grace
her womanhood, or whether the youngest of the family, her father and
mother's last pet, was to summon up courage, tear herself away from
familiar and dear surroundings, and carry her gifts and acquirements out
into the world, in order to win for them the best distinction of
usefulness.

Dora's lightly held suitor was the head of "Robinson's." "Robinson's"
was a great and time-honoured institution in Redcross, while it and its
masters were somewhat of anomalies. The first Robinson whom the town
troubled to remember was as good as anybody in it, the proprietor of a
silk-mill, and latterly of a wool-factory in the neighbourhood. As a
mere convenient adjunct to the mill and the factory he had started a
shop in the town, and kept it going by means of a manager. Even in that
light it was a handsome old shop. The walls were lined with polished
oak, so was the low ceiling, and there was an oak staircase leading
from one storey to another which a connoisseur in staircases might have
coveted. "Robinson's" was a positive feature in Redcross, and if it had
been anything else than a good shop of its kind would have been greatly
admired. The son of the founder of the shop was also reckoned, to begin
with, as good as his professional neighbours. He was college-bred, like
his father, as Dora in her jealousy for the dignity of her first lover
had stated. This was "all to begin with." Whether because it was
advisable, or from mere grovelling instincts, he dropped in turn both
the mill and the factory, neither of which did more than pay its way,
and retained the shop, which was understood to be a lucrative concern.
He did worse; though Redcross continued to acknowledge him--somewhat
dubiously to be sure--as a gentleman, because of the fine presence which
Tom had not inherited, and the perfect good breeding which had descended
to the son. In spite of the magnanimity which forgave frostily the
second Robinson for so far forgetting himself as to take the management
of his great shop into his own hands, walk up and down and receive
customers, and be seen working at his books in the glass office if he
did not go behind the counter, he went and married for his second wife a
farmer's daughter. She was an honest, sensible, comely young woman, but
she had no pretensions to be a lady, and no more inclination to enter
the society of the Redcross upper class than the upper class had a mind
to receive her as an equal. Charles Robinson's first w