n in his college as a reading-man and a steady
worker; he was fortunate, too, in obtaining pupils for the long
vacation. By and by he became a fellow and tutor of his college, and
before he was eight-and-twenty the living of Hadleigh was offered to
him. It was not at all a rich living,--not being worth more than three
hundred a year,--and some of his Oxford friends would have dissuaded
him from accepting it; but Archibald Drummond was not of their
opinion. Oxford did not suit his constitution; he was never well
there. Sussex air, and especially the sea-side, would give him just
the tone he required. He liked the big old-fashioned house that would
be allotted to him. He could take pupils and add to his income in that
way; at present he had his fellowship. It was only in the event of his
marriage that his income might not be found sufficient. At the present
moment he had no matrimonial intentions: there was only one thing on
which he was determined, and that was, that Grace must live with him
and keep his house.

Grace was the sister next to him in age. Mattie,--or Matilda, as her
mother often called her,--was the eldest of the family, and was two
years older than Archibald. Between him and Grace there were two
brothers, Fred and Clyde, and beyond Grace a string of girls ending in
Dottie, who was not yet ten. Archibald used to forget their ages and
mix them up in the most helpless way; he was never quite sure if
Isabel were eighteen or twenty, or whether Clara or Susie came next.
He once forgot Laura altogether, and was only reminded of her
existence by the shock of surprise at seeing the awkward-looking,
ungainly girl standing before him, looking shyly up in his face.

Archibald was never quite alive to the blessing of having seven
sisters, none of them with any pretension to beauty, unless it were
Grace, though he was obliged to confess on his last visit to Leeds
that Isabel was certainly passable-looking. He tried to take a proper
amount of interest in them and be serenely unconscious of their want
of grace and polish; but the effort was too manifest, and neither
Clara nor Susie nor Laura regarded their grave elder brother with any
lively degree of affection. Mrs. Drummond was a somewhat stern and
exacting mother, but she was never so difficult to please as when her
eldest son was at home.

"Home is never so comfortable when Archie is in it," Susie would
grumble to her favorite confidante, Grace. "Every one is oblig