lms, was too comical
to be resisted, and the peals of his laughter reached the lady on the
lawn, and brought the children pressing to the dining-room window to
see what had happened. Flo, of whom Dick had said that she was getting
pretty, but who certainly was not shy, and had no fear of finding herself
out of place, came pertly and tapped at the window, and, looking in with
her little sunny face, demanded to know what was the fun, so that Dick
burst forth again and again. The rector did not see the fun, for his
part; he saw no fun at all. Even when Dick, almost weeping with the
goodness of the joke, endeavoured to explain how droll it was to think
of his old uncle sending him there, Mr. Wilberforce did not see it. "My
wife will ask me what you were laughing about, and how am I to tell her?
She will see no joke in it, and she will not believe that I was not
laughing with you--at all that is most sacred, Emily will say." No one
who had seen the excellent rector at that moment would have accused him
of sharing in the laughter, for his face was as blankly serious as if he
had been at a funeral: but he knew the view which Mrs. Wilberforce was
apt to take.

And his fears came so far true that he did undergo a rigid
cross-questioning as soon as the guest was out of the way. And though
the rector was as discreet as possible, it yet became deeply impressed
upon the mind of his wife that the fun had something to do with the
Elms. That gentlemen did joke on such subjects, which were not fit to
be talked about, she was fully aware; but that her own husband, a man
privileged beyond most men, a clergyman of the Church of England,
should do it, was bitter indeed to her. "I know what young men are," she
said; "they are all the same. I know there is nothing that amuses and
attracts them so much as improper people. But, Herbert, you! and when
vice is at our very doors, to laugh! Oh, don't say another word to me on
the subject!" Mrs. Wilberforce cried.

CHAPTER XII.

The recollection of that unexplained and ill-timed merriment clouded
over the household horizon even next morning; but Dick was so cheerful
and so much at his ease that things ameliorated imperceptibly. The heart
of a woman, even when most disapproving, is softened by the man who takes
the trouble to make himself agreeable to her children. She thought that
there could not be so very much harm in him, after all, when she saw
the little ones clustering about him, on