Ellinor grasped eagerly at the only pleasure which her money enabled her to give to the old man:  and promised him that she would take care and buy the right to that particular piece of ground.  This was evidently a gratification Dixon had frequently yearned after; he kept saying, “I’m greatly obleeged to ye, Miss Ellinor.  I may say I’m truly obleeged.”  And when he saw them off by the coach the next day, his last words were, “I cannot justly say how greatly I’m obleeged to you for that matter of the churchyard.”  It was a much more easy affair to give Miss Monro some additional comforts; she was as cheerful as ever; still working away at her languages in any spare time, but confessing that she was tired of the perpetual teaching in which her life had been spent during the last thirty years.  Ellinor was now enabled to set her at liberty from this, and she accepted the kindness from her former pupil with as much simple gratitude as that with which a mother receives a favour from a child.  “If Ellinor were but married to Canon Livingstone, I should be happier than I have ever been since my father died,” she used to say to herself in the solitude of her bed-chamber, for talking aloud had become her wont in the early years of her isolated life as a governess.  “And yet,” she went on, “I don’t know what I should do without her; it is lucky for me that things are not in my hands, for a pretty mess I should make of them, one way or another.  Dear! how old Mrs. Cadogan used to hate that word ‘mess,’ and correct her granddaughters for using it right before my face, when I knew I had said it myself only the moment before!  Well! those days are all over now.  God be thanked!”

In spite of being glad that “things were not in her hands” Miss Monro tried to take affairs into her charge by doing all she could to persuade Ellinor to allow her to invite the canon to their “little sociable teas.”  The most provoking part was, that she was sure he would have come if he had been asked; but she could never get leave to do so.  “Of course no man could go on for ever and ever without encouragement,” as she confided to herself in a plaintive tone of voice; and by-and-by many people were led to suppose that the bachelor canon was paying attention to Miss Forbes, the eldest daughter of the family to which the delicate Jeanie belonged.  It was, perhaps, with the Forbeses that both Miss Monro and Ellinor were the most intimate of all the families in East Chester.  Mrs. Forbes was a widow lady of good means, with a large family of pretty, delicate daughters.  She herself belonged to one of the great houses in —–­shire, but had married into Scotland; so, after her husband’s death, it was the most natural thing in the world that she should settle in East Chester; and one after another of her daughters had become first Miss Monro’s pupil and afterwards her friend.  Mrs. Forbes herself had always been strongly attracted by Ellinor, but it was long before she could conquer the timid reserve by which Miss Wilkins was hedged round.  It was Miss Monro, who was herself incapable of jealousy, who persevered in praising them to one another, and in bringing them together; and now Ellinor was as intimate and familiar in Mrs. Forbes’s household as she ever could be with any family not her own.