t, and
she expanded in life, in thought, and in understanding. She began to see
a reason for her own position, and to believe in it, and take it
seriously. She was a great lady, the first in the neighbourhood, and she
felt that, as little Tom's mother, it was natural and befitting that she
should be so. She began to be sensible of ambition within herself, as
well as something that felt like pride. It was so little like ordinary
pride, however, that Lucy was sorry for everybody who had not all the
noble surroundings which she began to enjoy. She would have liked that
every child should have a nursery like little Tom's, and every mother
the same prospects for her infant, and was charitable and tender beyond
measure to all the mothers and children within reach on little Tom's
account, which was an extravagance which her husband did not grudge, but
liked and encouraged, knowing the sentiment from which it sprang. It was
with no view to popularity that the pair thus endeavoured to diffuse
happiness about them, being so happy themselves; but it answered the
same purpose, and their popularity was great.

When the county conferred the highest honour in its power upon Sir Tom,
his immediate neighbours in the villages about took the honour as their
own, and rejoiced as, even at a majority or a marriage, they had never
rejoiced before, for so kind a landlord, so universal a friend, had
never been.

The villages were model villages on the Randolph lands. Sir Tom and his
young wife had gone into every detail about the labourers' cottages with
as much interest as if they had themselves meant to live in one of them.
There were no such trim gardens or bright flower-beds to be seen
anywhere, and it was well for the people that the Rector of the parish
was judicious, and kept Lady Randolph's charities within bounds. There
had been no small amount of poverty and distress among these rustics
when the Squire was poor and absent, when they lived in tumbledown old
houses, which nobody took any interest in, and where neither decency nor
comfort was considered; but now little industries sprang up and
prospered, and the whole landscape smiled. A wise landlord with
unlimited sway over his neighbourhood and no rivals in the field can do
so much to increase the comfort of everybody about him; and such a small
matter can make a poor household comfortable. Political economists, no
doubt, say it is demoralising: but when it made Lucy happy and the po