itting up in a row till their lords and
masters should be pleased to want them!

Next, he insisted that he would not have her going about the place
after dark, but she was fortified by the curate's promise to escort her
safely, and reduced him to a semi-imprecation which she again viewed as
extremely wicked. The existence of that meek little helpless Mrs.
Scudamour, always shut up in a warm room with her delicate baby, cut
off Henry from any other possible objection, and he was obliged to
submit.

Leonard would gladly have been his sister's companion on her
expeditions, but he must remain at home and prepare for the morrow's
school-work, and endure the first hour of dreariness unenlivened by her
smile and greeting, and, what was worse, without the scanty infusion of
peace produced by her presence. Her rapid departure after dinner
always discomposed Henry; and the usual vent for his ill-humour was
either a murmur against the clergy and all their measures, or the
discovery of some of Leonard's transgressions of his code. Fretted and
irritable at the destruction of evening comfort, he in his turn teased
the fiery temper of his brother. If there were nothing worse, his
grumbling remarks interrupted, and too often they were that sort of
censure that is expressively called nagging. Leonard would reply
angrily, and the flashes of his passion generally produced silence.
Neither brother spoke to Averil of these evening interludes, which were
becoming almost habitual, but they kept Leonard in a constant sore
sense of injury, yet of uneasy conscience. He looked to the Randall
scholarship as his best hope of leaving home and its torments, but his
illness had thrown him back: he had not only lost the last quarter, but
the acquirements of the one before it were obscured; and the vexations
themselves so harassed and interrupted his evening studies, that he
knew it was unreasonable to hope for it at the next examination, which,
from various causes, was to come after the Christmas holidays; and it
would be well if he could even succeed in the summer.

Innocent as the Mays were of the harmonium business, Henry included
them in the annoyance it gave. It was the work of the curate--and was
not Dr. May one in everything with the clergy? had he not been
instrumental in building the chapel? was it not the Mays and the clergy
who had made Ave inconveniently religious and opinionative, to say
nothing of Leonard? The whole town was pries