"It's very quiet; but you mustn't let it bore you, as you call it."
"O, that won't matter much, because it will only be for so short a time."
"So short a time! Are you going to leave Helmingham?"
"O yes; haven't you heard? George has got a living, such a jolly place, they say, in the Isle of Wight, Newmanton they call it; and we give up here at Midsummer."
"I congratulate you, my dear Gertrude, as much as I bewail my own misfortune. I was looking forward with such pleasure to having you within reachable distance in this horribly unneighbourly neighbourhood, and now you dash all my hopes! Whence did Mr. Benthall get this singular piece of good fortune?"
"George got the presentation from Lord Hetherington, who is a friend of Wal— I mean of a great friend of ours. And Lord Hetherington had seen George in London, and had taken a fancy to him, as so many people do; and he begged his friend to offer this living to George."
"That is very delightful indeed; I must congratulate you, though I must say I deserve a medal for my unselfishness in doing so. It will be charming for your sister, too; she never liked this part of the country much, I think; and of course she will live with you?"
"No, not live with us; we shall see her whenever she can get away from London, I hope."
"From London! ah, I forgot. Of course she will make your friend Lady—Man—Lady Mansergh's her head-quarters?"
"No; you are not right yet, Mrs. Creswell," said Gertrude, smiling in great delight, and showing all her teeth. "The fact is, Maud is going to be married, and after her marriage she will live the greater part of the year in London."
"To be married! indeed!" said Marian—she always hated Maud much more than Gertrude. "May one ask to whom?"
"Oh, certainly; every one will know it now;—to the new member here, Mr. Joyce."
"Indeed!" said Marian, quite calmly (trust her for that). "I should think they would be excellently matched! My dear Gertrude, how on earth do you get these flowers to grow in a room? Mine are all blighted, the merest brown horrors."
"Would he prefer that pale spiritless girl—not spiritless, but missish, knowing nothing of the world and its ways—to a woman who could stand by his side in an emergency, and help him throughout his life? Am I to be for ever finding one or other of these doll-children in my way? Shall I give up this last, greatest hope, simply because of this preposterous obstacle? Invention too, perhaps, of the other girl's, to annoy me. Walter is not that style of man—last person on earth to fancy a bread-and-butter miss, who We will see who shall win this time. This is an excitement which I certainly had not expected."
And the ponies never went so fast before.
Night on the Minch.
"She is a poor thing, a bit toy!" said the skipper of the Lowland trader, regarding the little yacht Tern from the deck of his big vessel, while we lay in Canna Harbour: "She's no' for these seas at all; and the quicker ye are awa' hame wi' her round the Rhu, ye'll be the wiser. She should never hae quitted the Clyde."
Set by the side of the trader's great hull, she certainly did look a "toy": so tiny, so slight, with her tapering mast and slender spars. To all our enumeration of her good qualities, the skipper merely replied with an incredulous "oomph," and assured us that, were she as "good as gold," the waters of the Minch would drown her like a rat if there was any wind at all. Few yachts of thrice her tonnage, and twice her beam, ever cared to show their sails on the outside of Skye. Why, even the skipper, in his great vessel, which was like a rock in the water, had seen such weather out there as had made his hair stand on end; and he launched into a series of awful tales, showing how he had driven from the point of Sleat to Isle Ornsay up to his neck in the sea, how a squall off Dunvegan Head had carried away his topmast, broken his mainsail boom, and swept his decks clean of boats and rubbish, all at one fell crash; and numberless other terrific things, all tending to show that we were likely to get into trouble. When he heard that we actually purposed crossing the Minch to Boisdale, and beating up along the shores of the Long Isle as far as Stornoway, he set us down as madmen at once, and condescended to no more advice. After that, till the moment we sailed, he regarded us from the side of his vessel in a solemn sort of way, as if we were people going to be hanged.
He frightened us a little. The Wanderer, who had planned the expedition, looked at the skipper—or the Viking, as we got in the habit of calling him, because he wasn't like one. The Viking, who had never before ventured with his yacht beyond the Clyde, was pale, and only wanted encouragement
