When the spring came, Mrs. Hackit begged that she might have Dickey to stay with her, and great was the enlargement of Dickey’s experience from that visit.  Every morning he was allowed—­being well wrapt up as to his chest by Mrs. Hackit’s own hands, but very bare and red as to his legs—­to run loose in the cow and poultry yard, to persecute the turkey-cock by satirical imitations of his gobble-gobble, and to put difficult questions to the groom as to the reasons why horses had four legs, and other transcendental matters.  Then Mr. Hackit would take Dickey up on horseback when he rode round his farm, and Mrs. Hackit had a large plumcake in cut, ready to meet incidental attacks of hunger.  So that Dickey had considerably modified his views as to the desirability of Mrs. Hackit’s kisses.

The Misses Farquhar made particular pets of Fred and Sophy, to whom they undertook to give lessons twice a-week in writing and geography; and Mrs. Farquhar devised many treats for the little ones.  Patty’s treat was to stay at home, or walk about with her papa; and when he sat by the fire in an evening, after the other children were gone to bed, she would bring a stool, and, placing it against his feet, would sit down upon it and lean her head against his knee.  Then his hand would rest on that fair head, and he would feel that Milly’s love was not quite gone out of his life.

So the time wore on till it was May again, and the church was quite finished and reopened in all its new splendour, and Mr. Barton was devoting himself with more vigour than ever to his parochial duties.  But one morning—­it was a very bright morning, and evil tidings sometimes like to fly in the finest weather—­there came a letter for Mr. Barton, addressed in the Vicar’s handwriting.  Amos opened it with some anxiety—­somehow or other he had a presentiment of evil.  The letter contained the announcement that Mr. Carpe had resolved on coming to reside at Shepperton, and that, consequently, in six months from that time Mr. Barton’s duties as curate in that parish would be closed.

O, it was hard!  Just when Shepperton had become the place where he most wished to stay—­where he had friends who knew his sorrows—­where he lived close to Milly’s grave.  To part from that grave seemed like parting with Milly a second time; for Amos was one who clung to all the material links between his mind and the past.  His imagination was not vivid, and required the stimulus of actual perception.

It roused some bitter feeling, too, to think that Mr. Carpe’s wish to reside at Shepperton was merely a pretext for removing Mr. Barton, in order that he might ultimately give the curacy of Shepperton to his own brother-in-law, who was known to be wanting a new position.

Still, it must be borne; and the painful business of seeking another curacy must be set about without loss of time.  After the lapse of some months, Amos was obliged to renounce the hope of getting one at all near Shepperton, and he at length resigned himself to accepting one in a distant county.  The parish was in a large manufacturing town, where his walks would lie among noisy streets and dingy alleys, and where the children would have no garden to play in, no pleasant farm-houses to visit.