even tremblingly conscious that Harry was growing less like her side of the house every day; but she clung to her little girl as her perfect representative, a last hope and compensation for the uncomprehended life she had led all these weary years. CHAPTER III. THE YOUNGEST SON. Harry Joscelyn had been said in the nursery to be a sweet-tempered child; and he had lived upon the reputation through all the impatient years of youth, during which he had not been sweet-tempered, but decidedly “contrary,” as all the Joscelyns were. Notwithstanding the fact that the Joscelyns thought a great deal of themselves, and the vague grandeur of their ancestry, education had always been a very doubtful necessity in the house. Ralph Joscelyn himself had been at school it was supposed in the natural course, and could write and read and make up his accounts, which was all that was necessary; and it had not occurred to him that his sons wanted more. Such nervous attempts as their mother made to secure for them advantages to which she on her side, as a clergyman’s daughter, attached a value which was more superstitious than enlightened, only strengthened her husband’s conviction that the ways of horses were much better worth learning than anything that could be got out of books. Harry had been the exception; he was the godson of an old uncle who lived in the nearest town, and who also had a tidy bit of money to leave behind him, a qualification which gave him great credit among his kinsfolks, and made his recommendation potent. He it was who had procured for Harry the education which made him superior to his brethren. Uncle Henry had gone so far as to permit the boy to live in his house while he attended school, and as this seemed a plain indication that the boy was to be his heir there had not been a word to say against it. As for Mrs. Joscelyn, she had triumphed sadly in the fate which satisfied her wishes while taking her solace from her. She thought ever after that if Harry had not been taken from her at that susceptible period of his life, he would have been a comfort to her in his later years, and never would have forsaken his mother. But we are all apt to find out afterwards the disadvantages which attend every piece of good fortune. At the first proposal it had seemed something too good to be hoped for. When it was intimated to her that Harry was to go to the Grammar School at Wyburgh, at Uncle Henry’s cost, and was to be housed under Uncle Henry’s roof and cared for by his housekeeper, whose only fault was that she was too kind to the rough boys--whom she only of all the dependants of the family, insisted upon calling the young gentlemen--there was a sort of _Nunc Dimittis_ in Mrs. Joscelyn’s heart. If only she could hope for anything as good for Liddy, though Liddy was but a baby in those days! But when Harry, the one who she fondly thought would understand her, was gone, his mother wrung her hands over that as over so many other troubles.