“Jonathan, can I see the baronet?”

“What, at nine in the morning, Grace Acton!  Call again at two, and you may find him getting up.  He hasn’t been three hours a-bed yet, and there’s nobody about but Sarah Stack and me.  I wish those Lunnun sparks would but leave the place:  they do his honour no good, I’m thinking.”

“Not till two!” was the slow and mournful ejaculation.  What a damper to her buoyant hopes:  and Providence had seen fit to give her ill-success.  Is it so?  Prosperity may come in other shapes.

“Why, Grace,” suddenly said Floyd, in a very nervous way, “what makes you call upon my master in this tidy trim?”

“To save my father,” answered Innocence.

“How? why?  Oh don’t, Grace, don’t!  I’ll save him—­I will indeed—­what is it?  Oh, don’t, don’t!”

For the poor affectionate fellow conjured on the spot the black vision of a father saved by a daughter’s degradation.

“Don’t, Jonathan?—­it’s my duty, and God will bless me in it.  That cruel Mr. Jennings has resolved upon our ruin, and I wished to tell Sir John the truth of it.”

At this hearing, Jonathan brightened up, and glibly said, “Ah, indeed, Jennings is a trouble to us all:  a sad life I’ve led of it this year past; and I’ve paid him pretty handsomely too, to let me keep the place:  while, as for John Page and the grooms, and Mr. Coachman and the helpers, they don’t touch much o’ their wages on quarter-day, I know.”

“Oh, but we—­we are ruined! ruined!  Father is forbidden now to labour for our bread.”  And then with many tears she told her tale.

“Stop, Miss Grace,” suddenly said Jonathan, for her beauty and eloquence transformed the cottager into a lady in his eyes, and no wonder; “pray, stop a minute, Miss—­please to take a seat; I sha’n’t be gone an instant.”

And the good-hearted fellow, whose eyes had long been very red, broke away at a gallop; but he was back again almost as soon as gone, panting like a post-horse.  “Oh, Grace! don’t be angry! do forgive me what I am going to do.”

“Do, Jonathan?” and the beauty involuntarily started—­“I hope it’s nothing wrong,” she added, solemnly.

“Whether right or wrong, Grace, take it kindly; you have often bade me read my Bible, and I do so many times both for the sake of it and you; ay, and meet with many pretty sayings in it:  forgive me if I act on one—­’It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” With that, he thrust into her hand a brass-topped, red-leather purse, stuffed with money.  Generous fellow! all the little savings, that had heretofore escaped the prying eye and filching grasp of Simon Jennings.  There was some little gold in it, more silver, and a lot of bulky copper.

“Dear Jonathan!” exclaimed Grace, quite thrown off her guard of maidenly reserve, “this is too kind, too good, too much; indeed, indeed it is:  I cannot take the purse.”  And her bright eyes overflowed again.