life, and made a vast number of friends; and when he was not staying
with them, he and his mother were supremely happy together. He
walked with her, read to her, sang to her, and played with her
pupils. He had always been brought up as the heir--petted, humoured,
and waited on--a post which he filled with goodhumoured easy grace,
and which he continued to fill in the same manner, though he had no
one to wait on him but his mother, and her faithful servant Jane
Beckett. Years passed on, and they seemed perfectly satisfied with
their division of labour,--Mrs. Frost kept school, and Henry played
the flute, or shot over the Ormersfield property.

If any one remonstrated, Henry was always said to be waiting for a
government appointment, which was to be procured by the Ormersfield
interest. More for the sake of his mother than of himself, the
Ormersfield interest was at length exerted, and the appointment was
conferred on him. The immediate consequence was his marriage with
the first pretty girl he met, poorer than himself, and all the
Ormersfield interest failed to make his mother angry with him.

The cholera of 1832 put an end to poor Henry's desultory life. His
house, in a crowded part of London, was especially doomed by the
deadly sickness; and out of the whole family the sole survivors were
a little girl of ten months old, and a boy of seven years, the latter
of whom was with his grandmother at Northwold.

Mrs. Frost was one of the women of whom affection makes unconscious
heroines. She could never sink, as long as there was aught to need
her love and care; and though Henry had been her darling, the very
knowledge that his orphans had no one but herself to depend on,
seemed to brace her energies with fresh life. They were left