It seemed for a time, however, that my auguries were likely to prove false, and that Amabel's course of true love was like to run smooth. Just about Christmas time Mr. Cheriton paid us a visit, bringing letters from Sir Julius to Mrs. Deborah and to Amabel herself. Sir Julius wrote very kindly to his daughter. He said she was rather young to marry, and must wait at least a year, but as Mr. Cheriton was a man of good family, and had a competent fortune beside his living, and a likelihood of church preferment, he should make no objection to his paying his addresses to his daughter. What he wrote to Mrs. Deborah I don't know, but she received Mr. Cheriton very politely, even though he and his family were known for steadfast adherents to the reigning dynasty, and hoped she should have the pleasure of seeing his father and mother at Highbeck Hall during the Christmas season. They came accordingly—he, a venerable, kind old man, very sincerely religious in his fashion, and though a little perplexed as to his son's new-fangled ways, as he called them, yet quite willing to accept them, and believe they must be good because Walter said so; she, the very model of a Lady Bountiful, a perfect housekeeper, a famous concoctor of syrups, draughts, and emulsions, of broth and brewis, the kind if somewhat arbitrary friend of the poor. She had not been in the house two hours, before she had propounded at least a dozen different remedies for Aunt Chloe's cough, from bread jelly with lemon-peel and raisins, to a couple of snails boiled in her tea-water. This last was confided in a whisper to Aunt Deborah, as it was essential to the cure that the patient should know nothing about it. Both these good people took very kindly to Amabel, and invited us both to visit them. Mrs. Cheriton presented Amabel with a pair of pearl ear-rings which had been given herself on her wedding day, and promised her some silver which had been in the family three hundred years at least. (Did any one ever hear of an heirloom which had been in a family for less than three hundred years?) The subject of politics was kept out of sight by mutual consent, so we all parted excellent friends.