that some day it would be my fate to travel ever so far and wide, and to
come home again browner than any berry?"

"Why, you see, Miss Fairfax, the wisest seer is occasionally blind, and
you are that rare bird, a consistent woman. Knowing the great lady you
most admired, I feared for you some fatal act of imitation. But, thank
God! you have had grace given you to appreciate a simple-minded, lovable
fellow, who will take you out of conventional bonds, and help you to
bend your life round in a perfect circle. You are the happiest woman it
has been my lot to meet with."

Bessie did not speak, but she looked up gratefully in the face of her
old friend.

CHAPTER XLIX.

_BESSIE'S LAST RIDE WITH THE DOCTOR._

Mr. Carnegie complained that he had less of his dear Bessie's company
than anybody else by reason of his own busy occupation, and one clear
September morning, when the air was wonderfully fresh and sweet after a
thunderstorm during the night, he asked her to come out for a last ride
with him before Harry Musgrave carried her away. Bessie donned her habit
and hat, and went gladly: the ride would serve as a leavetaking of some
of her friends in the cottages whom otherwise she might miss.

In the village they met Miss Buff, going off to the school to hear the
Bible read and teach the Catechism--works of supererogation under the
new system, which Mr. Wiley had thankfully remitted to her on account
of her popularity with parents and children.

"Your duty to your neighbor and your duty to God and the ten
commandments--nothing else, because of the Dissenters," she explained in
a bustle. "Imagine the vulgarity of an education for the poor from which
the Bible may be omitted! Dreadful! I persuade the children to get
certain of the psalms, proverbs, and parables by heart out of school.
Bless you! they like that; but as for teaching them such abstract
knowledge as what an adverb or an isthmus is, or the height of Mont
Blanc, I defy you! And it is all fudge. Will they sweep a room or make
an apple-dumpling the better for it? Not they. But fix it in their minds
that whatever their hands find to do they must do it with their might,
and there is a chance that they will sweep into the corners and pare the
apples thin. But I have no time to spare, so good-bye, good-bye!"

The general opinion of Beechhurst was with Miss Buff, who was making a
stand upon the ancient ways in opposition to the superior master of Lady
Latimer'