"I wonder how Mrs. Douglass can endure that child's noise. It is such a pity that he should be ruined by indulgence."
"I wouldn't be that boy's nurse for a fortune," exclaimed Hepsey, who was putting up the toys Geenie had pulled about. "They'll have a time with him if he lives."
Mr. Lambert called during Mrs. Asbury's visit, and was introduced to the guests. He seemed greatly attracted by Ethel, who fixed her large violet eyes seriously upon him. He succeeded at last in coaxing her to his side, when they had quite an animated conversation. Before they parted he gave her a beautiful little charm, whist he unhooked from his watch-chain.
This was the first time Marion had seen him since her discovery that Mr. Regy, of whom she had heard so much, was only the double of her old friend. She longed to ask him about it, but would not before strangers. She contented herself with inquiries about Neddy Carter, who was soon to be admitted to the mission school.
Only two days after Mrs. Asbury's return to Grantbury, Marion received a thick letter with a foreign postmark,—Leyden, Yorkshire. She retired quickly to her own chamber, and sat down with blooming cheeks to its perusal.
I have no intention of copying the letter, but will say that, after giving her an account of his visit to his home,—a visit which almost overwhelmed him with its painful memories,—and visiting the graves of father, mother, and brother as they lay side by side under the old yew-trees, he took the cars for Ingleside, his father's ancestral home in Leyden. He told her he found only an old servant, a retainer of the family, who received him as one from the dead. His grandfather had four children born here,—one son and three daughters. When he died, in Harold's twelfth year, his property was divided equally between them, except Ingleside, which was always to be kept in the family, and after the death of his daughters to revert to his oldest grandson.
Estelle Angus, for whom Stella was named, made a will and left her namesake her heir. Mary and Sarah died without making a will, and the property came to Harold, as the nearest of kin. It was not a great fortune that he found awaiting him, Mr. Angus told Marion, but, with the money left in the bank by his father, it was sufficient to enable him to carry out some cherished plans.
One of these plans was to build a pretty home on a certain knoll in Grantbury (the very one Mr. Asbury had given to the church), to be called Ingleside; but there was one word from her which must come before the new Ingleside could be built.
Then followed certain statements in regard to a diagnosis recently made of his heart, which conveyed to the young lady a pretty accurate idea of what the word must be, in order that the English cottage be erected.
By this time Marion, by certain unwelcome symptoms, which had forced themselves on her notice was aware of the strength of her own attachment for her pastor, and, being naturally frank and outspoken, she wrote the word (a very short one), which, could he have known it, would have set good Farmer Rand's mind at rest in regard "to holding on" to his pastor.