I do hope Ephraim Hebblethwaite is not very unhappy about Fanny. I should think it must be dreadful, when you love any one very much, to see her go and give herself quite away to somebody else. And Ambrose thinks of going to live in Cheshire, where his uncle has a large farm, and he has no children, so the farm will come to Ambrose some day; and his uncle, Mr Minshull, would like him to come and live there now. Of course, if that be settled so, we shall lose Fanny altogether. Must there always be changes and break-ups in this world? I do not mean the change of death: that, we know, must come. But why must there be all these other changes? Why could we not go on quietly as we were? It seems now as if we should never be the same any more. If that uncle of Cecilia's would only have tied her to the leg of a table, or locked her up in her bed-chamber, or done something to keep her down there in the South, so that she had never come to torment us! I suppose I ought not to wish that, if she makes Father happier. Ay, but will she make him happy? That is just what I am uncomfortable about! I don't believe she cares a pin for him, though I dare say she likes well enough to be the Squire's lady, and queen it at Brocklebank. Somehow, I cannot trust those tawny eyes, with their sidelong glances. Am I very wicked, or is she? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Will things never give over happening? This morning, just after I came down--there were only my Aunt Kezia, Mr Keith, Flora, and me in the dining-parlour--we suddenly heard the great bell of Brocklebank Church begin to toll. My Aunt Kezia set down the chocolate-pot. "It must be somebody who has died suddenly, poor soul!" cried she. "Maybe, Ellen Armathwaite's baby: it looked very bad when I saw it last, on Thursday. Hark!" The bell stopped tolling, and we listened for the sound which would tell us the sex and age of the departed. "One!" Then silence. That meant a man. Ellen Armathwaite's baby girl it could not be. Then the bell began again, and we counted. It tolled on up to twenty-- thirty--forty: we could not think who it could be. "Surely not Farmer Catterall!" said my Aunt Kezia, "I have often felt afraid of an apoplexy for him." But the bell went on past sixty, and we knew it was not Farmer Catterall. "Is it never going to stop?" said Flora, when it had passed eighty. My Aunt Kezia went to the door, and calling Sam, bade him go out and inquire. Still the bell tolled on. It stopped just as Sam came in, at ninety-six. "Who is it, Sam?--one of the old bedesmen?" "Nay, Mrs Kezia; puir soul, 'tis just the auld Vicar!" "Mr Digby!" we all cried together. "Ay; my mither found him deid i' his bed early this morrow. She's come up to tell ye, an' to ask gin' ye can spare me to go and gi'e a haun', for that puir witless body, Mr Anthony Parmenter, seems all but daft."