When Margaret had been here before, she had brought down with her

a great box of books, recommended by masters or governess, and

had found the summer's day all too short to get through the

reading she had to do before her return to town. Now there were

only the well-bound little-read English Classics, which were

weeded out of her father's library to fill up the small

book-shelves in the drawing-room. Thomson's Seasons, Hayley's

Cowper, Middleton's Cicero, were by far the lightest, newest, and

most amusing. The book-shelves did not afford much resource.

Margaret told her mother every particular of her London life, to

all of which Mrs. Hale listened with interest, sometimes amused

and questioning, at others a little inclined to compare her

sister's circumstances of ease and comfort with the narrower

means at Helstone vicarage. On such evenings Margaret was apt to

stop talking rather abruptly, and listen to the drip-drip of the

rain upon the leads of the little bow-window. Once or twice

Margaret found herself mechanically counting the repetition of

the monotonous sound, while she wondered if she might venture to

put a question on a subject very near to her heart, and ask where

Frederick was now; what he was doing; how long it was since they

had heard from him. But a consciousness that her mother's

delicate health, and positive dislike to Helstone, all dated from

the time of the mutiny in which Frederick had been engaged,--the

full account of which Margaret had never heard, and which now

seemed doomed to be buried in sad oblivion,--made her pause and

turn away from the subject each time she approached it. When she

was with her mother, her father seemed the best person to apply

to for information; and when with him, she thought that she could

speak more easily to her mother. Probably there was nothing much

to be heard that was new. In one of the letters she had received

before leaving Harley Street, her father had told her that they

had heard from Frederick; he was still at Rio, and very well in

health, and sent his best love to her; which was dry bones, but

not the living intelligence she longed for. Frederick was always

spoken of, in the rare times when his name was mentioned, as

'Poor Frederick.' His room was kept exactly as he had left it;

and was regularly dusted, and put into order by Dixon, Mrs.

Hale's maid, who touched no other part of the household work, but

always remembered the day when she had been engaged by Lady

Beresford as ladies' maid to Sir John's wards, the pretty Miss

Beresfords, the belles of Rutlandshire. Dixon had always

considered Mr. Hale as the blight which had fallen upon her young

lady's prospects in life. If Miss Beresford had not been in such

a hurry to marry a poor country clergyman, there was no knowing

what she might not have become. But Dixon was too loyal to desert

her in her affliction and downfall (alias her married life). She

remained with her, and was devoted to her interests; always

considering herself as the good and protecting fairy, whose duty

it was to baffle the malignant giant, Mr. Hale. Master Frederick

had been her favorite and pride; and it was with a little

softening of her dignified look and manner, that she went in

weekly to arrange the chamber as carefully as if he might be

coming home that very evening. Margaret could not help believing

that there had been some late intelligence of Frederick, unknown

to her mother, which was making her father anxious and uneasy.

Mrs. Hale did not seem to perceive any alteration in her

husband's looks or ways. His spirits were always tender and

gentle, readily affected by any small piece of intelligence

concerning the welfare of others. He would be depressed for many

days after witnessing a death-bed, or hearing of any crime. But

now Margaret noticed an absence of mind, as if his thoughts were

pre-occupied by some subject, the oppression of which could not

be relieved by any daily action, such as comforting the

survivors, or teaching at the school in hope of lessening the

evils in the generation to come. Mr. Hale did not go out among

his parishioners as much as usual; he was more shut up in his

study; was anxious for the village postman, whose summons to the

house-hold was a rap on the back-kitchen window-shutter--a signal

which at one time had often to be repeated before any one was

sufficiently alive to the hour of the day to understand what it

was, and attend to him. Now Mr. Hale loitered about the garden if

the morning was fine, and if not, stood dreamily by the study

window until the postman had called, or gone down the lane,

giving a half-respectful, half-confidential shake of the head to

the parson, who watched him away beyond the sweet-briar hedge,

and past the great arbutus, before he turned into the room to

begin his day's work, with all the signs of a heavy heart and an

occupied mind.




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