“Oh no.  I do not even teach in the Sunday-school at Kirkham.  It is very small.  Mr. Forbes does not encourage the attendance of children whose parents are able to instruct them themselves.”

“I am glad to hear it.  I do not approve of this system of relieving parents of their private duties.  Mr. Wiley carries it to excess, and will not permit any poor woman to become a member of the coal-and-clothing club who does not send her children to Sunday-school:  the doctor has refused his subscription in consequence, and divides it amongst the recusants.  For a specimen of Miss Myra Robb’s evening-class teaching we have a girl who provokes Bridget almost past her patience:  she cannot say her duty to her neighbor in the catechism, and her practice of it is so imperfect that your father begs me, the next time I engage a scullery-wench, to ascertain that she is not infected with the offensive pious conceit that distinguishes poor Eliza.  Our own dear children are affectionate and good, on the whole.  Jack has made up his mind to the sea, and Willie professes that he will be a doctor, like his father; he could not be better.  They are both at Hampton School yet, but we have them over for Sunday while the summer weather continues.”

When Bessie had heard the family news and all about the children, she had to tell her own, and very interesting her mother found it.  She had to answer numerous questions concerning Mr. Laurence Fairfax, his wife and boys, and then Mrs. Carnegie inquired about that fine gentleman of whose pretensions to Miss Fairfax Lady Latimer had warned her.  Bessie blushed rather warmly, and told what facts there were to tell, and she now learnt for the first time that her wooing was a matter of arrangement and policy.  The information was not gratifying, to judge from the hot fire of her face and the tone of her rejoinder.  “Mr. Cecil Burleigh is a fascinating person—­so I am assured—­but I don’t think I was the least bit in love,” she averred with energetic scorn.  Her mother smiled, and did not say so much in reply as Bessie thought she might.

Presently they went into the orchard, and insensibly the subject was renewed.  Bessie remembered afterward saying many things that she never meant to say.  She mentioned how she had first seen Mr. Cecil Burleigh at the Fairfield wedding devoted to a most lovely young lady whom she had seen again at Ryde, and had known as Miss Julia Gardiner.  “I thought they were engaged,” she said.  “I am sure they were lovers for a long while.”

“You were under that impression throughout?” Mrs. Carnegie suggested interrogatively.

“Yes.  From the day I saw them together at Ryde I had no other thought.  He was grandpapa’s friend, grandpapa forwarded his election for Norminster, and as I was the young lady of the house at Abbotsmead, it was not singular that he should be kind and attentive to me, was it?  I am quite certain that he was as little in love with me as I was with him, though he did invite me to be his wife.  I felt very much insulted that he should suppose me such a child as not to know that he did not care for me; it was not in that way he had courted Miss Julia Gardiner.”