than
they expected, but whose weeds made Fanny warm to her directly; but she
was shy and retiring, and could not be drawn into conversation; and
her little Alice was only three years old, much younger than Rachel had
expected as a pupil, but a very pretty creature with great black eyes.

Tea and cake were provided by way of an inauguration feast, and the
three little girls sat up in an atmosphere of good cheer, strongly
suggestive of school feasts, and were left in the midst, with many
promises of being good, a matter that Lovedy seemed to think would be
very easy in this happy place, with no lace to make.

Mrs. Rawlins, whose husband had been a trained schoolmaster, was to
take the children to church, and attend to their religious instruction;
indeed, Mr. Mauleverer was most anxious on this head, and as Rachel
already knew the scruples that withheld him from ordination were only
upon the absolute binding himself to positive belief in minor technical
points, that would never come in the way of young children.

Altogether, the neat freshness of the room, the urbanity of Mr.
Mauleverer, the shy grief of the matron, all left a most pleasant
impression. Rachel was full of delight and triumph, and Grace and Fanny
quite enthusiastic; the latter even to the being sure that the Colonel
would be delighted, for the Colonel was already beginning to dawn on the
horizon, and not alone. He had written, in the name of his brother, to
secure a cottage of gentility of about the same calibre as Myrtlewood,
newly completed by a speculator on one of the few bits of ground
available for building purposes. A name was yet wanting to it; but the
day after the negotiation was concluded, the landlord paid the delicate
compliment to his first tenant by painting "Gowanbrae" upon the
gate-posts in letters of green. "Go and bray," read Bessie Keith as she
passed by; "for the sake of the chief of my name, I hope that it is not
an omen of his occupations here."

The two elder boys were with her; and while Francis, slowly apprehending
her meaning in part, began to bristle up with the assurance that
"Colonel Keith never brayed in his life," Conrade caught the point with
dangerous relish, and dwelt with colonial disrespect, that alarmed
his mother, on the opinion expressed by some unguarded person in his
hearing, that Lord Keith was little better than an old donkey. "He is
worse than Aunt Rachel," said Conrade, meditatively, "now she has saved
Don, a