capable of saying. At last she remembered, in 'Gertrude,' the old nurse's complaint that Laura did not inquire after the rheumatism, and she hazarded her voice in expressing a hope that Mr. Daniels did not suffer from it. Clear as the sweet voice was, it was too tremulous (for she was really in a fright of embarrassment) to reach the old man's ear, and his daughter-in-law took it upon her to repeat the inquiry in a shrill sharp scream, that almost went through her ears; then while the old man was answering something in a muttering maundering way, she proceeded with a reply, and told a long story about his ways with the doctor, in her Sussex dialect, almost incomprehensible to Henrietta. The conversation dropped, until Mrs. Daniels began hoping that every one at the Hall was quite well, and as she inquired after them one by one, this took up a reasonable time; but then again followed a silence. Mrs. Daniels was not a native of Knight Sutton, or she would have had more to say about Henrietta's mother; but she had never seen her before, and had none of that interest in her that half the parish felt. Henrietta wished there had been a baby to notice, but she saw no trace in the room of the existence of children, and did not like to ask if there were any. She looked at the open hearth, and said it was very comfortable, and was told in return that it made a great draught, and smoked very much. Then she bethought herself of admiring an elaborately worked frame sampler, that hung against the wall; and the conversation this supplied lasted her till, to her great joy, grandpapa made his appearance again, and summoned her to return, as it was already growing very dark.
She thought he might have made something of an apology for the disagreeableness of his friend; but, being used to it, and forgetting that she was not, he did no such thing; and she was wondering that cottage visiting could ever have been represented as so pleasant an occupation, when he began on a far more interesting subject, asking about her mother's health, and how she thought Knight Sutton agreed with her, saying how very glad he was to have her there again, and how like his own daughter she had always been. He went on to tell of his first sight of his two daughters-in-law, when, little guessing that they would be such, he went to fetch home the little Mary Vivian, who had come from India under the care of General St. Leger. 'There they were,' said he; 'I can almost see them now, as their black nurse led them in; your aunt a brown little sturdy thing, ready to make acquaintance in a moment, and your mamma such a fair, shrinking, fragile morsel of a child, that I felt quite ashamed to take her among all my great scrambling boys.'
'Ah! mamma says her recollection is all in bits and scraps; she recollects the ship, and she remembers sitting on your knee in a carriage; but she cannot remember either the parting with Aunt Geoffrey or the coming here.'
'I do not remember about the parting with Aunt Geoffrey; they managed that in the nursery, I believe, but I shall never forget the boys receiving her,-Fred and Geoffrey, I mean,-for Roger was at school. How they admired her like some strange curiosity, and played with her like a little girl with a new doll. There was no fear that they would be too rough with her, for they used to touch her as if she was made of glass. And what a turn out of old playthings there was in her service!'
'That was when she was six,' said Henrietta, 'and papa must have been ten.'
'Yes, thereabouts, and Geoffrey a year younger. How they did pet her! and come down to all their old baby- plays again for her sake, till I was almost afraid that cricket and hockey would be given up and forgotten.'
'And were they?'
'No, no, trust boys for that. Little Mary came to be looker on, if she did not sometimes play herself. She was distressed damsel, and they knight and giant, or dragon, or I cannot tell what, though many's the time I have laughed over it. Whatever they pleased was she: never lived creature more without will of her own.'
'Never,' responded Henrietta; but that for which Mr. Langford might commend his little Mary at seven years old, did not appear so appropriate a subject of observation in Mrs. Frederick Langford, and by her own daughter.
'Eh!' said her grandfather. Then answering his mental objection in another tone, 'Ay, ay, no will for her own pleasure; that depends more on you than on any one else.'
'I would do anything on earth for her!' said Henrietta, feeling it from the bottom of her heart.
'I am sure you would, my dear,' said Mr. Langford, 'and she deserves it. There are few like her, and few that have gone through so much. To think of her as she was when last she was here and to look at her now! Well, it won't do to talk of it; but I thought when I saw her face yesterday, that I could see, as well as believe, it was all for the best for her, as I am sure it was for us.'
He was interrupted just as they reached the gate by the voice of his eldest son calling 'Out late, sir,' and looking round, Henrietta saw what looked in the darkness like a long procession, Uncle and Aunt Roger, and their niece, and all the boys, as far down as William, coming to the Hall for the regular Christmas dinner-party.
Joining company, Henrietta walked with Jessie and answered her inquiries whether she had got wet or cold in the morning; but it was in an absent manner, for she was all the time dwelling on what her grandfather had been saying. She was calling up in imagination the bright scenes of her mother's youth; those delightful games of which she had often heard, and which she could place in their appropriate setting now that she knew the scenes. She ran up to her room, where she found only Bennet, her mother having dressed and gone down; and sitting down before the fire, and resigning her curls to her maid, she let herself dwell on the ideas the conversation had called up, turning from the bright to the darker side. She pictured to herself the church, the open grave, her uncles and her grandfather round it, the villagers taking part in their grief, the old carpenter's averted head-she thought what must have been the agony of the moment, of laying in his untimely grave one so fondly loved, on whom the world was just opening so brightly,-and the young wife-the infant children-how fearful it must have been! 'It was almost a cruel dispensation,' thought Henrietta. 'O, how happy and bright we might have been! What would it not have been to hold by his hand, to have his kiss, to look for his smile! And mamma, to have had her in all her joyousness and blitheness, with no ill health, and no cares! O, why was it not so? And yet grandpapa said it was for the best! And in what a manner he did say it, as if he really felt and saw, and knew the advantage of it! To dear papa himself I know it was for the best, but for us, mamma, grandpapa-no, I never shall understand it. They were good before; why did they need punishment? Is this what is called saying 'Thy will be done?' Then I shall never be able to say it, and yet I ought!'
'Your head a little higher, if you please, Miss Henrietta,' said Bennet; 'it is that makes me so long dressing you, and your mamma has been telling me that I must get you ready faster.'
Henrietta slightly raised her head for the moment, but soon let it sink again in her musings, and when Bennet reminded her, replied, 'I can't, Bennet, it breaks my neck.' Her will was not with her mother's, in a trifling matter of which the reasonableness could not but approve itself to her. How, then, was it likely to be bent to that of her Heavenly Parent, in what is above reason?
The toilet was at length completed, and in time for her to be handed in to dinner by Alexander, an honour which she owed to Beatrice having already been secured by Frederick, who was resolved not to be again abandoned to Jessie. Alex did not favour her with much conversation, partly because he was thinking with perturbation of the task set him for the evening, and partly because he was trying to hear what Queen Bee was saying to Fred, in the midst of the clatter of knives and forks, and the loud voice of Mr. Roger Langford, which was enough to drown most other sounds. Some inquiries had been made about Mrs. Geoffrey Langford and her aunt, Lady Susan St. Leger, which had led Beatrice into a great lamentation for her mother's absence, and from thence into a description of what Lady Susan exacted from her friends. 'Aunt Susan is a regular fidget,' said she; 'not such a fidget as some people,' with an indication of Mrs. Langford. 'Some people are determined to make others comfortable in a way of their own, and that is a fidget to be regarded with considerable respect; but Aunt Susan's fidgeting takes the turn of sacrificing the comfort of every one else to her own and her little dog's.'
'But that is very hard on Aunt Geoffrey,' said Fred.
'Frightfully. Any one who was less selfish would have insisted on mamma's coming here, instead of which Aunt Susan only complains of her sister and brother, and everybody else, for going out of London, when she may be taken suddenly ill at any time. She is in such a nervous state that Mr. Peyton cannot tell what might be the consequence,' said Beatrice, in an imitative tone, which made Fred laugh.
'I am sure I should leave her to take care of herself,' said he.
'So do the whole family except ourselves; they are all worn out by her querulousness, and are not particularly given to patience or unselfishness either. But mamma is really fond of her, because she was kind to her when she came home from India, and she manages to keep her quiet better than anyone else can. She can very seldom resist mamma's cheerful voice, which drives off half her nerves at once. You cannot think how funny it is to see how Aunt
