d, if you knew, to stand in young people's way!'

'_I!_' cried poor Mrs. Leyburn--'I stand in the way!' She was getting
tremulous and tearful, and Mrs. Thornburgh felt herself a brute.

'Well,' she said, plunging on desperately, 'I have been thinking over it
night and day. I've been watching him, and I've been talking to the
girls, and I've been putting two and two together, and I'm just about
sure that there might be a chance for Robert, if only Catherine didn't
feel that you and the girls couldn't get on without her!'

Mrs. Leyburn took up her knitting again with agitated fingers. She was
so long in answering that Mrs. Thornburgh sat and thought with
trepidation of all sorts of unpleasant consequences which might result
from this audacious move of hers.

'I don't know how we _should_ get on,' cried Mrs. Leyburn at last, with
a sort of suppressed sob, while something very like a tear fell on the
stocking she held.

Mrs. Thornburgh was still more frightened, and rushed into a flood of
apologetic speech. Very likely she was wrong, perhaps it was all a
mistake, she was afraid she had done harm, and so on. Mrs. Leyburn took
very little heed, but at last she said, looking up and applying a soft
handkerchief gently to her eyes--

'Is his mother nice? Where's his living? Would he want to be married
soon?'

The voice was weak and tearful, but there was in it unmistakable
eagerness to be informed. Mrs. Thornburgh, overjoyed, let loose upon her
a flood of particulars, painted the virtues and talents of Mrs. Elsmere,
described Robert's Oxford career, with an admirable sense for effect,
and a truly feminine capacity for murdering every university detail,
drew pictures of the Murewell living and rectory, of which Robert had
photographs with him, threw in adroit information about the young man's
private means, and in general showed what may be made of a woman's mind
under the stimulus of one of the occupations most proper to it. Mrs.
Leyburn brightened visibly as the flood proceeded. Alas, poor Catherine!
How little room there is for the heroic in this trivial everyday life of
ours!

Catherine a bride, Catherine a wife and mother, dim visions of a white
soft morsel in which Catherine's eyes and smile should live again--all
these thoughts went trembling and flashing through Mrs. Leyburn's mind
as she listened to Mrs. Thornburgh. There is so much of the artist in
the maternal mind, of the artist who longs to see the work of h