a moving mass of shawls, cloaks, and
umbrellas. Phillis kept very close to her father's side on our return
to the farm. She appeared to me to be shrinking away from Holdsworth,
while he had not the slightest variation in his manner from what it
usually was in his graver moods; kind, protecting, and thoughtful
towards her. Of course, there was a great commotion about our wet
clothes; but I name the little events of that evening now because I
wondered at the time what he had said in that low voice to silence
Phillis so effectually, and because, in thinking of their intercourse
by the light of future events, that evening stands out with some
prominence. I have said that after our removal to Hornby our
communications with the farm became almost of daily occurrence. Cousin
Holman and I were the two who had least to do with this intimacy. After
Mr Holdsworth regained his health, he too often talked above her head
in intellectual matters, and too often in his light bantering tone for
her to feel quite at her ease with him. I really believe that he
adopted this latter tone in speaking to her because he did not know
what to talk about to a purely motherly woman, whose intellect had
never been cultivated, and whose loving heart was entirely occupied
with her husband, her child, her household affairs and, perhaps, a
little with the concerns of the members of her husband's congregation,
because they, in a way, belonged to her husband. I had noticed before
that she had fleeting shadows of jealousy even of Phillis, when her
daughter and her husband appeared to have strong interests and
sympathies in things which were quite beyond her comprehension. I had
noticed it in my first acquaintance with them, I say, and had admired
the delicate tact which made the minister, on such occasions, bring the
conversation back to such subjects as those on which his wife, with her
practical experience of every-day life, was an authority; while
Phillis, devoted to her father, unconsciously followed his lead,
totally unaware, in her filial reverence, of his motive for doing so.

To return to Holdsworth. The minister had at more than one time spoken
of him to me with slight distrust, principally occasioned by the
suspicion that his careless words were not always those of soberness
and truth. But it was more as a protest against the fascination which
the younger man evidently exercised over the elder one more as it were
to strengthen himself against yiel