ts
besides to begin life with, the lady had nothing. As the shortest way to
a living he went into the Church, and the birth of their daughter was
contemporary with Geoffry's ordination. His father-in-law gave him a
title for orders, and a lodging under his roof, and Mr. Fairfax
grudgingly allowed his son two hundred a year for a maintenance.

The young couple were lively and handsome. They had done a foolish
thing, but their friends agreed to condone their folly. Before very long
a south-country benefice, the rectory of Beechhurst, was put in
Geoffry's way, and he gayly removed with his wife and child to that
desirable home of their own. They were poor, but they were perfectly
contented. Nature is sometimes very kind in making up to people for the
want of fortune by an excellent gift of good spirits and good courage.
She was very kind in this way to Geoffry Fairfax and his wife Elizabeth;
so kind that everybody wondered with great amazement what possessed that
laughing, rosy woman to fall off in health, and die soon after the birth
of a second daughter, who died also, and was buried in the same grave
with her mother.

The rector was a cheerful exemplification of the adage that man is not
made to live alone. He wore the willow just long enough for decency, and
then married again--married another pretty, portionless young woman of
no family worth mentioning. This reiterated indiscretion caused a breach
with his father, and the slender allowance that had been made him was
resumed. But his new wife was good to his little Bessie, and Abbotsmead
was a long way off.

There were no children of this second marriage, which was lucky; for
three years after, the rector himself died, leaving his widow as
desolate as a clergyman's widow, totally unprovided for, can be. She had
never seen any member of her husband's family, and she made no claim on
Mr. Fairfax, who, for his part, acknowledged none. Bessie's near
kinsfolk on her mother's side were all departed this life; there was
nobody who wanted the child, or who would have regarded her in any light
but an incumbrance. The rector's widow therefore kept her unquestioned;
and being a woman of much sense and little pride, she moved no farther
from the rectory than to a cottage-lodging in the town, where she found
some teaching amongst the children of the small gentry, who then, as
now, were its main population.

It was hard work for meagre reward, and perhaps she was not sorry to