"June 24, 184-.
"My Dear Tom,--Your letter came to hand this morning, and it has,
of course, given your mother and me much pain. It is not the
money that we care about, but that our son should have
deliberately undertaken, or pretended to undertake, what he must
have known at the time he could not perform himself.
"I have written to my bankers to pay 100L. at once to your
account at the Oxford Bank. I have also requested my solicitor to
go over to Oxford, and he will probably call on you the day after
you receive this. You say that this person who holds your note of
hand is now in Oxford. You will see him in the presence of my
solicitor, to whom you will hand the note when you have recovered
it. I shall consider afterwards what further steps will have to
be taken in the matter.
"You will not be of age for a year. It will be time enough then
to determine whether you will repay the balance of this money out
of the legacy to which you will be entitled under your
grandfather's will. In the meantime, I shall deduct at the rate
of 50L. a year from your allowance and I shall hold your bond in
honor to reduce your expenditure by this amount. You are no
longer a boy, and one of the first duties which a man owes to his
friends and to society is to live within his income.
"I make this advance to you on two conditions. First, that you
will never again put your hand to a note or bill in a transaction
of this kind. If you have money, lend it or spend it. You may
lend or spend foolishly, but that is not the point here; at any
rate you are dealing with what is your own. But in transactions
of this kind you are dealing with what is not your own. A
gentleman should shrink from the possibility of having to come on
others, even on his own father, for the fulfillment of his
obligations, as he would from a lie. I would sooner see a son of
mine in his grave than crawling on through life a slave to wants
and habits which he must gratify at other people's expense.
"My second condition is, that you put an end to your acquaintance
with these two gentlemen who have led you into this scrape, and
have divided the proceeds of your joint note between them. They
are both your seniors in standing, you say, and they appear to be
familiar with this plan of raising money at the expense of other
people. The plain English word for such doings is, swindling.
What pains me most is, that you have become intimate with young
men of this kind. I am not sure that it will not be my duty to
lay the whole matter before the authorities of the college. You
do not mention their names, and I respect the feeling which has
led you not to mention them. I shall know them quite soon enough
through my solicitor, who will forward me a copy of the note of
hand and signatures in due course.
"Your letter makes general allusion to other matters; and I
gather from it that you are dissatisfied with the manner in which
you have spent your first year at Oxford. I do not ask for
specific confessions, which you seem inclined to offer me; in
fact, I would sooner not have them, unless there is any other
matter in which you want assistance or advice from me. I know
from experience that Oxford is a place full of temptation of all
kinds, offered to young men at the most critical time of their
lives. Knowing this, I have deliberately accepted the
responsibility of sending you there, and I do not repent it. I am
glad that you are dissatisfied with your first year. If you had
not been I should have felt much more anxious about your second.
Let bygones be bygones between you and me. You know where to go
for strength, and to make confessions which no human ear should
hear, for no human judgment can weigh the cause. The secret
places of a man's heart are for himself and God. Your mother
sends her love.
"I am, ever your affectionate father,--JOHN BROWN."
June 26th, 184-.
"MY DEAR BOY,--I am not sorry that you have taken my last letter
as you have done. It is quite right to be sensitive on these
points, and it will have done you no harm to have fancied for
forty-eight hours that you had in my judgment lost caste as a
gentleman. But now I am very glad to be able to ease your mind on
this point. You have done a very foolish thing; but it is only
the habit, and the getting others to bind themselves, and not the
doing it oneself for others, which is disgraceful. You are going
to pay honourably for your folly, and will owe me neither thanks
nor money in the transaction. I have chosen my own terms for
repayment, which you have accepted, and so the financial question
is disposed of.
"I have considered what you say as to your companions--friends I
will not call them--and will promise you not to take any further
steps, or to mention the subject to anyone. But I must insist on
my second condition, that you avoid all further intimacy with
them. I do not mean that you are to cut them, or do anything that
will attract attention. But, no more intimacy.
"And now, my dear boy, as to the rest of your letter. Mine must
indeed have failed to express my meaning. God forbid that there
should not be the most perfect confidence between us. There is
nothing which I desire or value more. I only question whether
special confessions will conduce to it. My experience is against
them. I almost doubt whether they can be perfectly honest between
man and man; and, taking into account the difference of our ages,
it seems to be much more likely that we should misunderstand one
another. But having said this, I leave it to you to follow your
own conscience in the matter. If there is any burthen which I can
help you to bear, it will be my greatest pleasure, as it is my
duty, to do it. So now, say what you please, or say no more. If
you speak, it will be to one who has felt and remembers a young
man's trials.
"We hope you will be able to come home to-morrow, or the next
day, at latest. Your mother is longing to see you, and I should
be glad to have you here a day or two before the assizes, which
are held next week. I should rather like you to accompany me to
them, as it will give me the opportunity of introducing you to my
brother magistrates from other parts of the county, whom you are
not likely to meet elsewhere, and it is a good thing for a young
man to know his own county well.
"The cricket club is very flourishing, you will be glad to hear,
and they have put off their best matches till your return; so you
are in great request, you see. I am told that the fishing is very
good this year, and am promised several days for you in the club
water.
"September is a long way off, but there is nothing like being
before hand; I have put your name down for a license; and it is
time you should have a good gun of your own; so I have ordered
one for you from a man who has lately settled in the county. He
was Purdy's foreman, with whom I used to build, and, I can see,
understands his business thoroughly. His locks are as good as any
I have ever seen. I have told him to make the stock rather
longer, and not quite so straight as that of my old double with
which you shot last year. I think I remember you criticized my
weapon on these points; but there will be time for you to alter
the details after you get home, if you disapprove of my orders.
It will be more satisfactory if it is built under your own eye.
"If you continue in the mind for a month's reading with your
friend Mr. Hardy, we will arrange it towards the end of the
vacation; but would he not come here? From what you say we should
very much like to know him. Pray ask him from me whether he will
pass the last month of the vacation here, reading with you. I
should like you to be his first regular pupil. Of course this
will be my affair. And now, God bless you, and come home as soon
as you can. Your mother sends her best love.
"Ever your most affectionate,
"JOHN BROWN."
"ENGLEBOURN RECTORY,
"June 28th, 184-'
"DEAREST MARY;--How good of you to write to me so soon! Your
letter has come like a gleam of sunshine. I am in the midst of
worries already. Indeed, as you know, I could never quite throw
off the fear of what might be happening here, while we were
enjoying ourselves at Oxford, and it has all turned out even
worse than I expected. I shall never be able to go away again in
comfort, I think. And yet, if I had been here, I don't know that
I could have done any good. It is so very sad that poor papa is
unable to attend to his magistrate's business, and he has been
worse than usual, quite laid up in fact, since our return. There
is no other magistrate--not even a gentleman in the place, as you
know, except the curate; and they will not listen to him, even if
he would interfere in their quarrels. But he says he will not
meddle with secular matters; and, poor man, I cannot blame him,
for it is very easy and sad and wearing to be mixed up in it all.
"But now I must tell you all my troubles. You remember the men
whom we saw mowing together just before we went to Oxford. Betty
Winburn's son was one of them, and I am afraid the rest are not
at all good company for him. When they had finished papa's hay,
they went to mow for Farmer Tester. You must remember him, dear,
I am sure; the tall, gaunt man, with heavy, thick lips and a
broken nose, and the top of his head quite flat, as if it had
been cut off a little above his eyebrows. He is a very miserly
man, and a hard master; at least all the poor people tell me so,
and he looks cruel. I have always been afraid of him, and
disliked him, for I remember as a child hearing papa complain how
troublesome he was in the vestry; and except old Simon, who, I
believe, only does it from perverseness, I have never heard
anybody speak well of him.
"The first day that the men went to mow for Farmer Tester, he
gave them sour beer to drink. You see, dear, they bargained to
mow for so much money and their beer. They were very discontented
at this, and they lost a good deal of time going to complain to
him about it, and they had high words with him.
"The men said the beer wasn't fit for pigs, and the farmer said
it was quite good enough 'for such as they,' and if they didn't
like his beer they might buy their own. In the evening, too, he
came down and complained that the mowing was bad, and then there
were more high words, for the men are very jealous about their
work. However they went to work as usual the next morning, and
all might have gone off quietly, but in the day Farmer Tester
found two pigs in his turnip field which adjoins the common, and
had them put in the pound. One of these pigs belonged to Betty
Winburn's son, and the other to one of the men who was mowing
with him; so, when they came home at night, they found what had
happened.
"The constable is our pound-keeper, the little man who amused you
so much; he plays the bass-viol in church. When he puts any
beasts into the pound he cuts a stick in two, and gives one piece
to the person who brings the beasts, and keeps the other himself,
and the owner of the beasts has to bring the other end of the
stick to him before he can let them out. Therefore, the owner,
you see, must go to the person who has pounded his beasts, and
make a bargain with him for payment of the damage which has been
done, and so get back the other end of the stick, which they call
the 'tally,' to produce to the pound-keeper.
"Well, the men went off to the constable's when they heard their
pigs were pounded, to find who had the 'tally,' and, when they
found it was Farmer Tester, they went in a body to his house to
remonstrate with him, and learn what he set the damages at. The
farmer used dreadful language to them, I hear, and said they
weren't fit to have pigs, and must pay half a crown for each pig,
before they could have the 'tally;' and the men irritated him by
telling him that his fences were a shame to the parish, because
he was too stingy to have them mended, and that the pigs couldn't
have found half a crown's worth of turnips in the whole field,
for he never put any manure on it except what he could get off
the road, which ought to belong to the poor. At last the farmer
drove them away saying he should stop the money out of the price
he was to pay for their mowing.
"Then there was very near being a riot in the parish; for some of
the men are very reckless people, and they went in the evening
and blew horns and beat kettles before his house, till the
constable, who has behaved very well, persuaded them to go away.
"In the morning one of the pigs had been taken out of the pound;
not Betty's son's, I am glad to say--for no doubt it was very
wrong of the men to take it out. The farmer was furious, and went
with the constable in the morning to find the pig, but they could
hear nothing of it anywhere. James Pope, the man to whom it
belonged, only laughed at them, and said he never could keep his
pig in himself, because it was grandson to one of the acting pigs
that went about to the fairs, and all the pigs of that family
took to climbing naturally; so his pig must have climbed out of
the pound. This of course was all a story; the men had lifted the
pig out of the pound, and then killed it, so that the farmer
might not find it, and sold the meat cheap all over the parish.
Betty went to the farmer that morning and paid the half crown,
and got her son's pig out before he came home; but Farmer Tester
stopped the other half crown out of the men's wages, which made
matters worse then ever.
"The day that we were in the Theatre at Oxford, Farmer Tester was
away at one of the markets. He turns his big cattle out to graze
on the common, which the poor people say he has no right to do,
and in the afternoon a pony of his got into the allotments, and
Betty's son caught it, and took it to the constable, and had it
put in the pound. The constable tried to persuade him not to do
it, but it was of no use; and so, when Farmer Tester came home,
he found that his turn had come. I am afraid that he was not
sober, for I hear that he behaved dreadfully both to the
constable and to Betty's son, and, when he found that he could
not frighten them, he declared he would have the law of them if
it cost him twenty pounds. So in the morning he went to fetch his
lawyer, and when we got home you can fancy what a scene it was.
"You remember how poorly papa was when you left us at Lambourn.
By the time we got home he was quite knocked up, and so nervous
that he was fit for nothing except to have a quiet cup of tea in
his own room. I was sure as we drove up the street, there was
something the matter. The ostler was watching outside the Red
Lion, and ran in as soon as we came in sight; and, as we passed
the door, out came Farmer Tester, looking very flushed in the
face, and carrying his great iron-handled whip, and a person with
him, who I found was his lawyer, and they marched after the
carriage. Then the constable was standing at his door too, and he
came after us, and there was a group of men outside the rectory
gate. We had not been in the house five minutes before a servant
came in to say that Farmer Tester and a gentlemen wanted to see
papa on particular business. Papa sent out word that he was very
unwell, and that it was not the proper time to come on business;
he would see them the next day at twelve o'clock. But they would
not go away, and then papa asked me to go out and see them. You
can fancy how disagreeable it was; and I was so angry with them
for coming, when they knew how nervous papa is after a journey,
that I could not have patience to persuade them to leave; and so
at last they made poor papa see them after all.
"He was lying on a sofa, and quite unfit to cope with a hard bad
man like Farmer Tester, and a fluent plausible lawyer. They told
their story all their own way, and the farmer declared that the
man had tempted the pony into the allotment with corn. And the
lawyer said that the constable had no right to keep the pony in
the pound, that he was liable to all sorts of punishments. They
wanted papa to make an order at once for the pound to be opened,
and I think he would have done so, but I asked him in a whisper
to send for the constable, and hear what he had to say. The
constable was waiting in the kitchen, so he came in in a minute.
You can't think how well he behaved; I have quite forgiven him
all his obstinacy about the singing. He told the whole story
about the pigs, and how Farmer Tester had stopped money out of
the men's wages. And when the lawyer tried to frighten him, he
answered him quite boldly, that he mightn't know so much about
the law, but he knew what was always the custom long before his
time at Englebourn about the pound, and if Farmer Tester wanted
his beast out, he must bring the 'tally' like another man. Then
the lawyer appealed to papa about the law, and said how absurd it
was, and that if such a custom were to be upheld, the man who had
the 'tally' might charge 100L. for the damage. And poor papa
looked through his law books, and could find nothing about it at
all; and while he was doing it Farmer Tester began to abuse the
constable, and said he sided with all the good-for-nothing
fellows in the parish, and that bad blood would come of it. But
the constable quite fired up at that, and told him that it was
such as he who made bad blood in the parish, and that poor folks
had their rights as well as their betters, and should have them
as long as he was constable. If he got papa's order to open the
pound, he supposed he must do it, and 'twas not for him to say
what was law, but Henry Winburn had had to get the 'tally' for
his pig from Farmer Tester, and what was fair for one was fair
for all.
"I was afraid papa would have made the order, but the lawyer said
something at last which made him take the other side. So he
settled that the farmer should pay five shillings for the
'tally,' which was what he had taken from Betty, and had stopped
out of the wages, and that was the only order he would make, and
the lawyer might do what he pleased about it. The constable
seemed satisfied with this, and undertook to take the money down
to Harry Winburn, for Farmer Tester declared he would sooner let
the pony starve than go himself. And so papa got rid of them
after an hour and more of this talk. The lawyer and Farmer Tester
went away grumbling and very angry to the Red Lion. I was very
anxious to hear how the matter ended; so I went after the
constable to ask him to come back and see me when he had settled
it all, and about nine o'clock he came. He had had a very hard
job to get Harry Winburn to take the money, and give up the
'tally.' The men said that, if Farmer Tester could make them pay
half-a-crown for a pig in his turnips, which were no bigger than
radishes, he ought to pay ten shillings at least for his pony
trampling down their corn, which was half grown, and I couldn't
help thinking this seemed very reasonable. In the end, however,
the constable had persuaded them to take the money, and so the
pony was let out.
"I told him how pleased I was at the way he had behaved, but the
little man didn't seem quite satisfied himself. He should have
liked to have given the lawyer a piece of his mind, he said, only
he was no scholar, 'but I've a got all the feelin's of a man,
miss, though I medn't have the ways o' bringin' on 'em out.' You
see I'm quite coming round to your opinion about him. But when I
said that I hoped all the trouble was over, he shook his head,
and he seems to think that the men will not forget it, and that
some of the wild ones will be trying to pay Farmer Tester out in
the winter nights, and I could see he was very anxious about
Harry Winburn; so I promised him to go and see Betty.
"I went down to her cottage yesterday, and found her very low,
poor old soul, about her son. She has had a bad attack again, and
I am afraid her heart is not right. She will not live long if she
has much to make her anxious, and how is that to be avoided? For
her son's courting is all going wrong, she can see, though he
will not tell her anything about it; but he gets more moody and
restless, she says, and don't take a pride in anything, not even
in his flowers or his allotment; and he takes to going about,
more and more every day, with these men, who will be sure to lead
him into trouble.
"After I left her, I walked up to the Hawk's Lynch, to see
whether the view and the air would not do me good. And it did do
me a great deal of good, dear, and I thought of you, and when I
should see your bright face and hear your happy laugh again. The
village looked so pretty and peaceful. I could hardly believe,
while I was up there, that there were all these miserable
quarrels and heartburnings going on in it. I suppose they go on
everywhere, but one can't help feeling as if there was something
specially hard in those which come under one's own eyes, and
touch one's self. And then they are so frivolous, and everything
might go on so comfortably if people would only be reasonable. I
ought to have been a man, I am sure, and then I might, perhaps,
be able to do more, and should have more influence. If poor papa
were only well and strong!
"But, dear, I shall tire you with all these long histories and
complainings. I have run on till I have no room left for anything
else; but you can't think what a comfort it is to me to write it
all to you, for I have no one to tell it to. I feel so much
better, and more cheerful, since I sat down to write this. You
must give my dear love to uncle and aunt, and let me hear from
you again whenever you have time. If you could come over again
and stay for a few days, it would be very kind; but I must not
press it, as there is nothing to attract you here, only we might
talk over all that we did and saw at Oxford.--Ever, dearest Mary,
your affectionate cousin,
"Katie"
"P. S.--I should like to have the pattern of the jacket you wore
the last day at Oxford. Could you cut it out in thin paper and
send it in your next?"
"July-,184-.
"MY DEAR BROWN,--I was very glad to see your hand, and to hear
such flourishing accounts of your vacation doings. You won't get
any like announcement of me, for cricket has not yet come so far
west as this, at least not to settle. We have a few pioneers and
squatters in the villages; but, I am sorry to say, nothing yet
like matches between the elevens of districts. Neighbors we have
none, except the rector; so I have plenty of spare time, some of
which I feel greatly disposed to devote to you; and I hope you
won't find me too tedious to read.
"It is very kind of your father to wish that you should be my
first pupil, and to propose that I should spend the last month of
this vacation with you in Berkshire. But I do not like to give up
a whole month. My father is getting old and infirm, and I can see
that it would be a great trial to him, although he urges it, and
is always telling me not to let him keep me at home. What do you
say to meeting me half way? I mean, that you should come here for
half of the time, and then that I should return with you for the
last fortnight of the vacation. This I could manage perfectly.
"But you cannot in any case be my first pupil; for not to mention
that I have been, as you know, teaching for some years, I have a
pupil here, at this minute. You are not likely to guess who it
is, though you know him well enough--perhaps I should say too
well--so, in a word, it is Blake. I had not been at home three
days before I got a letter from him, asking me to take him, and
putting it in such a way that I couldn't refuse. I would sooner
not have had him, as I had already got out of taking a reading
party with some trouble, and felt inclined to enjoy myself here
in dignified idleness till next term. But what can you do when a
man puts it to you as a great personal favor, &c. &c.? So I wrote
to accept. You may imagine my disgust a day or two afterwards, at
getting a letter from an uncle of his, some official person in
London apparently, treating the whole matter in a _business_
point of view, and me as if I were a training groom. He is good
enough to suggest a stimulant to me in the shape of extra pay and
his future patronage in the event of his nephew's taking a first
in Michaelmas term. If I had received this letter before, I think
it would have turned the scale, and I should have refused. But
the thing was done, and Blake isn't fairly responsible for his
relative's views.
"So here he has been for a fortnight. He took a lodging in the
village at first; but of course my dear old father's ideas of
hospitality were shocked at this, and here he is, our inmate.
"He reads fiercely by fits and starts. A feeling of personal
hatred against the examiners seems to urge him on more than any
other motive; but this will not be strong enough to keep him to
regular work, and without regular work he won't do,
notwithstanding all his cleverness, and he is a marvellously
clever fellow. So the first thing I have to do is to get him
steadily to the collar, and how to do it is a pretty particular
puzzle. For he hasn't a grain of enthusiasm in his composition,
nor any power, as far as I can see, of throwing himself into the
times and scenes of which he is reading. The philosophy of Greece
and the history of Rome are matters of perfect indifference to
him--to be got up by catch-words and dates for examination and
nothing more. I don't think he would care a straw if Socrates had
never lived, or Hannibal had destroyed Rome. The greatest names
and deeds of the old world are just so many dead counters to
him--the Jewish just as much as the rest. I tried him with the
story of the attempt of Antiochus Epiphanes to conquer the Jews,
and the glorious rising of all that was living in the Holy Land
under the Maccabees. Not it bit of it; I couldn't get a spark out
of him. He wouldn't even read the story because it is in the
Apocrypha, and so, as he said, the d----d examiners couldn't ask
him anything about it in the schools.
"Then his sense of duty is quiet undeveloped. He has no notion of
going on doing anything disagreeable because he ought. So here I
am at fault again. Ambition he has in abundance; in fact so
strongly, that very likely it may in the end pull him through,
and make him work hard enough for his Oxford purposes at any
rate. But it wants repressing rather than encouragement, and I
certainly shan't appeal to it.
"You will begin to think I dislike him and want to get rid of
him, but it isn't the case. You know what a good temper he has,
and how remarkably well he talks; so he makes himself very
pleasant, and my father evidently enjoys his company; and then to
be in constant intercourse with a subtle intellect like his, is
pleasantly exciting, and keeps one alive and at high pressure,
though one can't help always wishing that it had a little heat in
it. You would be immensely amused if you could drop in on us.
"I think I have told you or you must have seen it for yourself,
that my father's principles are true blue, as becomes a sailor of
the time of the great war, while his instincts and practice are
liberal in the extreme. Our rector, on the contrary, is liberal
in principles, but an aristocrat of the aristocrats in instinct
and practice. They are always ready enough therefore to do
battle, and Blake delights in the war, and fans it and takes part
in it as a sort of free lance, laying little logical pitfalls for
the combatants alternately, with that deferential manner of his.
He gets some sort of intellectual pleasure, I suppose, out of
seeing where they ought to tumble in; for tumble in they don't,
but clear his pit-falls in their stride--at least my father
does--quite innocent of having neglected to distribute his middle
term; and the rector, if he has some inkling of these traps,
brushes them aside, and disdains to spend powder on anyone but
his old adversary and friend. I employ myself in trying to come
down ruthlessly on Blake himself; and so we spend our evenings
after dinner, which comes off at the primitive hour of five. We
used to dine at three, but my father has comformed now to college
hours. If the rector does not come, instead of argumentative
talk, we get stories out of my father. In the morning we bathe,
and boat, and read. So, you see, he and I have plenty of one
another's company; and it is certainly odd that we get on so well
with so very few points of sympathy. But, luckily, besides his
good temper and cleverness, he has plenty of humor. On the whole,
I think we shall rub through the two months which he is to spend
here without getting to hate one another, though there is little
chance of our becoming friends. Besides putting some history and
science into him (scholarship he does not need), I shall be
satisfied if I can make him give up his use of the pronoun 'you'
before he goes. In talking of the corn laws, or foreign policy,
or India, or any other political subject, however interesting, he
never will identify himself as an Englishman; and 'you do this,'
or 'you expect that' is for ever in his mouth, speaking of his
own countrymen. I believe if the French were to land to-morrow on
Portland, he would comment on our attempts to dislodge them as if
he had no concern with the business except as a looker-on.
"You will think all this rather a slow return for your jolly
gossiping letter, full of cricket, archery, fishing, and I know
not what pleasant goings-on. But what is one to do? one can only
write about what is one's subject of interest for the time being,
and Blake stands in that relation to me just now. I should prefer
it otherwise, but _si on n'a pas ce qu'on aime il faut aimer ce
qu'on a_. I have no incident to relate; these parts get on
without incidents somehow, and without society. I wish there were
some, particularly ladies' society. I break the tenth commandment
constantly, thinking of Commemoration, and that you are within a
ride of Miss Winter and her cousin. When you see them next, pray
present my respectful compliments. It is a sort of consolation to
think that one may cross their fancy for a moment and be
remembered as part of a picture which gives them pleasure. With
such piece of sentiment I may as well shut up. Don't you forget
my message now, and--
"Believe me, ever yours most truly,
"JOHN HARDY.
"P.S.--I mean to speak to Blake, when I get a chance, of that
wretched debt which you have paid, unless you object. I should
think better of him if he seemed more uncomfortable about his
affairs. After all he may be more so than I think, for he is very
reserved on such subjects."
"ENGLEBOURN RECTORY,
"July, 184-'
"DEAREST MARY.--I send the coachman with this note in order that
you may not be anxious about me. I have just returned from poor
Betty Winburn's cottage to write it. She is very very ill, and I
do not think can last out more than a day or two; and she seems
to cling to me so that I cannot have the heart to leave her.
Indeed, if I could make up my mind to do it, I should never get
her poor white eager face out of my head all day, so that I
should be very bad company, and quite out of place at your party,
making everybody melancholy and uncomfortable who came near me.
So, dear, I am not coming. Of course it is a great
disappointment. I had set my heart on being with you, and
enjoying it all thoroughly; and even at breakfast this morning
knew of nothing to hinder me. My dress is actually lying on the
bed at this minute, and it looks very pretty, especially the
jacket like yours, which I and Hopkins have managed to make up
from the pattern you sent, though you forgot the sleeves, which
made it rather hard to do. Ah, well; it is no use to think of how
pleasant things would have been which one cannot have. You must
write me an account of how it all went off, dear; or perhaps you
can manage to get over here before long to tell me.
"I must now go back to poor Betty. She is such a faithful,
patient old thing, and has been such a good woman all her life
that there is nothing painful in being by her now, and one feels
sure that it will be much happier and better for her to be at
rest. If she could only feel comfortable about her son, I am sure
she would think so herself. Oh, I forgot to say that her attack
was brought on by the shock of hearing that he had been summoned
for an assault. Farmer Tester's son, a young man about his own
age, has, it seems, been of late waylaying Simon's daughter and
making love to her. It is so very hard to make out the truth in
matters of this kind. Hopkins says she is a dressed-up little
minx who runs after all the young men in the parish; but really,
from what I see and hear from other persons, I think she is a
good girl enough. Even Betty, who looks on her as the cause of
most of her own trouble, has never said a word to make me think
that she is at all a light person, or more fond of admiration
than any other good-looking girl in the parish.
"But those Testers are a very wicked set. You cannot think what a
misfortune it is in a place like this to have these rich families
with estates of their own, in which the young men begin to think
themselves above the common farmers. They ape the gentlemen, and
give themselves great airs, but of course no gentleman will
associate with them, as they are quite uneducated; and the
consequence is that they live a great deal at home, and give
themselves up to all kinds of wickedness. This young Tester is
one of these. His father is a very bad old man, and does a great
deal of harm here; and the son is following in his steps, and is
quite as bad, or worse. So you see that I shall not easily
believe that Harry Winburn has been much in the wrong. However,
all I know of it at present is that young Tester was beaten by
Harry yesterday evening in the village street, and that they came
to papa at once for a summons.
"Oh, here is the coachman ready to start; so I must conclude,
dear, and go back to my patient. I shall often think of you
during the day. I am sure you will have a charming party. With
best love to all, believe me, ever dearest,
"Your most affectionate,
"KATIE.
"P. S.--I am very glad that uncle and aunt take to Tom, and that
he is staying with you for some days. You will find him very
useful in making the party go off well, I am sure."