thou
see them?"

Christian would feel a spiritual bump, as though she had been flung
off her chair on to the schoolroom floor, and Miss Weyman (always
enviously spoken of by adjacent mammas as "that most sensible little
Englishwoman") would say:

"I wonder how much you heard of what I was reading! I wish I could see
you learning to have a little more concentration!"

Whereas, did the excellent Miss Weyman only know it, a very little
more concentration on Christian's part, and it is possible that she,
and Judith, and the Twins, might all have seen the Pale Horse
thundering past the schoolroom windows. Stranger things have happened.
The Indian rope and basket trick, for instance.

"A most curious child--a perfect passion for animals, and so _dreamy_,
if you know what I mean," Miss Weyman would say to a comrade visitor.
"And the things that she seems to have learnt from the huntsman! But
really a nice little thing, and clever, too, though a _most_ erratic
worker! Now, Judith--" Miss Weyman felt there was some satisfaction
in teaching Judith. _She_ could concentrate, if the comrade visitor
liked! Nothing was a difficulty to her! And her memory! And her
energy--Miss Weyman freely admitted that Judith was three years older
than Christian, but still--

In short, Judith was a credit to any sensible little Englishwoman, but
Christian had a way of knowing nothing (as touching arithmetic, for
example), or too much (as touching Shakespeare and the Book of
Revelation), that implied considerable independence as to the
instructions of Miss Weyman, and no sensible little Englishwoman could
be expected to enjoy that.

CHAPTER VII

It is not peculiar to Irish incomes to fail to develop in response to
increasing demands upon them. It was, however, a distinctive feature
of the incomes of those who were Irish landlords during the latter
years of the Victorian era, to shrink in steady response to the
difficulties of English government in Ireland. Only Irish people can
understand the complicated processes of erosion to which Dick
Talbot-Lowry's resources were subjected, or can realise the tests of
fortitude and endurance to a man of spirit, that were involved by the
visitations of "Commissioners," with their fore-ordained mission of
lowering Dick's rents, rents that, in Dick's opinion, were already
philanthropically low. Major Talbot-Lowry, like many of his tribe,
though a pessimist in politics, was an optimist in most other