absented himself from service, and speculate at his leisure whether a bull-baiting or a cock-fight had lured to sinful delight, and recall to a nicety the amount that stood to the delinquent’s debit in the long narrow, greasy, skin-bound ledger of hieroglyphics that only Ephraim understood, and at whose sight the stoutest good dame’s heart would sink and the shrillest-tongued virago’s voice be hushed.

Mr. Thorpe was a widower, and though it is possible—such is the amiable of a women for the bereaved and afflicted—that more than one might have been willing and lend attentive ear had he wooed again, a widower, Ephraim announced, he meant to live and die. His daughter, and only child, Martha, was old enough to keep the house above the shop, in which the father and daughter dwelt. The spiteful gossips of the village said she was not only old enough, but ugly enough. But said gossips suffered their critical judgment of the daughter to be warped by their unfavourable opinion of the father. It cannot be denied that Martha’s hair was not only of somewhat harsh and coarse texture, but of hue from her sire. It is true also that her face was angular and pinched, and freckled to boot, and that her form displayed none of the graceful curves so suggestive of clinging warmth and seductive softness; nor was her voice the soft and dulcet fluting that disarms not less than melting eye or witching smile. Poor Martha had been crushed and stifled and starved all her life. She had never loved nor been loved but the timid, wistful, yearning look that stole unbidden from her grey eyes told of a heart that hungered for the love that makes a woman’s life. Though she lived, and had lived for years under the same roof with her father, she could not remember to have heard from his lips one caressing word, to have received from his hand one gentle touch, or; seen from his eye one glance of affection. He was not unkind to her, save in the negative way which is the withholding of kindness; nay, if in any way. Ephraim could be said to be extravagant it was in the lavish adornment of his daughter’s person. The vicar’s wife had not a richer silk or costlier shawl; no manufacturer’s daughter finer feathers or more elegant bracelet. But Martha would have preferred a much homelier garb and a necklace of beads or jet; she asked only to slink unnoticed through her chill life, and had an half-formulated idea that her father dressed her as he did his shop windows, in the way of trade and to abash his neighbours.

Martha had practically no friends. The daughters of the manufacturers could, of course, not be expected to have more than a go-to-meeting, bowing acquaintance with a shop-keeper’s daughter, 

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