“Bah! Your bookbinder-fellow! What has he to do with it?” “Nothing at all. It wasn't for him either, it was for God's sake I held my peace, mammy. If _all_ his children quarrelled like you and dad, what a house he would have! It was for God's sake I said nothing; and you know, mammy, you've made it up with God, and you mustn't go and be naughty again!” The mother stood silent and still. It seemed for an instant as if the old fever had come back, for she shivered. She turned and went to her chair, sat down, and again was still. A minute after, her forehead flushed like a flame, turned white, then flushed and paled again several times. Then she gave a great sigh, and the conflict was over. She smiled, and from that moment she also never said a word about Miss Brown. But in the silence of her thought, Barbara suffered, for what might not be the fate of Miss Brown! No one but a genuine lover of animals would believe how she suffered. In her mind's eye she kept seeing her turn her head with sharp-curved neck in her stall, or shoot it over the door of her box, looking and longing for her mistress, and wondering why she did not come to pat her, or feed her, or saddle her for the joyous gallop across grass and green hedge; and the heart of her mistress was sore for her. But at length one day in church, they read the psalm in which come the words, “Thou, Lord, shalt save both man and beast!” and they went to her soul. She reflected that if Miss Brown was in trouble, it might be for the saving of Miss Brown: she had herself got enough good from trouble to hope for that! For she heartily believed the animals partakers in the redemption of Jesus Christ; and she fancied perhaps they knew more about it than we think,--the poor things are so silent! Anyhow she saw that the reasonable thing was to let God look after his own; and if Miss Brown was not his, how could she _be_? But the mother was sending all over the country to find who had Miss Brown; and she had not inquired long before she learned that she was in the stables at Mortgrange. There she knew she would be well treated, and therefore told Barbara the result of her inquiries. CHAPTER LVI. _WINGFOLD AND BARBARA_. Barbara went yet oftener to Mr. and Mrs. Wingfold. By this time, through Simon Armour, they knew something about Richard, but none of them all felt at liberty to talk about him. Barbara had now a better guide in her reading than Richard. True reader as he had been, Wingfold's acquaintance both with literature and its history, that is, its relation to the development of the people, was as much beyond the younger man's as it ought to be. What in Barbara Richard had begun well, Wingfold was carrying on better.