en laughed a little. They knew that, however difficult it might be
to find the true explanation of the fact, the fact remained that there
were no young men in Chellaston, that boys who grew up there went as
inevitably elsewhere to make their fortunes as they would have done from
an English country town.

Among the ladies who came to see Mrs. Rexford and count her children,
the feeling concerning her was more nearly allied to kindly
commiseration than she would at all have liked had she known it. They
said that Captain Rexford might succeed if his wife and daughters--Each
would complete the conditional clause in her own way, but it was clear
to the minds of all that the success of the Rexford farm would depend to
a great extent upon the economy and good management practised in the
house.

Now the Rexfords, man, woman, and child, had come with brave hearts,
intending to work and to economise; yet they found what was actually
required of them different from all that their fancy had pictured; and
their courage, not being obliged to face those dangers to which they had
adjusted it, and being forced to face much to which it was not adjusted,
suffered shock, and took a little time to rally into moderate animation.

At the end of their weary journey they had found themselves in a large
wooden house, not new by any means, or smart in any of its appointments;
and, as convenience is very much a matter of custom, it appeared to them
inconvenient--a house in which room was set against room without vestige
of lobby or passage-way, and in which there were almost as many doors to
the outside as there were windows. They had bought it and its furniture
as a mere adjunct to a farm which they had chosen with more care, and
when they inspected it for the first time their hearts sank somewhat
within them. Captain Rexford, with impressive sadness, remarked to his
wife that there was a greater lack of varnish and upholstery and of
traces of the turning lathe than he could have supposed possible
in--"_furniture_." But his wife had bustled away before he had quite
finished his speech. Whatever she might feel, she at least expressed no
discouragement. Torture does not draw from a brave woman expressions of
dismay.

That which gave both Mrs. Rexford and Sophia much perplexity in the
first day or two of the new life was that the girl Eliza seemed to them
to prove wholly incompetent. She moved in a dazed and weary fashion
which was quite inconsi