When a young man in the country is what he calls bullied at home, work demanded of him which he hates, aims and purposes insisted upon which he does not possess, it is an infinite relief to him to escape to the society of those who will flatter and soothe, and make him feel himself a fine fellow and a gentleman in spite of all. Such was the company in the ‘Blue Boar’ where the Rector’s son was thought much of, and his opinions greatly looked up to, notwithstanding a conviction on the part of the honest tradespeople who frequented the parlour that it was a thousand pities he ever came there. They asked themselves why didn’t his father look to it, and see that Mr. Jim had summut to do, and friends of his own kind--in the same breath with which they flattered him as the nicest young gentleman, and considered it a pleasure to hear what he thought of things; but it was a long time before any one among them could make up his mind to utter the words which were on all their lips, and to tell Mr. Jim that the parlour of the ‘Blue Boar,’ though it was so respectable, was not the place for a young gentleman; and in the meantime the incense of their admiration and pride in his companionship was balm to the youth, notwithstanding his own knowledge that he ought not to be there. And there was another place which was becoming still more agreeable to poor Jim. Since that first visit when she called him in, in the darkening, he had paid many visits at the schoolroom to Mrs. Brown. He could not go anywhere without passing the door, and in the evening, when it was not very easy to see who went or came, she was almost always there, looking out, breathing the air as she said, after the day’s work, and keeping a watch for Jim. He was flattered by this watch for him even more than by the admiration of the shopkeepers, and yet at the same time half ashamed. For there was no depravity about the boy, and these attentions on the part of a woman who was no longer young embarrassed him greatly, and gave him a sense of danger which, however, in her presence was entirely soothed and smoothed away. There was a sense of danger but still more a sense of ridicule, which seized him whenever he left her, and made him resolve with a blush never to go near her again. And, yet again, there was safety too. Had Mrs. Brown had a daughter, a girl whom he might have fallen in love with, whom people might have talked about, Jim felt that the circumstances would have been quite different; then, indeed, it would have been a duty to have stayed away: but a woman who might be his mother! If she liked to talk to him it was ridiculous, but it couldn’t be any harm. Nobody thought it anything wrong that Osborne the curate should pay long visits to Miss Grey, and take tea with her, and all that; and why not Jim to Mrs. Brown who was much more amusing, and who had no society? She was a capital one to talk; she had been a great deal about the world; she knew hundreds of