bout taking
back those sweets. I was swindled, of course, but we should have died if
we'd had to eat them up. Well, now, my dears----'

The vicar's wife paused. Her square short figure was between the two
girls; she had on arm of each, and she looked significantly from one to
another, her gray curls flapping across her face as she did so.

'Go on, Mrs. Thornburgh,' cried Rose. 'You make us quite nervous.'

'How do you like Mr. Elsmere?' she inquired solemnly.

'Very much,' said both in chorus.

Mrs. Thornburgh surveyed Rose's smiling frankness with a little sigh.
Things were going grandly, but she could imagine a disposition of
affairs which would have given her personally more pleasure.

'_How--would--you--like_--him for a brother-in-law?' she inquired,
beginning in a whisper, with slow emphasis, patting Rose's arm, and
bringing out the last words with a rush.

Agnes caught the twinkle in Rose's eye, but she answered for them both
demurely.

'We have no objection to entertain the idea. But you must explain.'

'Explain!' cried Mrs. Thornburgh. 'I should think it explains itself. At
least if you'd been in this house the last twenty-four hours you'd think
so. Since the moment when he first met her, it's been "Miss Leyburn,"
"Miss Leyburn," all the time. One might have seen it with half an eye
from the beginning.'

Mrs. Thornburgh had not seen it with two eyes, as we know, till it was
pointed out to her; but her imagination worked with equal liveliness
backwards or forwards.

'He went to see you yesterday, didn't he--yes, I know he did--and he
overtook her in the pony-carriage--the vicar saw them from across the
valley--and he brought her back from your house, and then he kept
William up till nearly twelve talking of her. And now he wants a picnic.
Oh, it's as plain as a pike-staff. And, my dears, _nothing_ to be said
against him. Fifteen hundred a year if he's a penny. A nice living, only
his mother to look after, and as good a young fellow as ever stepped.'

Mrs. Thornburgh stopped, choked almost by her own eloquence. The girls,
who had by this time established her between them on a garden-seat,
looked at her with smiling composure. They were accustomed to letting
her have her budget out.

'And now, of course,' she resumed, taking breath, and chilled a little
by their silence, 'now, of course, I want to know about Catherine?' She
regarded them with anxious interrogation. Rose, still smiling, slowly
shook