g. Poor fellow! I
daresay Louisa worries him out of his life;" and with this easy
conclusion the elder brother was dismissed by the girls. "Perhaps Frank
is going to be married," said the other sister, who, under the lively
spur of this idea, came back to the window to gaze at him again, and
find out whether any intimation of this alarming possibility could be
gathered from the fit of his long clerical coat, or his manner of walk,
as he sauntered along under the limes. "As if a Perpetual Curate could
marry!" said Letty, with scorn, who knew the world. As for little Janet,
who was a tender-hearted little soul, she folded her two hands together,
and looked at her brother's back with a great increase of interest. "If
one loved him, one would not mind what he was," said the little maiden,
who had been in some trouble herself, and understood about such matters.
So the girls talked at their window, Mrs Wentworth being, as usual,
occupied with her nursery, and nobody else at hand to teach them wisdom,
and soon branched off into speculations about the post-bag, which was
"due," and which, perhaps, was almost more interesting, to one of them
at least, than even a brother who was going to be married.

In the mean time Gerald was talking of Huxtable and Plumstead, the
brother-in-law and cousin, who were both clergymen in the same
district, and about the people in the village whom they had known when
they were boys, and who never grew any older. "There is old Kilweed,
for example, who was Methuselah in those days--he's not eighty yet,"
he said, with a smile and a sigh; "it is we who grow older and come
nearer to the winter and the sunset. My father even has come down a
long way off the awful eminence on which I used to behold him: every
year that falls on my head seems to take one off his: if we both live
long enough, we shall feel like contemporaries by-and-by," said
Gerald: "just now the advantage of years is all on my side; and you
are my junior, sir." He was switching down the weeds among the grass
with his cane as he spoke, like any schoolboy; the air, and perhaps a
little excitement, had roused the blood to his cheek. He did not look
the same man as the pale martyr in the library--not that he had any
reason for appearing different, but only that inalienable poetic
waywardness which kept him up through his trouble. As for Mr
Wentworth, he resented the momentary brightening, which he took for
levity.

"I thought we came out h