went on were enough to break any mother's heart. He was fast
going to the bad; and yet his mother, though she would scold and fume
at times, never seemed to see it, and paid his debts, and let him have
his fling. Miss Nesta were engaged to be married, and Jane says her
lover did all he could to stand by her brother and keep him straight;
but it weren't no good whatever. And about two year ago the end came.
Mr. Arthur had some trouble over a gaming-table; that was the
beginning; then he went and signed a bank cheque that wasn't his--I
believe as how it is called forging, and the gentleman whose cheque it
was had him up in court; he wouldn't hush it up, and it was the talk of
all Lunnon, so Jane tells me. His mother would have paid up, though it
would have ruined her; but she weren't allowed, and he were sent to
prison across the seas for seventeen years. Jane says Mrs. Fairfax
seemed turned to stone; she shut up the Lunnon house, and went abroad
to some foreign place with a long name, I forgets it now; and then she
comes back and takes Holly Grange, which is as nice an old house as
ever you see, and belonged to a Colonel Sparks, who died only a
twelvemonth ago, and is about a mile from here, over against that wood
you see yonder. But I'm tiring of you with this long tale.'

'I like to hear it,' said nurse; and so did Betty, though a good deal
of it was incomprehensible to her. She sat with Prince in her arms on
the grass close by, and her quick little ears were listening to every
word.

'Well,' said Mrs. Crump, with a sigh, 'there ain't much more to tell.
Jane says Mrs. Fairfax shuts herself up and won't see a single visitor;
Miss Grace, the eldest daughter, who was never very strong, has become
a confirmed invalid, with very crotchety and fidgety ways, and makes
every one miserable who comes near her. Miss Nesta is the only one
that keeps bright; and Jane says her temper is that sweet, she bears
with all her sister's crossness and unreasonableness, and her mother's
icy coldness, like an angel. She have had her troubles, too, poor
thing! Jane tells me that it was Mrs. Fairfax made her break off her
engagement with her lover; he were some relative of the gentleman that
lost the cheque, and she wouldn't have the engagement go on on no
account. Jane says her lover had a talk with Mrs. Fairfax, and he were
rather a high and mighty gentleman, and he left the room as white as
death, and declared he would never set