prightly elf, at once the plague and pet of the family--to our
Muriel.

"Edwin's girl" stole away with him, merrily chattering. Guy sat down
beside his mother, and slipped his arm round her waist. They still
fondled her with a child-like simplicity--these her almost grown-up
sons; who had never been sent to school for a day, and had never
learned from other sons of far different mothers, that a young man's
chief manliness ought to consist in despising the tender charities of
home.

"Guy, you foolish boy!" as she took his cap off and pushed back his
hair, trying not to look proud of his handsome face, "what have you
been doing all day?"

"Making myself agreeable, of course, mother."

"That he has," corroborated Walter, whose great object of hero-worship
was his eldest brother. "He talked with Lady Oldtower, and he sang
with Miss Oldtower and Miss Grace. Never was there such a fellow as
our Guy."

"Nonsense!" said his mother, while Guy only laughed, too accustomed to
this family admiration to be much disconcerted or harmed thereby.

"When does Ralph return to Cambridge?"

"Not at all. He is going to leave college, and be off to help the
Greeks. Father, do you know everybody is joining the Greeks? Even
Lord Byron is off with the rest. I only wish I were."

"Heaven forbid!" muttered the mother.

"Why not? I should have made a capital soldier, and liked it too,
better than anything."

"Better than being my right hand at the mills, and your mother's at
home?--Better than growing up to be our eldest son, our comfort and our
hope?--I think not, Guy."

"You are right, father," was the answer, with an uneasy look. For this
description seemed less what Guy was than what we desired him to be.
With his easy, happy temper, generous but uncertain, and his showy,
brilliant parts, he was not nearly so much to be depended on as the
grave Edwin, who was already a thorough man of business, and plodded
between Enderley mills and a smaller one which had taken the place of
the flour mill at Norton Bury, with indomitable perseverance.

Guy fell into a brown study, not unnoticed by those anxious eyes, which
lingered oftener upon his face than on that of any of her sons. Mrs.
Halifax said, in her quick, decisive way, that it was "time to go in."

So the sunset picture outside changed to the home-group within; the
mother sitting at her little table, where the tall silver candlestick
shed a subdued light on her work-bask