s of life."

"Dorothea must have one, must she, out in New Zealand? Well, Swan will
be proud to teach you anything he knows or doesn't know, and he will
give you an opinion if you ask it on any subject whatever."

Accordingly John went into the house to dine, and perhaps it was in
consequence of this assertion that the two young men asked their old
friend's opinion on various points not at all in his line. Valentine
even told him that his brother intended to write a book, and asked him
what he thought it had better be about; whereupon Swan, while deftly
shaping his _bud_, shook his head gravely, and said that wanted a deal
of thinking over.

"But if I was you, sir," he continued, speaking to Brandon, "I should
get Mr. Mortimer--Mr. John--to help you, specially if there's going to
be any foreign talk in it. My word, I don't believe there's any language
going that Mr. Mortimer can't lay his tongue to!"

CHAPTER XI.

WANTED A DESERT ISLAND.

"We, too, have autumns, when our leaves
Drop loosely through the dampened air;
When all our good seems bound in sheaves,
And we stand reaped and bare."

Lowell.

Laura and Mrs. Melcombe went home, and Laura saw the window again that
Joseph had so skilfully glazed. Joseph was not there, and Laura would
not have occupied herself with constant thoughts about him if there had
been anything, or rather anybody else to think of. She soon began to
feel low-spirited and restless, while, like a potato-plant in a dark
cellar, she put forth long runners towards the light, and no light was
to be found. This homely simile ought to be forgiven, because it is such
a good one.

Peter was getting too old for her teaching. He had a tutor, but the
tutor was a married man, and had taken lodgings for himself and his wife
in one of the farm-houses.

Laura had no career before her, and no worthy occupation. All that came
to pass in her day was a short saunter, or a drive, or a visit to the
market-town, where she sat looking on while her sister-in-law did some
shopping.

Melcombe was six or seven miles from any _visitable_ families, excepting
two or three clergymen and their wives; it was shut up in a
three-cornered nook of land, and could not be approached excepting
through turn-pikes, and up and down some specially steep hills. These
things make havoc with country sociability.

As long as there had been plenty to do and see, Laura had enjoyed her
life on t