 you uncommonly to
stand for the county; and a Radical of good family squares well enough with a
new-fashioned Tory like young Debarry; but you see, these riots - it's been a
nasty business. I shall have my hair combed at the sessions for a year to come.
But hey- What dame is this, with a small boy? - not one of my parishioners?«
    Harold and Esther turned, and saw an elderly woman advancing with a tiny
red-haired boy, scantily attired as to his jacket, which merged into a small
sparrow-tail a little higher than his waist, but muffled as to his throat with a
blue woollen comforter. Esther recognised the pair too well, and felt very
uncomfortable. We are so pitiably in subjection to all sorts of vanity - even
the very vanities we are practically renouncing! And in spite of the almost
solemn memories connected with Mrs Holt, Esther's first shudder was raised by
the idea of what things this woman would say, and by the mortification of having
Felix in any way represented by his mother.
    As Mrs Holt advanced into closer observation, it became more evident that
she was attired with a view not to charm the eye, but rather to afflict it with
all that expression of woe which belongs to very rusty bombazine and the limpest
state of false hair. Still, she was not a woman to lose the sense of her own
value, or become abject in her manners under any circumstances of depression;
and she had a peculiar sense on the present occasion that she was justly relying
on the force of her own character and judgment, in independence of anything that
Mr Lyon or the masterful Felix would have said, if she had thought them worthy
to know of her undertaking. She curtsied once, as if to the entire group, now
including even the dogs, who showed various degrees of curiosity, especially as
to what kind of game the smaller animal Job might prove to be after due
investigation; and then she proceeded at once towards Esther, who, in spite of
her annoyance, took her arm from Harold's, said, »How do you do, Mrs Holt?« very
kindly, and stooped to pat little Job.
    »Yes - you know him, Miss Lyon,« said Mrs Holt, in that tone which implies
that the conversation is intended for the edification of the company generally;
»you know the orphin child, as Felix brought home for me that am his mother to
take care of. And it's what I've done - nobody more so - though
