And then she stopped, poor girl, from utter inability to make herself understood by the parent whose cold unwomanly eyes were fixed with such unassisting scrutiny on her blushing face. There are mothers and mothers, even as (I was about to say) there are friends and friends: but in using such a conjunction I was wrong, for of that rare hypostasis there can be but one variety; degrees of comparison exist not in that particular noun substantive of the many which signify “to be, to do, and to suffer.” Either a friend’s love passeth the love of woman, and he sticketh closer than a brother, or he is that daily-met-with and more generally-useful thing, _id est_, a good-natured acquaintance, whose services, should they not chance to interfere with his own requirements, may possibly be at our disposal. But to return to Rhoda Vavasour’s natural friend--to the one being who had it in her power, and whose sacred duty it was, as far as mortal skill can do the heavenly work, to make the crooked straight and the rough places plain to the weaker and the tottering vessel, who was less able than herself to bear the burden and the heat of the day. A few words softly, wisely spoken, a kind caress, the sweet conviction, in some unknown mysterious way conveyed, that she, the mother, was the best, the most heaven-deputed guardian for her child, would have convinced that child, whose experience of life was _nil_, and who had seen no man save her brothers whom she could compare with the right-minded young rector of Switcham, that an engagement with that reverend gentleman might not be exactly a desirable consummation, or one, save by the good man himself, prudently as well as _devoutly_ to be wished. Rhoda was a girl thoroughly amenable to reason, as well as one whom the silken cords of affection could have led with the lightest, tenderest touch. Delicate of frame, physically as well as mentally, she could ill bear the wear and tear of either excitement or worry; and perhaps George Wallingford had said no more than the truth when he suggested that her life, in the seclusion of a country parsonage, would probably pass more happily away than were the nervous girl to be thrown into the whirlpool of stir and fashion, there to be tossed to and fro amongst the vessels of iron, against which her frailer, humbler self would be hopelessly, maybe, bruised and broken.