arter of the school, while in the little town
which stretched up the hill covered by the new school buildings, she was
the helper, gossip, and confidante of half the parish. Her vast hats,
strange in fashion and inordinate in brim, her shawls of many colours,
hitched now to this side now to that, her swaying gait and looped-up
skirts, her spectacles, and the dangling parcels in which her soul
delighted, were the outward signs of a personality familiar to all. For
under those checked shawls which few women passed without an inward
marvel, there beat one of the warmest hearts that ever animated mortal
clay, and the prematurely wrinkled face, with its small quick eyes and
shrewd indulgent mouth, bespoke a nature as responsive as it was
vigorous.

Their owner was constantly in the public eye. Her house, during the
hours at any rate in which her boy was at school, was little else than a
halting-place between two journeys. Visits to the poor, long watches by
the sick; committees, in which her racy breadth of character gave her
always an important place; discussions with the vicar, arguments with
the curates, a chat with this person and a walk with that--these were
the incidents and occupations which filled her day. Life was delightful
to her; action, energy, influence, were delightful to her; she could
only breathe freely in the very thick of the stirring, many-coloured
tumult of existence. Whether it was a pauper in the workhouse, or boys
from the school, or a girl caught in the tangle of a love-affair, it was
all the same to Mrs. Elsmere. Everything moved her, everything appealed
to her. Her life was a perpetual giving forth, and such was the inherent
nobility and soundness of the nature, that in spite of her curious Irish
fondness for the vehement romantic sides of experience, she did little
harm, and much good. Her tongue might be over-ready and her
championships indiscreet, but her hands were helpful, and her heart was
true. There was something contagious in her enjoyment of life, and with
all her strong religious faith, the thought of death, of any final pause
and silence in the whirr of the great social machine, was to her a
thought of greater chill and horror than to many a less brave and
spiritual soul.

Till her boy was twelve years old, however, she had lived for him first
and foremost. She had taught him, played with him, learnt with him,
communicating to him through all his lessons her own fire and eagerness
to