ther
things were right or wrong, honourable or dishonourable; hers was
whether they were beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant.
Consequently the two moved along parallel lines; and she moved a great
deal more quickly than he did. Christopher had deep convictions, but was
very shy of expressing them; Elisabeth's convictions were not
particularly deep, but such as they were, all the world was welcome to
them as far as she was concerned.

As the children grew older, one thing used much to puzzle and perplex
Christopher. Elisabeth did not seem to care about being good nearly as
much as he cared: he was always trying to do right, and she only tried
when she thought about it; nevertheless, when she did give her attention
to the matter, she had much more comforting and beautiful thoughts than
he had, which appeared rather hard. He was not yet old enough to know
that this difference between them arose from no unequal division of
divine favour, but was simply and solely a question of temperament. But
though he did not understand, he did not complain; for he had been
brought up under the shadow of the Osierfield Works, and in the fear and
love of the Farringdons; and Elisabeth, whatever her shortcomings, was a
princess of the blood.

Christopher was a day-boy at the Grammar School at Silverhampton, a fine
old town some three miles to the north of Sedgehill; and there and back
he walked every day, wet or fine, and there he learned to be a scholar
and a gentleman, and sundry other important things.

"Do you hear that noise?" said Elisabeth, one afternoon in the holidays,
when she was twelve and Christopher fifteen; "that's Mrs. Bateson's pig
being killed."

"Hear it?--rather," replied Christopher, standing still in the wood to
listen.

"Let's go and see it," Elisabeth suggested.

Christopher looked shocked. "Well, you are a horrid girl! Nothing would
induce me to go, or to let you go either; but I'm surprised at your
being so horrid as to wish for such a thing."

"It isn't really horridness," Elisabeth explained meekly; "it is
interest. I'm so frightfully interested in things; and I want to see
everything, just to know what it looks like."

"Well, I call it horrid. And, what's more, if you saw it, it would make
you feel ill."

"No; it wouldn't."

"Then it ought to," said Christopher, who, with true masculine dulness
of perception, confounded weakness of nerve with tenderness of heart.

Elisabeth sighed. "Nothing