"Well, my boy, I am very much pleased with
this. Indeed I am." My uncle took off his
spectacles, and held out his strong right hand
to Horace, giving him a hearty grip."It does
you credit, and you may justly be proud of it."

"I am proud of it, sir," answered Horace,
with ingenuous glee. "I am glad that you should
see—that you should have this opportunity of
convincing yourself—that is, I mean, that my
prospects——"

"Yes, yes, I know. You are proud and glad
that I should be made to understand on such
excellent authority, what a trustworthy responsible
rising gentleman I am to have for a
nephew, and what a very slow old coach I must
be to think it well for him to wait one single day,
before taking all the cares of the world on his
shoulders! That's it, isn't it, laddie?"

Horace coloured, but answered with a smile:
"Well, you have put it in your own words, sir,
but I suppose that is it."

"And now, mayn't We know something of
this great business?" asked my aunt, from
among the cushions in her arm-chair.

Then Uncle Gough, with Horace's full
consent, told us what were the contents of Mr.
Topps's letter. That distinguished engineer
retained a kindly remembrance and a high opinion
of his former pupil, and was willing to put a good
thing in his way when the occasion presented
itself. There were some new waterworks to
be erected in a small northern town just on
this side of the Scottish Border, and Mr. Topps
had been applied to, to find some competent
person to design and superintend their erection.
He himself was much too "eminent and expensive,"
as Mr. Lee would have said, to be asked
to undertake the business. But the chairman
of the water-works company, being acquainted
with the great Birmingham engineer, had written
to ask his advice. "And my advice is, that
they should employ you, Lee," wrote Mr.
Topps in his letter. "I have every confidence
in you, and, if you will undertake it, it may lead
to better things."

Better things! What could be better? So I
thought. But to Mr. Topps, from his eminence,
probably the whole matter looked small enough.

"What does Rotherwood say to it?" asked
my uncle.

"Well, sir, he sees no objection to my taking
it. Clinch, his articled pupil, can do all such
work as I have been doing during the last half
year."

The only drawback to our happiness was,
that Horace would have to go to the north,
and remain there some time. But that
would not be just yet. Some six months must
elapse before the arrangements could be so far
advanced as to necessitate his presence. And
six months seemed quite a long time to look
forward to, when I was nineteen.

CHAPTER IX.

I WAS once told, when I was a very little
girl—too little to be told so—that I should
find good and evil, joy and sorrow, succeed each
other throughout my life, with the regularity of
the chequers on a chess-board. I have found
this true in the main: true in the sense
in which it was intended to be understood:
but I have never found it to be an accurate
illustration of the alternations of bright and
dark in our daily existence. The dark spots
have come to me—and, thank God! the bright
spots too—but by no means with the rigidity
of outline and regularity of succession,
suggested by the chess-board simile. Absolute
blackness has been rare—rarer, perhaps, on the
whole than absolute whiteness. I have known
both. But they were divided from each other
by infinite gradations of more or less neutral
tints, and not by sharp well-defined lines, where
the black ceased and the white began. In truth,
I think that sharp well-defined lines are not
common, either in nature or human nature.

I am led to remember the "chess-board," by
thinking of the cloud that came over us soon
after our pride and triumph in Horace's good
fortune. Dear Aunt Gough grew very ill. Still
without any special disorder that could be
discovered, or that the family doctor chose to
define to us; but very weak, and very ill. She
seldom left her chamber now, and, Anna being
away, I was with her a great deal. She would
sometimes feebly protest against the constancy
of my attendance on her; but I said, and said
truly, that I could not have been happy if I had
left her to receive loving care from other hands.

"It is but selfishness after all, dear aunty;
for, as soon as I am away from you, I begin to
fidget, and to fancy that something has been
forgotten which ought to have been remembered,
or something left undone which ought to
have been done. And then my self-conceit
brings me back to see to things myself."

"But Horace will think me very selfish, my
love, if I engross you altogether. That must
not be."

"I am sure he will not think that, aunt.
Besides, Horace has been away a good deal,
himself, lately."

It was true that Horace had been away a good
deal lately; away from Willborough. Before
he should take his departure for the north, there
were two or three matters to which Mr. Rotherwood
wished him to give his personal superintendence.
Among others, there was the draining
of Meadow Leas. I have said that Mr.
Rotherwood desired it, but Mr. Lee was very
anxious, too, that Horace should see to it himself.
Had not Sir Robert sent for him to the Hall
purposely to speak of it? Had he not shaken
hands with him, and presented him to my lady
in the drawing-room? "Clinch could do it all
right enough," said Horace. But nevertheless,
thus influenced, he went himself to Meadow
Leas. So it followed that what with his frequent
absence, and what with my attendance on my
aunt, we were not quite so much together as
would otherwise have been natural in our
position. But he rode over from his father's house
(where he was staying to be near his work)
almost every day, and brought my aunt many a