The uncles and Taptal said he would be better now at a private tutor’s. But Wolfe would not leave Dr. Frost’s. A low pony-carriage was bought for him, and all his spare time he would go driving over to Mrs. Hearn’s. He was as a son to her. His great animal spirits had been taken out of him, you see; and he had to find his happiness in quieter grooves. One Saturday afternoon he drove me over. Mrs. Hearn had asked me to stay with her until the Monday morning. Barrington generally stayed.
It was in November. Considerably more than a year after the accident. The guns of the sportsmen were heard in the wood; a pack of hounds and their huntsmen rode past the cottage at a gallop, in full chase after a late find. Barrington looked and listened, a sigh escaping him.
“These pleasures are barred to me now.”
“But a better one has been opened to you,” said Mrs. Hearn, with a meaning smile, as she took his hand in hers.
And on Wolfe’s face, when he glanced at her in answer, there sat a look of satisfied rest that I am sure had never been seen on it before he fell off the waggon.
IV.
MAJOR PARRIFER.
He was one of the worst magistrates that ever sat upon the bench of justices. Strangers were given to wonder how he got his commission. But, you see, men are fit or unfit for a post according to their doings in it; and, generally speaking, people cannot tell what those doings will be beforehand.
They called him Major: Major Parrifer: but he only held rank in a militia regiment, and every one knows what that is. He had bought the place he lived in some years before, and christened it Parrifer Hall. The worst title he could have hit upon; seeing that the good old Hall, with a good old family in it, was only a mile or two distant. Parrifer Hall was only a stone’s throw, so to say, beyond our village, Church Dykely.