in
her best gown, and with her wedding ribbon on. When she had shaken
hands with her master and mistress, and spoken a good word for her
fellow-servants, as she called them, the ruddy-faced girl appeared, her
cheeks many shades deeper than usual, and her cap quillings standing off
like the rays on a sign-post picture of the sun. Following her came the
boy, feeling awkward in his new clothes, and scraping with his left leg
till the process was put a stop to by his master's entering into
conversation with him. Hester's beauty was really so striking, as with
a blushing bashfulness, she for the first time enacted the mistress
before her husband's eyes, that it was impossible not to observe it.
Margaret glanced towards her brother, and they exchanged smiles. But
the effect of Margaret's smile was that Mr Hope's died away, and left
him grave.

"Brother!" said Margaret; "what is the true story belonging to that
great book about the Polar Sea, that you see lying there?"

"How do you mean? Is there any story belonging to it at all?"

"Three at least; and Deerbrook has been so hot about it--"

"You should send round the book to cool them. It is enough to freeze
one to look at the plates of those polar books."

"Sending round the book is exactly the thing I wanted to do, and could
not. Mrs Rowland insists that Mrs Enderby ordered it in; and Mrs
Grey demands to have it first; and Mr Rowland is certain that you
bespoke it before anybody else. I was afraid of the responsibility of
acting in so nice a case. An everlasting quarrel might come out of it:
so I covered it, and put in the list, all ready to be sent at a moment's
warning; and then I amused myself with it while you were away. Now,
brother, what will you do?"

"The truth of the matter is, that I ordered it in myself, as Mr Rowland
says. But Mrs Enderby shall have it at once, because she is ill. It
is a fine large type for her; and she will pore over the plates, and
forget Deerbrook and all her own ailments, in wondering how the people
will get out of the ice."

"Do you remember, Margaret," said Hester, "how she looked one summer
day,--like a ghost from the grave,--when she came down from her books,
and had even forgotten her shawl?"

"Oh, about the battle!" cried Margaret, laughing.

"What battle?" asked Hope. "An historical one, I suppose, and not that
of the Rowlands and Greys. Mrs Enderby is of a higher order than the
rest of us Deerbrook people: s