, which she somewhat mistook, Julia sobbed out, “He met me c-coming out of the school, and asked to s-see me home. I said 'No thank you,' because I th-thought of your warning. 'Oh yes!' said he, and would walk with me, and keep saying he loved me. So, to stop him, I said, 'M-much ob-liged, but I was b-busy and had no time to flirt.' 'Nor have I the in-inclination,' said he. 'That is not what others say of you,' said I—you know what you t-told me, mamma—so at last he said d-did ever he ask any lady to be his wife? 'I suppose not,' said I, 'or you would be p-p-private property by now instead of p-public.'”

“Now there was a foolish speech; as much as to say nobody could resist him.”

“W-wasn't it? And n-no more they could. You have no idea how he makes love; so unladylike: keeps advancing and advancing, and never once retreats, nor even st-ops. 'But I ask you to be my wife,' said he. Oh, mamma, I trembled so. Why did I tremble? I don't know. I made myself cold and haughty; 'I should make no reply to such ridiculous questions; say that to mamma, if you dare!' I said.”

Mrs. Dodd bit her lip, and said, “Was there ever such simplicity?”

“Simple! Why that was my cunning. You are the only creature he is afraid of; so I thought to stop his mouth with you. But instead of that, my lord said calmly, 'That was understood; he loved me too well to steal me from her to whom he was indebted for me.' Oh, he has always an answer ready. And that makes him such a p-pest.”

“It was an answer that did him credit.”

“Dear mamma! now did it not? Then at parting he said he would come to-morrow, and ask you for my hand; but I must intercede with you first, or you would be sure to say 'No.' So I declined to interfere: 'W-w-what was it to me?' I said. He begged and prayed me: 'Was it likely you would give him such a treasure as Me unless I stood his friend?' (For the b-b-brazen Thing turns humble now and then.) And, oh, mamma, he did so implore me to pity him, and kept saying no man ever loved as he loved me, and with his begging and praying me so passionately—oh, so passionately—I felt something warm drop from his poor eyes on my hand. Oh! oh! oh! oh!—What could I do? And then, you know, I wanted to get away from him. So I am afraid I did just say 'Yes.' But only in a whisper. Mamma! my own, good, kind, darling mamma, have pity on him and on me; we love one another so.”

A shower of tender tears gushed out in support of this appeal and in a moment she was caught up with Love's mighty arms, and her head laid on her mother's yearning bosom. No word was needed to reconcile these two.

After a long silence, Mrs. Dodd said this would be a warning never to judge her sweet child from a distance again, nor unheard. “And therefore,” said she, “let me hear from your own lips how so serious an attachment could spring up. Why, it is scarcely a month since you were first introduced at that ball.”

“Mamma,” murmured Julia, hanging her head, “you are mistaken; we knew each other before.”

Mrs. Dodd looked all astonishment.

“Now I will ease my heart,” said Julia, impetuously, addressing some invisible obstacle. “I tell you I am sick of having secrets from my own mother.” And with this out it all came. She told the story of her heart better than I have; and, woman-like, dwelt on the depths of loyalty and delicate love she had read in Alfred's moonlit face that night at Henley. She said no eloquence could have touched her like it. “Mamma, something said to me, 'Ay, look at him well, for that is your husband to be.'” She even tried to solve the mystery of her soi-disant sickness: “I was disturbed by a feeling so new and so powerful,* but, above all, by having a secret from you; the first—the last.”

*Perhaps even this faint attempt at self-analysis was due to
the influence of Dr. Whately. For, by nature, young ladies
of this age seldom turn the eye inward.

“Well, darling, then why have a secret? Why not trust me, your friend as well as your mother?”

“Ah! why, indeed? I am a puzzle to myself. I wanted you to know, and yet I could not tell you. I kept giving you hints, and hoped so you would take them, and make me speak out. But when I tried to tell you plump, something kept pull—pull—pulling me inside, and I couldn't. Mark my words! some day it will turn out that I am neither more nor less than a fool.”

Mrs. Dodd slighted this ingenious solution. She said, after a moment's reflection, that the fault of this misunderstanding lay between the two. “I remember now I have had many hints; my mind must surely have gone to sleep. I was a poor simple woman who thought her daughter was to be always a child. And you were very wrong to go and set a limit to your mother's love: there is none—none whatever.” She added: “I must import a little prudence and respect for the world's opinion into this new connection; but whoever you love shall find no enemy in me.”

Next day Alfred came to know his fate. He was received with ceremonious courtesy. At first he was a good deal embarrassed, but this was no sooner seen than it was relieved by Mrs. Dodd with tact and gentleness. When her turn came, she said, “Your papa? Of course you have communicated this step to him?”

Alfred looked a little confused, and said, “No: he left for London two days ago, as it happens.”

“That is unfortunate,” said Mrs. Dodd. “Your best plan would be to write to him at once. I need hardly tell you that we shall enter no family without an invitation from its head.”

Alfred replied that he was well aware of that, and that he knew his father, and could answer for him. “No doubt,” said Mrs. Dodd, “but, as a matter of reasonable form, I prefer he should answer for himself.” Alfred would write by this post. “It is a mere form,” said he, “for my father has but one answer to his children, 'Please yourselves.' He sometimes adds, 'and how much money shall you want?' These are his two formulae.”

He then delivered a glowing eulogy on his father; and Mrs. Dodd, to whom the boy's character was now a grave and anxious study, saw with no common satisfaction his cheek flush and his eyes moisten as he dwelt on the calm, sober, unvarying affection, and reasonable indulgence he and his sister had met with all their lives from the best of parents. Returning to the topic of topics, he proposed an engagement. “I have a ring in my pocket,” said this brisk wooer, looking down. But this Mrs. Dodd thought premature and unnecessary. “You are nearly of age,” said she, “and then you will be able to marry, if you are in the same mind.” But, upon being warmly pressed, she half conceded even this. “Well,” said she, “on receiving your father's consent, you can propose an engagement to Julia, and she shall use her own judgment; but, until then, you will not even mention such a thing to her. May I count on so much forbearance from you, sir?”

“Dear Mrs. Dodd,” said Alfred, “of course you may. I should indeed be ungrateful if I could not wait a post for that. May I write to my father here?” added he, naively.

Mrs. Dodd smiled, furnished him with writing materials, and left him, with a polite excuse.

“ALBION VILLA, September 29.

“MY DEAR FATHER,—You are too thorough a man of the world, and too well versed in human nature, to be surprised at hearing that I, so long invulnerable, have at last formed a devoted attachment to one whose beauty, goodness, and accomplishments I will not now enlarge upon; they are indescribable, and you will very soon see them and judge for yourself. The attachment, though short in weeks and months, has been a very long one in hopes, and fears, and devotion. I should have told you of it before you left, but in truth I had no idea I was so near the goal of all my earthly hopes; there were many difficulties: but these have just cleared away almost miraculously, and nothing now is wanting to my happiness but your consent. It would be affectation, or worse, in me to doubt that you will grant it. But, in a matter so delicate, I venture to ask you for something more: the mother of my ever and only beloved Julia is a lady of high breeding and sentiments: she will not let her daughter enter any family without a cordial invitation from its head. Indeed she has just told me so. I ask, therefore, not your bare consent, of which I am sure, since my happiness for life depends on it, but a consent so gracefully worded—and who can do this better than you?—as to gratify the just pride and sensibilities of the high-minded family about to confide its brightest ornament to my care.

“My dear father, in the midst of felicity almost more than mortal, the thought has come that this letter is my first step towards leaving the paternal roof under which I have been so happy all my life, thanks to you. I should indeed be unworthy of all your goodness if this thought caused me no emotion.

“Yet I do but yield to Nature's universal law. And, should I be master of my own destiny, I will not go far from you. I have been unjust to Barkington: or rather I have echoed, without thought, Oxonian prejudices and affectation. On mature reflection, I know no better residence for a married man.

“Do you remember about a year ago you mentioned a Miss Lucy Fountain to us as 'the most perfect gentlewoman you had ever met?' Well, strange to say, it is that very lady's daughter; and I think when you see her you will say the breed has anything but declined, in spite of Horace mind his 'damnosa quid non.' Her brother is my dearest friend, and she is Jenny's; so a more happy alliance for all parties was never projected.

“Write to me by return, dear father, and believe me, ever your dutiful and grateful son,

“ALFRED HARDlE.”

As he concluded, Julia came in, and he insisted on her reading this masterpiece. She hesitated. Then he told her with juvenile severity that a good husband always shares his letters with his wife.

“His wife! Alfred!” and she coloured all over. “Don't call me names,” said she, turning it off after her fashion. “I can't bear it: it makes me tremble. With fury.”

“This will never do, sweet one,” said Alfred gravely. “You and I are to have no separate existence now; you are to be I, and I am to be you. Come!”

“No; you read me so much of it as is proper for me to hear. I shall not like it so well from your lips: but never mind.”

When he came to read it, he appreciated the delicacy that had tempered her curiosity. He did not read it all to her, but nearly.

“It is a beautiful letter,” said she; “a little pomposer than mamma and I write. 'The paternal roof!' But all that becomes you; you are a scholar: and, dear Alfred, if I should separate you from your papa, I will never estrange you from him; oh, never, never. May I go for my work? For methinks, O most erudite, the 'maternal dame,' on domestic cares intent, hath confided to her offspring the recreation of your highness.” The gay creature dropt him a curtsey, and fled to tell Mrs. Dodd the substance of “the sweet letter the dear high-flown Thing had written.”

By then he had folded and addressed it, she returned and brought her work: charity children's great cloaks: her mother had cut them, and in the height of the fashion, to Jane Hardie's dismay; and Julia was binding, hooding, etcetering them.

How demurely she bent her lovely head over her charitable work, while Alfred poured his tale into her ears! How careful she was not to speak, when there was a chance of his speaking! How often she said one thing so as to express its opposite, a process for which she might have taken out a patent! How she and Alfred compared heart-notes, and their feelings at each stage of their passion! Their hearts put forth tendril after tendril, and so curled, and clung, round each other.

In the afternoon of the second blissful day, Julia suddenly remembered that this was dull for her mother. To have such a thought was to fly to her; and she flew so swiftly that she caught Mrs. Dodd in tears, and trying adroitly and vainly to hide them.

“What is the matter? I am a wretch. I have left you alone.”

“Do not think me so peevish, love! you have but surprised the natural regrets of a mother at the loss of her child.”

“Oh, mamma,” said Julia, warmly, “and do you think all the marriage in the world can ever divide you and me—can make me lukewarm to my own sweet, darling, beautiful, blessed, angel mother? Look at me: I am as much your Julia as ever; and shall be while I live. Your son is your son till he gets him a wife: but your daughter's your daughter, ALL—THE——DAYS—OF HER LIFE.”

Divine power of native eloquence: with this trite distich you made hexameters tame; it gushed from that great young heart with a sweet infantine ardour, that even virtue can only pour when young, and youth when virtuous; and, at the words I have emphasised by the poor device of capitals, two lovely, supple arms flew wide out like a soaring albatross's wings, and then went all round the sad mother, and gathered every bit of her up to the generous young bosom.

“I know it, I know it!” cried Mrs. Dodd, kissing her; “I shall never lose my daughter while she breathes. But I am losing my child. You are turning to a woman visibly: and you were such a happy child. Hence my misgivings, and these weak tears, which you have dried with a word: see!” And she contrived to smile. “And now go down, dearest: he may be impatient; men's love is so fiery.”

The next day Mrs. Dodd took Julia apart and asked her whether there was an answer from Mr. Hardie. Julia replied, from Alfred, that Jane had received a letter last night, and, to judge by the contents, Mr. Hardie must have left London before Alfred's letter got there. “He is gone to see poor Uncle Thomas.”

“Why do you call him 'poor?'”

“Oh, he is not very clever; has not much mind, Alfred says; indeed, hardly any.”

“You alarm me, Julia!” cried Mrs. Dodd. “What? madness in the family you propose to marry into?”

“Oh no, mamma,” said Julia, in a great hurry; “no madness; only a little imbecility.”

Mrs. Dodd's lip curved at this Julian answer; but just then her mind was more drawn to another topic. A serious doubt passed through her, whether, if Mr. Hardie did not write soon, she ought not to limit his son's attendance on her daughter. “He follows her about like a little dog,” said she half fretfully.

Next day, by previous invitation, Dr. Sampson made Albion Villa his head-quarters. Darting in from London, he found Alfred sitting very close to Julia over a book.

“Lordsake!” cried he, “here's 'my puppy,' and 'm' enthusiast,' cheek by chowl.” Julia turned scarlet, and Alfred ejaculated so loudly, that Sampson inquired “what on airth was the matter now?”

“Oh, nothing; only here have I been jealous of my own shadow, and pestering her who 'your puppy' was: and she never would tell me. All I could get from her,” added he, turning suddenly from gratitude to revenge, “was that he was no greater a puppy than yourself, doctor.”

“Oh, Alfred, no; I only said no vainer,” cried Julia in dismay.

“Well, it is true,” said Sampson contentedly, and proceeded to dissect himself just as he would a stranger. “I am a vain man; a remarkably vain man. But then I'm a man of great mirit.”

“All vain people are that,” suggested Alfred dryly.

“Who should know better than you, young Oxford? Y' have got a hidache.”

“No, indeed.”

“Don't tell lies now. Ye can't deceive me; man, I've an eye like a hawk. And what's that ye're studying with her? Ovid, for a pound.”

“No; medicine; a treatise on your favourite organ, the brain, by one Dr. Whately.”

“He is chaffing you, doctor,” said Edward; “it is logic. He is coaching her; and then she will coach me.”

“Then I forbid the chaff-cutting, young Pidant. Logic is an ill plaster to a sore head.”

“Oh, 'the labour we delight in, physics pain.'”

“Jinnyus, Jinnyus;
Take care o' your carkuss,”

retorted the master of doggrel. “And that is a profounder remark than you seem to think, by your grinning, all of ye.”

Julia settled the question by putting away the book. And she murmured to Alfred, “I wish I could steal your poor dear headaches: you might give me half of them at least; you would, too, if you really loved me.”

This sound remonstrance escaped criticism by being nearly inaudible, and by Mrs. Dodd entering at the same moment.

After the first greeting, Sampson asked her with merry arrogance, how his prescription had worked? “Is her sleep broken still, ma'am? Are her spirits up and down? Shall we have to go back t' old Short and his black draught? How's her mookis membrin? And her biliary ducks? an'—she's off like a flash.”

“And no wonder,” said Mrs. Dodd reproachfully.

Thus splashed Sampson among the ducks: one of them did not show her face again till dinner.

Jane Hardie accompanied her brother by invitation. The general amity was diversified and the mirth nowise lessened by constant passages of arms between Messrs. Sampson and Alfred Hardie.

After tea came the first contretemps. Sampson liked a game of cards: he could play, yet talk chronothermalism, as the fair can knit babies' shoes and imbibe the poetasters of the day.

Mrs. Dodd had asked Edward to bring a fresh pack. He was seen by his guardian angel to take them out of his pocket and undo them; presently Sampson, in his rapid way, clutched hold of them; and found a slip of paper curled round the ace of spades, with this written very clear in pencil,

“REMEMBER THY CREATOR IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH!”

“What is this?” cried Sampson, and read it out aloud. Jane Hardie coloured, and so betrayed herself. Her “word in season” had strayed. It was the young and comely Edward she wished to save from the diabolical literature, the painted perdition, and not the uninteresting old sinner Sampson, who proceeded to justify her preference by remarking that “Remember not to trump your partner's best card, ladies,” would be more to the point.

Everybody, except this hardened personage, was thoroughly uncomfortable. As for Alfred, his face betrayed a degree of youthful mortification little short of agony. Mrs. Dodd was profoundly disgusted, but fortunately for the Hardies, caught sight of his burning cheeks and compressed lips. “Dr. Sampson,” said she, with cold dignity, “you will, I am sure, oblige me by making no more comments; sincerity is not always discreet; but it is always respectable: it is one of your own titles to esteem. I dare say,” added she with great sweetness, “our resources are not so narrow that we need shock anybody's prejudices, and, as it happens, I was just going to ask Julia to sing: open the piano, love, and try if you can persuade Miss Hardie to join you in a duet.”

At this, Jane and Julia had an earnest conversation at the piano, and their words, uttered in a low voice, were covered by a contemporaneous discussion between Sampson and Mrs. Dodd.

Jane. No, you must not ask me: I have forsworn these vanities. I have not opened my piano this two years.

Julia. Oh, what a pity; music is so beautiful; and surely we can choose our songs, as easily as our words; ah, how much more easily.

Jane. Oh, I don't go so far as to call music wicked: but music in society is such a snare. At least I found it so; my playing was highly praised, and that stirred up vanity: and so did my singing, with which I had even more reason to be satisfied. Snares! snares!

Julia. Goodness me! I don't find them so. Now you mention it, gentlemen do praise one; but, dear me, they praise every lady, even when we have been singing every other note out of tune. The little unmeaning compliments of society, can they catch anything so great as a soul?

Jane. I pray daily not to be led into temptation, and shall I go into it of my own accord?

Julia. Not if you find it a temptation. At that rate I ought to decline.

Jane. That doesn't follow. My conscience is not a law to yours. Besides, your mamma said “sing:” and a parent is not to be disobeyed upon a doubt. If papa were to insist on my going to a ball even, or reading a novel, I think I should obey; and lay the whole case before Him.

Mrs. Dodd (from a distance). Come, my dears, Dr. Sampson is getting so impatient for your song.

Sampson. Hum! for all that, young ladies' singing is a poor substitute for cards, and even for conversation.

Mrs. Dodd. That depends upon the singer, I presume.

Sampson. Mai—dear—madam, they all sing alike; just as they all write alike. I can hardly tell one fashionable tune from another; and nobody can tell one word from another, when they cut out all the consonants. N' listen me. This is what I heard sung by a lady last night.

Eu un Da' ei u aa an oo. By oo eeeeyee aa Vaullee, Vaullee, Vaullee, Vaullee, Vaullee om is igh eeaa An ellin in is ud.

Mrs. Dodd. That sounds like gibberish.

Sampson. It is gibberish, but it's Drydenish in articulating mouths. It is—

He sung Darius great and good, By too severe a fate Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, Fallen from his high estate, And wiltering in his blood.

Mrs. Dodd. I think you exaggerate. I will answer for Julia that she shall speak as distinctly to music as you do in conversation.

Sampson (all unconscious of the tap). Time will show, madam. At prisent they seem to be in no hurry to spatter us with their word-jelly. Does some spark of pity linger in their marble bos'ms? or do they prefer inaud'ble chit-chat t' inarticulate mewing?

Julia, thus pressed, sang one of those songs that come and go every season. She spoke the words clearly, and with such variety and intelligence, that Sampson recanted, and broke in upon the—“very pretty”—“how sweet”—and “who is it by?” of the others, by shouting, “Very weak trash very cleanly sung. Now give us something worth the wear and tear of your orgins. Immortal vairse widded t' immortal sounds; that is what I understand b' a song.”

Alfred whispered, “No, no, dearest; sing something suitable to you and me.”

“Out of the question. Then go farther away, dear; I shall have more courage.”

He obeyed, and she turned over two or three music-books, and finally sung from memory. She cultivated musical memory, having observed the contempt with which men of sense visit the sorry pretenders to music, who are tuneless and songless among the nightingales, and anywhere else away from their books. How will they manage to sing in heaven? Answer me that.

The song Julia Dodd sang on this happy occasion, to meet the humble but heterogeneous views of Messrs. Sampson and Hardie, was a simple eloquent Irish song called Aileen Aroon. Whose history, by-the-bye, was a curious one. Early in this century it occurred to somebody to hymn a son of George the Third for his double merit in having been born, and going to a ball. People who thus apply the fine arts in modern days are seldom artists; accordingly, this parasite could not invent a melody; so he coolly stole Aileen Aroon, soiled it by inserting sordid and incongruous jerks into the refrain, and called the stolen and adulterated article Robin Adair. An artisan of the same kidney was soon found to write words down to the degraded ditty: and, so strong is Flunkeyism, and so weak is Criticism, in these islands, that the polluted tune actually superseded the clean melody; and this sort of thing—

Who was in uniform at the ball?
Silly Billy,

smothered the immortal lines.

But Mrs. Dodd's severe taste in music rejected those ignoble jerks, and her enthusiastic daughter having the option to hymn immortal Constancy or mortal Fat, decided thus:—

When like the early rose,
Aileen aroon,
Beauty in childhood glows,
Aileen aroon,
When like a diadem,
Buds blush around the stem,
Which is the fairest gem?
Aileen aroon.
Is it the laughing eye?
Aileen aroon.
Is it the timid sigh?
Aileen aroon.
Is it the tender tone?
Soft as the string'd harp's mean?
No; it is Truth alone,
Aileen aroon.
I know a valley fair,
Aileen aroon.
I know a cottage there,
Aileen aroon.
Far in that valley's shade,
I know a gentle maid,
Flower of the hazel glade,
Aileen aroon.
Who in the song so sweet?
Aileen aroon,
Who in the dance so fleet?
Aileen aroon.
Dear are her charms to me,
Dearer her laughter free,
Dearest her constancy.
Aileen aroon.
Youth must with time decay,
Aileen aroon,
Beauty must fade away,
Aileen aroon.
Castles are sacked in war,
Chieftains are scattered far,
Truth is a fixed star,
Aileen areon.

The way the earnest singer sang these lines is beyond the conception of ordinary singers, public or private. Here one of nature's orators spoke poetry to music with an eloquence as fervid and delicate as ever rung in the Forum. She gave each verse with the same just variety as if she had been reciting, and, when she came to the last, where the thought rises abruptly, and is truly noble, she sang it with the sudden pathos, the weight, and the swelling majesty, of a truthful soul hymning truth with all its powers.

All the hearers, even Sampson, were thrilled, astonished, spell-bound: so can one wave of immortal music and immortal verse (alas! how seldom they meet!) heave the inner man when genius interprets. Judge, then, what it was to Alfred, to whom, with these great words and thrilling tones of her rich, swelling, ringing voice, the darling of his own heart vowed constancy, while her inspired face beamed on him like an angel's.

Even Mrs. Dodd, though acquainted with the song, and with her daughter's rare powers, gazed at her now with some surprise, as well as admiration, and kept a note Sarah had brought her, open, but unread, in her hand, unable to take her eyes from the inspired songstress. However, just before the song ended, she did just glance down, and saw it was signed Richard Hardie. On this her eye devoured it; and in one moment she saw that the writer declined, politely but peremptorily, the proposed alliance between his son and her daughter.

The mother looked up from this paper at that living radiance and incarnate melody in a sort of stupor: it seemed hardly possible to her that a provincial banker could refuse an alliance with a creature so peerless as that. But so it was; and despite her habitual self-government, Mrs. Dodd's white hand clenched the note till her nails dented it; and she reddened to the brow with anger and mortification.

Julia, whom she had trained never to monopolise attention in society, now left the piano in spite of remonstrance, and soon noticed her mother's face; for from red it had become paler than usual. “Are you unwell, dear?” said she sotto voce.

“No, love.”

“Is there anything the matter, then?”

“Hush! We have guests: our first duty is to them.” With this Mrs. Dodd rose, and, endeavouring not to look at her daughter at all, went round and drew each of her guests out in turn. It was the very heroism of courtesy; for their presence was torture to her. At last, to her infinite relief, they went, and she was left alone with her children. She sent the servants to bed, saying she would undress Miss Dodd, and accompanied her to her room. There the first thing she did was to lock the door; and the next was to turn round and look at her full.

“I always thought you the most lovable child I ever saw; but I never admired you as I have to-night, my noble, my beautiful daughter, who would grace the highest family in England.” With this Mrs. Dodd began to choke, and kissed Julia eagerly with the tears in her eyes, and drew her with tender, eloquent defiance to her bosom.

“My own mamma,” said Julia softly, “what has happened?”

“My darling,” said Mrs. Dodd, trembling a little, “have you pride? have you spirit?”

“I think I have.”

“I hope so: for you will need them both. Read that!”

And she held out Mr. Hardie's letter, but turned her own head away, not to see her girl's face under the insult.

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER VI

JULIA took Mr. Hardie's note and read it:—

“MADAM,—I have received a very juvenile letter from my son, by which I learn he has formed a sudden attachment to your daughter. He tells me, however, at the same time, that you await my concurrence before giving your consent. I appreciate your delicacy; and it is with considerable regret I now write to inform you this match is out of the question. I have thought it due to you to communicate this to yourself and without delay, and feel sure that you will, under the circumstances, discountenance my son's further visits at your house—I am, Madam, with sincere respect, your faithful servant,

“RICHARD HARDIE.”

Julia read this letter, and re-read it in silence. It was an anxious moment to the mother.

“Shall our pride be less than this parvenu's?” she faltered. “Tell me yourself, what ought we to do?”

“What we ought to do is, never to let the name of Hardie be mentioned again in this house.”

This reply was very comforting to Mrs. Dodd.

“Shall I write to him, or do you feel strong enough?”

“I feel that, if I do, I may affront him. He had no right to pretend that his father would consent. You write, and then we shall not lose our dignity though we are insulted.”

“I feel so weary, mamma.” Life seems ended.

“I could have loved him well. And now show me how to tear him out of my heart; or what will become of me?”

While Mrs. Dodd wrote to Alfred Hardie, Julia sank down and laid her head on her mother's knees. The note was shown her; she approved it languidly. A long and sad conversation followed; and, after kissing her mother and clinging to her, she went to bed chilly and listless, but did not shed a single tear. Her young heart was benumbed by the unexpected blow.

Next morning early, Alfred Hardie started gaily to spend the day at Albion Villa. Not a hundred yards from the gate he met Sarah, with Mrs. Dodd's letter, enclosing a copy of his father's to her. Mrs. Dodd here reminded him that his visits had been encouraged only upon a misapprehension of his father's sentiments; for which misapprehension he was in some degree to blame: not that she meant to reproach him on that score, especially at this unhappy moment: no, she rather blamed herself for listening to the sanguine voice of youth; but the error must now be repaired. She and Julia would always wish him well, and esteem him, provided he made no further attempt to compromise a young lady who could not be his wife. The note concluded thus—

“Individually I think I have some right to count on your honourable feeling to hold no communication with my daughter, and not in any way to attract her attention, under the present circumstances.—I am, dear Mr. Alfred Hardie, with many regrets at the pain I fear I am giving you, your sincere friend and well-wisher,

“LUCY DODD.”

Alfred on reading this letter literally staggered: but proud and sensitive, as well as loving, he manned himself to hide his wound from Sarah, whose black eyes were bent on him in merciless scrutiny. He said doggedly, though tremulously, “Very well!” then turned quickly on his heel, and went slowly home. Mrs. Dodd, with well-feigned indifference, questioned Sarah privately: the girl's account of the abrupt way in which he had received the missive added to her anxiety. She warned the servants that no one was at home to Mr. Alfred Hardie.

Two days elapsed, and then she received a letter from him. Poor fellow, it was the eleventh. He had written and torn up ten.

“DEAR MRS. DODD,—I have gained some victories in my life; but not one without two defeats to begin with; how then can I expect to obtain such a prize as dear Julia without a check or two? You need not fear that I shall intrude after your appeal to me as a gentleman: but I am not going to give in because my father has written a hasty letter from Yorkshire. He and I must have many a talk face to face before I consent to be miserable for life. Dear Mrs. Dodd, at first receipt of your cruel letter, so kindly worded, I was broken-hearted; but now I am myself again: difficulties are made for ladies to yield to, and for men to conquer. Only for pity's sake do not you be my enemy; do not set her against me for my father's fault. Think, if you can, how my heart bleeds at closing this letter without one word to her I love better, a thousand times better, than my life—I am, dear Mrs. Dodd, yours sorrowfully, but not despairing,

“ALFRED HARDIE.”

Mrs. Dodd kept this letter to herself. She could not read it quite unmoved, and therefore she felt sure it would disturb her daughter's heart the more.

Alfred had now a soft but dangerous antagonist in Mrs. Dodd. All the mother was in arms to secure her daughter's happiness, coute qu'il coute! and the surest course seemed to be to detach her affections from Alfred. What hope of a peaceful heart without this? and what real happiness without peace? But, too wise and calm to interfere blindly, she watched her daughter day and night, to find whether Love or Pride was the stronger, and this is what she observed—

Julia never mentioned Alfred. She sought occupation eagerly: came oftener than usual for money, saying, it was for “Luxury.” She visited the poor more constantly, taking one of the maids with her, at Mrs. Dodd's request. She studied Logic with Edward. She went to bed rather early, fatigued, it would appear, by her activity: and she gave the clue to her own conduct one day: “Mamma,” said she, “nobody is downright unhappy who is good.”

Mrs. Dodd noticed also a certain wildness and almost violence, with which she threw herself into her occupations, and a worn look about the eyes that told of a hidden conflict. On the whole Mrs. Dodd was hopeful; for she had never imagined the cure would be speedy or easy. To see her child on the right road was much. Only the great healer Time could “medicine her to that sweet peace which once she owned;” and even Time cannot give her back her childhood, thought the mother, with a sigh.

One day came an invitation to an evening party at a house where they always wound up with dancing. Mrs. Dodd was for declining as usual for since that night Julia had shunned parties. “Give me the sorrows of the poor and afflicted,” was her cry; “the gaiety of the hollow world jars me more than I can bear.” But now she caught with a sort of eagerness at this invitation. “Accept. They shall not say I am wearing the willow.”

“My brave girl,” said Mrs. Dodd joyfully, “I would not press it; but you are right; we owe it to ourselves to outface scandal. Still, let there be no precipitation; we must not undertake beyond our strength.”

“Try me to-night,” said Julia; “you don't know what I can do. I dare say he is not pining for me.”

She was the life and soul of the party, and, indeed, so feverishly brilliant, that Mrs. Dodd said softly to her, “Gently, love; moderate your spirits, or they will deceive our friends as little as they do me.”

Meantime it cost Alfred Hardie a severe struggle to keep altogether aloof from Julia. In fact, it was a state of daily self-denial, to which he would never have committed himself, but that he was quite sure he could gradually win his father over. At his age we are apt to count without our antagonist.

Mr. Richard Hardie was “a long-headed man.” He knew the consequence of giving one's reasons: eternal discussion ending in war. He had taken care not to give any to Mrs. Dodd, and he was as guarded and reserved with Alfred. The young man begged to know the why and the wherefore, and being repulsed, employed all his art to elicit them by surprise, or get at them by inference: but all in vain. Hardie senior was impenetrable; and inquiry, petulance, tenderness, logic, were all shattered on him as the waves break on Ailsa Craig.

Thus began dissension, decently conducted at first, between a father indulgent hitherto and an affectionate son.

In this unfortunate collision of two strong and kindred natures, every advantage was at present on the father's side: age, experience, authority, resolution, hidden and powerful motives, to which my reader even has no clue as yet; a purpose immutable and concealed. Add to these a colder nature and a far colder affection; for Alfred loved his father dearly.

At last, one day, the impetuous one lost his self-command, and said he was a son, not a slave, and had little respect for Authority when afraid or ashamed to appeal to Reason. Hardie senior turned on him with a gravity and dignity no man could wear more naturally. “Alfred, have I been an unkind father to you all these years?”

“Oh no, father, no; I have said nothing that can be so construed. And that is the mystery to me; you are acting quite out of character.”

“Have I been one of those interfering, pragmatical fathers who cannot let their children enjoy themselves their own way?”

“No, sir; you have never interfered, except to pay for anything I wanted.”

“Then make the one return in your power, young man: have a little faith in such a father, and believe that he does not interfere now but for your good, and under a stern necessity; and that when he does interfere for once, and say, 'This thing shall not be,' it shall not be—by Heaven!”

Alfred was overpowered by the weight and solemnity of this. Sorrow, vexation, and despondency all rushed into his heart together, and unmanned him for a moment; he buried his face in his hands, and something very like a sob burst from his young heart. At this Hardie senior took up the newspaper with imperturbable coldness, and wore a slight curl of the lip. All this was hardly genuine, for he was not altogether unmoved; but he was a man of rare self-command, and chose to impress on Alfred that he was no more to be broken or melted than a mere rock.

It is always precarious to act a part; and this cynicism was rather able than wise: Alfred looked up and watched him keenly as he read the monetary article with tranquil interest; and then, for the first time in his life, it flashed into the young man's mind that his father was not a father. “I never knew him till now,” thought he. “This man is [Greek text].” *

*Without bowels of affection.

Thus a gesture, so to speak, sowed the first seed of downright disunion in Richard Hardie's house—disunion, a fast-growing plant, when men set it in the soil of the passions.

Alfred, unlike Julia, had no panacea. Had any lips, except perhaps hers, told him that “to be good is to be happy here below,” he would have replied: “Negatur; contradicted by daily experience.” It never occurred to him, therefore, to go out of himself, and sympathise with the sordid sorrows of the poor, and their bottomless egotism in contact with the well-to-do. He brooded on his own love, and his own unhappiness, and his own father's cruelty. His nights were sleepless and his days leaden. He tried hard to read for his first class, but for once even ambition failed: it ended in flinging books away in despair. He wandered about dreaming and moping for some change, and bitterly regretting his excessive delicacy, which had tied his own hands and brought him to a stand-still. He lost his colour and what little flesh he had to lose; for such young spirits as this are never plump. In a word, being now strait-jacketed into feminine inactivity, while void of feminine patience, his ardent heart was pining and fretting itself out. He was in this condition, when one day Peterson, his Oxonian friend, burst in on him open-mouthed with delight, and, as usual with bright spirits of this calibre, did not even notice his friend's sadness. “Cupid had clapped him on the shoulder,” as Shakespeare hath it; and it was a deal nicer than the bum-bailiff rheumatism.

“Oh, such a divine creature! Met her twice; you know her by sight; her name is Dodd. But I don't care; it shall be Peterson; the rose by any other name, &c.” Then followed a rapturous description of the lady's person, well worth omitting. “And such a jolly girl! brightens them all up wherever she goes; and such a dancer; did the cachouka with a little Spanish bloke Bosanquet has got hold of, and made his black bolus eyes twinkle like midnight cigars: danced it with castanets, and smiles, and such a what d'ye call 'em, my boy, you know; such a 'go.'”

“You mean such an 'abandon,'” groaned Alfred, turning sick at heart.

“That's the word. Twice the spirit of Duvernay, and ten times the beauty. But just you hear her sing, that is all; Italian, French, German, English even.”

“Plaintive songs?”

“Oh, whatever they ask for. Make you laugh or make you cry to order; never says no. Just smiles and sits down to the music-box. Only she won't sing two running: they have to stick a duffer in between. I shall meet her again next week; will you come? Any friend of mine is welcome. Wish me joy, old fellow; I'm a gone coon.”

This news put Alfred in a phrensy of indignation and fear. Julia dancing the cachouka! Julia a jolly girl! Julia singing songs pathetic or merry, whichever were asked for! The heartless one! He called to mind all he had read in the classics, and elsewhere, about the fickleness of woman. But this impression did not last long; he recalled Julia's character, and all the signs of a love tender and true she had given him. He read her by himself, and, lover-like, laid all the blame on another. It was all her cold-blooded mother. “Fool that I have been. I see it all now. She appeals to my delicacy to keep away; then she goes to Julia and says, 'See, he deserts you at a word from his father. Be proud, be gay! He never loved you; marry another.' The shallow plotter forgets that whoever she does marry I'll kill. How many unsuspicious girls have these double-faced mothers deluded so? They do it in half the novels, especially in those written by women; and why? because these know the perfidy and mendacity of their sex better than we do; they see them nearer, and with their souls undrest. War, Mrs. Dodd! war to the death! From this moment I am alone in the world with her. I have no friend but Alfred Hardie: and my bitterest enemies are my cold-blooded father and her cold-blooded mother.”

The above sentences, of course, were never uttered. But they represent his thoughts accurately, though in a condensed form, and are, as it were, a miniature of this young heart boiling over.

From that moment he lay in wait for her, and hovered about the house day and night, determined to appeal to her personally, and undeceive her, and baffle her mother's treachery. But at this game he was soon detected: Mrs. Dodd lived on the watch now. Julia, dressed to go out, went to the window one afternoon to look at the weather; but retreated somewhat hastily and sat down on the sofa.

“You flutter, darling,” said Mrs. Dodd. “Ah! he is there.”

“Yes.”

“You had better take off your things.”

“Oh, yes. I tremble at the thoughts of meeting him. Mamma, he is changed, sadly changed. Poor, poor Alfred!” She went to her own room and prayed for him. She informed the Omniscient that, though much greater and better in other respects than she was, he had not Patience. She prayed, with tears, that he might have Christian patience granted Him from on high.

“Heart of stone! she shuns me,” said Alfred, outside. He had seen her in her bonnet.

Mrs. Dodd waited several days to see whether this annoyance would not die of itself: waiting was her plan in most things. Finding he was not to be tired out, she sent Sarah out to him with a note carefully sealed.

“Mr. Alfred Hardie,—Is it generous to confine my daughter to the house?—Yours regretfully,

Hard Cash

HARD CASH

By Charles Reade

PREFACE

HARD CASH

PROLOGUE

“'EDWARD DODD.'”

CHAPTER I

“ALFRED HARDIE”

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

FOR MISS DODD.

———-

FOR MISS DODD.

———-

FOR MISS DODD.

FOR MISS DODD.

———-

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

JULIA took Mr. Hardie's note and read it:—

“RICHARD HARDIE.”

“LUCY DODD.”

“ALFRED HARDIE.”

“LUCY DODD.”