’I have been constantly admiring her discernment, for I own that at first his reserve stood very much in my way, but since she has raised his spirits, and taught him to exert himself, he has been a most valuable brother to me.

’Then you think her happy?  I was surprised to see her such a fine-looking woman; my aunts had croaked so much about his children and his mother, that I thought she would be worn to a shadow.’

’Very happy.  She has casual troubles, and a great deal of work, but that is what she is made for.’

‘How does she get on with his children?’

’Hearty love for them has carried her through the first difficulties, which appalled me, for they had been greatly mismanaged.  I am afraid that she has not been able to undo some of the past evil; and with all her good intentions, I am sometimes afraid whether she is old enough to deal with grown-up young people.’

’You don’t mean that Kendal’s children are grown up?  I should think him younger than I am.’

’He is so, but civil servants marry early, and not always wisely; and the son is about twenty.  Poor Albinia dotes on him, and has done more for him than ever his father did; but the lad is weak and tender every way, with no stamina, moral or physical, and with just enough property to do him harm.  He has been at Oxford and has failed, and now he is in the militia, but what can be expected of a boy in a country town, with nothing to do?  I did not like his looks last week, and I don’t think his being there, always idle, is good for that little manly scamp of Albinia’s own.’

‘Why don’t they put him into the service?’

‘He is too old.’

‘Not too old for the cavalry!’

’He can ride, certainly, and is a tall, good-looking fellow; but I should not have thought him the stuff to make a dragoon.  He has always been puling and delicate, unfit for school, wanting force.’

‘Wanting discipline,’ said the General.  ’I have seen a year in a good regiment make an excellent officer of that very stamp of youngster, just wanting a mould to give him substance.’

‘The regiment should be a very good one,’ said Mr. Ferrars; ’he would be only too easily drawn in by the bad style of subaltern.’

‘Put him into the 25th Lancers,’ said the General, ’and set Fred to look after him.  Rattlepate as he is, he can take excellent care of a lad to whom he takes a fancy, and if Albinia asked him, he would do it with all his heart.’

’I wish you would propose it, though I am afraid his father will never consent.  I would do a great deal to get him away before he has led little Maurice into harm.’

’This consideration moved the Rector of Fairmead himself to broach the subject, but neither Mr. Kendal nor Albinia could think of venturing their fragile son in the army, though assured that there was little chance that the 25th Lancers would be summoned to the east, and they would only hold out hopes of little Maurice by and by.