ncommon
and precious piece of jewelry; it was made of pure gold, minutely chased
and threaded with curious workmanship, in form like a melon, and bearing
what seemed to be characters of some foreign language: there might be
a spell, or even witchcraft, in it, and the sooner it was out of her
keeping the better. Nevertheless she took very good care of it, wrapping
it in lamb's-wool, and peeping at it many times a day, to be sure that
it was safe, until it made her think of the owner so much, and the many
wonders she had heard about him, that she grew quite angry with herself
and it, and locked it away, and then looked at it again.

As luck would have it, on the very day when Mary was to stroll down
Bempton Lane (not to meet any one, of course, but simply for the merest
chance of what might happen), her father had business at Driffield corn
market, which would keep him from home nearly all the day. When his
daughter heard of it she was much cast down; for she hoped that he
might have been looking about on the northern part of the farm, as he
generally was in the afternoon; and although he could not see Bempton
Lane at all, perhaps, without some newly acquired power of seeing round
sharp corners, still it would have been a comfort and a strong resource
for conscience to have felt that he was not so very far away. And this
feeling of want made his daughter resolve to have some one at any
rate near her. If Jack had only been at home, she need have sought no
further, for he would have entered into all her thoughts about it, and
obeyed her orders beautifully. But Willie was quite different, and hated
any trouble, being spoiled so by his mother and the maidens all around
them.

However, in such a strait, what was there to do but to trust in Willie,
who was old enough, being five years in front of Mary, and then to try
to make him sensible? Willie Anerley had no idea that anybody--far less
his own sister--could take such a view of him. He knew himself to be,
and all would say the same of him, superior in his original gifts,
and his manner of making use of them, to the rest of the family put
together. He had spent a month in Glasgow, when the whole place was
astir with the ferment of many great inventions, and another month in
Edinburgh, when that noble city was aglow with the dawn of large ideas;
also, he had visited London, foremost of his family, and seen enough new
things there to fill all Yorkshire with surprise; and the re