“Come, Lucy, my dear, don’t be so down-hearted.  You always have spoiled the boy, and you must go on spoiling him.”

“Nothing ever did cut me so before, Vincy,” said the wife, her fair throat and chin beginning to tremble again, “only his illness.”

“Pooh, pooh, never mind!  We must expect to have trouble with our children.  Don’t make it worse by letting me see you out of spirits.”

“Well, I won’t,” said Mrs. Vincy, roused by this appeal and adjusting herself with a little shake as of a bird which lays down its ruffled plumage.

“It won’t do to begin making a fuss about one,” said Mr. Vincy, wishing to combine a little grumbling with domestic cheerfulness.  “There’s Rosamond as well as Fred.”

“Yes, poor thing.  I’m sure I felt for her being disappointed of her baby; but she got over it nicely.”

“Baby, pooh!  I can see Lydgate is making a mess of his practice, and getting into debt too, by what I hear.  I shall have Rosamond coming to me with a pretty tale one of these days.  But they’ll get no money from me, I know.  Let his family help him.  I never did like that marriage.  But it’s no use talking.  Ring the bell for lemons, and don’t look dull any more, Lucy.  I’ll drive you and Louisa to Riverston to-morrow.”

CHAPTER LVII.

    They numbered scarce eight summers when a name
        Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there
    As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame
        At penetration of the quickening air: 
    His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu,
        Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor,
    Making the little world their childhood knew
        Large with a land of mountain lake and scaur,
    And larger yet with wonder love belief
        Toward Walter Scott who living far away
    Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief. 
        The book and they must part, but day by day,
            In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran
            They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan.

The evening that Fred Vincy walked to Lowick parsonage (he had begun to see that this was a world in which even a spirited young man must sometimes walk for want of a horse to carry him) he set out at five o’clock and called on Mrs. Garth by the way, wishing to assure himself that she accepted their new relations willingly.

He found the family group, dogs and cats included, under the great apple-tree in the orchard.  It was a festival with Mrs. Garth, for her eldest son, Christy, her peculiar joy and pride, had come home for a short holiday—­Christy, who held it the most desirable thing in the world to be a tutor, to study all literatures and be a regenerate Porson, and who was an incorporate criticism on poor Fred, a sort of object-lesson given to him by the educational mother.  Christy himself, a square-browed, broad-shouldered