in thinking of their intercourse by the light of future events, that evening stands out with some prominence.  I have said that after our removal to Hornby our communications with the farm became almost of daily occurrence.  Cousin Holman and I were the two who had least to do with this intimacy.  After Mr Holdsworth regained his health, he too often talked above her head in intellectual matters, and too often in his light bantering tone for her to feel quite at her ease with him.  I really believe that he adopted this latter tone in speaking to her because he did not know what to talk about to a purely motherly woman, whose intellect had never been cultivated, and whose loving heart was entirely occupied with her husband, her child, her household affairs and, perhaps, a little with the concerns of the members of her husband’s congregation, because they, in a way, belonged to her husband.  I had noticed before that she had fleeting shadows of jealousy even of Phillis, when her daughter and her husband appeared to have strong interests and sympathies in things which were quite beyond her comprehension.  I had noticed it in my first acquaintance with them, I say, and had admired the delicate tact which made the minister, on such occasions, bring the conversation back to such subjects as those on which his wife, with her practical experience of every-day life, was an authority; while Phillis, devoted to her father, unconsciously followed his lead, totally unaware, in her filial reverence, of his motive for doing so.

To return to Holdsworth.  The minister had at more than one time spoken of him to me with slight distrust, principally occasioned by the suspicion that his careless words were not always those of soberness and truth.  But it was more as a protest against the fascination which the younger man evidently exercised over the elder one more as it were to strengthen himself against yielding to this fascination—­that the minister spoke out to me about this failing of Holdsworth’s, as it appeared to him.  In return Holdsworth was subdued by the minister’s uprightness and goodness, and delighted with his clear intellect—­his strong healthy craving after further knowledge.  I never met two men who took more thorough pleasure and relish in each other’s society.  To Phillis his relation continued that of an elder brother:  he directed her studies into new paths, he patiently drew out the expression of many of her thoughts, and perplexities, and unformed theories—­scarcely ever now falling into the vein of banter which she was so slow to understand.

One day—­harvest-time—­he had been drawing on a loose piece of paper-sketching ears of corn, sketching carts drawn by bullocks and laden with grapes—­all the time talking with Phillis and me, cousin Holman putting in her not pertinent remarks, when suddenly he said to Phillis,—­

’Keep your head still; I see a sketch!  I have often tried to draw your head from memory, and failed; but I think I can do it now.  If I succeed I will give it to your mother.  You would like a portrait of your daughter as Ceres, would you not, ma’am?’