 myself,« said Fred, eager to vindicate Mary. »But when I asked Mr.
Farebrother to speak for me, she allowed him to tell me there was a hope.«
    The power of admonition which had begun to stir in Mrs. Garth had not yet
discharged itself. It was a little too provoking even for her self-control that
this blooming youngster should flourish on the disappointments of sadder and
wiser people - making a meal of a nightingale and never knowing it - and that
all the while his family should suppose that hers was in eager need of this
sprig; and her vexation had fermented the more actively because of its total
repression towards her husband. Exemplary wives will sometimes find scape-goats
in this way. She now said with energetic decision, »You made a great mistake,
Fred, in asking Mr. Farebrother to speak for you.«
    »Did I?« said Fred, reddening instantaneously. He was alarmed, but at a loss
to know what Mrs. Garth meant, and added, in an apologetic tone, »Mr.
Farebrother has always been such a friend of ours; and Mary, I knew, would
listen to him gravely; and he took it on himself quite readily.«
    »Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own wishes, and
seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others,« said Mrs. Garth. She did not
mean to go beyond this salutary general doctrine, and threw her indignation into
a needless unwinding of her worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.
    »I cannot conceive how it could be any pain to Mr. Farebrother,« said Fred,
who nevertheless felt that surprising conceptions were beginning to form
themselves.
    »Precisely; you cannot conceive,« said Mrs. Garth, cutting her words as
neatly as possible.
    For a moment Fred looked at the horizon with a dismayed anxiety, and then
turning with a quick movement said almost sharply -
    »Do you mean to say, Mrs. Garth, that Mr. Farebrother is in love with Mary?«
    »And if it were so, Fred, I think you are the last person who ought to be
surprised,« returned Mrs. Garth, laying her knitting down beside her and folding
her arms. It was an unwonted sign of emotion in her that she should put her work
out of her hands. In fact her feelings were divided between the satisfaction of
giving Fred his discipline and the sense of having gone a little too far. Fred
took his hat and stick and rose quickly.
    »Then you think I
