At this moment the object under dispute came tripping into the room, dressed in a simple muslin gown with a neat coarse straw bonnet tied closely under her soft round chin. Mrs. Rushmere glanced up at the lovely smiling girl, so graceful in all her movements, so artless and winning in her unaffected simplicity, and quite realized her husband's idea, that she was not fit for a ploughman's help-mate. "Well, Doll, lass, what's up at the parsonage?" cried the farmer. "Your face is all of a glow and brimful of summat." "Our old vicar is dead, father; Mr. Martin has just got the news." "Bless my soul, Mr. Conyers gone? Why he be a young man to me," and he pushed his hands through his gray locks. "What did a' die of, lass?" "Apoplexy--it was quite sudden. He had just eaten a hearty dinner, when he fell down in a fit, and never spoke again." "Ah, them parsons generally die o' that. They be great yeaters, and the stomach, they do say, affects the head. It seems like putting the cart afore the horse, don't it, dame?" "I ran up to tell you," continued Dorothy, "that Mrs. Martin sends her best compliments to you, father, and would esteem it a great favour if you would allow me to stay all day at the parsonage, to help her prepare rooms for the use of the new vicar, who is going to board with her, and is expected down to-night." "Whew," cried Rushmere, snapping his fingers. "I think Mrs. Martin had better keep you altogether. She's a clever woman to make use of other people's servants. I have a great mind to send you back to tell her that I won't let you go." Dorothy was silent. Experience had taught her that it was the best policy never to answer her father in these moods. Left to himself his better nature generally prevailed. "And who be the new vicar, Dolly?" asked her mother, who seldom failed in getting her adopted child out of these scrapes, by diverting her husband's attention to another object. "Mr. Gerard Fitzmorris, a first cousin of my lord's." "I knew his father," said Rushmere, "when he was raising a regiment here, to fight the rebels in Ireland. He was a bad man. A drunkard an' a gambler, and got killed in a duel. His wife ran away with another officer. He followed them to France, challenged her seducer, an' got the worst of it. His death was no loss to the world, or to his family. So, so, this is his son. Poor stuff to make a man o' God out on' one would think." "Children do not always inherit their parents' vices," suggested Mrs. Rushmere. "It would be bad for the world if they did. But somehow I ha' found that they often bear a strong family likeness," muttered the farmer. "Well, girl, an' when do the new parson commence his work?" "He will read himself in next Sunday morning. Mr. Martin says that he is an excellent preacher, and a real Christian. Not one made so by education, and from having been born and brought up in a Christian land, but from conversion, and an earnest desire to be of use in the church."