“Is he not handsome, Alice?”

“Some people would think so, William.  I like a face I can read.”

“I’m sure it is a long way better to keep yourself to yourself.  Say what you will, I am sure he will have plenty of good qualities.  Eh?  What?”

“For instance, a great deal of money.”

“Treat him fair, Alice; treat him fair.  You never were one to be unfair, and I don’t think you’ll begin with my nephew.”

“No, I’ll never be unfair, not as long as I live; and I’ll take up for Julius Sandal as soon as I am half sure he deserves it.”

“You can’t think what a pleasure it would be to me if he fancied one of our girls.  I’ve planned it this many a long day, Alice.”

“Well, then, William, if you have a wish as strong as that, it is something more than a wish, it is a kind of right; and I’ll never go against you in any fair matter.”

“And though you spoke scornful of money, it is a good thing; and the girl Julius marries will be a rich woman.  Eh?  What?”

“Perhaps; but it is the happiness and not the riches of her child that is a good mother’s reward, and a good father’s too.  Eh, William?”

“Certainly, Alice, certainly.”  But his unspoken reflection was, “women are that short sighted, they cannot put up with a small evil to prevent a big one.”

He had forgotten that “the wise One” and the “Counsellor” thought one day’s joys and sorrows “sufficient” for the heart to bear.

CHAPTER IV.

THUS RUNS THE WORLD AWAY.

                “But we mortals
     Planted so lowly, with death to bless us,
     Sorrow no longer.”

     “Our choices are our destiny.  Nothing is ours that our choices have
     not made ours.”

Julius Sandal had precisely those superficial excellences which the world is ready to accept at their apparent value; and he had been in so many schools, and imbibed such a variety of opinions, that he had a mental suit for all occasions.  “He knows about every thing,” said Sandal to the clergyman, at the close of an evening spent together,—­an evening in which Julius had been particularly interesting.  “Don’t you think so, sir?”

The rector looked up at the starry sky, and around the mountain-girdled valley, and answered slowly, “He has a great many ideas, squire; but they are second-hand, and do not fit his intellect.”

Charlotte had much the same opinion of the paragon, only she expressed it in a different way.  “He believes in every thing, and he might as well believe in nothing.  Confucius and Christ are about the same to him, and he thinks Juggernaut only ’a clumsier spelling of a name which no man spells correctly.’”

“His mind is like a fine mosaic, Charlotte.”

“Oh, indeed, Sophia, I don’t think so!  Mosaics have a design and fit it.  The mind of Julius is more like that quilt of a thousand pieces which grandmother patched.  There they are, the whole thousand, just bits of color, all sizes and shapes.  I would rather have a good square of white Marseilles.”