When the Rectory was ready, and the family returned, it was high summer, and there were constant meetings between the households. No doubt there were the usual amount of trivial disappointments and annoyances, but the whole season seems to me to have been bathed in sunlight. The Reform Bill agitations and the London mobs of which Clarence wrote to us were like waves surging beyond an isle of peace. Clarence had some unpleasant walks from the office. Once or twice the shutters had to be put up at Frith and Castleford’s to prevent the windows from being broken; and once Clarence actually saw our nation’s hero, ‘the Duke,’ riding quietly and slowly through a yelling, furious mob, who seemed withheld from falling on him by the perfect impassiveness of the eagle face and spare figure. Moreover a pretty little boy, on his pony, suddenly pushed forward and rode by the Duke’s side, as if proud and resolute to share his peril. ‘If Griffith had been there!’ said Ellen and Emily, though they did not exactly know what they expected him to have done. The chief storms that drifted across our sky were caused by Mrs. Fordyce’s resolution that Griffith should enjoy none of the privileges of an accepted suitor before the engagement was an actual fact. Ellen was obedient and conscientious; and would neither transgress nor endure to have her mother railed at by Griff’s hasty tongue, and this affronted him, and led to little breezes. When people overstay their usual time, tempers are apt to get rather difficult. Griffith had kept all his terms at Oxford, and was not to return thither after the long vacation, but was to read with a tutor before taking his degree. Moreover bills began to come from Oxford, not very serious, but vexing my father and raising annoyances and frets, for Griff resented their being complained of, and thought himself ill-used, going off to see his own friends whenever he was put out. One morning at breakfast, late in October, he announced that Lady Peacock was in lodgings at Clifton, and asked my mother to call on her. But mamma said it was too far for the horse—she visited no one at that distance, and had never thought much of Selina Clarkson before or after her marriage. ‘But now that she is a widow, it would be such a kindness,’ pleaded Griff. ‘Depend upon it, a gay young widow needs no kindness from me, and had better not have it from you,’ said my mother, getting up from behind her urn and walking off, followed by my father. Griff drummed on the table. ‘I wonder what good ladies of a certain age do with their charity,’ he said.