CHAPTER IV.

Summers and winters came and went, with little to mark them, except the growth of the trees, and the quiet progress of young creatures.  Erminia was sent to school somewhere in France, to receive more regular instruction than she could have in the house with her invalid aunt.  But she came home once a year, more lovely and elegant and dainty than ever; and Maggie thought, with truth, that ripening years were softening down her volatility, and that her aunt’s dewlike sayings had quietly sunk deep, and fertilized the soil.  That aunt was fading away.  Maggie’s devotion added materially to her happiness; and both she and Maggie never forgot that this devotion was to be in all things subservient to the duty which she owed to her mother.

“My love,” Mrs. Buxton had more than once said, “you must always recollect that your first duty is toward your mother.  You know how glad I am to see you; but I shall always understand how it is, if you do not come.  She may often want you when neither you nor I can anticipate it.”

Mrs. Browne had no great wish to keep Maggie at home, though she liked to grumble at her going.  Still she felt that it was best, in every way, to keep on good terms with such valuable friends; and she appreciated, in some small degree, the advantage which her intimacy at the house was to Maggie.  But yet she could not restrain a few complaints, nor withhold from her, on her return, a recapitulation of all the things which might have been done if she had only been at home, and the number of times that she had been wanted; but when she found that Maggie quietly gave up her next Wednesday’s visit as soon as she was made aware of any necessity for her presence at home, her mother left off grumbling, and took little or no notice of her absence.

When the time came for Edward to leave school, he announced that he had no intention of taking orders, but meant to become an attorney.

“It’s such slow work,” said he to his mother.  “One toils away for four or five years, and then one gets a curacy of seventy pounds a-year, and no end of work to do for the money.  Now the work is not much harder in a lawyer’s office, and if one has one’s wits about one, there are hundreds and thousands a-year to be picked up with mighty little trouble.”

Mrs. Browne was very sorry for this determination.  She had a great desire to see her son a clergyman, like his father.  She did not consider whether his character was fitted for so sacred an office; she rather thought that the profession itself, when once assumed, would purify the character; but, in fact, his fitness or unfitness for holy orders entered little into her mind.  She had a respect for the profession, and his father had belonged to it.

“I had rather see you a curate at seventy pounds a-year, than an attorney with seven hundred,” replied she.  “And you know your father was always asked to dine everywhere—­to places where I know they would not have asked Mr. Bish, of Woodchester, and he makes his thousand a-year.  Besides, Mr. Buxton has the next presentation to Combehurst, and you would stand a good chance for your father’s sake.  And in the mean time you should live here, if your curacy was any way near.”