and all men not
giants and glib of tongue in good stead. It is written of an apostle,
and he not the least of the apostles, that he might have been termed in
bodily presence mean, and in speech contemptible. But boys and girls are
not wont to take up such examples and ponder their meaning in foolish
young hearts.

The Millars, as one of the girls had said, were brought up in the Old
Doctor's House at Redcross. It would seem that professions and trades
were hereditary in the old-fashioned, stationary town. Dr. Millar's
father had not only been a doctor before him, he had been _the_ doctor
in Redcross, with a practice extending from an aristocratic county to a
parish-poor class of patients. His pretty sister Penny, whom Annie was
not unlike, had married into the county, General Beauchamp of Wayland's
younger son. The marriage, with all its consequences, was a thing of the
long past, leaving little trace in the present. For young Beauchamp,
though he was a squire's son, had not been able to get on at the bar,
and had emigrated with his wife while emigration was still comparatively
untried in Australia, where it was to be hoped his county extraction had
served him in the Bush at least as well as Tom Robinson's university
education would avail him in the shop. It had all happened an age before
the young Millars could remember, still the tradition of a marriage of a
member of a former generation of the Millars into the squirearchy had
its effect on her collateral descendants. It did not signify that the
reigning Beauchamps of Waylands had almost ceased to remember the
ancient alliance in their dealings with their doctor. That dim and
distant distinction established the superior position of the Millars in
their native town, to the girls' entire satisfaction. Dora to marry
Robinson, of "Robinson's," a farthing candle of a man, when her
Grand-aunt Penny had married a Beauchamp of Waylands, by all accounts
the handsomest, most dashing member of the Hunt in his day, was a
descent not to be thought of for a moment.

CHAPTER II.

THE "COUP DE GRACE."

The crisis had come. Dr. Millar had granted a final formal interview,
not without some agitation on the father's part, to the still more
agitated suitor; and after assuring him of the paternal good-will, had
turned him over to the daughter--the whole being done with a sorrowful
prescience, shared by the unfortunate young man, of what the answer
would be.

Poor Dora was h