other people happy, and whose only incentive
to exertion was that she would do a kindness
to another. She petted Ralph a good deal.
Her husband—a hard pompous man, who
carried everything before him in the parish
by dint of quickness in figures and a deep
voice—said she spoilt the boy. He did not
approve of poor relations with quaint tastes
and inquiring minds. He thought they ought
to be practical,—"fit for clerkships and
counting-houses, sir; not always living in
snail-shells and dog-kennels." But now he
was obliged to confess that patronage might
be worse bestowed than on that "loose-
jointed awkward fool of a fellow, who, by
Jove, sir, would not kill the slugs off my
peach-trees, nor shoot the blackbirds in the
cherry-trees, nor take the crows'-nests, nor
shoot the sparrows,—who would not even
chop up a worm when he was digging in the
garden!" But at last he got accustomed to
Ralph and his odd ways; and, partly
perhaps because all his energies were absorbed in
opposing an obnoxious churchwarden whom
he used to call a viper and a traitor to the
blessed constitution, he let him alone, and
allowed his wife to dispense her sweet
charities at her will. So Ralph wandered about,
looking after grubs and caterpillars, or sat by
the fire reading about ant, and emmets, and
song-birds, and dormice, till he knew as much
about them as one of themselves,—and
perhaps more.

Little Miss Temple and Ralph Jessett
were great friends. She was a little lady of
about five or six years old when Ralph came
to Manor House,—he a boy of eighteen or
nineteen; and they soon became the firmest
and fastest allies possible. The way in which
the little thing used to cling to him, follow
him about the garden, and perch on his knee
to hear his stories about creeping things,
was quite beautiful. All the servants said
that Master Ralph was the only one in the
world who could manage Miss Letty,—"the
plague of the whole house," they used to add
savagely, and truly; for that she was this
domestic inconvenience there is no denying,
I fear. What can a healthy well-organised
child be but a plague, if all her youth and
energy of life be placed under the harrow of
conventionality? Miss Letty was no exception
to the rule that force must have an
object, and that energy must be expanded;
still less to that which makes healthy children
of high spirits family torments, unless they
are allowed to live somewhat according to
the necessities of their being. However, she
was very good to Ralph, and did not tease
him much. And Ralph, in return for her
patronage, instructed her in a great deal of
insect lore, and taught her the names of
birds, and the habits of fishes, and the
wonderful virtues of plants,—Letty sitting on
his knee down in the old arbour, where
the tomtit's nest was, wondering if she should
ever be as clever as Ralph Jessett, and what
a pity it was her doll could not hear him as
well as she did. So Ralph and Letty were
great cronies, and believed in each other
implicitly.

Time gradually unfolded one after another
of his huge iron books of years; till the little
Letty had grown into a fine handsome girl
of eighteen, with eyes as blue as the sky
on a hot summer's day, and hair as golden as
the sun's. She was a magnificent specimen
of a Saxon girl, with perhaps more animation
in that fresh, round face of hers than many
of the Saxon race "pure blood,"—with a
pair of large round shoulders as white as
snow, and arms and hands that would have
made the fortune of a modeller, if he could
have copied them correctly. Her lips were
as fresh and red, and her skin was as white
as human flesh may be; and altogether she
was as superb a being as you would see
anywhere in England, and was consequently
a great pride to the parents, and the
acknowledged beauty of the county. She herself
quite conscious too, in a good-tempered
way, that she was beautiful and admirable,—
vain as a high-bred hunter would have been
vain, if conversant with his own peculiar
points of beauty,—not like a peacock, but in
a free, half-laughing, gallant manner, quite
content to admire herself, but not fretting
after the admiration of all the world beside;
perhaps because she had it. And all the
time she had been developing into this grand
creature—all the time she had been growing
stronger and handsomer, and fuller of life and
more powerful—Ralph Jessett had shrunk
and shrunk, till now, at a little more than
thirty, he was bald and gray, and withered and
wrinkled; shyer and more awkward than ever;
a better naturalist certainly, but stranger,
more shambling and less worldly than he
was when, as a boy of eighteen, he first came
to Manor House as Mr. Temple's poor
relation,—more loved than ever by everybody.
Even the squire sometimes condescended
to exchange a few kindly words with him,
and sweet Mrs. Temple, stouter and lazier
than in olden times, smiling on him placidly,
as she kept him holding skeins for her to
wind off his hands, by the hour together;
Miss Letty only changing somewhat in her
demonstrations, eschewing now that
particular form of friendship which she and her
doll used to indulge in, ten years ago, down
in the tomtit's arbour, but capital friends
still with Ralph, although she did no longer
sit on his knee, and try to poke out his eyes;
but counting him as entirely her property
and creature as Dido, her spaniel, or Frisk,
her pony,—Ralph nothing loth to be so classed,
as much for love of his co-subjects as for their
queen.

As Miss Letty grew out into this brilliant
womanhood, Ralph's manners were observed
to change. Always respectful, even to the
little girl, he became reverential to the
young lady; and while his anxiety to please