Chapter: They numbered scarce eight summers when a name
        Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there
    As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame
        At penetration of the quickening air:
    His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu,
        Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor,
    Making the little world their childhood knew
        Large with a land of mountain lake and scaur,
    And larger yet with wonder love belief
        Toward Walter Scott who living far away
    Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief.
        The book and they must part, but day by day,
            In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran
            They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan.


The evening that Fred Vincy walked to Lowick parsonage (he had begun to
see that this was a world in which even a spirited young man must
sometimes walk for want of a horse to carry him) he set out at five
o'clock and called on Mrs. Garth by the way, wishing to assure himself
that she accepted their new relations willingly.

He found the family group, dogs and cats included, under the great
apple-tree in the orchard.  It was a festival with Mrs. Garth, for her
eldest son, Christy, her peculiar joy and pride, had come home for a
short holiday--Christy, who held it the most desirable thing in the
world to be a tutor, to study all literatures and be a regenerate
Porson, and who was an incorporate criticism on poor Fred, a sort of
object-lesson given to him by the educational mother.  Christy himself,
a square-browed, broad-shouldered masculine edition of his mother not
much higher than Fred's shoulder--which made it the harder that he
should be held superior--was always as simple as possible, and thought
no more of Fred's disinclination to scholarship than of a giraffe's,
wishing that he himself were more of the same height.  He was lying on
the ground now by his mother's chair, with his straw hat laid flat over
his eyes, while Jim on the other side was reading aloud from that
beloved writer who has made a chief part in the happiness of many young
lives.  The volume was "Ivanhoe," and Jim was in the great archery
scene at the tournament, but suffered much interruption from Ben, who
had fetched his own old bow and arrows, and was making himself
dreadfully disagreeable, Letty thought, by begging all present to
observe his random shots, which no one wished to do except Brownie, the
active-minded but probably shallow mongrel, while the grizzled
Newfoundland lying in the sun looked on with the dull-eyed neutrality
of extreme old age.  Letty herself, showing as to her mouth and
pinafore some slight signs that she had been assisting at the gathering
of the cherries which stood in a coral-heap on the tea-table, was now
seated on the grass, listening open-eyed to the reading.

But the centre of interest was changed for all by the arrival of Fred
Vincy.  When, seating himself on a garden-stool, he said that he was on
his way to Lowick Parsonage, Ben, who had thrown down his bow, and
snatched up a reluctant half-grown kitten instead, strode across Fred's
outstretched leg, and said "Take me!"

"Oh, and me too," said Letty.

"You can't keep up with Fred and me," said Ben.

"Yes, I can.  Mother, please say that I am to go," urged Letty, whose
life was much checkered by resistance to her depreciation as a girl.

"I shall stay with Christy," observed Jim; as much as to say that he
had the advantage of those simpletons; whereupon Letty put her hand up
to her head and looked with jealous indecision from the one to the
other.

"Let us all go and see Mary," said Christy, opening his arms.

"No, my dear child, we must not go in a swarm to the parsonage.  And
that old Glasgow suit of yours would never do.  Besides, your father
will come home.  We must let Fred go alone.  He can tell Mary that you
are here, and she will come back to-morrow."

Christy glanced at his own threadbare knees, and then at Fred's
beautiful white trousers.  Certainly Fred's tailoring suggested the
advantages of an English university, and he had a graceful way even of
looking warm and of pushing his hair back with his handkerchief.

"Children, run away," said Mrs. Garth; "it is too warm to hang about
your friends.  Take your brother and show him the rabbits."

The eldest understood, and led off the children immediately.  Fred felt
that Mrs. Garth wished to give him an opportunity of saying anything he
had to say, but he could only begin by observing--

"How glad you must be to have Christy here!"

"Yes; he has come sooner than I expected.  He got down from the coach
at nine o'clock, just after his father went out.  I am longing for
Caleb to come and hear what wonderful progress Christy is making.  He
has paid his expenses for the last year by giving lessons, carrying on
hard study at the same time.  He hopes soon to get a private tutorship
and go abroad."

"He is a great fellow," said Fred, to whom these cheerful truths had a
medicinal taste, "and no trouble to anybody." After a slight pause, he
added, "But I fear you will think that I am going to be a great deal of
trouble to Mr. Garth."

"Caleb likes taking trouble: he is one of those men who always do more
than any one would have thought of asking them to do," answered Mrs.
Garth.  She was knitting, and could either look at Fred or not, as she
chose--always an advantage when one is bent on loading speech with
salutary meaning; and though Mrs. Garth intended to be duly reserved,
she did wish to say something that Fred might be the better for.

"I know you think me very undeserving, Mrs. Garth, and with good
reason," said Fred, his spirit rising a little at the perception of
something like a disposition to lecture him.  "I happen to have behaved
just the worst to the people I can't help wishing for the most from.
But while two men like Mr. Garth and Mr. Farebrother have not given me
up, I don't see why I should give myself up."  Fred thought it might be
well to suggest these masculine examples to Mrs. Garth.

"Assuredly," said she, with gathering emphasis.  "A young man for whom
two such elders had devoted themselves would indeed be culpable if he
threw himself away and made their sacrifices vain."

Fred wondered a little at this strong language, but only said, "I hope
it will not be so with me, Mrs. Garth, since I have some encouragement
to believe that I may win Mary.  Mr. Garth has told you about that?
You were not surprised, I dare say?"  Fred ended, innocently referring
only to his own love as probably evident enough.

"Not surprised that Mary has given you encouragement?" returned Mrs.
Garth, who thought it would be well for Fred to be more alive to the
fact that Mary's friends could not possibly have wished this
beforehand, whatever the Vincys might suppose.  "Yes, I confess I was
surprised."

"She never did give me any--not the least in the world, when I talked
to her myself," said Fred, eager to vindicate Mary.  "But when I asked
Mr. Farebrother to speak for me, she allowed him to tell me there was a
hope."

The power of admonition which had begun to stir in Mrs. Garth had not
yet discharged itself.  It was a little too provoking even for _her_
self-control that this blooming youngster should flourish on the
disappointments of sadder and wiser people--making a meal of a
nightingale and never knowing it--and that all the while his family
should suppose that hers was in eager need of this sprig; and her
vexation had fermented the more actively because of its total
repression towards her husband.  Exemplary wives will sometimes find
scapegoats in this way.  She now said with energetic decision, "You
made a great mistake, Fred, in asking Mr. Farebrother to speak for you."

"Did I?" said Fred, reddening instantaneously.  He was alarmed, but at
a loss to know what Mrs. Garth meant, and added, in an apologetic tone,
"Mr. Farebrother has always been such a friend of ours; and Mary, I
knew, would listen to him gravely; and he took it on himself quite
readily."

"Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own
wishes, and seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others," said
Mrs. Garth. She did not mean to go beyond this salutary general
doctrine, and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding of her
worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.

"I cannot conceive how it could be any pain to Mr. Farebrother," said
Fred, who nevertheless felt that surprising conceptions were beginning
to form themselves.

"Precisely; you cannot conceive," said Mrs. Garth, cutting her words as
neatly as possible.

For a moment Fred looked at the horizon with a dismayed anxiety, and
then turning with a quick movement said almost sharply--

"Do you mean to say, Mrs. Garth, that Mr. Farebrother is in love with
Mary?"

"And if it were so, Fred, I think you are the last person who ought to
be surprised," returned Mrs. Garth, laying her knitting down beside her
and folding her arms.  It was an unwonted sign of emotion in her that
she should put her work out of her hands.  In fact her feelings were
divided between the satisfaction of giving Fred his discipline and the
sense of having gone a little too far.  Fred took his hat and stick and
rose quickly.

"Then you think I am standing in his way, and in Mary's too?" he said,
in a tone which seemed to demand an answer.

Mrs. Garth could not speak immediately.  She had brought herself into
the unpleasant position of being called on to say what she really felt,
yet what she knew there were strong reasons for concealing.  And to her
the consciousness of having exceeded in words was peculiarly
mortifying.  Besides, Fred had given out unexpected electricity, and he
now added, "Mr. Garth seemed pleased that Mary should be attached to
me.  He could not have known anything of this."

Mrs. Garth felt a severe twinge at this mention of her husband, the
fear that Caleb might think her in the wrong not being easily
endurable.  She answered, wanting to check unintended consequences--

"I spoke from inference only.  I am not aware that Mary knows anything
of the matter."

But she hesitated to beg that he would keep entire silence on a subject
which she had herself unnecessarily mentioned, not being used to stoop
in that way; and while she was hesitating there was already a rush of
unintended consequences under the apple-tree where the tea-things
stood.  Ben, bouncing across the grass with Brownie at his heels, and
seeing the kitten dragging the knitting by a lengthening line of wool,
shouted and clapped his hands; Brownie barked, the kitten, desperate,
jumped on the tea-table and upset the milk, then jumped down again and
swept half the cherries with it; and Ben, snatching up the half-knitted
sock-top, fitted it over the kitten's head as a new source of madness,
while Letty arriving cried out to her mother against this cruelty--it
was a history as full of sensation as "This is the house that Jack
built." Mrs. Garth was obliged to interfere, the other young ones came
up and the tete-a-tete with Fred was ended.  He got away as soon as he
could, and Mrs. Garth could only imply some retractation of her
severity by saying "God bless you" when she shook hands with him.

She was unpleasantly conscious that she had been on the verge of
speaking as "one of the foolish women speaketh"--telling first and
entreating silence after.  But she had not entreated silence, and to
prevent Caleb's blame she determined to blame herself and confess all
to him that very night.  It was curious what an awful tribunal the mild
Caleb's was to her, whenever he set it up.  But she meant to point out
to him that the revelation might do Fred Vincy a great deal of good.

No doubt it was having a strong effect on him as he walked to Lowick.
Fred's light hopeful nature had perhaps never had so much of a bruise
as from this suggestion that if he had been out of the way Mary might
have made a thoroughly good match.  Also he was piqued that he had been
what he called such a stupid lout as to ask that intervention from Mr.
Farebrother.  But it was not in a lover's nature--it was not in
Fred's, that the new anxiety raised about Mary's feeling should not
surmount every other.  Notwithstanding his trust in Mr. Farebrother's
generosity, notwithstanding what Mary had said to him, Fred could not
help feeling that he had a rival: it was a new consciousness, and he
objected to it extremely, not being in the least ready to give up Mary
for her good, being ready rather to fight for her with any man
whatsoever.  But the fighting with Mr. Farebrother must be of a
metaphorical kind, which was much more difficult to Fred than the
muscular.  Certainly this experience was a discipline for Fred hardly
less sharp than his disappointment about his uncle's will.  The iron
had not entered into his soul, but he had begun to imagine what the
sharp edge would be.  It did not once occur to Fred that Mrs. Garth
might be mistaken about Mr. Farebrother, but he suspected that she
might be wrong about Mary.  Mary had been staying at the parsonage
lately, and her mother might know very little of what had been passing
in her mind.

He did not feel easier when he found her looking cheerful with the
three ladies in the drawing-room. They were in animated discussion on
some subject which was dropped when he entered, and Mary was copying
the labels from a heap of shallow cabinet drawers, in a minute
handwriting which she was skilled in.  Mr. Farebrother was somewhere in
the village, and the three ladies knew nothing of Fred's peculiar
relation to Mary: it was impossible for either of them to propose that
they should walk round the garden, and Fred predicted to himself that
he should have to go away without saying a word to her in private.  He
told her first of Christy's arrival and then of his own engagement with
her father; and he was comforted by seeing that this latter news
touched her keenly.  She said hurriedly, "I am so glad," and then bent
over her writing to hinder any one from noticing her face.  But here
was a subject which Mrs. Farebrother could not let pass.

"You don't mean, my dear Miss Garth, that you are glad to hear of a
young man giving up the Church for which he was educated: you only mean
that things being so, you are glad that he should be under an excellent
man like your father."

"No, really, Mrs. Farebrother, I am glad of both, I fear," said Mary,
cleverly getting rid of one rebellious tear.  "I have a dreadfully
secular mind.  I never liked any clergyman except the Vicar of
Wakefield and Mr. Farebrother."

"Now why, my dear?" said Mrs. Farebrother, pausing on her large wooden
knitting-needles and looking at Mary.  "You have always a good reason
for your opinions, but this astonishes me.  Of course I put out of the
question those who preach new doctrine.  But why should you dislike
clergymen?"

"Oh dear," said Mary, her face breaking into merriment as she seemed to
consider a moment, "I don't like their neckcloths."

"Why, you don't like Camden's, then," said Miss Winifred, in some
anxiety.

"Yes, I do," said Mary.  "I don't like the other clergymen's
neckcloths, because it is they who wear them."

"How very puzzling!" said Miss Noble, feeling that her own intellect
was probably deficient.

"My dear, you are joking.  You would have better reasons than these for
slighting so respectable a class of men," said Mrs. Farebrother,
majestically.

"Miss Garth has such severe notions of what people should be that it is
difficult to satisfy her," said Fred.

"Well, I am glad at least that she makes an exception in favor of my
son," said the old lady.

Mary was wondering at Fred's piqued tone, when Mr. Farebrother came in
and had to hear the news about the engagement under Mr. Garth.  At the
end he said with quiet satisfaction, "_That_ is right;" and then bent
to look at Mary's labels and praise her handwriting.  Fred felt
horribly jealous--was glad, of course, that Mr. Farebrother was so
estimable, but wished that he had been ugly and fat as men at forty
sometimes are.  It was clear what the end would be, since Mary openly
placed Farebrother above everybody, and these women were all evidently
encouraging the affair.  He was feeling sure that he should have no
chance of speaking to Mary, when Mr. Farebrother said--

"Fred, help me to carry these drawers back into my study--you have
never seen my fine new study.  Pray come too, Miss Garth.  I want you
to see a stupendous spider I found this morning."

Mary at once saw the Vicar's intention.  He had never since the
memorable evening deviated from his old pastoral kindness towards her,
and her momentary wonder and doubt had quite gone to sleep.  Mary was
accustomed to think rather rigorously of what was probable, and if a
belief flattered her vanity she felt warned to dismiss it as
ridiculous, having early had much exercise in such dismissals.  It was
as she had foreseen: when Fred had been asked to admire the fittings of
the study, and she had been asked to admire the spider, Mr. Farebrother
said--

"Wait here a minute or two.  I am going to look out an engraving which
Fred is tall enough to hang for me.  I shall be back in a few minutes."
And then he went out.  Nevertheless, the first word Fred said to Mary
was--

"It is of no use, whatever I do, Mary.  You are sure to marry
Farebrother at last."  There was some rage in his tone.

"What do you mean, Fred?"  Mary exclaimed indignantly, blushing deeply,
and surprised out of all her readiness in reply.

"It is impossible that you should not see it all clearly enough--you
who see everything."

"I only see that you are behaving very ill, Fred, in speaking so of Mr.
Farebrother after he has pleaded your cause in every way.  How can you
have taken up such an idea?"

Fred was rather deep, in spite of his irritation.  If Mary had really
been unsuspicious, there was no good in telling her what Mrs. Garth had
said.

"It follows as a matter of course," he replied.  "When you are
continually seeing a man who beats me in everything, and whom you set
up above everybody, I can have no fair chance."

"You are very ungrateful, Fred," said Mary.  "I wish I had never told
Mr. Farebrother that I cared for you in the least."

"No, I am not ungrateful; I should be the happiest fellow in the world
if it were not for this.  I told your father everything, and he was
very kind; he treated me as if I were his son.  I could go at the work
with a will, writing and everything, if it were not for this."

"For this? for what?" said Mary, imagining now that something specific
must have been said or done.

"This dreadful certainty that I shall be bowled out by Farebrother."
Mary was appeased by her inclination to laugh.

"Fred," she said, peeping round to catch his eyes, which were sulkily
turned away from her, "you are too delightfully ridiculous.  If you
were not such a charming simpleton, what a temptation this would be to
play the wicked coquette, and let you suppose that somebody besides you
has made love to me."

"Do you really like me best, Mary?" said Fred, turning eyes full of
affection on her, and trying to take her hand.

"I don't like you at all at this moment," said Mary, retreating, and
putting her hands behind her.  "I only said that no mortal ever made
love to me besides you.  And that is no argument that a very wise man
ever will," she ended, merrily.

"I wish you would tell me that you could not possibly ever think of
him," said Fred.

"Never dare to mention this any more to me, Fred," said Mary, getting
serious again.  "I don't know whether it is more stupid or ungenerous
in you not to see that Mr. Farebrother has left us together on purpose
that we might speak freely.  I am disappointed that you should be so
blind to his delicate feeling."

There was no time to say any more before Mr. Farebrother came back with
the engraving; and Fred had to return to the drawing-room still with a
jealous dread in his heart, but yet with comforting arguments from
Mary's words and manner.  The result of the conversation was on the
whole more painful to Mary: inevitably her attention had taken a new
attitude, and she saw the possibility of new interpretations.  She was
in a position in which she seemed to herself to be slighting Mr.
Farebrother, and this, in relation to a man who is much honored, is
always dangerous to the firmness of a grateful woman.  To have a reason
for going home the next day was a relief, for Mary earnestly desired to
be always clear that she loved Fred best.  When a tender affection has
been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we
could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives.
And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can
over other treasures.

"Fred has lost all his other expectations; he must keep this," Mary
said to herself, with a smile curling her lips.  It was impossible to
help fleeting visions of another kind--new dignities and an
acknowledged value of which she had often felt the absence.  But these
things with Fred outside them, Fred forsaken and looking sad for the
want of her, could never tempt her deliberate thought.

 Fred is on his way to Lowick parsonage, where Mary Garth is staying with Miss Farebrother to help her set up the new house. On his way, he stops to see Mrs. Garth. She hints that it was wrong of him to ask Mr. Farebrother to talk to Mary for him, and Fred realizes that Mr. Farebrother must be in love with Mary, too. He's instantly jealous, of course, even though Mrs. Garth admits that Mary doesn't know anything about it. When he arrives at the Lowick parsonage, he finds Mary helping Miss Farebrother, Miss Noble, and Mrs. Farebrother to organize some cabinets. He tells her that he's going to work for her father, and she says she's glad. When Mr. Farebrother gets back, he comes up with an excuse to leave Mary and Fred alone together for a few minutes. Fred gets sulky with Mary because he thinks she's going to marry Mr. Farebrother, and Mary tells him not to be ridiculous.

