The voice was weak and tearful, but there was in it unmistakable eagerness to be informed. Mrs. Thornburgh, overjoyed, let loose upon her a flood of particulars, painted the virtues and talents of Mrs. Elsmere, described Robert’s Oxford career, with an admirable sense for effect, and a truly feminine capacity for murdering every university detail, drew pictures of the Murewell living, and rectory, of which Robert had photographs with him, threw in adroit information about the young man’s private means, and in general showed what may be made of a woman’s mind under the stimulus of one of the occupations most proper to it. Mrs. Leyburn brightened visibly as the flood proceeded. Alas, poor Catherine! How little room there is for the heroic in this trivial everyday life of ours! Catherine a bride, Catherine a wife and mother, dim visions of a white soft morsel in which Catherine’s eyes and smile should live again--all these thoughts went trembling and flashing through Mrs. Leyburn’s mind as she listened to Mrs. Thornburgh. There is so much of the artist in the maternal mind, of the artist who longs to see the work of his hand in fresh combinations and under all points of view. Catherine, in the heat of her own self-surrender, had perhaps forgotten that her mother too had a heart! ‘Yes, it all sounds very well’ said Mrs. Leyburn at last, sighing, ‘but, you know, Catherine isn’t easy to manage.’ ‘Could you talk to her--find out a little?’ ‘Well, not to-day; I shall hardly see her. Doesn’t it seem to you that when a girl takes up notions like Catherine’s she hasn’t time for thinking about the young men? Why, she’s as full of business all day long as an egg’s full of meat. Well, it was my poor Richard’s doing--it was his doing, bless him! I am not going to say anything against it but it was different--once.’ ‘Yes, I know,’ said Mrs. Thornburgh, thoughtfully. ‘One had plenty of time, when you and I were young, to sit at home and think what one was going to wear, and how one would look, and whether he had been paying attention to any one else; and if he had, why; and all that. And now the young women are so superior. But the marrying has got to be done somehow all the same. What is she doing to-day?’ ‘Oh, she’ll be busy all to-day and to-morrow; I hardly expect to see her till Saturday.’ Mrs. Thornburgh gave a start of dismay. ‘Why, what is the matter now?’ she cried in her most aggrieved tones. ‘My dear Mrs. Leyburn, one would think we had the cholera in the parish. Catherine just spoils the people.’ ‘Don’t you remember,’ said Mrs. Leyburn, staring in her turn, and drawing herself up a little, ‘that to-morrow is Midsummer Day, and that Mary Backhouse is as bad as she can be?’ ‘Mary Backhouse! Why I had forgotten all about her!’ cried the vicar’s wife, with sudden remorse. And she sat pensively eyeing the carpet awhile.