“You have money, and your brother will not refuse you a bit o' land. Why not build some of these new-fangled cottages, with fancy gardens, and dwarf palaces for a cow and a pig? Rhoda, child, if I was a poor woman, I could graze a cow in the lanes hereabouts, and feed a pig in the woods. Now you do that for the poor, Miss Vizard, and don't let my girl think for you. Breed your own ideas. That will divert you from self, my dear, and you will begin to find it--there--just as if a black cloud was clearing away from your mind, and letting your heart warm again.” Zoe caught at the idea, and that very day asked Vizard timidly whether he would let her have some land to build a model cottage or two on. Will it be believed that the good-natured Vizard made a wry face? “What, two proprietors in Islip!” For a moment or two he was all squire. But soon the brother conquered. “Well,” said he, “I can't give you a fee-simple; I must think of my heirs: but I will hold a court, and grant you a copy-hold; or I'll give you a ninety-nine years' lease at a pepper-corn. There's a slip of three acres on the edge of the Green. You shall amuse yourself with that.” He made it over to her directly, for a century, at ten shillings a year; and, as he was her surviving trustee, he let her draw in advance on her ten thousand pounds. Mapping out the ground with Rhoda, settling the gardens and the miniature pastures, and planning the little houses and outhouses, and talking a great deal, compared with what she transacted, proved really a certain antidote to that lethargy of woe which oppressed her: and here, for a time, I must leave her, returning slowly to health of body, and some tranquillity of mind; but still subject to fits of shame, and gnawed by bitter regrets. CHAPTER XXIX. THE reputation Mademoiselle Klosking gained in the new oratorio, aided by Ashmead's exertions, launched her in a walk of art that accorded with her sentiments. She sung in the oratorio whenever it could be performed, and also sung select songs from it, and other sacred songs at concerts. She was engaged at a musical festival in the very cathedral town whose choir had been so consoling to her. She entered with great zeal into this engagement, and finding there was a general desire to introduce the leading chorister-boy to the public in a duet, she surprised them all by offering to sing the second part with him, if he would rehearse it carefully with her at her lodgings. He was only too glad, as might be supposed. She found he had a lovely voice, but little physical culture. He read correctly, but did not even know the nature of the vocal instrument and its construction, which is that of a bagpipe. She taught him how to keep his lungs full in singing, yet not to gasp, and by this simple means enabled him to sing with more than twice the power he had ever exercised yet. She also taught him the swell, a figure of music he knew literally nothing about.