Cadman; but between this lady and her
nearest kinsfolk there had been but slight correspondence--the deceased
Cadman left her only a couple of hundred pounds. With capital at
command, Nicholas Peak took a lease of certain fields near his house,
and turned farmer. The study of chemistry had given a special bent to
his economic speculations; he fancied himself endowed with exceptional
aptitude for agriculture, and the scent of the furrow brought all his
energies into feverish activity--activity which soon impoverished him:
that was in the order of things. 'Ungainly integrity' and 'headlong
irascibility' wrought the same results for the ex-dispenser as for the
Ayrshire husbandman. His farming came to a chaotic end; and when the
struggling man died, worn out at forty-three, his wife and children
(there was now a younger boy, Oliver, named after the Protector) had no
very bright prospects.

Things went better with them than might have been anticipated. To Mrs.
Peak her husband's death was not an occasion of unmingled mourning. For
the last few years she had suffered severely from domestic discord, and
when left at peace by bereavement she turned with a sense of liberation
to the task of caring for her children's future. Godwin was just
thirteen, Oliver was eleven; both had been well schooled, and with the
help of friends they might soon be put in the way of self-support. The
daughter, Charlotte, sixteen years of age, had accomplishments which
would perhaps be profitable. The widow decided to make a home in
Twybridge, where Miss Cadman kept a millinery shop. By means of this
connection, Charlotte presently found employment for her skill in fine
needlework. Mrs. Peak was incapable of earning money, but the
experiences of her early married life enabled her to make more than the
most of the pittance at her disposal.

Miss Cadman was a woman of active mind, something of a
busy-body--dogmatic, punctilious in her claims to respect, proud of the
acknowledgment by her acquaintances that she was not as other
tradespeople; her chief weakness was a fanatical ecclesiasticism, the
common blight of English womanhood. Circumstances had allowed her a
better education than generally falls to women of that standing, and in
spite of her shop she succeeded in retaining the friendship of certain
ladies long ago her schoolfellows. Among these were the Misses
Lumb--middle-aged sisters, who lived at Twybridge on a small
independence, their time c