And Letitia would hear nothing about the heat, the emptiness of the town, the solitude to which she would be doomed while her husband was being initiated into his office. In town she would stay while her husband remained; and so it was settled, as this happened not to be one of the points which his lordship had fixed unalterably within himself. “There is papa!” exclaimed the eldest child, quitting her stand at the carriage window, and clinging to her aunt’s neck, as soon as they entered the sweep which led up to Mr. Waldie’s door. “Yes; it is your papa. I wonder what brings him home so long before dinner to-day.” Waldie had been standing with his hands in his pockets, gazing on vacancy, till the sound of the carriage wheels roused him. When he saw who was come, he appeared suddenly busy among his shrubs, and turned his back towards the house door.—Maria appeared, with a smile; but there was discomposure under it. “Go and tell papa, my dear. He did not see the carriage. Go and ask him to come in.” But the child for once was slow to obey. She clung closer to her mamma the more she was bid to go. “We will go together,” said Letitia, leading the way to where Waldie was half buried among the shrubs. When he could no longer pretend not to see them, he came forward and shook hands; but his countenance was black as night. His anxious wife busied herself in pointing out how grievously the Portugal laurels were blighted. “Blighted! aye, look! Not a leaf that does not crumble like ashes in my hand,” said Waldie, twitching off a spray and crumbling the leaves. “I had set my heart upon these laurels, and now to see them ruined in this way.... Damn the blight!” muttered he between his teeth. “I hear there is much mischief done in Kent,” observed lord F——. “In Kent! You would think there had been a shower of Gomorrah rain by the look of the place. Young ash plantations, miles long, with their shoots crisped and black, worse than my laurels. Curse the blight!” “And the hops....” lord F—— was going on to inquire; but Mrs. Waldie held up her finger to stop him. He broke off suddenly, and Waldie turned round upon his wife with a look which made her change colour. In order to relieve everybody, lord F—— summoned up all his experiences of the mischiefs done by blight at Weston, diverging gradually upon topics nearly related,—modes of improving, embellishing, &c., and ending with an invitation to the Waldies to go down and occupy the place for the few weeks of its greatest beauty. Waldie glanced quickly from one to another, as if suspicious of some plot to humour and amuse him, and then bluntly intimated that his going from home at present was out of the question. Scarcely another word could be got out of him, even when the ladies had walked away into the greenhouse, and the children had tried who could run fastest from papa, leaving him alone with lord F——.