and the week out; where, if innocence
remains, she remains in spite of evil and
temptation; where vice breeds crime in
a hot-bed of ignorance; where rheumatism
and fever are every day guests, and the
squire and the people are each other's
natural enemy.

This was much the case on the fine estate
to which Francis George Percival Monke had
the misfortune to be born heir, and his
mother's precepts were not likely to help
him to improve it. A narrow-minded,
bigoted, purse-proud woman, be she mother
or be she wife, is one of the greatest
hindrances that can befal a man; and, in his
youth, Francis George certainly showed none
of that force of character which might have
promised that he would, some day, strike
out an independent and better line of conduct
for himself.

III.

THERE is no knowing into what depths of
stultified folly the lad might have meandered,
but for a lucky accident that befel him when
he was about sixteen. He was riding an ill-
broken pony through the village of Grenside,
when it took fright and ran away with him,
threw him, and broke his arm. The youth
was picked up, and carried into the house of
the curate of the parish, whose wife put him
to bed and sent for his mother and the
doctor. The doctor came and set the limb,
and his mother came to nurse him—but,
finding her own comforts restricted in the
curate's abode, she soon left him to recover
without her attendance. She acted advisedly;
Francis George could not have been in better
hands.

Mr. Proby was a plain, steady-going,
worthy clergyman, and his wife was an
excellent woman; a woman of talent and
education, of enthusiasm and genuine warm-
heartedness. Curate-like, Mr. Proby had
a house full of children; hearty, noisy,
generous, mischievous boys, and laughter-
loving, pretty girls. All the family were good-
looking, but Katie was a real beauty, a copy
of her mother; nearly, if not quite, as handsome
as her mother had been at the same
age. There was no nonsense about Katie;
no silly affectation of boyishness, no still
sillier affectation of premature womanishness.
She was a thorough girl, tall, slight, agile
—as swift a runner, and as good a climber,
skipper, and general playfellow as brothers
could wish for; and yet she was an adept at
her needle, a good nurse, a clever little
scholar, and a most sunshiny companion to
everybody. A great part of the attendance
upon Francis George fell to her share, and she
did it with a cheerful alacrity and kindness
all her own.

There was not much about the young
gentleman to attract liking; he did not
become a favourite in the family by any means;
the smaller Proby children disliked him, in
fact; and even their mother, kind as she was,
found him too exacting and imperious an
inmate to be civil to longer than necessary:
so, as soon as he was sufficiently recovered to
return home, he was not pressed to stay
longer. Every one took leave of him rather
gladly than otherwise—Katie included.

Going back to Hardington was a return to
polar regions. Francis George missed
something. He missed the atmosphere of warm
affection that surrounded the curate's hearth,
and made his family as one; he missed the
cheerful voices and laughter, and, above all,
he missed Katie's smile and good-humoured
attentions. His mother was like a machine,
after those impulsive Probys. Francis George
tried to thaw her by telling her stories of
the ways and customs of the curate's house,
but he might as easily have hoped to thaw
the old stone griffins at Hardington gate by
breathing on them, as to thaw her by any
such process. She became by and by quite
impatient of any allusion to his friends, and
told him that his gratitude was absurdly
overstretched.

Yes; Francis George had a fund of obstinate,
pertinacious, unforgetting gratitude in
his disposition, which this lucky accident
developed. It was the nearest approach to
any decided virtue that he had yet displayed.
His father and mother had insisted on
compensating Mrs. Proby for the trouble and
expense of their son's recovery, but Francis
George could not be persuaded to look upon
it as a cancelling of his debt. He turned his
pony's head towards Grenside nearly every
day, and inquired after the health of the
Probys, as if, instead of being a hardy race,
they were a family of chronic invalids. Katie
used to go out to the gate laughing, to answer
his questions and receive his messages; and
one day, with a fiery blush on his face and a
nervous stammer in his voice, he told her he
had brought her a little present.

"You must not let my mother know, but
I spent all my quarter over it," said he, in a
hurried whisper, trying to put a morocco
case into her hands; but Katie, clasping
those little members behind her back, shook
her head in a resolute way, and said she must
not accept presents from him; papa would
not like it; especially if Mrs. Percival Monke
did not know.

"O! But do, Katie! I should never have
bought it but for you—it is a watch and
chain!" persisted he with anxious earnestness.
In the first place, it had cost him an
immense effort of self-denial to make the
purchase at all; and in the second, he had
been full a month in raising up his courage
to offer it—it was cruel indeed to reject it,
and his "do, Katie! " was most pathetic.

"No, no, no! " she replied; "you ought
not to have spent your money in such a
foolish way."

"It is not foolish. Look here, Katie! I
like you better than anybody in the world,