o more have admitted that a girl who hadn't got her own bread or her
family's to earn by it was justified in spending her time in fiddling
than he would have approved of her spending it in dancing. I have heard
him take a text out of the _Imitation_ and lecture Rose when she was
quite a baby for pestering any stray person she could get hold of to
give her music-lessons. "Woe to them"--yes, that was it--"that inquire
many curious things of men, and care little about the way of serving
me." However, he wasn't consistent. Nobody is. It was actually he that
brought Rose her first violin from London in a green baize bag. Mrs.
Leyburn took me in one night to see her asleep with it on her pillow,
and all her pretty curls lying over the strings. I daresay, poor man, it
was one of the acts towards his children that tormented his mind in his
last hour.'

'She has certainly had her way about practising it: she plays superbly.'

'Oh yes, she has had her way. She is a queer mixture, is Rose. I see a
touch of the old Leyburn recklessness in her; and then there is the
beauty and refinement of her mother's side of the family. Lately she has
got quite out of hand. She went to stay with some relations they have in
Manchester, got drawn into the musical set there, took to these funny
gowns, and now she and Catherine are always half at war. Poor Catherine
said to me the other day, with tears in her eyes, that she knew Rose
thought her as hard as iron. "But what can I do?" she said. "I promised
papa." She makes herself miserable, and it's no use. I wish the little
wild thing would get herself well married. She's not meant for this
humdrum place, and she may kick over the traces.'

'She's pretty enough for anything and anybody,' said Robert.

The vicar looked at him sharply, but the young man's critical and
meditative look reassured him.

The next day, just before early dinner, Rose and Agnes, who had been for
a walk, were startled, as they were turning into their own gate, by the
frantic waving of a white handkerchief from the vicarage garden. It was
Mrs. Thornburgh's accepted way of calling the attention of the Burwood
inmates, and the girls walked on. They found the good lady waiting for
them in the drive in a characteristic glow and flutter.

'My dears, I have been looking out for you all the morning! I should
have come over but for the stores coming, and a tiresome man from
Randall's. I've had to bargain with him for a whole hour a