CHAPTER XIII.

HONOR'S INTERCESSION.

WOODSIDE, as Mr. Grey's house was called, lay in a little hollow scooped out of the main road, and forming a sort of dingle, beside which flowed the trout-stream; the garden ascended at the back, and led by a gate into a small pine-wood, which looked deliciously shady by day, but somewhat sombre by night, the house being perfectly lonely, with the exception of two cottages lower down the road.

Dym thought the steep garden beautiful, and longed to explore it; but on nearer view it was somewhat wild and uncultivated; weeds grew in the garden paths, and roses and lilies bloomed amid cabbages and tall straggling heads of asparagus; the ivy that covered the house was graceful in its negligence, but sadly required cropping and training; and two boys and a girl, looking equally uncared for, were playing at horses before the gate. They rushed up to Honor at once, and the leadera pretty little dark-eyed thing-exclaimed,

"Oh, I am so glad you've come, Miss Nethecote! Now mamma won't cry any more to-day."

"If mamma is ill, you should not have left her, Amy," returned Honor, reprovingly. And the child hung her head.

"Mother said we might go out and play, as she wasn't well enough to hear us our lessons," shouted the driver—a sturdy bright-faced boy of nine.

"Never mind, Rupert, you shall do your Latin with me," observed Miss Nethecote, consolingly. And as the young stu dent looked anything but gratified, she added, "I have some fine pears for some good children, but they must be fairly earned first."

"Oh, I'll come in and do my sums!" called out Edgar, the second boy.

Mayn't I hem my duster?" pleaded Amy.

Honor smiled, and then bade them all come in quietly by and by. She only wanted to introduce a new friend to their mother, and then she would attend to them.

The outside of the house had prepared Dym for the total want of comfort and even cleanliness in the inside; but, as Miss Nethecote observed in a low voice,

"How was a woman with bad health, and six children, and only one servant, to keep a place tidy and comfortable?"

Dym thought she would have managed better when she saw the living-room of the family. The muslin curtains were torn and soiled; the table-cover spotted with ink; lesson-books strewn hither and thither; a Noah's ark was on the floor; and a sickly-looking child lay fast asleep with a box of tin soldiers beside her and a headless doll hugged tightly in her arms. Honor picked her up, by way of beginning, and nearly crushed a farmyard and half a dozen ducks and geese; two or three trees crackled crisply under her feet.

Mrs. Grey lay on a couch at the end of the room, with a piled-up basket of mending beside her. A great boy of three was fretfully trying to clamber up in her lap, and a beautiful infant lay fast asleep in an old-fashioned cradle with rockers. Honor deposited the sleeping child carefully on the couch at the mother's feet, and, lifting the boy into her arms, and rocking the cradle at the same time, quietly introduced Dym. Now, Esther, you must cheer up; for I have brought Miss Elliott to talk to you."

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"You have brought her into a sad untidy place, I am afraid; but I am very glad to see you, Miss Elliott, all the same. new face is rather a treat in these parts: I never see any one but Honor-never."

"Except Mrs. Chichester and Mrs. Fortescue now and then, you mean. And you forget how kind Mrs. Trevor was last summer."

"Yes; but she has not been for a long time. I was only saying so to Edward this morning; but, as I told him, what inducement can any one have to come to such a place? Please sit down, Miss Elliott. I am afraid the children have littered all the chairs."

"She shall have mine, for I want to clear up the room; and then I have promised to take Rupert to his lessons. Miss Elliott, I believe you are fond of children: will you take poor Harry? he is not very well, and wants to be nursed." And, before Dym could answer, she found herself rocking the cradle, with a sleepy boy on her lap who took up all her attention

"I am afraid he will tire you, Miss Elliott," observed his mother.

Mrs. Grey had a soft monotonous voice, with a fretful chord in it, like Harry's. Was this the woman that Honor liked best in Birstwith-better even than Mrs. Chichester and good-natured merry little Mrs. Trevor? Dym found herself wondering and watching her hostess between the intervals of rocking.

She was certainly an interesting-looking young woman. The shape of the face was almost as fine as Honor's, and she had large sad-looking brown eyes. Dym found out afterwards she had been a great beauty; but constant ill health had faded the fresh complexion, making her look sallow and older than her age. The pretty soft hair was thin, and brushed carelessly from the face, as though Esther Grey had ceased to care for her own good looks; and her dress was put on with the same negligence: the loose sleeves showed the white wasted arms pitiably, and Dym had quite shrunk from the touch of the thin hot fingers.

One thing she noticed: Mrs. Grey was evidently a fond mother; for her eyes brightened when Dym praised Harry's curly hair and commented on the beauty of the babyanother boy--and her voice lost a little of its dreary whine, as Rupert and Edgar came in with their hair nicely brushed and took their places at the table with Honor, while little Amy gathered up the remnant of the toys and then sat quietly to work on her duster.

"The children are all as good as gold when Honor is here," whispered Mrs. Grey. "And then she teaches them so beautifully. Rupert learns twice as fast with her as he does with me; and he is such a clever boy! I am afraid I haven't the right knack of teaching. He asks me questions, and that makes me nervous. I am a sad invalid, Miss Elliott."

Dym put a civil question or two, which soon brought out a whole list of ailments from the poor lady. Dym asked Miss Nethecote afterwards whether she really had all that matter with her, and was told very gravely in answer that she feared Mrs. Grey was very delicate. Dym grew to understand her interest in her after a time, when she knew both better.

Poor Esther Grey had married for love, very unwisely, as all her friends said; and, indeed, she little knew what was

before her when she accepted the young doctor, Edward Grey. "And she might have married any one," as one of them observed-a rich East India director, an uncle of Esther's, who had just died without leaving them a penny. But she was

only eighteen; and Edward Grey was good-looking and very much in love; and everything went on as merrily as weddingbells for the first two or three years. Esther was not a very good manager, but she looked wonderfully beautiful; and Mr. Grey was disposed to be lenient, and to think that she would. do better as she grew older.

And doubtless this would have been the case if Esther had had a mother to advise her, or even had she known Honor sooner; but Mr. Grey had not yet begun to practice in Birstwith. The close street and the small house in the smoky suburb of Leeds began to oppress the young country beauty, the children came too fast, and the little household grew more pinched and straitened every day; Esther's fresh roses paled, her spirits declined, she grew wan and anxious, then fretful; naturally sweet-tempered and lymphatic, she soon ceased efforts that seemed unavailing, and before youth was past sank into a nervous invalid.

Most people pitied Mr. Grey, but in truth the fault lay on both sides. He was a clever, energetic man, indefatigable in his profession, and much loved by his patients; but as the years went on, transforming Esther from the petted wife into the harassed, worn-out mother, he was a little hard on her, his comfortless home was distasteful to him, he grew weary of constant complaints and ailments; at times when he came home jaded and weary, and needing those little nameless offices which wives generally delight to offer, he would speak almost roughly to her: "If you would make some effort, things would not be so shamefully neglected," he said sometimes. And so they grew apart. Esther was too gentle to retaliate, but her tears were the constant source of annoyance to her husband; in time she ceased to tell him of her nervous fancies, she began to suffer in silence; she never told him now what was the truth, that such efforts were beyond her. With the consciousness of failing strength there came a new, strange tenderness into her heart for the husband of her youth. "He will learn to hate me and to hate his home," she said once to Honor in the first days of their friendship; "and he used to

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love it so. I believe he hardly cares to look at his children, because he thinks they are so neglected; he is working himself to death for us, and yet I never dare tell him so. Last night I could hardly sleep for watching him, he looked so gray and thin.”

In those days Honor would preach patience and courage, she would bid Esther look her troubles boldly in the face, and rouse herself to do her daily work; but of late she had ceased wholly from such advice. Instead of that she would come almost daily and take tasks on herself, to spare Esther; the mending-baskets would dwindle down almost by miracle, though Grace Dunster and Phil could tell another tale. Rupert began to make progress with his lessons, and Amy at times was transformed into a neat-handed little maiden. Honor would brighten the whole household for a few hours, but of late there was always a lingering tenderness in her manner as she kissed Esther and wished her good-by, and often as she left the house she would sigh to herself and say, "Poor girl! poor Esther!"

Love begets love: a real warm affection will often grow out of mere pity and liking; we cannot help another without a atrong interest springing up in our hearts for the object we have succored; the Samaritan, as he journeyed on, must often have thought of the man whose wounds he had just bound up with oil and wine.

Honor soon learned to love the woman who was leaning all her weary weight on her; she bore with her as patiently as though she were her own sister: the gentleness that failed to stir the husband's latent love irresistibly attracted Honor: presently, in the long watches beside Esther's bed, she discerned the feeble excellences and beauties of her nature. "I never knew a purer or more loving heart," she once said to Dym; "and by and by he will find it out; not that I blame him," she hastily added, with that sweet charity which was natural to her; "he has the hardest life a man can have, and Esther has never been to him the wife he needed."

Mr. Grey did not make his appearance that day till the luncheon was nearly over. He brightened up visibly when he saw Honor, and shook hands cordially with Miss Elliott, and even addressed his wife cheerfully.

He was a fair, gentlemanly man, but, although still young,