em
to look at if they would. The girls learned to come, because Catherine
could teach them a simple dressmaking, and was clever in catching stray
persons to set them singing; and because Mr. Elsmere read exciting
stories, and because nothing any one of them ever told Mrs. Elsmere was
forgotten by her, or failed to interest her. Any of her social equals of
the neighborhood would have hardly recognized the reserved and stately
Catherine on these occasions. Here she felt herself at home, at ease.
She would never, indeed, have Robert's pliancy, his quick divination,
and for some time after her transplanting the North-country woman
had found it very difficult to suit herself to a new shade of local
character. But she was learning from Robert every day; she watched him
among the poor, recognizing all his gifts with a humble intensity of
admiring love, which said little but treasured everything, and for
herself her inward happiness and peace shone through her quiet ways,
making her the mother and the friend of all about her.

As for Robert, he, of course, was living at high pressure all round.
Outside his sermons and his school, his Natural History Club had perhaps
most of his heart, and the passion for science, little continuous work
as he was able to give it, grew on him more and more. He kept up as best
he could, working with one hand, so to speak, when he could not spare
two, and in his long rambles over moor and hill, gathering in with his
quick eye a harvest of local fact wherewith to feed their knowledge and
his own.

The mornings he always spent at work among his books, the afternoons
in endless tramps over the parish, sometimes alone, sometimes with
Catherine; and in the evenings, if Catherine was 'at home' twice a week
to womankind, he had his nights when his study became the haunt and prey
of half the boys in the place, who were free of everything, as soon as
he had taught them to respect his books, and not to taste his medicines;
other nights when he was lecturing or story-telling, in the club or in
some outlying hamlet; or others again, when with Catherine beside him he
would sit trying to think some of that religious passion which burned
in both their hearts, into clear words or striking illustrations for his
sermons.

Then his choir was much upon his mind. He knew nothing about music, nor
did Catherine; their efforts made Rose laugh irreverently when she got
their letters at Berlin. But Robert believed in a c