that undue ruddiness of the cheeks, and superfluous plumpness of limb, which in the opinion of some of the ill-natured critics of her own sex, betrayed palpable touches of the farmer's daughter. There were male eyes, however, which saw perhaps an additional attraction in these imputed blemishes. Young as she was, Hetty had already made a conquest, and obvious as was the danger of having so young and so attractive an inmate in the house, the sharpsighted Mrs. Colyton had contrived completely to overlook it. Walter her eldest son, soon ceasing to regard Hetty as his handsome playfellow, and viewing her rather as the accomplished and captivating friend of his sister than as the daughter of Farmer Chervil, began with the thoughtless inflammability of youth to become vehemently enamoured of her charms, a passion with which he found means to make her acquainted, and which the young lady, not less susceptible and inconsiderate than himself, returned with all the girlish ardour of a first love, excited by her natural anxiety to accomplish a

marriage which should secure her from the dreaded chance of ever relapsing into her original humble station.

Mr. Colyton, too indolent and unobservant, or rather too much engrossed in his own recreations and indulgences to notice this attachment, was no sooner apprised of it by his wife, who had herself made the discovery by mere accident, than he proposed that they should send Hetty back to her parents; but as his spouse justly observed that this would by no means prevent the interviews of the lovers, while it would be a great trial to Edith, in her present delicate and depressed state, to deprive her of her friend, it was finally resolved that Walter, who had always been intended for the army, should enter immediately upon his military career, and be dispatched to some regiment that was stationed at a distance from Somersetshire. His father accordingly purchased a captain's commission, a rank that was then procurable without any previous service, and sending for his son, pointed out to him the great

imprudence, totally unprovided as he was, of forming an engagement with a girl, who, however deserving she might be in other respects, was only a farmer's daughter, without a shilling of portion. Putting the commission into his son's hands, and saluting him for the first time by the title of captain, he then urged his immediate departure for London where his regiment was stationed, a measure to which the enamoured youth was bribed, rather than reconciled, by a handsome donation; and by the prospect of being thus enabled to participate in the pleasures of the capital as soon as he should reach it. Hetty was for one week indignant at his easy compliance with such unreasonable recommendations, and another week saw her inconsolable for his absence; but at the end of this time she was restored to her usual vivacity by the receipt of a letter containing vows of unalterable fidelity couched in all the ardent terms of a youthful and fervid temperament, wherein the writer declared that as love would now stimulate his professional exertions, he doubted

not that success in his new career would speedily qualify him to follow the dearest impulses of his heart, and openly claim his adored Hetty as his bride.

There was one other personage domiciliated at Orchard Place whom we must not omit to notice, although he took but little share in the proceedings of the family. This was Paul Mapletoft, an old bachelor of easy fortune, and the brother of Mrs. Colyton.

He was almost literally a book-worm, devoted to study, and not altogether undistinguished as a writer upon scientific subjects, several of his papers having been read with applause at the Royal Society. His gaunt, wild-looking figure; his total disregard of ordinary observances in his exterior appointments; his odd habits; his fits of absence, in which he would sometimes commit the most ludicrous mistakes, and his custom of talking to himself in his solitary rambles, afforded, it must be confessed, some excuse for those imputations upon his sanity in which the clowns of the vicinage so freely in

VOL. I.

dulged. However eccentric and even outré might be his habitudes and appearance, he was a man of sense and learning, a pedant perhaps in semblance but not in reality, being totally free from all affectations or pretension, and having for the basis of his character a tranquil amiability, together with a marvellous fund of simplicity and naïveté.

Having thus hastily introduced the reader to the inmates of Orchard Place, it may not be inexpedient, in order that he may feel himself more completely at home, to afford him a passing glance at the house itself, although it presented no features of any very marked character or importance. It was a low rambling irregular structure, altered and enlarged by successive proprietors, until in the confusion of its gable ends and projections you could only guess which was the front by pitching upon that part which was opposite to the back of the premises, the latter being sufficiently indicated by a whole suburb of petty outbuildings and offices, beyond which, upon a gentle ascent, was the