Mrs. Tempest had never been known to be unkind to anyone. She regarded all her fellow-creatures with a gentle tolerance. They were there, a necessary element of the universe, and she bore with them. But she had never attached herself particularly to anybody except the Squire. Him she adored. He took all the trouble of life off her hands, and gave her all good things. She had been poor, and he had made her rich; nobody, and he had elevated her into somebody. She loved him with a canine fidelity, and felt towards him as a dog feels towards his master--that in him this round world begins and ends. "Yes," assented Rorie, with a sigh, "I'm going up to-morrow." "Why up?" inquired Miss McCroke, without lifting her eyes from her needles. "It isn't up on the map." "I hope you are going to get a grand degree," continued Mrs. Tempest, in that soft conciliatory voice of hers; "Senior Wrangler, or something." "That's the other shop," exclaimed Rorie; "they grow that sort of timber at Cambridge. However, I hope to pull myself through somehow or other this time, for my mother's sake. She attaches a good deal of importance to it, though for my own part I can't see what good it can do me. It won't make me farm my own land better, or ride straighter to hounds, or do my duty better to my tenants." "Education," said Miss McCroke sententiously, "is always a good, and we cannot too highly estimate its influence upon----" "Oh yes, I know," answered Rorie quickly, for he knew that when the floodgates of Miss McCroke's eloquence were once loosened the tide ran strong, "when house and lands are gone and spent a man may turn usher in an academy, and earn fifty pounds a year and his laundress's bill by grinding Caesar's Commentaries into small boys. But I shouldn't lay in a stock of learning with that view. When my house and lands are gone I'll go after them--emigrate, and go into the lumber trade in Canada." "What a dreadful idea," said Mrs. Tempest; "but you are not going to lose house and lands, Roderick--such a nice place as Briarwood." "To my mind it's rather a commonplace hole," answered the young man carelessly, "but the land is some of the best in the county." It must be nearly seven by this time, he thought. He was getting through this period of probation better than he had expected. Mrs. Tempest gave a little stifled yawn behind her huge black fan, upon which Cupids and Graces, lightly sketched in French gray, were depicted dancing in the airiest attitudes, after Boucher. Roderick would have liked to yawn in concert, but at this juncture a sudden ray of light flashed upon him and showed him a way of escape. "I think I'll go to the gentleman's room, and make myself decent before the second bell rings," he said. "Do," assented Mrs. Tempest, with another yawn; and the young man fled.