WRECKED IN PORT.
A SERIAL STORY BY THE AUTHOR OF "BLACK SHEEP."
BOOK II.
CHAPTER V. BECOMING INDISPENSABLE.

"MASTER will be glad to see you, miss,
in the library, if you please."

"Very good, Wilson. Is Mr. Creswell
alone?"

"Mr. Radford, the agent from Brocksopp,
have been with him for the last half
hour, miss: but he's on the point to go. I
saw him getting on his gloves as I left the
room."

"Very good; tell Mr. Creswell I will be
with him at once."

The servant retired, closing the door
behind her, and Marian was left alone with
her mother. They were in what they had
become accustomed to call "their own" sitting-
room, with its bright chintz furniture and
tasteful appointments, as Marian had
described them in her letter to Walter. It
was tolerably early morning, just after ten
o'clock, and the sun lit up the garden and
the grass plot, from which the slight frost
had not yet disappeared, though the
snowdrops and the crocuses were already showing
their heads in the flower borders, while
the ditch-banks of the neighbourhood were
thick with promised crops of violets and
primroses. Mrs. Ashurst, whose infirmities
seemed greatly to have increased within
the past six months, was sitting by the fire
with her face turned towards the window,
enjoying the brightness of the morning;
but her back was turned to the door, and
she had not caught the servant's message.

"What was that Martha said, my dear?"
she asked. "My hearing's getting worse,
I think. I miss almost everything that's
said now."

"You had your back towards her, dear
mother; and you were too pleasantly occupied
looking at the bright weather outside,
and thinking that we should soon be able
to get you out for a turn up and down the
long walk, in the sun. Martha came to
say that Mr. Creswell wanted to see me in
the library."

"Again, Marian? Why you were with
him for hours—when was it—the day
before yesterday."

"Yes, mother; you're quite right; I was
there, helping him with his accounts. But
there was some information which had to
be supplied, before we could finish them.
I suppose he has obtained that now, and
we can go on with our work."

"You're a clever child, my dear," said
the old lady, fondly stroking her daughter's
shining hair.

"There's more use than cleverness in
what I'm doing for Mr. Creswell, darling
mother. Don't you remember how I used
to make out the boarders' bills for poor
papa, and the 'general running account' to
be submitted half yearly to the governors?
These are larger and more intricate
matters, of course, dealing as they do with the
amount and sources of Mr. Creswell's
income; but I think I have mastered the
method of dealing with them, and Mr.
Creswell, I imagine, thinks so too."

"It must be a very large income, my
dear, to keep up all this place, and——"

"Large! You have no conception of it,
mother. I had no conception of it, nor of
how it came in, and grew, and is for ever
growing, until it was before me in black
and white. Original funds, speculations,
mortgages, investments in this and that, in
ships and wharves and breweries, in foreign
railroads and——Ah! good heavens, it's
enough to turn one's brain to think of!"