little which the hostess was the first to break i wonder how dick is getting on with his young friend to night i have been thinking of that aunt don t you think he is a little young to be dining at a club well he is nearly seventeen and has left though it is true only a few days he cannot be tied to one s apron strings now he is no longer a school boy his friend mr who is at college asks him to dine with him what would you have had me do the poor boy is so thoughtless and i am afraid has so little principle � though indeed that is not his fault aud he has never a mother s care that is only too true but even supposing myself to be in his mother s place here is an old school fellow asks the lad to dine should i not be his � a feeling that is perhaps strongest at his age � in saying no and perhaps added the old lady it is just possible he might have gone all the same oh i hope not aunt i trust not he is self willed and i fear wild but not so wicked as that lady smiled again and this time her smile had a touch of bitterness if dick is wicked at his age help him and forgive grown men i think you are disposed to take a view of human instead of using what from your own elevation above the follies of the world would more become you � the i you do not talk like that elevation i my feet are set in mire and clay well the soil is even worse at all events on which the rest of us are standing as to dick if you objected to his going out why did you not advise him to stay at home j advise him you know that i have no authority nay that his father has the poor lad against me as though i were a serpent poor francis it seems so strange to me that you good people should quarrel so even when yon are of the same blood il is written aunt answered the other gravely that for the good cause a man s foes shall be those of his own household there i also the text let love continue replied the elder lady you have eaten next to nothing my dear as usual will you not take one glass of wine sister shook her head and smiled you know i never drink wine aunt then we will go np stairs you will sit up for master to night very good my lady the deceased lord when he came home from his club was supposed to use his own skeleton key chapter il sister s the two ladies when they to the drawing room resumed the work in which they had been engaged the younger at least would have scorned to call it by that name her real work lay among the tenants of the lanes and of the town and what she did for the same with her thread and needle was by comparison perhaps the hardest task she had to do within doors was to herself from her own opinions with a vehemence that under the circumstances would have been the like of her venerable relative to matters that were nearer to her than life itself was one of the crosses that sister had to bear i had a letter from francis this morning and not a very satisfactory one observed the elder lady pi yes this was full of significance it implied first an absence of rise and secondly a if the other pleased to listen � but under protest as though nothing coming from the quarter in question could possess any interest i really do pity that poor boy having to spend his holidays or at least the time before he goes to college at i always did pity him aunt such a change as he must find it after not a soul seems ever to come to the tower except mr sister uttered an of yes i must say there i agree with you continued the old lady that man seems to have picked out as it were the worst part of the christian faith to form a religion for himself and he s a too is a very of it is that francis does not see it he sees it aunt but the man in spite of it said sister quietly he considers him a and a shining light i wonder how it is that the clergy are now so puffed up mused her in my young days till a man was made a bishop no one thought anything of him and not much even � then my lord s father indeed looked upon his as a sort of link between the drawing room and the servants hall but that was an extreme case now half one s relatives are preached to death by them and the other half t so much as eat or drink without permission of their clergyman � just as though they had taken degrees in instead of divinity i i� waa � a less black than we re painted church and possibly even to the himself her own spiritual superior is richard like his father was as a boy aunt inquired she presently yes though with a difference he is not quite so handsome but then he has a more frank expression even in his wildest days your brother had rather an austere look he took his pleasures sadly but the clear skin and complexion the bright brown eyes the mass of hair with that natural wave in it are of his father s characteristics francis was never winning to my mind as this boy is though my poor mary � his cousin too which 