le plans for the poor, and the children's school, and the cottages
that ought to be repaired, and the labourers that ought to be employed.
For though it may seem singular, Vernon St. John, insensibly influenced
by his wife's meek superiority, and corrected by her pure companionship,
had begun to feel the charm of innocent occupations,--more, perhaps,
than if he had been accustomed to the larger and loftier excitements of
life, and missed that stir of intellect which is the element of those
who have warred in the democracy of letters, or contended for the
leadership of States. He had begun already to think that the country was
no such exile after all. Naturally benevolent, he had taught himself to
share the occupations his Mary had already found in the busy "luxury of
doing good," and to conceive that brotherhood of charity which usually
unites the lord of the village with its poor.

"I think, what with hunting once a week,--I will not venture more
till my pain in the side is quite gone,--and with the help of some old
friends at Christmas, we can get through the winter very well, Mary."

"Ah, those old friends, I dread them more than the hunting!"

"But we'll have your grave father and your dear, precise, excellent
mother to keep us in order. And if I sit more than half an hour after
dinner, the old butler shall pull me out by the ears. Mary, what do
you say to thinning the grove yonder? We shall get a better view of the
landscape beyond. No, hang it! dear old Sir Miles loved his trees better
than the prospect; I won't lop a bough. But that avenue we are planting
will be certainly a noble improvement--"

"Fifty years hence, Charles!"

"It is our duty to think of posterity," answered the ci-devant
spendthrift, with a gravity that was actually pompous. "But hark! is
that two o'clock? Three, by Jove! How time flies! and my new bullocks
that I was to see at two! Come down to the farm, that's my own Mary. Ah,
your fine ladies are not such bad housewives after all!"

"And your fine gentlemen--"

"Capital farmers! I had no idea till last week that a prize ox was so
interesting an animal. One lives to learn. Put me in mind, by the by, to
write to Coke about his sheep."

"This way, dear Charles; we can go round by the village,--and see poor
Ponto and Dash."

The tears rushed to Mr. St. John's eyes. "If poor Sir Miles could have
known you!" he said, with a sigh; and though the gardeners were at work
on the lawn, he bowed