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reddened to find how light the purse was. John, too, reddened; then, on a well-inspired impulse, he held out his hand, and made Parson proud and happy by accepting his contribution. did more. Parson was the owner of a sturdy Irish horse, the merits of which he never wearied of extolling. It was not beautiful, but was untiring. He now mentioned this fact again to John. "Well, Parson!" said John.

"Why, brother, my thought was," Parson answered, “an' you would ride the hobby, the journey to London would be made the easier."

John said nothing, but strode towards the stables. The hobby was soon saddled, and, mounted on her, he bade his brother adieu.

"You are not going to London the nearest way, brother," Parson demurred, as the rider set off.

John laughed. He was going to London via Bridlington, which was certainly not the nearest way. He made no answer, but urged the hobby forward. When out of sight of Bucklands he slackened speed, and for a space rode slowly, with eyes fixed in a blind stare. His hands mechanically retained hold of the reins, but the brain that should have guided them was dormant, and, for the time being, numbed by an overwhelming sense of his outcast condition which suddenly came upon him, the disinherited heir of Bucklands rode like one in a dream. The hobby the while made good her master's opinion of her, by stepping on wisely and warily.

How long John England might have remained in reverie, it is impossible to say. As events took their course, he was suddenly startled by a loud bark. The southern hound was alongside of him. She was his property, but it had not entered his thoughts to take her with him to London, and their connection was one of such comparative newness that he was as much surprised as

pleased to see the affectionate face which was lifted to his. He bent from the hobby to give the panting, barking creature a hearty greeting, made of alternate stroking and repressive pats; then, with no uncertain grip upon the reins, sped on to Bridlington.

VI.

THE VISIT TO BRIDLINGTON QUAY.

The Bridlington of to-day, with its railway station, its town hall, commercial exchange, dissenting chapels, banks and hat factories, was a thing undreamt of a hundred years ago, when little more than one long street composed the market town which was to attain to such affluence, and where so many new houses were to be built, while what remained of the noble priory, that of old housed what was here most honored, was to crumble more and more away.

Among the influences which effected the change of old Bridlington to new Bridlington, that exerted by "the Quay" was a major one. The high estimation in which this place came to be held had a reflex action upon the neighboring townlet, and as John England rode through Bridlington on his way to the Quay, he had abundant opportunity to notice, if his observing faculties had been more awake than they were, that the maxim that the times change and we change with them, was finding manifold illustration in regions not far remote from Bucklands.

John's mood was not one which inclined him to meditate upon that thing, and he rode at a quick canter through the town, only again slackening speed as he came in sight of the sea. It was quiet and sunlit. While not a man who habitually made an augur of Nature, John was conscious of interpreting this fact as boding good to him. His sur

prise and mortification were the greater at a communication made to him on his presenting himself at the house which was the summer abode of Penelope, nominally under the protection of her grandmother, a lady whose advanced age and great infirmity made the young girl to all intents and purposes her own mistress.

On being ushered into a room in which the old and the young gentlewoman sat, John learnt from the latter that Alce was deeply offended, and had signified her fixed intention to hold aloof from a family, the head of which had subjected her to gross insult.

Penelope, who was still in her riding habit, and who sat on a hassock at her grandmother's feet, tenderly holding the hand of the old lady, spoke with face averted from her, and using a low voice, as who should say: "Spare we these white hairs with the quarrels of us young folk." John, the while, who stood full in view of the old lady, was not able so to disguise his face that she did not notice the great distress in it. "Is anything gone wrong, John?" she quavered. “Is this girl unkind?"

"No ma'am," John answered. "Penelope is always kind."

"I think she is so," the old lady ansented, and she added, as she closed her eyes-"I am very sleepy."

Penelope laughed. It was evidently her grandmother's intention to efface her presence as much as might be.

"Well, Gran'am hears little, and will now see nothing," the girl then said, "so I will tell you all, John. Alce is in a prodigious pet, and your thinking she would see you now is the most stupid thing that even a man could imagine." The man thus trounced winced. "You may, therefore, go back to Bucklands," Penelope added, quietly. "Bucklands is my home no more," John said, equally quietly.

Penelope, with a start, requested that he would be more explicit, and he gave

her as briefly as might be an account of what had happened. He also informed her of his intention to go to London.

"How came you here?" the girl asked. "On Parson's hobby."

"Are you going to London on Parson's hobby?"

"No."

"How, then, are you going?" "On foot."

"Why on foot?"

"Lest I be killed with a fall from Parson's hobby," was the ironical answer; and John, who was going on foot to London to save expense in certain directions, added:

"Have you any more questions to ask, Penelope?"

"Yes," the girl replied, bravely. "Is there anything I can do for you, John, that your fine gentleman's pride and delicacy will not kick at?"

John laughed, despite himself; then he said, echoing the sarcastic phrasing of the blunt, kind girl:

"Yes, there are three things you can do for me, Penelope, that my fine gentleman's pride and delicacy will not kick at. These are, firstly, that you will let your man in York take his hobby back to Parson-I will ride with her to York and leave her at your stables there; secondly, that you will make my peace with Parson that the hobby was not rode by me to London; and, thirdly,

that you will keep Sweetlips-the

southern hound-who has followed me from Bucklands. She is of a rare breed and merits better care than I can give her till I have made my fortune."

"She is herself worth much," Penelope said, tentatively.

"I know it," was answered, shortly. Penelope decided not to make an offer to purchase Sweetlips, and vainly racked her brain to evolve some other method of transferring some of her excess of wealth to the poor fellow who contemplated going afoot to London.

She could think of none that would not give dire offence, and exclaimed, petulantly:

"I am glad I am not a gentleman, John, for they are the most ridiculous creatures."

John bowed.

"I am glad you are a lady, Penelope," he said, "for if you were a gentleman I could not let you call me a most ridiculous creature."

"Are you angry, John?" was asked. "Angry!" John exclaimed. "Am I a fool, Penelope, that I should misunderstand a most generous and amiable young lady?"

The girl thus singularly be-epitheted looked relieved. Then she said:

"How long is, John, the journey from York to London?"

""Tis not two hundred miles," John answered, rightly concluding that Penelope would not divine from this answer that it was two hundred miles minus three. "It has been gone on foot and back in six days," he added.

Penelope, in conformity with her character of amiable young lady, expressed the gratification which it afforded her that John would only have half this footing to perform. "Where will you rest?" she asked.

"At Ferrybridge, at Grantham, and at Eaton," John answered, naming the principal halting-places on the great road from York to London.

"You will see a great part of the world," Penelope exclaimed. Under

the timid guardianship of her grandmother, she had herself never been allowed to travel farther than York. "When you have gotten to each of these places," she added, "I pray you will write to us, and do not tease us with ruined abbeys and Gothic castles-we are no antiquarians-though, indeed, Alce is full of Roman camps and Druidical circles" (John pricked his ears), "but tell us plainly what has happed to you, and" (the girl's bright

eyes softened) "that you are not dead of weariness."

"May I, indeed, Penelope, write to you?" John asked, with an overjoyed expression.

"Why, yes, and-since you are going so far away, John, I will not hide from you what my heart feelingly tells me" -Penelope used this fine flower of speech with no abatement of her naturalness-"which is that Alce may yet be yours, for we young ladies-"

Here a wafture of the hand was used to give the idea of young feminine mobility.

John, of set purpose, wore a look of blank non-comprehension.

"Fy, John," came the angry ejaculation, "must one spell 'Constantinople' to the last letter before you gentlemen will understand that 'Constantinople' is being spelled?"

John smiled. Then he bent over the girl's hand and kissed it.

Mrs. Steptoe, who, from feigning slumber, had fallen into an actual sleep, at this moment opened her eyes. "Well, children?" she said.

It was the wish of Mrs. Steptoe's heart that her granddaughter should be John England's wife, and her voice expressed a trembling excitement.

"What has had place?" she asked. "Nothing has had place, but that John is going to London," Penelope answered, "and has said good-bye to me, and will say good-bye to you, Gran'am."

The old lady's face fell sadly, and she asked John, anxiously, how long he purposed sojourning in a city where gentlemen, 'twas said, were miserably drawn into the eddy of worldly dissipation.

John looked at the woebegone face; then kissed the old lady affectionately, assuring her that he meant to sojourn no longer than need was in that perilous city, and giving her his promise to keep his honor bright.

"Do you not love John, my dear?" Mrs. Steptoe asked of her granddaughter after his exit.

"No, Gran'am," was answered.

"And who is it you love?" the old lady asked, testily.

"What, Gran'am, do you mean by 'love'?" the girl queried, with her chin a little pertly tilted.

"The passion of that name, my dear," her grandmother answered, eyeing quietly the chin.

"This John England has for Alce and she for him," Penelope replied.

"Then I will dower Alce, and will not dower you," Mrs. Steptoe said, "for as you know, my wish was always that a granddaughter of mine should marry John England, and with her wealth repair Bucklands."

The answer to this was obvious. Penelope had inherited considerable riches from her father, and would not be impoverished by her grandmother's action; on the other hand, Alce, who had no fortune, would be greatly benefited by being dowered by Mrs. Steptoe. With charming tact Penelope did not put this case, but said, as she lowered her head:

"I am sorry, Gran'am, to disoblige you, but indeed I love not John England, and he loves not me."

"Loves!" the old lady exclaimed, and now, in her turn, put a question which was, with a slight variation, the one before put by her granddaughter. "What is your notion of love, Penelope?"

"A flame," Penelope answered, “a-a virtuous flame."

The amendment on conventional lines was a happy idea. "Virtuous" is a good word, but the fact is that Penelope put rather more stress on "flame." Her grandmother indulgently ignored that circumstance, and said:

"Sure, one could feel a virtuous flame for John, Penelope."

"Ay, Gran'am, but 'twere sure a pity if-two did this," objected Penelope.

The old lady, in that deep anger which results when there is a-going "agley" of what seems the best-laid schemes of men and mice, lifted a trembling finger, and said:

"Whichever of you becomes John England's wife I will dower"-a pause here gave solemn emphasis to words which the speaker eventually made good-"and though the wealth assured to you is thought considerable, Penelope, this is in part because you are accounted my heiress, and with what should derive to you from me would be the richest woman in Yorkshire, which you will not be if I shall make Alce my heiress."

"I do not, Gran'am, ambitionate to be the richest woman in Yorkshire," the girl said, softly.

"Do not you?" the old lady exclaimed, and added, "Perhaps, too, you do not ambitionate to be the most admired young lady in Yorkshire, which I see your cousin Alce is become."

"Is John England, Gran'am, all the admirers in Yorkshire?" the girl asked, with some temper. She was entirely fancy-free, and did not desire John England's admiration, but she had so long been the most admired young lady in Yorkshire that she could not forego that title quite calmly, and, while willing to cede the first place in one heart to Alce, was not willing to cede to her the first place in every heart.

"Who will you name as deserving to rank with John England, a most handsome young gentleman and a most virtuous, whom all we hereabout always hoped to see your husband, Penelope?"

"Heart, every summer finds handsome young gentlemen hereabout!" Penelope exclaimed.

"And virtuous?"

"Very like," the girl replied.
"You are, miss, a simpleton."

Mrs. Steptoe said this very coldly; then she added:

"I have not patience to see you longer,

and have not power to leave you, so desire you will leave me."

"You are, Gran'am, very angry," the girl said, sorrowfully.

"I am so, Penelope," was answered. "Your not marrying John England is what I never inferred could happen." "He has, Gran'am, not asked me," Penelope answered, with suspicious de

mureness.

"This is your fault, Penelope," Mrs. Steptoe said. "The young lady must give the occasion."

This Georgian sentiment did not incense Penelope to the extent that it might incense a young Victorian gentlewoman, and without cavilling with the dictum in the abstract she said, confining herself to the consideration of it as applied to her individual case:

"If there were twenty John Englands, Gran'am, and there is, I suppose, only one" (the addendum was made in a tone of ironical regret), "I would give none of them the occasion to marry me, because-"

There was a pause. Mrs. Steptoe's face said "Proceed."

"Because my heart is not engaged," Penelope proceeded.

"You are grown romantic," Mrs. Steptoe answered, "and I now see you are resolved to marry without taking the judgment of your best friend in the choice. This is the new fashion with young ladies who are come to revolt against the counsels of the sober and prudent part of their family, their mammas and grandmammas. Did not I say, Penelope, you might leave me? Your company was never less agreeable to me."

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hand, marriage being a great ceremony, she pardonably felt that a sine quâ non in her case was that her heart should be given to the gentleman to whom she gave her hand, and her heart at this time, far from being given to any gentleman, was filled with love for two gentlewomen, her grandmother and her cousin Alce. To her cousin Alce she now carried her distress.

It was not an easy matter to acquaint Alce with what had happened without making her feel that she was in a measure to blame, and Penelope, avoiding the personal, had recourse to the abstract.

""Tis remarkable," she said, "how not securing their own wills can inhumanize the hearts of those persons most cried up for their tenderness, mammas and-" she paused, and used significant stress "grandmammas."

Penelope so seldom led up to the actual through the abstract, that Alce for a moment looked nonplussed. Then she said:

"You have had a quarrel with Gran'am, Penelope."

"The greatest I ever had," was answered.

Alce's face expressed extreme shock. Mrs. Steptoe and her granddaughter Penelope, openly her favorite, did not always agree, and Alce had witnessed altercations between them, which to her had appeared to touch the outer limit of the seemly.

"You was very pert, I fear, Penelope," she surmised.

"Nay, 'twas not our usual kind of quarrel," Penelope answered-the kind of quarrel to which she referred being one in which she generally came off worst, by reason of pitting young im pertinence against the venerable wisdom of her kinswoman-"I was scarce pert at all."

"This was strange," Alce said, with more candor than clemency.

""Tis true," came the quiet assevera

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