“I thank you heartily for having been good to my cousin,” Francis said, earnestly. He was thinking that he would drop into a jeweller’s shop on his way homeward, and choose the handsomest diamond ring in the man’s stock for Miss Jemima Banks. “I don’t know as I deserve any thanks, sir,” answered the girl. “I couldn’t help taking to Mrs. Lesley, and I couldn’t help feeling for her when I saw her so solitary and so sad. Months and months went by before her husband came back to her; and when he did come her baby was born, and there was the cradle in the corner just by where you’re sitting, and she seemed as if she couldn’t make enough of the child.” “A child!” murmured Francis. “Mrs. Burfield never told me of the child.” “But Mr. Lesley, he didn’t seem so wrapped up in the baby as she did,” continued Miss Banks; “and I used to fancy she saw it, and fretted about it. He couldn’t take her out to dinner anywhere this time, nor yet to the theatre, on account of the child. She asked him once to take her for a drive somewhere in the country, and to take the child with them; but he laughed at her, and said, ‘I don’t think there’s a pleasanter sight in creation than an estimable mechanic in his Sunday clothes, with three children in a wicker chaise, and a fourth in arms; but don’t you think we may as well leave that sort of thing to the mechanic, Susy? the poor fellow has so few chances of distinguishing himself.’ That was just the sort of speech Mr. Lesley was always making, half laughing, half scornful; he was always going on in a sneering way about the baby, and her being so fond of it, and devoting herself so much to it; and sometimes one of those nasty speeches of his would set his wife off crying, for her health wasn’t very strong just then, and any little thing would upset her. And then he’d look at her with a hard, cruel look that he’d got sometimes, and throw his book into a corner, and get up and walk out of the house, banging the door to that degree that mother would be unnerved for the rest of the evening. Mr. Lesley took to stopping out very late this time, and used to let himself in with a latch-key, long after me and mother had gone to bed; but I know that Susan used to sit up for him, and I know that he used to be angry with her for doing it; for Woolcote Villas are slight-built, and I’ve heard him talking to her as I lay awake overhead. He was at home for some months this time off and on,--but he’d be away for days together,--and when he was at home he had a tired way like, that made me feel uncomfortable somehow to see him. He was always yawning, and smoking, and sitting over his books, or lying asleep upon the sofa; and I’m sure if I’d been Mrs. Lesley, I should have been very glad when he took himself off. But, Lor’ bless your heart! poor little thing, she fretted about his going away, just as if he’d been the kindest of husbands. He wasn’t going back to college any more; he was going to Germany this time.