'Oh, quite close,' cried Mrs. Thornburgh brightening at last, and
like a great general, leaving one scheme in ruins, only the more
ardently to take up another. 'There is the house,' and she pointed
out Burwood among its trees. Then with her eye eagerly fixed upon
him she fell into a more or less incoherent account of her favorites.
She laid on hot colors thickly, and Elsmere at once assumed
extravagance.

'A saint, a beauty, and a wit all to yourselves in these wilds!'
he said laughing. 'What luck! But what on earth brought them here--a
widow and three daughters--from the south? It was an odd settlement
surely, though you have one of the loveliest valleys and the purest
airs in England.'

'Oh, as to lovely valleys,' said Mrs. Thornburgh, sighing, 'I think
it very dull; I always have. When one has to depend for everything
on a carrier that gets drunk, too! Why you know they belong here.
They're real Westmoreland people.'

'What does that mean exactly?'

'Oh, their grandfather was a farmer, just like one of the common
farmers about. Only his land was his own and theirs isn't.'

'He was one of the last of the statesmen,' interposed Mr.
Thornburgh--who, having rescued his sermon from Jane's tender
mercies, and put out his modest claret and sherry for the evening,
had strolled out again and found himself impelled as usual to put
some precision into his wife's statements--'one of the small