e spared or
grudged at the county dinner-tables. Occasionally his business took him
up to London. Hurried as these journeys might be, he never returned
without a new game, a new toy of some kind, to "make home pleasant to his
little maid," as he expressed himself.

He liked, too, to see what was doing in art, or in literature; and as he
gave pretty extensive orders for anything he admired, he was almost sure
to be followed down to Hamley by one or two packages or parcels, the
arrival and opening of which began soon to form the pleasant epochs in
Ellinor's grave though happy life.

The only person of his own standing with whom Mr. Wilkins kept up any
intercourse in Hamley was the new clergyman, a bachelor, about his own
age, a learned man, a fellow of his college, whose first claim on Mr.
Wilkins's attention was the fact that he had been travelling-bachelor for
his university, and had consequently been on the Continent about the very
same two years that Mr. Wilkins had been there; and although they had
never met, yet they had many common acquaintances and common
recollections to talk over of this period, which, after all, had been
about the most bright and hopeful of Mr. Wilkins's life.

Mr. Ness had an occasional pupil; that is to say, he never put himself
out of the way to obtain pupils, but did not refuse the entreaties
sometimes made to him that he would prepare a young man for college, by
allowing the said young man to reside and read with him. "Ness's men"
took rather high honours, for the tutor, too indolent to find out work
for himself, had a certain pride in doing well the work that was found
for him.

When Ellinor was somewhere about fourteen, a young Mr. Corbet came to be
pupil to Mr. Ness. Her father always called on the young men reading
with the clergyman, and asked them to his house. His hospitality had in
course of time lost its _recherche_ and elegant character, but was always
generous, and often profuse. Besides, it was in his character to like
the joyous, thoughtless company of the young better than that of the
old--given the same amount of refinement and education in both.

Mr. Corbet was a young man of very good family, from a distant county. If
his character had not been so grave and deliberate, his years would only
have entitled him to be called a boy, for he was but eighteen at the time
when he came to read with Mr. Ness. But many men of five-and-twenty have
not reflected so deeply as