The months went by—­heavy and anxious months; for the school gradually dwindled away, and Ascott’s letter—­now almost the only connection his aunts had with the outer world, for poverty necessarily diminished even their small Stowbury society—­became more and more unsatisfactory; and the want of information in them was not supplied by those other letters which had once kept Johanna’s heart easy concerning the boy.

Mr. Lyon had written once before sailing, nay, after sailing, for he had sent it home by the pilot from the English Channel; then there was, of course, silence.  October, November, December, January, February, March—­how often did Hilary count the months, and wonder how soon a letter would come, whether a letter ever would come again.  And sometimes—­the sharp present stinging her with its small daily pains, the future looking dark before her and them all—­she felt so forlorn, so forsaken, that but for a certain tiny well-spring of hope, which rarely dries up till long after three-and twenty, she could have sat down and sighed, “My good days are done.”

Rich people break their hearts much sooner than poor people; that is, they more easily get into that morbid state which is glorified by the term, “a broken heart.”  Poor people can not afford it.  Their constant labor “physics pain.”  Their few and narrow pleasures seldom pall.  Holy poverty! black as its dark side is, it has its bright side too, that is, when it is honest, fearless, free from selfishness. wastefulness, and bickerings; above all, free from the terror of debt.

“We’ll starve, we’ll go into the work house rather than we’ll go into debt!” cried Hilary once, in a passion of tears, when she was in sore want of a shawl, and Selina urged her to get it, and wait till she could pay for it.  “Yes; the work house!  It would be less shame to be honorably indebted to the laws of the land than to be meanly indebted, under false pretences, to any individual in it”.

And when, in payment for some accidental lessons, she got next month enough money to buy a shawl, and a bonnet, too—­nay, by great ingenuity, another bonnet for Johanna—­Hilary could have danced and sang—­sang, in the gladness and relief of her heart, the glorious euthanasia of poverty.

But these things happened only occasionally; the daily life was hard still; ay, very hard, even though at last came the letter from “foreign parts;” and following it, at regular intervals, other letters.  They were full of facts rather than feelings—­simple, straightforward; worth little as literary compositions; school-master and learned man as he was, there was nothing literary or poetical about Mr. Lyon; but what he wrote was like what he spoke, the accurate reflection of his own clear, original mind and honest, tender heart.