t Wells called
her sometimes, and would suggest to her father that a year or two at a
"finishing school" would be an advantage.

But the squire could not bring himself to part from his only daughter,
and her education had been, I am afraid, sadly neglected.

"Well, little one," Mr. Falconer said, as he seated himself on a rough
wooden bench, "what is this?" touching the cover of a book that peeped
from her apron pocket.

"It is a book, father, Charlotte lent me: Mrs. Hemans' poems."

"Ah! poetry is a good thing when it is kept in its right place."

"I have been learning a long poem called 'Edith,' and I repeat it when I
am darning stockings, picking up a stitch for every word. Don't you
understand, father?"

"I never darned a stocking," he said, laughing.

"Ah! happy father! Mother has now given me six pairs of Melville's new
socks, to strengthen the heels. In and out, in and out with the long
needle; I have to try very hard not to grumble, so I say 'Edith' as a
comfort, and to help me on."

'The woods--oh! solemn are the boundless woods
Of the great Western world when day declines,
And louder sounds the roll of distant floods,
More deep the rustling of the solemn pines;
When darkness gathers o'er the stilly air,
And mystery seems o'er every leaf to brood,
Awful it is for human heart to bear
The weight and burden of the solitude.'

"Father," she said, suddenly stopping, "you are thinking of something
that troubles you. I know it by the deep line on your forehead, between
your eyes. May I know, father?"

"Well, Sunshine, I am troubled about Melville; he wants to go and see
the world, he says. I have given him as good an education as befits his
station in life. He has made little use of it; and the bills for the
last term at Oxford have been enormous."

"How shameful!" Joyce exclaimed.

"Things are so different from what they were when I was a boy," the
squire said. "Why, I never dreamed of anything beyond doing my duty
here. I took the farming business off your grandfather's shoulders
before I was five-and-twenty. I was his steward, as Melville ought to be
mine, and leave me free. As it is, I have to pay Watson, and look into
everything myself, when I have a son of three-and-twenty, who ought to
do all this for me. I suppose it can't be helped," the squire said,
stretching out his legs, and taking up the gun which had been resting
against the bench, "and as far as I can see the yo