so big and wants her less. Things do settle themselves. If any one
had told her twenty years ago that Richard would have a great woollen
factory living, and Cocksmoor and Stoneborough meet, and a separate
parish be made, with a disgusting paper-mill, two churches, and a
clergyman's wife-—(what's the female of whipper-snapper, Lance?)-—who
treats her as—-"

"As an extinct volcano," murmured Lance.

"She would have thought her heart would be broken," pursued Gertrude.
"Whereas now she owns that it is the best thing, and a great relief,
for she could not attend to Cocksmoor and my father both. We want
her to take a holiday, but she never will. Once she did when Blanche
and Hector came to stay, but he was not happy, hardly well, and I
don't think she will ever leave him again."

"Mrs. Rivers is working still in London?"

"Oh yes; I don't know what the charities of all kinds and
descriptions would do without her."

"No," said Clement from his easy-chair. "She is a most valuable
person. She has such good judgment."

"It has been her whole life ever since poor George Rivers' fatal
accident," said Gertrude. "I hardly remember her before she was
married, except a sense that I was naughty with her, and then she was
terribly sad. But since she gave up Abbotstoke to young Dickie May
she has been much brighter, and she can do more than any one at
Cocksmoor. She manages Cocksmoor and London affairs in her own way,