“For some cry quick and some cry slow,

    But while the hills remain,

    Uphill, too slow, will need the whip,

    Downhill, too quick, the chain.”

    Tennyson.

Several years had passed away, and Mary’s Approach had never been made, though the lane had been improved and worn a good deal smoother, and the Duchess and other grandees had found their way along it.

There were other expenses and other interests. Dora was married. A fellow-soldier of Captain Carbonel’s had come on a visit, and had carried the bright young sister off to Malta. She was a terrible loss to all the parish, and it would have been worse if Sophia had not grown up to take her place, and to be the great helper in the school and parish, as well as the story-teller and playmate, the ever ready “Aunt Sophy” of the little children.

And these years had made the farm and garden look much prettier and neater altogether. The garden was full of flowers, and roses climbed up the verandah; and the home-field beyond looked quite park-like with iron railings between, so that the pretty gentle Alderney cows could be plainly seen.

The skim-milk afforded by those same cows went in great part to the delicate children in the village, though Mrs Carbonel had every year to fight a battle for it with Master Pucklechurch and his wife, who considered the whole of it as the right of the calves and little pigs, and would hardly allow that the little human Bartons or Morrises were more worth rearing.

There had been a visitation of measles through the village—very bad in the cottages, and at Greenhow the three little children had all been very ill; the second, Dora, died, and the elder one, little Mary, remained exceedingly delicate, screaming herself ill on any alarm or agitation, and needing the most anxious care.

The cottagers had learnt to look to Greenhow and the “Gobblealls” as the safe resource in time of any distress, whether of a child having eaten too many blackberries, or of a man being helpless from “rhumatiz;” a girl needing a recommendation to a service, or “Please, sir, I wants to know if it is allowed for a man to kill my father?” which was the startling preface to George Truman’s complaint of a public-house row in which his father had got a black eye.

Still, there was less fighting among the men and much less among the women, since Nanny Barton and Betsy Seddon had lodged counter-accusations after a great quarrel over the well, when Nanny had called Betsy, among other choice epithets, “a sneaking hypercriting old cat of a goody,” and Betsy had returned the compliment by terming Nanny “a drunken, trapesing, good-for-nothing jade, as had no call to good water.” On which Nanny had torn out a large bunch of Betsy’s hair, and Betsy had used her claws to make long scratches on Nanny’s cheeks, the scars of which were cherished for the magistrates! It was expected in the village that Betsy would get off, being that she and her husband worked for Captain Gobbleall, and Nanny was known, when “a bit overtaken,” to have sauced Miss Sophy. Nevertheless they were equally fined, with the choice of three weeks’ imprisonment, and, to every one’s surprise, the fines were produced.

Betsy thought it very hard that she should be fined when she worked in the captain’s fields; and she lamented still more when he insisted on the family removing to a vacant cottage of his own between two of his fields. It was in better condition, had more garden, and a lower rent, and her husband, who was a quiet man, never quarrelling unless she made him, much rejoiced. “She have too much tongue,” he said, and she had to keep the peace, for the captain declared that, after the next uproar in his fields, he should give her no more work there. And though she declared it was not her, but “they women who would not let her alone,” things certainly became much quieter.

For Captain Carbonel was an active magistrate, busy in all the county improvements, and preserving as much order in the two parishes as was possible where there was no rural police, only the constable, Cobbler Cox, who was said to be more “skeered of the rogues than the rogues was of he,” and, at Downhill, Appleton, the thatcher, who was generally to be found enjoying himself at the Selby Arms. Still, fewer cases came up to the bench than in former times, and Uphill hardly furnished one conviction in a quarter. The doctors at the infirmary said that they knew an Uphill person by the tidier clothing. This was chiefly owing to the weekly club, of which the women were very glad. “It is just as if it was given,” they said, when the clothes came in half-yearly, and decent garments encouraged more attendance at church. There was no doubt that Uphill was more orderly, but who could tell what was the amount of real improvement in the people’s hearts and souls?

That first Confirmation had only produced two additional communicants, Sophia Carbonel, and Susan Pucklechurch, who was in training in the Greenhow nursery. Not one of the others came to the Holy Feast. Their parents, for the most part, said they were too young, and, as these parents never came themselves, the matter seemed hopeless unless some deeper religious feeling could be infused by diligent care.

In one case, where there was a terrible illness and a slow recovery of George Truman, he became strongly impressed, and so did his wife, a very nice, meek woman, who had been in a good service. They both came to the Holy Communion the month after the man was out again, but ............