her propensity to dictate.  He deferred to her, and contrived to thwart her, to do the very thing she would not have done, and to do it in the most obnoxious way.  The puzzle was—­could he help it?  Was he one of those tactless persons who are for ever blundering, or had he the will to assert himself, and not the pluck to do it boldly?  His refuge was in round-about manoeuvres, and my lady felt towards him as those intolerant Cumberland statesmen felt before their enmity made the bleak moorland too hot for him.  He was called an able man, but his foibles were precisely of the sort to create in the large-hearted of the gentle sex an almost masculine antipathy to their spiritual pastor.  Bessie Fairfax could not bear him, and she could render a reason.  Mr. Wiley received pupils to read at his house, and he had refused to receive a dear comrade of hers.  It was his rule to receive none but the sons of gentlemen.  Young Musgrave was the son of a farmer on the Forest, who called cousins with the young Carnegies.  As the connection was wide, perhaps the vigorous dislike of more important persons than Bessie Fairfax is sufficiently accounted for.  All the world is agreed that a slight wound to men’s self-love rankles much longer than a mortal injury.

It is not, however, to be supposed that the Beechhurst people spited themselves so far as to keep away from the rector’s school-treat because they did not love the rector. (By the by, it was not his treat, but only buns and tea by subscription distributed in his grounds, with the privilege of admittance to the subscribers.) The orthodox gentility of the neighborhood assembled in force for the occasion when the sun shone upon it as it shone to-day, and the entertainment was an event for children of all classes.  If the richer sort did not care for buns, they did for games; and the Carnegie boys were so eager to lose none of the sport that they coaxed Bessie to take time by the forelock, and presented themselves almost first on the scene.  Mrs. Wiley, ready and waiting out of doors to welcome her more distinguished guests, met a trio of the little folks, in Bessie’s charge, trotting round the end of the house to reach the lawn.

“Always in good time, Bessie Carnegie,” said she.  “But is not your mother coming?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Wiley,” said Bessie with prim decorum.

“By the by, that is not your name.  What is your name, Bessie?”

“Elizabeth Fairfax.”

“Ah! yes; now I remember—­Elizabeth Fairfax.  And is your uncle pretty well?  I suppose we shall see him later in the day?  He ought to look in upon us before we break up.  There! run away to the children in the orchard, and leave the lawn clear.”

Bessie accepted her dismissal gladly, thankful to escape the catechetical ordeal that would have ensued had there been leisure for it.  She was almost as shy of the rector’s wife as of the rector.  Mrs. Wiley had a brusque, absent manner, and it was a trick of hers to expose her young acquaintance to a fire of questions, of which she as regularly forgot the answers.  She had often affronted Bessie Fairfax by asking her real name, and in the next breath calling her affably Bessie Carnegie, the doctor’s step-daughter, niece or other little kinswoman whom he kept as a help in his house for charity’s sake.