Susie made no objections about remaining behind, when John thus rushed away. She was pleased with the village, the quietness, the retirement, the new friends; and, as has been said, she had never been so much made of, never met with so many attentions all her life. The old gardener and his wife whom John had managed to pick up again, and instal as guardians of the house, according to his old dream, were in the first place her devoted servants, telling her all manner of stories about her grandparents, which were very pleasant to Susie; and then she had visits from everybody to comfort or to explain to her. Mrs. Egerton came, full of anxiety, appealing to her as a person of sense to say whether she did not think her brother far too young to take the serious engagements of life upon him--whether it was not a pity for a young man to tie a millstone round his own neck--whether she had ever seen an engagement turn out well that had been formed so indefinitely, where there was no likelihood of a conclusion to it for years? This was the tone Mrs. Egerton had now taken up: and indeed she was too much of a gentlewoman at any time to have troubled Susie with any hint of the inequality in family and circumstances, which she had pointed out so distinctly to John. And then Elly would come with her letters, to ask what news Susie had, and to talk about Jack and herself--herself and Jack, and what they had done when they were ‘young,’ and what now they meant to do. Percy too had got a habit of ‘looking in’ when he came in from his rounds in the parish. He tried to interest Susie in parish work, and, indeed, did get from her a wonderful deal of information and help in the matter of the cottage hospital which he and the parish doctor were so anxious to get up-- Percy, in order to get the sick poor to some small extent provided for, the doctor with perhaps the less virtuous motive of studying disease. She gave him a great deal of help, but that did not altogether account for the constant visits he paid her, nor the deferential tone in which he spoke, and the respect with which he received all her little opinions. On the subject of hospitals, it was true, Susie knew more than anyone else in the whole parish: but on others her opinions were timid and not at all self-assured. Yet with what respect this young man, who put aside Elly’s much more convinced and enlightened views, listened to the little which Miss Sandford had to say! He almost frightened Susie by the earnestness of his attention, frightened her, flattered her, in the end amused her very much, and made her laugh to herself in private at the new position she held, quoted and looked up to as in all her life she had never been before. Susie could not tell why. She was older than he was, and she understood his kind better than he understood hers, and had not in reality as much reverence for the type of curate as he had. But yet he came every day, and told