Year: 1871

TT was not quite year since Mr.. Ge orge
L. fairfield, the leading solicitor in the
market-town of Norbury, had returned
from his honeymoon tour, bringing with
him the prettiest little wife that the good
old town had boasted for long time.
George was only thirty years of age, but
his wife looked a mere girl, and was at
least eleven years his junior much to the
disgust of more mature damsels who would
be very willing to step into the proprietor
ship of the good-looking young lawyer and
his prim, respectable old house, which was
one of the most conspicuous dwellings in
the upper and more rural part of High
street. Mr. fairfield had inherited an ex-
cellent business from his father, and was
altogether person Of some importance in
the opinion of the Norbury world at large
and of himself particularly


The wife was shy, girlish creature, who
seemed scarcely fit to be mistress of that
big formal house, with its shining wains-
coted walls and grim old furniture-furni-
ture that had been fashionable in the days
of Georges grandfather-gloomy old mahog-
any four posters and walnut-wood presses
in the polished panels whereof sentimental
kind of branch station of the circulating
library used to fancy she saw ghosts i'll the
cleaning. In honest truth she did not
take much to the house in High street, and
hnn yrv;t1 tfttIn tn hn
bright country home from which George
had won her.


But Mr. fairfield being Of an arbitrary
temper, and having convinced her that the
old house was perfection, she had never
ventured to hint her dislike. 1t must be
owned that the evenings were long and dull
for so girlish matron.


George was often out-sometimes at a
public dinner at Crown Hotel, sometimes
at social club at the same prosperous
tavern, or playing billiards with bachelor
clients-all in the way of business, of
course, as he told his wife.


But the evening during which he was
absent were not the less lonely on that ac-
count.


Mr.. fairfield employed three clerks a
gentlemanly young man, who was articled ;
a STRIPPING, for copying and out-of-door
works !; and gray haired old man, with a
face upon which there was look of
melancholy. Mr.. Bestow, the first men
toned, and Tom. Dreger, the STRIPPING,
had christened him Old Dismal, and spoke
of him commonly by that disrespectful sob
briquet. If he ever heard the name, it
apparently troubled him very little. He
rarely spoke, except SO far as his business
required him to speak and in the two
years that he had been with Mr.. fairfield
he had not advanced so much as one step
towards intimacy with his fellow-workers.


He lived four miles out of Norbury,
walking to and fro in all weathers, and no
one had seen the inside of his home.


Her first year of married life closed in
sorrow and disappointment for Alice Hart
field. The baby-stranger, from whose
coming she had expected so much pleasure
only opened its eyes to close them again
forever upon this world. She dwelt upon
this loss with grief which seemed to her
husband just little exaggerated, and it is
possible that her tears and sad looks drove
him to the club at the Crown rather more
often this year than previously


He fancied she was perfectly happy with
her books, and work and piano, in the in
terval between six and eleven o'clock, al
which hour he punctually returned to hi
abode, as sober as when he left home, wei
pleased with himself and the world at large


The young clerks commented very freely
upon the solicitors conduct in his domestic
capacity. r.0 yrr q &


eff had such pretty wife wouldn't
leave her alone evening after evening, as oul
governor does" remarked the STRIPPING
pertly 81 wonder he is not ashamed ol
himself" sat 10 sutIa .ff


"He ought TO take her more into society
certainly" replied Bestow, who was IL