for fits of crying when Ellen’s weakness caused
delays. Martyn’s holidays had been a time
of rapture to her, for there was no one to attend
much to her at home, and she was too young to enter
into the weight of anxiety; so the two had run as
wild together as a gracious well-trained damsel of
ten and a fourteen-year-old boy with tender chivalry
awake in him could well do. To be out of the
way was all that was asked of her for the time, and
all old delights, such as the robbers’ cave,
were renewed with fresh zest.
‘It was the sweetest and the last.’
And though Martyn was gone back to school, the child
felt the wrench from home most severely. As
she told me on one of those sorrowful days, ’She
did think she had come back to live at dear, dear little
Hillside all the days of her life.’ Poor
child, we became convinced that this vehement attachment
to Griffith’s brothers was one factor in Mrs.
Fordyce’s desire to make a change that should
break off these habits of intimacy and dependence.
Pluralities had not become illegal, and Frank Fordyce,
being still the chief landholder in Hillside, and
wishing to keep up his connection with his people,
did not resign the rectory, though he put the curate
into the house, and let the farm. Once or twice
a year he came to fulfil some of a landlord’s
duties, and was as genial and affectionate as ever,
but more and more absorbed in the needs of Beachharbour,
and unconsciously showing his own growth in devotion
and activity; while he brought his splendid health
and vigour, his talent, his wealth, and, above all,
his winning charm of manner and address, to that
magnificent work at Beachharbour, well known to all
of you; though, perhaps, you never guessed that the
foundation of all those churches and their grand
dependent works of piety, mercy, and beneficence
was laid in one young girl’s grave. I
never heard of a fresh achievement there without remembering
how the funeral psalm ends with —
’Prosper Thou the work of our hands upon us,
O prosper Thou our handiwork.’
And Emily? Her drooping after the loss of her
friend was sad, but it would have been sadder but
for the spirit Ellen had infused. We found
the herbs to heal our woe round our pathway, though
the first joyousness of life had departed.
The reports Mr. Henderson and the Hillside curate
brought from Oxford were great excitements to us,
and we thought and puzzled over church doctrine, and
tried to impart it to our scholars. We I say,
for Henderson had made me take a lads’ class,
which has been the chief interest of my life.
Even the roughest were good to their helpless teacher,
and some men, as gray-headed as myself, still come
every Sunday to read with Mr. Edward, and are among
the most faithful friends of my life.
’Shall such mean little creatures pretend to
the fashion? Cousin Turkey Cock, well may you
be in a passion.’
