“She has been in highly cultivated society and it has improved her a great deal, mother.  Perhaps if Lucy had had the same opportunity she would have been equally benefited.”

“I beg to remind you, John, of what you said about training trees—­’the nature of the tree has to be taken into account’; no amount of training could make an oak out of a willow.”

“True, mother.  Yet there are people who would prefer the willow to the oak.”

“And you couldn’t help such people, now could you?  You might be sorry for them.  But there—­what could you do?”

And John said softly,

    “What can we do o’er whom the unbeholden
      Hangs in a night, wherewith we dare not cope;
    What but look sunward, and with faces golden,
      Speak to each other softly of our Hope?”

CHAPTER VII

SHOCK AND SORROW

    There’s not a bonnie flower that springs
      By fountain, shaw, or green,
    There’s not a bonnie bird that sings,
      But minds me of my Jean.

      Only a child of Nature’s rarest making,
    Wistful and sweet—­and with a heart for breaking.

Life is a great school and its lessons go on continually.  Now and then perhaps we have a vacation—­a period in which all appears to be at rest—­but in this very placidity there are often bred the storms that are to trouble and perhaps renew us.  For some time after the departure of Harry and his bride, John’s life appeared to flow in a smooth but busy routine.  Between the mill and Harlow House, he found the days all too short for the love and business with which they were filled.  And Mrs. Hatton missed greatly the happy and confidential conversations that had hitherto made her life with her son so intimate and so affectionate.

Early in the spring John began the building of his own home, and this necessarily required some daily attention, especially as he had designs in his mind which were unusual to the local builders, and which seemed to them well worthy of being quietly passed over.  For the house was characteristic of the man and the man was not of a common type.

There was nothing small or mean about John’s house.  The hill on which it stood was the highest ground on the Hatton Manor.  It commanded a wide vista of meadows, interspersed with peacefully flowing waters, until the horizon on every hand was closed by ranges of lofty mountains.  On this hill the house stood broadly facing the east.  It was a large, square Georgian mansion, built of some white stone found in Yorkshire.  Its rooms were of extraordinary size and very lofty, their windows being wide and high and numerous.  Its corridors were like streets, its stairways broad enough for four people to ascend them abreast.  Light, air, space were throughout its distinguishing qualities, and its furnishings were not only very handsome, they had in a special manner that honest size, solidity, and breadth which make English household belongings so comfortable and satisfactory.  The grounds were full of handsome forest trees and wonderful grassy glades and just around the house the soil had been enriched and planted with shrubbery and flowers.