aything and pet to his elder brother.
From all accounts, he was a bright, engaging little fellow, and
developed unusual capacity.

'He was a cut above us, and people took notice of him, and that spoiled
him,' observed Mr. O'Brien one day.

Audrey, piecing the fragments of conversation together, could picture
the clever, handsome lad learning his lessons in the little back
parlour, while honest Tom served in the shop. But Mat was not always so
studious: he would be sliding with the Rector's boys, or helping them to
make a snow man; sometimes he would be having tea at the Rectory, or
with his master, or even with the curates. One of the curates was
musical, and Mat had an angelic voice. One could imagine the danger to
the precocious, clever boy, and how perhaps, on his return, he would
gibe a little in his impertinent boyish fashion at thickheaded, clumsy
Tom among his cornbins and sacks of split peas.

Mat did not wish to be a corn-chandler. When Tom married the daughter of
a neighbouring baker, Mat was heard to mutter to one of his intimates
that Tom might have looked higher for a wife. He grew a little
discontented after that, and gave the young couple plenty of trouble
until he got his way--a bad way, too--and went off to seek his fortunes
in London.

Tom missed the lad sadly; even his Susan's rosy cheeks and good-humour
failed to console him for a while. Not until Prissy made her
appearance--and in clamorous baby fashion wheedled her way into her
father's affections--did his sore heart cease to regret the young
brother.

Susan used to talk to her husband in her sensible way.

'It is no use your fretting, Tom,' she would say; 'boys will be boys,
and anything is better for Mat than hanging about here with his hands in
his pockets and doing nothing but gossip with the customers. He was
growing into idle ways. It was a shame for a big fellow like Mat to be
living upon his brother; it is far better for him to be thrown on
himself to work for his bread,' finished Susan, rocking her baby, for
she was a shrewd little person in her way.

'I don't like to think of Mat alone in London,' returned Tom slowly; but
as he looked into his wife's innocent eyes he forbore to utter all his
thoughts aloud. Tom was old enough to know something of the world; he
could guess at the pitfalls that stretched before the lad's unwary feet.
Mat was young, barely eighteen, his very gifts of beauty and cleverness
might lead him into trouble