elamour. The only chance of his refusal was
that he should take alarm at the manner of requiring his daughter from
him.

CHAPTER V. THE SUMMONS.

But when the King knew that the thing must be,
And that no help there was in this distress,
He bade them have all things in readiness
To take the maiden out.--MORRIS.

The second Sunday of suspense had come. The Sundays of good young ladies
little resembled those of a century later, though they were not devoid
of a calm peacefulness, worthy of the "sweet day, so cool, so calm, so
bright." The inhabited rooms of the old house looked bright and festal;
there were fresh flowers in the pots, honey as well as butter on
the breakfast table. The Major and Palmer were both in full uniform,
wonderfully preserved. Eugene, a marvel of prettiness, with his curled
hair and little velvet coat, contrived by his sisters out of some
ancestral hoard. Betty wore thick silk brocade from the same store;
Harriet a fresh gay chintz over a crimson skirt, and Aurelia was in
spotless white, with a broad blue sash and blue ribbons in her hat, for
her father liked to see her still a child; so her hair was only tied
with blue, while that of her sisters was rolled over a cushion, and
slightly powdered.

The church was so near that the Major could walk thither, leaning on
his stout crutch-handled stick, and aided by his daughter's arm, as
he proceeded down the hawthorn lane, sweet with the breath of May,
exchanging greetings with whole families of the poor, the fathers in
smock frocks wrought with curious needlework on the breast and back,
the mothers in high-crowned hats and stout dark blue woollen gowns, the
children, either patched or ragged, and generally barefooted, but by no
means ill-fed.

No Sunday school had been invented. The dame who hobbled along in
spectacles, dropping a low curtsey to the "quality," taught the hornbook
and the primer to a select few of the progeny of the farmers and
artisans, and the young ladies would no more have thought of assisting
her labours than the blacksmith's. They only clubbed their pocket money
to clothe and pay the schooling of one little orphan, who acknowledged
them by a succession of the lowest bobs as she trotted past, proud as
Margery Twoshoes herself of the distinction of being substantially shod.

The church was small, and with few pretensions to architecture at
the best. It had been nearly a ruin, when, stirred by the Majo