he continued, turning again
to Caroline, "that you also ought to thank my governess. It is not every
one she would welcome as she has welcomed you. You are distinguished
more than you think. This morning, as soon as you are gone, I shall ask
Mrs. Pryor's opinion of you. I am apt to rely on her judgment of
character, for hitherto I have found it wondrous accurate. Already I
foresee a favourable answer to my inquiries.--Do I not guess rightly,
Mrs. Pryor?"

"My dear, you said but now you would ask my opinion when Miss Helstone
was gone. I am scarcely likely to give it in her presence."

"No; and perhaps it will be long enough before I obtain it.--I am
sometimes sadly tantalized, Mr. Helstone, by Mrs. Pryor's extreme
caution. Her judgments ought to be correct when they come, for they are
often as tardy of delivery as a Lord Chancellor's. On some people's
characters I cannot get her to pronounce a sentence, entreat as I may."

Mrs. Pryor here smiled.

"Yes," said her pupil, "I know what that smile means. You are thinking
of my gentleman-tenant.--Do you know Mr. Moore of the Hollow?" she asked
Mr. Helstone.

"Ay! ay! Your tenant--so he is. You have seen a good deal of him, no
doubt, since you came?"

"I have been obliged to see him. There was business to transact.
Business! Really the word makes me conscious I am indeed no longer a
girl, but quite a woman and something more. I am an esquire! Shirley
Keeldar, Esquire, ought to be my style and title. They gave me a man's
name; I hold a man's position. It is enough to inspire me with a touch
of manhood; and when I see such people as that stately
Anglo-Belgian--that Gerard Moore--before me, gravely talking to me of
business, really I feel quite gentlemanlike. You must choose me for your
churchwarden, Mr. Helstone, the next time you elect new ones. They ought
to make me a magistrate and a captain of yeomanry. Tony Lumpkin's mother
was a colonel, and his aunt a justice of the peace. Why shouldn't I be?"

"With all my heart. If you choose to get up a requisition on the
subject, I promise to head the list of signatures with my name. But you
were speaking of Moore?"

"Ah! yes. I find it a little difficult to understand Mr. Moore, to know
what to think of him, whether to like him or not. He seems a tenant of
whom any proprietor might be proud--and proud of him I am, in that
sense; but as a neighbour, what is he? Again and again I have entreated
Mrs. Pryor to say what she thi