and hoped; she was waiting and hoping,
calmly and quietly fulfilling the ordinary
duties of her very ordinary life, but never
losing sight of her fixed intent. Then
across the path of her life there came a
man who seemed to give promise of
eventually fulfilling the requirements she had
planned out for herself. It was but a
promise; there was nothing tangible; but
the promise was so good, the girl's heart
yearned for an occupant, and, with all its
hard teaching and its worldly aspirations,
it was but human after all. So her human
heart and her worldly wisdom came to a
compromise in the matter of her acceptance
of a lover, and the result of that compromise
was her engagement to Walter Joyce.

When the Helmingham Grammar School
was under the misrule of old Dr. Munch,
then at its lowest ebb, and nominations
to the foundation were to be had for the
asking, and, indeed, in many cases were
sent a-begging, it occurred to the old head
master to offer one of the vacancies to Mr.
Joyce, the principal grocer and maltster of
the village, whose son was then just of an
age to render him accessible to the benefits
of the education which Sir Ranulph Clinton
had demised to the youth of Helmingham,
and which was then being so imperfectly
supplied to them under the auspices of Dr.
Munch. You must not for an instant imagine
that the offer was made by the old Doctor
out of pure loving-kindness and magnanimity;
he looked at it, as he did at most
things, from a purely practical point of
view; he owed Joyce, the grocer, so much
money, and if Joyce, the grocer, would write
him a receipt in full for all his indebtedness
in return for a nomination for Joyce junior,
at least he, the Doctor, would not have done
a bad stroke of business. He would have
wiped out an existing score, the value of
which proceeding meant, in Dr. Munch's
eyes, that he would be enabled at once to
commence a fresh one, while the acquisition
of young Joyce as a scholar would not
cause one atom of difference in the manner
in which the school was conducted, or rather
left to conduct itself. The offer was worth
making, for the debt was heavy, though the
Doctor was by no means sure of its being
accepted. Andrew Joyce was not Helmingham
born; he had come from Spindleton,
one of the large inland capitals, and had
purchased the business which he owned.
He was not popular among the Helmingham
folk, who were all strict church people,
so far as morning service attending, tithe
paying, and parson-respecting were concerned,
from the fact that his religious tendencies
were suspected to be what the villagers
termed "methodee." He had his
seat in the village church, it is true, and
put in an appearance there on the Sunday
morning, but instead of spending the Sabbath
evening in the orthodox way—which at
Helmingham consisted in sitting in the best
parlour, with a very dim light, and enjoying
the blessings of sound sleep, while Nelson's
Fasts and Festivals, or some equally proper
work, rested on the sleeper's knee, until it
fell off with a crash, and was only recovered
to be held upside down until the grateful
announcement of the arrival of supper—Mr.
Joyce was in the habit of dropping into
Salem Chapel, where Mr. Stoker, a shining
light from the pottery district, dealt forth
the most uncomfortable doctrine in the
most forcible manner. The Helmingham
people declared, too, that Andrew
Joyce was "uncanny" in other ways; he
was close-fisted and niggardly, his name was
to be found on no subscription list; he was
litigious; he declared that Mr. Prickett, the
old-fashioned solicitor of the village, was too
slow for him, and he put his law matters
into the hands of Messrs. Sheen and Nasmyth,
attorneys at Brocksopp, who levied
a distress before other people had served a
writ, and who were considered the sharpest
practitioners in the county. Old Dr. Munch
had heard of the process of Messrs. Sheen
and Nasmyth, and the dread of any of it
being exercised on him originally prompted
his offer to Andrew Joyce. He knew that
he might count on an ally in Andrew
Joyce's wife, a superior woman in very
delicate health, who had great influence
with her husband, and who was devoted to
her only son. Mrs. Joyce, when Hester
Baines, had been a Bible-class teacher in
Spindleton, and had had herself a fair
amount of education, would have had more,
for she was a very earnest woman in her
vocation, ever striving to gain more
knowledge herself for the mere purpose of
imparting it to others, but from her early
youth she had been fighting with a spinal
disease, to which she was gradually
succumbing, so that although sour granite-
faced Andrew Joyce was not the exact help-
mate that the girl so full of love and trust
would have chosen for herself, when he
offered her his hand and his home, she was
glad to avail herself of the protection thus
afforded, and of the temporary peace which
she could thus enjoy, until called, as she
thought she should be, very speedily to her
eternal rest.