and
yet for the life of her could not desire it as she knew it ought to
be desired.

She turned from the thought and let her mind dwell on the sentence or
two quoted by Charles from Molly's letter. They were peevish
sentences, and she did not doubt that the letter to John had been yet
more peevish. Life had taught her what some never learn, that folks
are not to be divided summarily into good and bad, right and wrong,
pleasant and unpleasant. Men and women are not always refined or
ennobled by unmerited suffering. They are soured often, sometimes
coarsened. Hetty loved Molly far better than she loved John: but in
a flash she saw that, not Molly only, but all her sisters who had
suffered for John's advancement, would exact the price of their
sacrifices in a consuming jealousy to be first in his favour.
She saw it so clearly that she pitied him for what would worry him
incessantly and be met by him with a patient conscientiousness.
He would never understand--could never understand--on what these
jealous sisters of his based their claims.

She saw it the more closely because she had no care of her own to
stand first with him. She smiled and stretched out an arm along the
pillow where the babe was not. Then suddenly she buried her face in
it and wept, and being weak, passed from tears into sleep.

CHAPTER III.

Molly's protest against the tyranny of home had long since passed
into a mere withholding of assent. She went about her daily task
more dutifully than ever. She had always been the household drudge:
but now she not only took over all the clerical work upon the
_Dissertationes in Librum Jobi_ (for the Rector's right hand was
shaken by palsy and the drawings occupied more and more of Johnny
Whitelamb's time); she devised new schemes for eking out the family
income. She bred poultry. With Johnny's help--he was famous with
the spade--she added half an acre to the kitchen garden and planted
it. The summer of 1727 proved one of the rainiest within men's
memory, and floods covered the face of the country almost to the
Parsonage door. "I hope," wrote the Rector to John on June 6th,
"I may be able to serve both my cures this summer, or if not, die
pleasantly in my last dike." On June 21st he could "make shift to
get from Wroote to Epworth by boat." Five days later he was twisted
with rheumatism as a result of his Sunday journey to Epworth and
back, "being lamed with having my breeches too full of wa