more
interested in Mr. Hogarth when he had been invited to dinner with a
peer of the realm, and stood a good chance of adding M.P. (though only
for a Scotch group of burghs) to his name. Even Mrs. Phillips felt a
little excited at the idea of a British member of Parliament, and
seemed to view both Jane and Elsie with more favour than she had done
before; while Mr. Phillips, anxious to do away with the impression of
his first interview with Mr. Hogarth, was quietly and cordially
hospitable, and hoped that the Swinton burghs would return him, that
they might have the pleasure of his society in London for the coming
sessions. Francis spent a week or more in London, and promised Miss
Phillips to pay a visit to her father in Derbyshire by and by. Mr.
Brandon was completely at a discount, and as fairly out of the circle
of Harriett's probable future life at Ashfield as if he had sailed for
Australia.

Chapter XIII.

Good-Bye

While Jane and Francis were discussing the state of Brandon's
affections, the object of their solicitude was going as fast as the
railway could take him to Ashfield, where his widowed mother lived with
his unmarried sister, a confirmed invalid, and a widowed sister, Mrs.
Holmes, the mother of those wonderful nephews and nieces whose
ignorance on the subject of dirt-pies had so much impressed Emily
Phillips. Brandon had always been very glad to go to see them, and to
stay a short time, but the intolerable dullness of the place had always
driven him back to London. Australians generally prefer a large town as
a residence, and London most of all; for though their relatives in
small country towns or rural neighbourhoods fancy that it must be so
much more lively with them than it is in the bush, there is a great
difference between the dullness where there is plenty of work to be
done, and the dullness where there is absolutely nothing.

Mrs. Brandon was a conscientious and, to a certain extent, rather a
clever woman, but she had many prejudices and little knowledge of the
world. Mary Brandon was the most amiable and the most pious and patient
of sufferers, who only got out in a Bath chair, and received a great
deal of care from her mother, while Mrs. Holmes devoted herself to her
children with a fidelity and an exclusiveness that made her influence
elsewhere almost infinitesimal. All of them loved Walter dearly, and
were very anxious that he should be married--most disinterestedly--for
their ci