said.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VIII.

BARLEY WOOD.

Great preparations were made in the Vicar's Close at Wells for
Charlotte's visit to Barley Wood. Her aunt gave her orders as to what
she was to wear every day; how she was to be sure to make a proper
curtsey at the door of the drawing-room when she entered Mrs. More's
presence; that she was to play on the piano, and exhibit the screens she
had just painted; and if Mrs. More admired them, she was to beg her to
do her the favour to accept them.

"Do not let Joyce commit herself by any rustic manners; you who have
been carefully educated, my dear Charlotte, must try to do me credit,
and give Joyce a hint--"

"Joyce is so lovely!" Charlotte exclaimed, "it scarcely matters what she
says, or wears."

"My dear, Joyce has no _style_, and is given to express herself too
freely; and, I _think_, her voice is sometimes pitched in too high a
key. Yours is gentle and well modulated; now do me credit at Barley
Wood, Charlotte; I have taken so much pains to form you on the model of
a true gentlewoman; and you must remember how many girls would think it
a great honour to pay a visit to Mrs. Hannah More."

Charlotte promised to do her best; and when her uncle called to take her
to the "Swan," where the four-wheel was waiting, she was in a flutter of
excitement.

Mr. Falconer greeted his sister in his usual frank kindly manner; and
while Charlotte ran upstairs to get ready, Miss Falconer said:

"I am glad to hear Melville is gone."

The squire sighed.

"Yes, he is gone, and his mother finds it hard to part from him."

"Hard to part from him! Really, Arthur, when one considers how much
anxiety he has caused, I wonder you should say that."

"Ah! Letitia, that is all very well; but mothers' hearts are the same,
whether their sons are good or bad. It seems to me that mothers
generally love the children best, that give them the most trouble.
However, the poor fellow is gone, bag and baggage. I went to Bath with
him, and delivered him over to Mr. Crawford, a steady-going man he
seems, and Melville will not have a chance of getting into mischief
under his care, I hope. But it is an expensive matter. I had to put a
hundred pounds into Crawford's keeping as a start; besides twenty I gave
Melville."

"You ought not to have given him more than five pounds," Miss Falconer
said. "The whole management of Melville has been a mistake."

"So you have told me before," said th