“Oh, you must run away with the good, thoughtful men—­(I mean to consider that as a compliment to myself, Maggie!) Will you let me wish I had been born poor, if I am to stay in England?  I should not then be liable to this fault into which I see the rich men fall, of forgetting the trials of the poor.”

“I am not sure whether, if you had been poor, you might not have fallen into an exactly parallel fault, and forgotten the trials of the rich.  It is so difficult to understand the errors into which their position makes all men liable to fall.  Do you remember a story in ‘Evenings at Home,’ called the Transmigrations of Indra?  Well! when I was a child, I used to wish I might be transmigrated (is that the right word?) into an American slave-owner for a little while, just that I might understand how he must suffer, and be sorely puzzled, and pray and long to be freed from his odious wealth, till at last he grew hardened to its nature;—­and since then, I have wished to be the Emperor of Russia, for the same reason.  Ah! you may laugh; but that is only because I have not explained myself properly.”

“I was only smiling to think how ambitious any one might suppose you were who did not know you.”

“I don’t see any ambition in it—­I don’t think of the station—­I only want sorely to see the ‘What’s resisted’ of Burns, in order that I may have more charity for those who seem to me to have been the cause of such infinite woe and misery.”

  “’What’s done we partly may compute;
  But know not what’s resisted,’”

repeated Frank musingly.  After some time he began again: 

“But, Maggie, I don’t give up this wish of mine to go to Australia—­Canada, if you like it better—­anywhere where there is a newer and purer state of society.”

“The great objection seems to be your duty, as an only child, to your father.  It is different to the case of one out of a large family.”

“I wish I were one in twenty, then I might marry where I liked to-morrow.”

“It would take two people’s consent to such a rapid measure,” said Maggie, laughing.  “But now I am going to wish a wish, which it won’t require a fairy godmother to gratify.  Look, Frank, do you see in the middle of that dark brown purple streak of moor a yellow gleam of light?  It is a pond, I think, that at this time of the year catches a slanting beam of the sun.  It cannot be very far off.  I have wished to go to it every autumn.  Will you go with me now?  We shall have time before tea.”

Frank’s dissatisfaction with the stern measures that, urged on by Mr. Henry, his father took against all who had imposed upon his carelessness as a landlord, increased rather than diminished.  He spoke warmly to him on the subject, but without avail.  He remonstrated with Mr. Henry, and told him how he felt that, had his father controlled his careless nature, and been an exact, vigilant landlord, these tenantry would never have had the great temptation to do him wrong; and that therefore he considered some allowance should be made for them, and some opportunity given them to redeem their characters, which would be blasted and hardened for ever by the publicity of a law-suit.  But Mr. Henry only raised his eyebrows and made answer: