thought at once severe and imaginative) reduces into links of early
association, explaining that he loved women who squinted, because,
when he was a boy, a girl with that infirmity squinted at him from the
other side of his father's garden-wall! Ah! be this union between man
and woman what it may; if it be really love, really the bond which
embraces the innermost and bettermost self of both,--how daily,
hourly, momently, should we bless God for having made it so easy to be
happy and to be good!"



CHAPTER VI.

THE dinner-party at Mr. Braefield's was not quite so small as Kenelm
had anticipated. When the merchant heard from his wife that Kenelm
was coming, he thought it would be but civil to the young gentleman to
invite a few other persons to meet him.

"You see, my dear," he said to Elsie, "Mrs. Cameron is a very good,
simple sort of woman, but not particularly amusing; and Lily, though a
pretty girl, is so exceedingly childish. We owe much, my sweet Elsie,
to this Mr. Chillingly,"--here there was a deep tone of feeling in his
voice and look,--"and we must make it as pleasant for him as we can.
I will bring down my friend Sir Thomas, and you ask Mr. Emlyn and his
wife. Sir Thomas is a very sensible man, and Emlyn a very learned
one. So Mr. Chillingly will find people worth talking to. By the by,
when I go to town I will send down a haunch of venison from Groves's."

So when Kenelm arrived, a little before six o'clock, he found in the
drawing-room the Rev. Charles Emlyn, vicar of Moleswich proper, with