ubs his large white hands through a mass of shaggy brown hair. But I am
sure you have no doubt that Mr. Richard Barton is a thoroughly good
fellow, as well as a man of talent, and you will be glad any day to shake
hands with him, for his own sake as well as his mother's.

Patty alone remains by her father's side, and makes the evening sunshine
of his life.

MR. GILFIL'S LOVE STORY

Chapter 1

When old Mr. Gilfil died, thirty years ago, there was general sorrow in
Shepperton; and if black cloth had not been hung round the pulpit and
reading-desk, by order of his nephew and principal legatee, the
parishioners would certainly have subscribed the necessary sum out of
their own pockets, rather than allow such a tribute of respect to be
wanting. All the farmers' wives brought out their black bombasines; and
Mrs. Jennings, at the Wharf, by appearing the first Sunday after Mr.
Gilfil's death in her salmon-coloured ribbons and green shawl, excited
the severest remark. To be sure, Mrs. Jennings was a new-comer, and
town-bred, so that she could hardly be expected to have very clear
notions of what was proper; but, as Mrs. Higgins observed in an undertone
to Mrs. Parrot when they were coming out of church, 'Her husband, who'd
been born i' the parish, might ha' told her better.' An unreadiness to
put on black on all available occasions, or too great an alacrity in
putting it off, argued, in Mrs. Higgins's opinion, a dangerous levity of
character, and an unnatural insensibility to the essential fitness of
things.

'Some folks can't a-bear to put off their colours,' she remarked; 'but
that was never the way i' _my_ family. Why, Mrs. Parrot, from the time I
was married, till Mr. Higgins died, nine years ago come Candlemas, I
niver was out o' black two year together!'

'Ah,' said Mrs. Parrot, who was conscious of inferiority in this respect,
'there isn't many families as have had so many deaths as yours, Mrs.
Higgins.'

Mrs. Higgins, who was an elderly widow, 'well left', reflected with
complacency that Mrs. Parrot's observation was no more than just, and
that Mrs. Jennings very likely belonged to a family which had had no
funerals to speak of.

Even dirty Dame Fripp, who was a very rare church-goer, had been to Mrs.
Hackit to beg a bit of old crape, and with this sign of grief pinned on
her little coal-scuttle bonnet, was seen dropping her curtsy opposite the
reading-desk. This manifestation of respect towards M