Margaret Maliphant

								

so hard now he is old. It would have been different, you see, if--if
little John had lived."
I kissed her silently. The innocent slight to my own capacities, which
had so occupied my mind an hour ago, passed unnoticed by me. And as
father that night at family prayers rolled forth in his sonorous voice
the beautiful language of the Psalms, the words, "He hath respect unto
the lowly, but the proud he knoweth afar off," sank into my heart, and
I thought that I should never again want to set myself up above my
betters.

CHAPTER VIII.

I lay awake quite half an hour that night, and I made up my mind--just
as seriously as though my feelings were likely to prove an important
influence--that I would in no way try to bias my father in his decision
about taking a bailiff. But real as was my trouble about this matter
that to me was so mighty, it was all put to flight the next morning
by an occurrence of more personal and immediate interest. Such is the
blessed elasticity of youth. The occurrence was one which not only
brought the remembrance of Captain Forrester, and my romantic dreams
for Joyce, once more vividly to my mind, but it also gave no small
promise of enjoyment to myself. It consisted in the sudden appearance
of a groom from the Manor, who delivered into my hands a note for
mother.
It was morning when he came; mother was still in the kitchen with
Deborah, and Joyce and I had not finished making our beds and dusting
our room. But I do not think there was any delay in the answering of
that door-bell. I remember how cross I was when mother would insist on
finishing all her business before she opened the note; she went into
the poultry-yard and decided what chickens and what ducks should be
killed for the week's dinners, she went into the dairy to look at the
cream, she even went up herself into the loft to get apples before
she would go and find her spectacles in the parlor. And yet any one
could have imagined that a note from the squire meant something very
important. And so, indeed, it did. It contained a formal invitation to
a grand ball to be given at the Manor-house. The card did not say a
"grand" ball, but of course we knew that it would be a grand ball. We
were fairly dazed with excitement. Actually a ball in our quiet little
village. Such a thing had not been known since I had been grown up,
and I had not even heard of its having occurred since the days when
young Mrs. Broderick had come to the Manor as a bride. Of course we
had been to dances in town once or twice--once to the Hoads', and once
to a county ball, got up at the White Hart Inn, but I think these were
really the only two occasions on which I had danced anywhere out of the
dancing academy. Joyce, being a little older, could count about three
more such exciting moments in her life. The card was passed round from
hand to hand, and then stuck up on the mantle-shelf in front of the
clock, as though there were any danger that any of the family would