embellished with wings and corners, added by successive owners. It had been the home of the Chaloners, a family belonging to the lesser gentry order, for generations back. But though the present Chaloner representatives could boast an uninterrupted line of ancestors, they were not pecuniarily able to support even the reputation of possessing such "forbears." The Rev. John had not sixpence in the world beyond his stipend. Therefore, when old Philip Chaloner, who married the rich Miss Keswick, died, and John stepped into his uncle's shoes as owner of Studley Court, he was willing enough that the widow should remain at the Court keeping it up as he could not. There was the ancient house with its quaint, oldworld gardens, a fair heritage enough for any man to rejoice in. But there was not a fraction of income to maintain it on. The Chaloners lived on their wives, people said, and certainly, they had rare luck in winning well-dowered brides. All, that is, with the exception of the Rev. John, who married the governess of the Lord-Lieutenant of the county. John, naturally, fell into the family living that went, without much saying, to a Chaloner in each generation. But there was no manner of doubt that he and the Lord-Lieutenant's former governess had a struggle to bring up the boys and the girls who appeared, one after the other, in the Studley vicarage home. The struggle had been buoyed up, however, by the certain prospect that, in the long run, Aunt Chaloner's money would, assuredly, fall to their lot. They bore with their fractious old relative's whims and tantrums equably, sustained as they were by the prospect aforesaid. Even when Aunt Chaloner, on the appearance of the third daughter of John and Fanny Chaloner, unreasonably insisted that the infant should bear her own Christian name the vicar and his wife did not openly rebel.

"To be sure, it's a downright injustice to the poor mite!" mourned Fanny, who loved to decorate each of her children with a name that was a mouthful of syllables. 66 Fancy the dear little thing being christened Mary Anne.' Such a come-down after the others, Ermyntrude' and "Gwendolen.'"

"Oh, I don't know, wife!" dreamily rejoined John. "You remember what Shakespeare says about the rose smelling as sweet

"Oh," cut in Mrs. Chaloner, rather impatiently, "who cares about what Shakespeare said, nowadays? Besides, 'Rose' is a sweetly pretty name for a girl. But as for 'Mary Anne'-if it were not for Aunt Chaloner, I'd rather the poor child never had a name at all! "

66

My dear Fanny !"-the vicar looked scandalised-"you rattle on in the most reckless manner, without, I feel sure, giving heed to what you're saying."

"Well, John," Fanny looked a trifle ashamed, "I never meant anything dreadful, only I am so upset."

"I fear, my dear," nervously persisted the vicar, that, if we refuse her request, Aunt Chaloner's money will never come our way. You know her temper. To the last I'll never feel quite sure she won't change her mind."

"And you think," meditatively said his wife, "that if we agree to naming dear baby after her it would be nailing the old lady, so to say?"

"Really, Fanny!" John was mildly shocked, but he knew of old that his wife was one of the brusque order of human beings whose tongues are unruly members.

It all ended, as everybody knew it would, in the brand-new morsel of humanity receiving the name of " Mary Anne." After that concession things went on satisfactorily, Aunt Chaloner taking a marked-indeed, an objectionable-interest in the rearing of her god-daughter. The next vicarage baby being a boy, the old lady did not interfere with his christening ceremony, but continued to superintend the bringing-up of his sister, from time to time breaking up the stillness of the surrounding peace by threats of her intention to alter her will in favour of the little Mary Anne instead of the child's father.

"But she'll never do that, John," said Mrs. Chaloner confidently. "It would be unjust after leading you to believe all these years that you were to be her heir."

"I don't know," feebly rejoined the vicar. It was his secret belief that women-some womenwere capable of anything, and he ruefully pictured the prospect of Merry, his young daughter, turning out to be sole heiress of Aunt Chaloner's fortune.

Thus the years slipped by, making a staid, elderly couple of John and Fanny, well-grown lads and lasses of their young folk, and an aged, cantankerous woman of Aunt Chaloner. Then there stepped upon the stage a lover, for time is inexorable. And with the said lover came diffi

as nature had turned out Ermy with a view to her being a parson's wife. But, unhappily, between the Rev. Septimus Selby and Aunt Chaloner there had raged a feud of some years' standing. This bitter differing had turned on a trivial point, about which the interfering old lady was glaringly in the wrong. It had been a matter of conscience with the Rev. Septimus not to give in, so the quarrel had taken firm root, years-deep. When the good man bethought him of what an excellent help-meet Ermy Chaloner would make himself and his parish, the feud broke out fiercely. "Carries one back to the days of the Montagues and the Capulets," sighed the vicar, when Aunt Chaloner's fury of opposition assumed volcanic proportions. But he did not utter his thought aloud, for Fanny had no great opinion of Shakespeare, and John himself was sensitive on the point.

It was all in vain though that both tried reasoning and entreaties, by turn, with their implacable relative.

"Really, Aunt Chaloner," said Fanny persuasively, "you might try and look at the thing in a rational light. What a chance it is for Ermy! In the present distress among girls she can hardly hope for another good offer of marriage, buried as we are, too, in this part of the world." Well," was the ultimate decision of the fierce old lady, "if Ermy marries that man, Fanny, not one penny of my money shall you or yours ever touch!"

But the threat had been uttered too often to possess any terrors. So Fanny Chaloner, thankful that a good husband was provided for her eldest girl, let things go on. There was a pretty village wedding, and Ermy went home to the next parish filled with the sober happiness she deserved. Though a significant silence reigned at the Court, nobody was perturbed. Aunt Chaloner's tantrums were varied and many. She would get over this as she had got over others. And, possibly, given time enough, the old lady might have done so if she had not done a more unexpected thing instead. Aunt Chaloner died.

This event, though it had been one upon which the well-doing of the whole vicarage family actually was hinged, came upon them as a dire blow, for its results were crushing. Aunt Chaloner's will, a recent one, announced that she had left her money to the son of Phil Chaloner, a scion of a distant branch of the Chaloner family, so distant that the actual relationship was lost in the mists of a century and-a-half. The Phil Chaloner aforesaid, a "ne'er-do-weel," had betaken himself to New Zealand, where he married and died in the space of two short years. He was known to have left a child behind him, a boy called after himself. But this was all ancient history at the vicarage, for poor Phil had rounded off his pitiful lifestory by dying before the Rev. John's marriage Nothing was known of the wife he had married, and nothing was ever heard of his widow. By degrees Phil himself was forgotten, as a tale that is told. Now, however, all that was changed. An old woman's rancorous spite had made of the ne'er-do-weel's son, supposing he were living, a

bridge, must come home, of course. It had been Aunt Chaloner's money that kept him there. And little Anthony must be at once removed from the expensive boarding-school. Dismay was painted on the faces of the little group, as one by one their cherished life-plans shrivelled up.

"And that dear injured girl!" Fanny Chaloner lifted a tear-stained face from the sofapillows, where she buried it when the storm of her angry disappointment had spent itself. "To think such a wicked trick should be played upon an innocent child of mine as to christen her 'Mary Anne' all for nothing."

66

Come, come, Fanny," John roused himself to say. "Don't be frivolous. It's too serious a business for nonsensical regrets!"

brood over the incomprehensibility of that half of the human race called women.

There was Aunt Chaloner, who had kept him dangling far into middle age on the tenter-hooks of almost certain expectation, and then ruthlessly cut him off, a penniless man. And there was Fanny, his wedded wife, in the midst of the calamity that had befallen himself and her, frivolously wailing over the old-fashioned name of a likely young lass, whose identity was safe, before many years were over her head, to be lost in the patronymic of a husband. Poor John Chaloner, as he leaned his burning forehead on the cool glass of the window pane, and gazed mournfully through the gap in the vicarage elms, at the distant chimney-tops of Studley Court, felt sore all over. There stood the old home, his inheritance; he knew what its fate must be. Bit by bit it would drop to ruin and decay for want of money to keep it up. If it were anywhere else but in such an unattractive part of the country, the Court might be let. But who would be tempted to come and settle in a place that offered no attraction, either of society or scenery? Then the vicar's thoughts wandered farther afield. He fell a-thinking of his boyhood's days, when reckless Phil Chaloner, the distant relative, had been a frequent visitor in the old home. Poor Phil was dead and gone; John had no bitter feeling against him. But it was otherwise with the son whom Phil had left behind him, to be the handy instrument for Aunt Chaloner's spite. Yes, it was hard to keep down vengeful feelings. against such an interloper as that. A stranger as well as interloper, in all but the old name that both branches of the family possessed alike. Then John brooded over his children now bereft of the independence so counted on. What on earth was to become of them, especially his girls?

The elder Chaloner girls were a marked contrast to their younger sister. Gwendolen was simply a replica of Ermy, who was turning out such a model parson's wife. Gwen, given her opportunity, would turn out exactly such another model. Orderly, sedate, and methodical to an almost unpleasant degree, Gwen's hands were full of parish matters since Ermy had departed to conduct those of a neighbouring community. It would make the head of an ordinary mortal spin, merely to contemplate the varied duties that filled the young woman's time to overflowing. Besides the choir-practisings and the Sunday-school, there were the cutting-out class, the Bible-class, the mothers' meetings, the district visiting, and innumerable smaller needs and calls. Gwen's narrow shoulders bore the burden of them all. Somebody had to do the work, and Mrs. Chaloner's days were filled up with the makeshifts and the drudgery entailed by a pinched income. Besides, Gwen's mind was of no common order-so she thought herself. She was pre-eminently fitted to take the reins of the parish in her capable hands. A dutiful daughter enough, she had secret doubts of her parents' ability, as young people have nowadays, possibly, indeed, always have had, so far back as when youth first began to tread on the heels of age. In addition to this intolerance

belonging to youth, Gwen, it has been already allowed, was a woman of superior mind. She belonged to the class of human beings who believe themselves to be the special prime-ministers of Providence, sent expressly into the world to arrange, indeed, to superintend its affairs on a code of principles evolved from their own desires. Gwen Chaloner was such an one. So much for her mental build. Her exterior was on the whole to be called a negative one. Neither fair nor dark, neither short nor tall, her personality made no lasting impression on the memory.

"Tes sich as Miss Gwen as gits all the kicks and none o' th' ha'pence i' this world!" loved to say Widow Parratt, who kept the general shop in Studley village, "Which I means as her's one of they folk as is barn to do the dirty work o' this life-the charin' so to call it-while the t'others, they set round wi' their 'ands white as white, lookin' as pratty, and smellin' as sweet, as if God Almighty made they same's the summer flow-wers, all pink, and blue, and fair!"

"Ah, 'tes so! 'Deed yes!" came a murmurous sound from the background of the shop, where lurked the widow's spinster-sister, 'Melia.

'Melia was of a distressingly meek temperament, and loved the shade violet-wise. It amply sufficed her that she should be Widow Parratt's echo, and such creatures of habit are we all, the widow would, distinctly, have missed the prompt amendments, which 'Melia never failed to supply, to round off her sister's philosophisings.

And," resumed the mistress of the shop, after supplying a diminutive customer with a wisp of tea and a wisp of sugar, 'tes like enough as they pratty, useless ones git the best chances, come to marryin'; men-folk be that fulish and easy dazzled by a rosy face and shiny eyes!"

""Tes so!" assented 'Melia, with a more pronounced sigh this time. And their respectful listeners knew Widow Parratt had in her mind the vicar's youngest daughter, whom Aunt Chaloner was supposed to have grievously injured by handicapping the girl with an old-fashioned name. Perhaps Merry was not unlike the flowers that bloom and the birds that sing. She was the only one of John Chaloner's children who had inherited his unsophisticated nature. The girl was innocently content with the world as God had made it. In her eyes, also, it was "very good." It might be Gwen at least would have said sothat Merry's mind was of an inferior order. She had no irksome strivings after impossible per fection; no desires beyond the simple one of doing to her neighbour as she would be done by.

"You're a mass of ridiculous conceit, Merry," Ermy and Gwen, provoked by the girl's easy nature, would irascibly declare.

"No! content, not conceit!" the smiling, curved lips of their young sister would rejoin goodtemperedly.

Whether she were conceited or contented, there might be disputations, but there could be none about the girl's beauty. Merry was one of Mother Nature's successes. Not that she got any great credit thereby. Beauty, like most other things, grows in time to be an every-day accident, and,

in Studley there were no strangers to be struck afresh by the young girl's fairness. Still, the village knew, when it gave the matter a thought, that it possessed a rare human jewel, the property of the place as it were, and Studley was secretly proud of the fact. On the whole, however, Merry was possibly more loved than she was admired. Quite at home in the cottages that made up the little community, she went in and out among the Studley folk after a fashion of her own, unlocking the doors of hearts, as well as homes, with the key of her own genuine sympathy. The most puckered brow relaxed its anxious tension at sight of the simple girl so ready to mourn or to rejoice, according to each mood. "She be like a

summer

Sunday herself, so serene-like and calm, never a frown nor a sneer at nobody. An' she don't put on her religion with her best clothes, she don't," the villagers agreed, as they noted their young favourite's serious sweet face and reverent mien, Sunday after Sunday, in the old-world ivy-clad Studley church, where she and they worshipped God, year in and year out. Undoubtedly, Aunt Chaloner's namesake was the best loved of all the vicarage family by old and young. As for the village babies, Merry Chaloner might have been the sun itself, so unanimously and steadily were the wee, solemn, round faces, turned towards her.

"Same's they was a field o' daisies, there!" declared Widow Parratt, who, spite of her prosaic trade of weighing out butter and tea, was of a poetical bias, and loved to lapse into imagery.

But Merry's popularity had one of its foundationstones in her lack of any special talent for admonition and advice-giving. Perhaps, too, another and greater charm was her capacity for listening intelligently, a supreme gift in any woman.

What, however, was the worth of these numerated qualities and graces in the Chaloner girls, now that they were blankly gazing ruin, or, at least, grim poverty, in the face? Even Merry's sweet countenance, short-featured and round, lengthened gravely.

"Father, dear, it's you I am most vexed for!" she stole into the study to whisper lovingly in the vicar's ear, after the storm of trouble had burst.

"And I for you, my girl. For you and the rest!"

SO

John Chaloner lifted his head wearily, and the two faces drew close, the faces that were singularly alike, of father and child. It was from John Merry had taken her calm, sweet looks, her limpid eyes, and the fresh tints that made one think of dewy roses. In the man of middle age these items had hardened; but Merry was the living remembrance of what the handsome boy had been in his fresh youth. To-day, however, the face-lines of each that naturally curved upwards drooped in curious unison.

"Dad!" Merry suddenly put her soft arms round the vicar's neck. "It doesn't do to be always preaching, does it?"

"You mean," rejoined the vicar quickly, "that I must begin and practice, do you? Yes, Merry, I must face this thing and bear it somehow. But it's for you children I feel it most," the speaker added with a groan. "Poor old Leonard must

give up Cambridge, and what on earth is the lad fit for? He is ruined, that's all !"

cap

"I don't know that," said Merry. "I don't suppose his having been at Cambridge will handias he calls it-Leonard for getting his living." John Chaloner glanced at Merry. He did not know it was in the child to utter such commonsense. Adversity had soon begun its developing work, surely!

"And Tony, poor little chap!" he resumed dolefully.

"Ah!" There was a catch in Merry's throat. "Tony will be the worst; he is so little. But, father," her face cleared, "why shouldn't you finish Tony's education? Surely you are cleverer than the masters at the grammar school! Andand"- Merry sprang up-"perhaps you could get another boy to teach, to live here at the vicarage, and be educated with Tony. People do that sort of thing."

"Of course, of course!" A ray of cheerfulness broke up the gloom of the despondent man. My own grandfather had the honour of bringing up in his rectory, the famous Prime Minister, Lord Amberley!" Yes, yes; Merry was right! Why shouldn't his grandfather's grandson aspire to a like honour? The cloud was lifting already, seeing which Merry departed to coax her weeping mother into helping to form a plan or plans for the future.

It was the girl's way. She might not have a pronounced gift for organising and for parishruling, but she instinctively knew how

"... to be to others' souls

A cup of strength in some great agony!"

There be some new-fashioned folk who fail to be convinced that such a capacity is woman's highest mission.

By degrees, slow but sure, the Chaloners began to get accustomed to the frustration of their hopes. Summer stole on apace; even Studley looked its fairest in Nature's bravery of green gladness. Leonard, brought home from Cambridge, had obtained a situation as junior master in the grammar school from which Tony had been removed. Leonard was a stolid, determined sort of lad, safe enough so get on, people predicted, in any

career.

"But what prospects has the poor boy as a schoolmaster?" whimpered his mother to Ermy. "Oh, well, mother, there are schoolmasters and schoolmasters, and our Leonard is bound to get to the top of the tree, whatever tree he may elect to climb. Septimus says so!" The young matron already began to quote her Septimus as an infallible man.

"She makes a perfect pope of him?" declared But Gwen, behind Ermy's back impatiently. Gwen herself had taken flight from the paternal roof, and was companioning an elderly lady in a distant county. It had been a wrench to Gwen, the leaving home.

"" she

"Of course, the parish will fall to pieces! had tearfully predicted, and Merry had made eager promises that all things-even the cutting

out class, and Merry detested plain sewingshould be kept up strenuously. So far she had been loyal to her promises, and had discovered, to her innocent surprise that much of Gwen's labour had been of a theoretical nature. There had been a word or two as to Merry herself also going out into the world. Indeed, she had been sent for to the country town to be interviewed by a mother in need of a nursery governess-sent for and sent back, promptly.

"Wouldn't have her at any price, not if she came for nothing; she's much too pretty!" was the would-be employer's private decision.

So Merry, meanwhile, remained at home, and the village rejoiced under the relaxed tension of her amiable rule.

Happen you've heard the news?" Widow Parratt greeted each and every customer that entered the general shop one summer morning, and the question was repeated with renewed vigour when Merry Chaloner stood in the shop doorway, a tall, slim personification of summer, in her lavender print and large straw hat, with its bow of black ribbon, in memory of Aunt Chaloner. "No?" went the widow, pleased enough. Well, there's been visitors at the Court. Mr. Crowder, the lawyer man from the county town, he druv' up in his gig, and aside him was a young gent, real wholesome-looking, brown as brown, an' that pleasant. They leaved the trap at The Jarge Inn and stepped over brisk as brisk to the Court. Then they steps back agin to the vicarage, I did hear tell, missy, so I made no doubt as you'd know all about it. 'Melia thought so, too."

46

"I did so," assented 'Melia, coming out from the shadows to get a better look at Studley's favourite.

"Oh," said Merry easily, "somebody did call to see father, but he had gone over to the rural dean's to a meeting."

"Jes' so! Ah, well, happen somebody'll call agin to-day, for they do say as he've stopped the night at The Jarge, and Mrs. Barker's that put about and upset with his ways, which 'tis the stranger, not old Mr. Crowder who druv' hisself home. As I was a-saying, and 'Melia knows 'tis truth I'm speaking, Miss Merry, The Jarge is that upset, not bein' 'customed to gentry folk which God made they same's He made we, but they do be a contrairy set, what wi' their fuss over their washin's and dressin's, and the power o' watter as they does waste-Eggscuse me, Miss Merry, dear, but if so be you'd jes' step aside and let the genelmun from The Jarge get into the shop!" The widow stemmed the torrent of her severe strictures on the short-comings of her betters to eagerly call out, in a shriller tone.

Merry, wheeling round, found herself face to face with an utter stranger. The girl was tall, and she stood on the step of the shop-door, so her limpid, blue eyes were on a straight line with a pair of grey ones that smiled, half-mischievously, out from a sunburnt, handsome face. A hot blush crept over Merry. Of course it was the stranger from The George Inn, and of course he had heard every word uttered by the widow's shrill voice!

For a second Merry stood motionless. Then she started, for the stranger was speaking.

'May I ask you to kindly tell me if this be the post-office?" The speaker had bared his head, and Merry glanced, with secret, shy approval, at the short-cropped brown hair that would, if it had been permitted, have curled over the round, wellshaped head. This stranger, with his trig build strong and straight, his scrupulously fresh appearance, was a new type to the country-bred girl. While she hesitated the widow stepped into the breach.

"There ain't no post office in Studley village, sir. But, if so be as it's stamps you want we keeps a few to oblige, and Dan'l Potter he travels to and fro from the country town every day, rain or shine, to fetch and carry Studley letters."

"That's so!" added 'Melia from the background.

"It seems rather awkward to have no regular post-office," shyly said Merry, for the stranger's eyes were fixed upon her face as though he expected her to speak.

"I've

"Not to me!" was the easy rejoinder. only just come from New Zealand myself where I've been a run-holder for years in an out-of-theway district, and letters were not an everyday luxury."

"New Zealand!" echoed Widow Parratt, and 'Melia stole forward a few steps. "Maybe," went on the widow, with the easy freedom of the Studley code of manners, "maybe, you've come across Parratt's brother Sam? Sam Parratt, who went out from Studley parish early in the fifties as fine a lad as ever stepped, and was swallied up by an earthquake three years after he landed. Happen you knowed he, sir?"

"No!" thoughtfully replied the stranger, after considering gravely. "I don't fancy that I ever came across him. In fact, the fifties were a little before my time, you see!" The grey eyes wandered, with a faintly, mischievous gleam in them, to Merry's hot face.

"

"That be the vicar's youngest ! volunteered the widow, five minutes after, when Merry, with a shy, but not ungraceful, little bow, slipped away. It was as though the good woman anticipated the question on the stranger's tongue, and 'Melia, as well as herself, noted a curious glint of pleasure that shot out of the grey eyes watching the retreating slim figure.

Half an hour later the stranger was standing in the vicar's study, facing the wondering gaze of that good man.

"Do I understand that you are desirous of renting the Court-of becoming my tenant?"

Well," returned the new-comer, who had sent in his card, "Mr. P. Eldridge," "of course I should like to look over the house, and all that, first. The fact is, I have recently returned from New Zealand, where I have been pretty successful on a sheep-run. I have taken a notion of settling in the old country, and hearing from old Crowder, the lawyer, that you had an old-fashioned countryhouse what we call a homestead-I thought it might possibly suit me. I have no friends out of