take the management into his own hands--a piece
of information that gave great satisfaction to every one except the firm
of Goody and Fripp. But in spite of this announcement, young Frank never
made his appearance--the walks continued overgrown with grass--the
wounded Atlas looked proudly to heaven from his deathbed of fame-and the
young ladies remained on the tiptoe of expectation.

"What can be the matter with the boy?" thought I; "has he no regard for
his father's neighbours, and his own birthplace?"

"What can be the matter with the boy?" thought Miss Sibylla Smith, and
all the maidens young, old, and middle aged. "Has he fallen in love with
his tutor's daughter, or got engaged to his guardian's niece?" for our
young people had studied life so zealously in three-volume novels, that
they never doubted for a moment that Frank Edwards's tutor (if he had a
tutor) had a daughter, or that his guardian (and they knew he had a
guardian) had a niece. But in spite of all our thoughts Bandvale Hall
continued empty.

"I'll take another look at the old place," I said, one day in August as
I was passing the lodge, and rode at a quiet contemplative walk down the
avenue. I hung my rein over one of the rails of the porch steps, and
passed round into the garden. Not a flower to be seen; but the place of
them famously supplied with potatoes and other useful articles--and the
same evidence of absenteeism in the shape of tottering walls, and grass
grown walks, and dusty fountains in all directions. What a shame!--if I
knew the boy's address, I would write to him to come home at once; but
that Leicestershire guardian has kept him quite separated from those who
ought to have been his friends, and had the bringing up of him from his
youth. If we are to have him all the rest of his life, he could not have
come among us too early; and in the firm intention of carrying this
resolution into effect, I determined to look out for some workman about
the place, to ask where Mr Edwards was to be found. The man that has the
care of the garden can't be far off;--and accordingly I went in search
of him. But either the vegetables were illustrations, like Southey's
butlers, of self-culture, or the gardener had gone to dinner; and in the
expectation of finding him in the kitchen, I clambered into the house by
an open window, and walked quietly along the passage. I thought I heard
voices in the garden library, a delightful room on the ground-floor,
wher