e rickets. In my day it was sewing
in frames that twisted girls; but these books in the lap, the head poked
forward, one shoulder up, and knees half as high as the shoulder, are a
thousand times worse."

"Good luck to you, Jack. Now you deserve your name, since you constitute
yourself groom of the chambers to your sisters."

Joanna laughed back to him. "Come and meet us, papa." And in the
shortest interval given to tie on their hats and skirts, the girls were
racing along to Hurlton.

In that moorland country, with outlying moorland fields where it was not
primitive nature--in a large family like that of the Crawfurds, rough
walking ponies swarmed as in Shetland. They were in constant request at
the Ewes, and the girls rode them lightly and actively, with the
table-boy, Sandy, at their heels, as readily as they walked. Perhaps
Joanna was the least given to the practice, though she availed herself
of it on this domestic occasion.

Joanna was a deception, as her mother said. She was a little, round,
soft thing, whom you would have expected to flash over with sunshine.
She was not a melancholy girl--as you may have been able to judge--and
it was not her blame that anything in her position had developed her
into a thoughtful, earnest character. But then she was always fancied
younger than she really was; people supposed her as easy as her mother,
while she could be vehement, and was firm to tenacity. Perhaps the
reason of the puzzle might be, not only that she had a little of that
constitutional indolence which serves to conceal latent energy, but
that, in trifles, she did inherit, in a marked degree, the unexacting,
kindly temper which causes the wheels of every-day life to turn easily.
She allowed herself to be pushed aside. She accepted the fate or
superstition which linked her with her father's sorrow; she was content,
she thought, to suffer the dregs of his act with him; she wished she
could suffer for him; the connexion had indeed a peculiar charm for her
enthusiasm and generosity, like her admiration of this Corncockle Moor.

Corncockle Moor, in its dreariness, loneliness, and wildness, now hung
out a vast curtain, which Joanna and Conny were skirting under the
golden decline of day, not so far from the spot where the little group
of men had gathered on the autumn morning, and the two sharp, short
cracks, and the little curl of blue smoke had indicated where one life
had gone out, and another was blasted in a si