LIFE'S AFTERMATH.

CHAPTER I.

FRIAR'S BRIDGE.

"One morning, oh! so early, my beloved, my beloved!

All the birds were singing blythely, as if never they would cease; 'Twas the thrush sang in the garden,—hear the story! hear the story! And the lark sang, give us glory, and the dove sang, give us JEAN INGELOW.

peace."

ONLY a town garden! but how beautiful it was in the eyes of the child who wandered about in it, dreaming her sweet dreams of early youth. Half-childish, halfwomanly, half-sad, half-joyous, as the day-dreams of fourteen are wont to be.

The garden was bounded by a wall on one side, and by the straggling wing of the old-fashioned house on the other. A long piece of grass stretched out towards a few trees, and behind them was the kitchen garden, with its strawberry-beds and raspberry-bushes-now full of the promise of fruit. The trees were neither stately nor tall, but they were dear to the heart of Winifred; and in one, an apple-tree, with a gnarled and knotted trunk, and twisted branches, was her favourite seat.

It was here we find her on this sweet May afternoon;

where the shadows were lying from the west upon the smooth grass, and the wind coming down from the hills which rose round Birkdal was sweet with the scent of the gorse, now blazing over the country-side like gold. dropped down from heaven.

The old apple-tree had been late in coming into blossom; and now that the big pear-tree, stretching countless arms against the red gable of the kitchen wall, had lost all its beauty for that year, the apple-tree was still a miracle of loveliness, with its pink and white flowers, and its rounded buds, shut close as if they never meant to open. The branch where Winifred sat swayed to and fro in the soft breeze; her dress was flecked with the light and shadow as the leaves played with the slanting sunbeams, and one or two of the white petals had fallen upon her hair and upon the book which lay upon her knee.

One little sunbeam seemed to love to linger on that young head, for it came through the thickest of the leaves, ever and anon, and touched the soft, fair hair with gold. Winifred's hair was very soft and fair, but it was cut closely to her head, worn short, as the custom was for the children of Friends five and twenty years ago. No falling tresses or rich full plaits adorned Winifred's head. Her slender throat was not shaded by the cloud of wavy tresses which we think now-a-days the natural adornment of maidens of her age.

Winifred Pennington had indeed no adornment of hair or dress. Her cotton frock was plainly made, and was of no particular shade or colour. A white apron, cut with what is called a bib, was buttoned behind; and she had nothing extraneous about her little person, for she was the only daughter of plain Friends-Quakers of the old-type—kind, consistent, and decided, and anxious that their children should follow in their steps. But there was no stiffness

or harshness about Mr. and Mrs. Pennington. Indeed Anna Pennington was a sweet and gentle woman, who ruled by love; and Robert Pennington, the banker of Birkdal, was known for his kindness to rich and poor all over the district. Robert Pennington was a prosperous man, and, had he chosen to do so, he might have built himself a country-house, and driven in to his business at the Bank every day. His partner, Henry Stackhouse, did this, and by degrees that sort of superiority which outward show gives, had clung to him, and he felt himself, with his late dinners and handsome carriage, a different sort of person to Robert Pennington, placed on a higher level, and, moreover, related by marriage to one of the best families in the county.

But Mr. Pennington was quite content to live in the house where his father and his grandfather had lived before him, and to pursue there his quiet, useful, unpretending life. The Bank faced the street, but though it was attached to the dwelling-house, the only connection with it was by a door opening from the wide front hall into the Bank parlour,--a mysterious region to Winifred, and she seldom crossed the threshold, for she associated it with big books with stout leather backs ranged on shelves, and tin boxes and iron safes; and then, moreover, there was a great portrait of an old partner in the firm of Pennington and Stackhouse, which followed her with searching eyes on the rare occasions, when she had ventured within the precincts of the Bank parlour. She could not bear to think of those eyes of her great uncle's, and she was teazed by the resemblance she fancied she saw between them and those of her brother Richard, now serving his appointed time in the Bank before being entered as a partner with his father in the old-established and prosperous business.