had always said nothing would come of it. The rector, for his part, would not show any triumph. He had behaved very well throughout; he had not resented the curate’s attempts to improve upon all his own ways, and do more than ever had been done before in Horton. And now when the fervour of these first reformations began to fail, he did not say, “I told you so,” as so many would have done. He was very moderate, very temperate, rather consoling than aggravating the disappointment. “Human nature is always the same,” he said. “Even when you get it stirred up for a time, it reclaims its right to do wrong--and yet all good work tells in the long run,” Mr. Prescott said, which was very good-natured of him, and was indeed straining a point; for he was by no means so sure that in the long run these Quixotic exertions did tell. But Mrs. Prescott was not so forbearing. “You might have known from the beginning this was how it would be,” she said to Mary. “You young people think you are the only people who have ever attempted anything; but it isn’t so--it’s quite the contrary. We have all tried what we could do, and we’ve all been disappointed. I could have told you so from the first, if you had shown any inclination to be guided by me!” “Oh, Aunt Jane!” cried Mary, “it all went on beautifully at first. It is my fault, that have not kept up as I ought to have done. If I hadn’t been such a poor creature, everything would have gone well.” “There is something in that,” said Mrs. Prescott, who had never had any babies. “It is always a sad thing when a young woman has so many children----” “Aunt Jane!” cried Mary, almost with a scream. She gathered the little new baby to her bosom, and over its downy little head glared at her childless aunt. “As if they were not the most precious things in life--as if they were not God’s best gift! as if we could do without any one of them!” “Perhaps not, my dear, now they are here,” said Mrs. Prescott; “but you may let your friends say that it would have been much better for you if they had not come so fast.”